The Black Death or Detroit. I don't know which is worse.
I keed, I keed: many very smart people are doing really interesting things in Detroit. It's interesting to note, though, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic causal factors: the Black Death significantly increased real peasant wages and per capita wealth, likely helping the transition from a feudal to capitalist society through dispersing capital more widely. It's a much better situation (for the people who remain) than the Detroit case, where it was low returns to labor that depopulated it.
Estonia is much closer to the Detroit case, it sounds like, which is not necessarily a good thing for its future prospects.
I keed, I keed: many very smart people are doing really interesting things in Detroit. It's interesting to note, though, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic causal factors: the Black Death significantly increased real peasant wages and per capita wealth, likely helping the transition from a feudal to capitalist society through dispersing capital more widely. It's a much better situation (for the people who remain) than the Detroit case, where it was low returns to labor that depopulated it.
Estonia is much closer to the Detroit case, it sounds like, which is not necessarily a good thing for its future prospects.