Signs of decaying society

From Robert Heinlein's 1982 science fiction novel "Friday," a list of symptoms of a society circling the drain.

Citizens identify themselves primarily with a group rather than with the nation.

The population loses faith in the police and the courts. The justice system combines denial of bail with failure to grant a speedy trial.

Taxes are high, the currency is inflated, and the country runs a chronic deficit.

The country passes unenforceable laws regarding private behavior.

The culture treats as civil rights conditions that must be earned by behavior, such as good credit and academic credentials.

Violence is increasingly uncontrolled.

The government relies on arbitrary compulsion, such as slavery and military conscription.

Personal civility collapses, in favor of a conviction that everyone is entitled to tactless expression of his true self at all times.

Heinlein admires characters who gamely try to fight a losing battle against this decay, but identifies more strongly with those willing to emigrate to new worlds and start again. He believed strongly that emigration was a sorting process that would so improve the new population that secular success would at last be achieved. He had no use for religion, but to the end of his days obviously had a core faith in personal honor and virtue.