Do Americans really believe they’ll be able to get their pet monster under control once they genocide the entire Middle East?

I don’t think any Americans who truly support this think further than the next quarter of Raytheon profits.

Everyone loves cowboy bebop, and a lot of shounen anime has penetrated pretty far - DBZ, Naruto, One Piece, etc.

Agreed that the problem is capitalism, but I don’t know about “no upside.” The poverty rate in China has continually decreased. While we in the west might argue that living under authoritarian rule might not be worth the tradeoff, that certainly is an upside.

Wait, the problem in your mind with China is that it’s not as safe for multinational companies to exploit their populace?

Unfortunately, I think that capitalism is here to stay, so things will just get shittier and shittier for everyone. As others responding to the top level comment have mentioned, declining birth rates means more stress on the entire system, where we’ll see more young people without any future to hope for since all their energy and money will be coopted for caring for old people, old people having shittier end-of-life experiences because there isn’t enough money to support them, and countries will not able to support anyone because there’s no investment due to lack of growth.

Re your third point - this is one of the main critiques of Capitalism, the reckless disregard for the bounds of growth.