It was chosen deliberately. HN has a wide audience. Of the 4 causes I explicitly listed, most people will shake their heads yes to two of them, feel indifferent to one, and feel insulted by one. This applies regardless of which group you belong to. I have friends that would think "Yes, yes, it's the lazy youth today" and be gravely insulted by the implication that corporate leadership is incompetent; I also have friends (in government) who would agree with both the observations on the lazy youth of today and the corrupt corporate leadership but be gravely insulted by the idea that incentives within our society might not result in the best behavior.
The meta-point I'm making is that every group believes our current problems are somebody else's fault, but what we're really facing is a systemic breakdown of the attributes that make for a functioning society. The other comment on this article, "Every empire has created the conditions of its collapse" has it right. When you're inside of the collapse, the idea that the collapse might be an inevitable result of the empire seems inconceivable, because the empire is all you've ever known. So a lot of people go around looking for a human adversary to blame, usually someone who was your countryman until recently, when really the system that created the country makes its demise inevitable.
People perpetuating it would have us believe the human race has been degrading for a few thousand years:
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
