On July 30, 2025, Balaji Srinivasan appeared on The Peter McCormack Show in an interview titled “Balaji Srinivasan: The COLLAPSE of the West – Why AI, Bitcoin & China Will Win.”

A friend recommended it, and I found it compelling—full of information, provocative as always—but built on shaky premises that led to shaky conclusions. Here’s why.

1. Global Wealth and the Return East

Balaji points out that global GDP is returning to the East, where it resided for millennia before the Industrial Revolution. True enough. But he portrays this shift as a natural correction, rather than a contingent trend. History isn’t linear—it’s punctuated by reversals.

Wealth doesn’t follow geography; it follows institutions. The essential best practices are well known:

  • Secure private property
  • Independent courts free from political influence
  • Just laws applied equally regardless of race, religion, or origin
  • Free markets
  • Free, fair, recurrent elections
  • A dynamic and competitive media

The West pioneered many of these, but they’re not Western by nature. Any society can adopt them. If they spread globally, then yes, wealth will more closely mirror population. That’s a good outcome—global prosperity is safer and more stable than global imbalance. But it’s not automatic, and it’s certainly not guaranteed.

2. Racism, Immigration, and Human Nature

Balaji suggests the West is uniquely racist and anti-immigrant. He’s right that racism and xenophobia exist—but wrong to think they’re unique to the West. Tribalism is the human default everywhere.

The real question is: who has confronted those instincts most seriously? By any comparative measure, the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe have gone further than others. Imperfectly, incompletely, yes—but still further. That matters.

3. Hollywood, Representation, and Global Stories

As evidence of Western racism, Balaji cites Hollywood’s lack of wealthy, non-Western protagonists—Crazy Rich Asians being the rare counterexample. But this misses the point.

Hollywood catered to its largest market: Western audiences. Protagonists tend to look like the audience. That’s market logic, not unique bigotry. More importantly, people worldwide flocked to Hollywood not because the characters were white, but because the movies were excellent—better writing, acting, sets, special effects.

As Asia and the Global South produce more world-class films, they’ll win global audiences too. Great stories and great production travel across borders.

4. Media, the NYT, and the Ecosystem

Balaji takes aim at The New York Times, calling its editorial board woke and affirmative-action driven. Let’s grant some of that critique. But his leap—that one institution’s bias invalidates the entire Western media ecosystem—is an overreach.

Media isn’t monolithic. If the Times leans too far into ideology, alternatives flourish: Substack, The Free Press, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, podcasts, and satirical outlets like The Onion, The Babylon Bee, and South Park. People may want to be affirmed, but they also want the truth. A competitive ecosystem ensures they eventually get it.

5. The Open Society Paradox

This is where Balaji’s critique misses the deeper truth. Open societies always look like they’re falling apart. Why? Because they are constantly self-correcting in public.

Autocracies look stable—until they shatter. Democracies look chaotic—because they regenerate in plain sight. That’s the “open society paradox.”

Take the Biden–Trump debate of June 2024. The spectacle exposed Biden’s decline, toppled him, elevated Kamala Harris, and ultimately delivered the presidency back to Donald Trump. Ugly? Yes. Incompetent? Often. But also transparent. The U.S. put its leaders on stage for public inspection. That’s how self-correcting systems punish weakness and adjust, however slowly and painfully.

6. Don’t Count Out the Messy West

Balaji is right that the non-West will grow wealthier as it adopts better institutions. But he underestimates the regenerative power of the West.

Robust systems are transparent, modular, and self-correcting. Self-correction is ugly, but it’s the source of constant renewal.

So yes, expect growth from the East. Celebrate it. But don’t count out the West. Its chaos is precisely what makes it resilient.

Closing Punch

Balaji sees decline. I see painful but necessary regeneration. The prudent may diversify away from the West. The wise know it is a phoenix, reborn through self-correction.