The American Age Was The Human Age

Author: Noah Smith URL: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-american-age-was-the-human-age One-line: Written on America’s 250th anniversary, this piece argues the country is likely to survive its “shakier” foundations for centuries yet, but the deeper story is that declining patriotism, factional politics defined by hatred, and the rise of AI-driven cognition mean the end of “the human age” is arriving well before any American collapse.

Note: the saved clipping cuts off partway through — the source is paywalled beyond “So whether or not this is the beginning of the end for America, it’s the beginning of the end for something even bigger and more important — the human age.” The rest of the essay (beyond that line) is not captured.

Key claims

• America, now 250 years old, will likely last as long as China’s major dynasties (Qing 268 years, Ming 276, Tang 289) — its GDP is still on a smooth upward trend and the “hour of the wolf” has not arrived, even though the country’s foundations are “shakier” than in Smith’s childhood.
• Much of the country has settled into “a comfortable equilibrium of sclerosis” — local veto power blocking or massively raising the cost of building factories, housing, energy, and transportation (an extension of Smith’s The Build-Nothing Country argument) — where the past has become more valuable to many Americans than the future.
• American politics is now defined more by mutual hatred than any positive vision: rightists consumed by hatred of immigration, leftists by hatred of Israel, and even Smith’s own intellectual-liberal class increasingly focused on lowering the social status of wealthy technologists rather than pursuing a constructive future.
• Patriotism has collapsed — Americans are now less proud of their nation than people in any other major world region, a reversal from America’s historically unusual patriotism.
• The rightist and leftist “visions” of America’s future are both fantasies — homogeneous ethnic restoration on the right, and socialist plenty on the left — while workable “abundance”-style visions get little engagement from either faction.
• Beneath the question of America’s survival is a bigger one: the end of “the human age.” With global fertility collapsing and more of the planet’s thinking shifting into AI data centers rather than human brains, Smith argues it’s unclear whether the nation-state framework that organized the last 250 years will even be needed going forward.

Notable quotes

“Barring abrupt catastrophe, the United States — which today marks a quarter of a millennium — will probably last as long as the Qing, the Ming, and probably the Tang.”

“The past has become more valuable than the future to many Americans; they cling desperately to the power to enforce stasis, preserving a facade of the country they grew up in at the expense of the very dynamism that made that country great.”

“How will the country be saved if no one thinks it’s something worth saving?”

“So whether or not this is the beginning of the end for America, it’s the beginning of the end for something even bigger and more important — the human age.”

Embedded tweets

I knew patriotism had declined in the United States. But hadn’t realized we’re actually below the world average now.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) · Jul 03, 2026 · View on X

How it connects

• Noah Smith — author; Noahpinion Substack.
• Patriotism — this piece’s data point (Americans now less patriotic than any other major world region) extends the wiki’s existing Patriotism thread, previously anchored on Buffett’s optimism in the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letters.
• The Build-Nothing Country — the “comfortable equilibrium of sclerosis” argument here is a direct callback to Smith’s earlier essay on America’s broken permitting/land-use system.