In Episode 443 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with former investment banker turned global strategist Viktor Shvets, whose books The Great Rupture and The Twilight Before the Storm provide an audaciously comprehensive and compelling framework for understanding the forces shaping our world. These include technology and finance, amplified by climate change, demographics, and a series of socioeconomic and geopolitical shocks that have created the once-in-a-century superstorm now enveloping Western democracies.

Viktor and Demetri spend the first hour of this episode exploring Shvets' central critique of neoliberalism and why he believes that much of the current crisis stems from this failed ideology. They compare today's sociopolitical and economic dynamics to those that overtook the world in the 1930s, focusing on technology-driven social disruption, a decline in the marginal utility of labor, runaway asset prices, repeated financial shocks, pandemics, climate stress, migration, and a deep loss of faith in institutions, in our collective identity, and in our shared capacity to solve problems.

The second hour turns to questions of policy design, institutional reform, and portfolio strategy. Viktor and Demetri debate the pros and cons of redistributive solutions such as universal basic income and more heavy-handed fixes to America's broken healthcare system and antiquated educational model. They also stress-test alternative modes of sociopolitical organization such as despotic feudalism, techno-communism, or models that attempt to better balance the more extreme outcomes that a highly technologized society like ours would produce.

The two end the episode with a conversation about digital currencies and the disruptive potential that decentralized finance will have on money and banking. Kofinas also asks Shvets what assets he believes will outperform if governments are able to institute the types of reforms that he believes are necessary, and similarly, what assets investors will want to own if we trend toward some of the darker scenarios that he envisions.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 09/29/2025