The United States of America not only possesses the richest combination of natural resources in the world but at a scale greater than all other nation-states. So, exactly how did the U.S. global market share fall from 40% to only 15% in the span of several decades?

In 1960, the U.S. controlled a 40% global market share of business, producing 90% of the world’s automobiles, as well as its own clothing, ships, aircraft, and general consumer goods—all at globally superior prices. Today, the American shipbuilding industry, among others, is essentially nonexistent. Yet, it’s not for lack of iron ore or coal to melt the ore. Countries without any iron or coal make ships, but America seemingly can’t. While some of the highest-paid workers in the world build ships, American shipbuilding jobs are gone, apart from those required to build an increasingly small number of U.S. Navy vessels.

The demise of America’s shipbuilding industry is only one example of America’s decline as a top global producer. But how did this come about? Logically, America’s only true competition should be Russia and Brazil, since these are the only nations that have the natural resources to become the world’s top producers, assuming their policies are efficient. But consider this: an American soldier goes into battle with a foreign-made rifle and pistol, and our chief rival, China, produces 17 times more steel than we do. America is losing to the foreign rifle, pistol, and steel mills when America has more iron ore and more energy to melt the ore into a finished product.

Is America’s failure due to external competition? A lack of leadership? Or something else altogether?

Every nation-state has enemies and America is no different. During the American Civil War, the Europeans supplied arms to the confederacy in the hope of splitting the country and therefore splitting their competition. Other nations have sold or continue to sell products to the U.S. at lower than production costs with the intent of damaging American businesses. It’s no secret that the U.S. has multiple external enemies who desire a weak America. Yet, historically, the threat to greatness has never been internal. Failure is domestic. As evidenced throughout history, empires are brought down by poor and miscalculated internal philosophies, not by external forces.

When we look at the period from 1970 to 2017 in America, it’s clear that those running the country were not doing a very good job. It’s not enough for a free, constitutionally-great nation to simply prevent the formation of global communism, or depose powerful dictators and tyrannical, top-down rulers. The United States must lead economically.

By viewing America’s decline in strength from a purely economic lens, it quickly becomes evident that the gradual weakening of U.S. global economic power is due to the implementation of domestic social science beliefs. Yet, social science cannot be pinned down to a single universal truth, and therefore, it produces increasingly detrimental policies year-over-year. The fact that America is more than 100% in debt and domestic manufacturing is dying fast, is evidence of this truth.

Keynesian economic theory, introduced in 1936 by English economist John Maynard Keynes, attributes money and labor as the chief cause of prosperity. The base premise of Keynesian theory, which is presently applied to American economic policy, is that wealth and economic prosperity are improved simply by adding money to the economy. Those ascribing to this modern theory of economics accept that simply through the act of printing money, the U.S. government causes an economic output, which, in turn, enables prosperity and the well-being of humanity. However, in chapter four of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes laments that he cannot find a unit of measure to evaluate outputs. He chose money and labor as the base units of his theory because in his view, there is “no solution” to the problem of finding a way to measure input and output in economic theory.

There’s a reason why Keynes was not able to find a solution for measuring input and output in economic theory. Physics and economics have more in common than Keynes assessed. He did not view economic activity as an energy-based cause and effect event subject to the laws of natural science. As in all things physical (that which resists force), a relationship is found between energy, mass, distance and time. Economic activity is no exception. Money and labor are not a cause; only energy can be a cause. They are a subset effect as an outcome derived from an input of something physical which occurred first.