Google discworld reading order, pick a storyline that is similar to genres you like (the guard books are copper fiction, the Lipwig books are inverted heist novels, the Rincewind books are classic fantasy by way of Oxford University culture, etc.)
Heinlein's law:
Arguing that a given scifi author's view of future society makes sense will always essentially reduce to arguing that the author's politics are correct.
Reminds me somewhat of roman concrete; archeologists were under the impression that roman concrete was poorly mixed due to various hydroreactive additives, that were thought to have been accidentally added during the mixing process.
It turned out these additives grant self healing properties to the structure, as when cracks appear revealing the additives, they expand to fill the crack.
It is an unearned windfall, but people deserve to keep their homes. It bears noting that the issue is caused by property investors, not homeowners. How about we go for the individuals that own more than 3 properties and let grandma keep what she earned?
Tldr: Churchill was a good wartime leader, but during his second term he screwed up the housing regulations so bad it broke up one of the longest conservative runs of all time with Attlee coming in to try and fix the mess.
Japan is still a first world nation. The world hasn't ended for them.
Can we stop pretending that having a population that isn't exponentially growing is a bad thing.
Not exactly a collapse, and a fall was always going to be the case; Brussels was always going to absolutely murder the first country to leave, as an example to the other states.