The Writing on the Wall for America Is Hard to Ignore

What if the story you grew up believing was never really true?

Never has there been clearer writing on the wall.

I'm tempted to say it's the end of the United States empire, but that's too simple.

Rather, the rest of the world is taking power and the narrative away from the US. For the first time in a long time, more people are leaving the United States than moving to it.

For decades, America sold itself as the obvious destination—the default place ambitious people moved toward, not away from.

That assumption feels shakier than it has in a very long time.

Not because the United States is collapsing, but because other countries are building systems, infrastructure, and quality of life that make the old story harder to defend.

When productive, ambitious, globally mobile people leave with little to no intention of returning, the like-minded who remain face a dichotomy: leave too—or stay and figure out how to build a tolerable, meaningful life where they are.

I like to think that if you read this newsletter, you’re one of the people still capable of thinking clearly about all of this. Or you live outside of the United States and care about these matters for one reason or another.

So let’s proceed in two parts:

• One—just so you know it’s not hyperbole, let’s talk about a couple of very specific things that barely register in American media coverage that illustrate this writing on the wall.

• Two—let’s consider the question: How to actually decide where to live?

Let’s surface scratch a couple of huge stories you’re probably not hearing about in the United States.

First, there’s something in Spain called Bizum. It’s a peer-to-peer payment platform—similar to Venmo or Zelle—that a vast majority of the Spanish population uses. If you want to split the bill, you “Bizum” your friend. Some businesses have been informally accepting Bizum for some time. All you need is the other person’s phone number and a bank account.

But, starting this week, Bizum is officially rolling out in retail stores across the country. So you can simply tap to pay using Bizum just as you might with Apple Pay, Google Pay, or your bank-issued Visa or Mastercard.

But the difference is, when you pay directly with Bizum, you cut out the expensive American card networks. The money moves instantly from your account to the merchant's bank account through a domestic rails system, drastically undercutting the fees American card networks force merchants to pay.

Bizum in Spain is effectively a test case for an eventual EU-wide rollout.

Bizum, MB WAY (Portugal), and Bancomat (Italy) formed a consortium called EuroPA to make their systems cross-compatible. Other local apps, like Blik (Poland), IRIS (Greece), and Vipps MobilePay (Nordics), have also signed on.

The goal is to enable over 100 million European citizens to seamlessly send money or buy goods across borders using their native local apps, without needing an intermediary card processor.

This doesn’t bode well for the American incumbents.

Second, Brazilian fintech Nubank and Europe’s Revolut and bunq have 223 million users combined. Only about one million are in the US—most of them belong to Revolut. All three neobanks are in the process of bringing their financial super apps to the US.

Banking, investing, transfers, payments, currency exchange—all in one place. We're talking a comprehensive one stop shop that no American bank or fintech offers.

All three of these companies are aggressive, successful, sharp, and fully prepared to compete on American turf.

That should make American incumbents nervous.

I could go on all day about just these two examples. But, in the bigger picture, we’re seeing the world eschew American hegemony while increasingly challenging US companies on their own turf and abroad.

So if someone says America’s grip on the global narrative is slipping or that the rest of the world is no longer content to operate inside an American-defined story, they’re not blowing smoke up your ass. They're making a logical inference from what they see happening around the world. Developments that rarely break through America’s relentlessly domestic political noise.

America isn’t necessarily collapsing. But the assumptions Americans rely on absolutely are.

If the assumptions you grew up with no longer hold, then the question becomes personal.

If you could live differently, where would you?

That’s the question we’ll tackle in the next installment: how to actually decide where to live.

It’ll be a paid installment—so if this conversation resonates, subscribe below.

Seen in Paris