I agree with you in the sense that all macro patterns in complex systems are meta stable. And no system will survive forever. My disagreement comes from that abandoning incrementalism and suing for compete revolution is profoundly dangerous given the complexity of modern states, modern economies and the modern world.

We agree that these breakdowns are often associated with war. But I disagree that money can be a limiting factor -- especially for say a great power conflict. Governments can just nationalize supply chains and defense production directly. They don't HAVE to go into debt to sustain a war. And if the war is considered to be existential, it's likely this is what they'll do. In fact, the US already had laws on the books that give the president expansive authority to seize control of production in the presence of a real or apprehended war -- the Defense Production Act, for example.

So I get my back up against the wall when people suggest something like Bitcoin can bend us away from these kinds of risks because of any discipline they think it can impose on governments, in this sense.

I'm willing to concede that wars like Iraq in 2003, conducted at the height of America's unipolar moment, within a largely peacetime framework of government debt and spending, could potentially have been attenuated if the public had felt the effects of that more directly, as you pointed out on WBD.

But I think existential wars are different. The rules change. The government can just force industry into a wartime economy and use production nationalization as a tool, if necessary. Which happened under FDR in WWII.