The world's biggest failure was its inability (or unwillingness) to invent intelligent software. By now I've said it a million times. In the early 2020s, web browsing remained infuriatingly slow, and PCs freeze as often as ever. Expressing the will of sometimes evil programmers, machines still refuse to do what we want, a type of invincible stupidity. Eternally defective software is the most constant reminder that the world is evil.
Human behavior is tracked, but personality is ignored. There are no universal rules of thought, only endless, arbitrary complexity. Societies randomize themselves because waste drives evolution.
The most absurd waste is the evil friction of unemployment. Economic depressions frighten young workers to pay for old people's entitlements. Things will only get worse before the last Boomer retires in 2030.

No matter how big any coming collapse may be, the world will be just fine. Depending on your circumstances, skills, location, government, economy, finances, luck and health, you may be fine too.
Meanwhile, life will continue to suck more than we dare admit. For many there's only darkness ahead. No easy escape; meaning no escape at all.
Suicide is logical when conditions are really intolerable, but often a simple solution has been overlooked. The victims would have kicked themselves had they only known.
The solution might be to liquidate their life and relocate, or to radically simplify their life. You should probably do that. A living standard better than prison or boarding school is easy in theory.
Often the simplest answer is to do nothing. The second simplest answer is to do more of the same.

Could this work on a larger scale? From the Post Office to healthcare, inefficient power and favor networks exist mostly to sustain themselves. It's politically unthinkable to deregulate legacy monopolies. They can only be outcompeted.

According to 'While America Aged' by Roger Lowenstein, in US cities (San Diego) and industries (autos) the pensions promised to union members, transit workers, and civil servants will vastly exceed their combined salaries while working. These promises were made during a golden age of growth. Instead of funding their retirements, the politicians traded the money for even more votes. New employees' salaries have declined to pay the coming benefits.

Under Obamacare, the AARP insists younger workers earning over $10,000 per year subsidize the healthcare wishes of the rich elderly, with much higher premiums to come for Generations Y, Z, and beyond. Millions have already been priced out. If the politicians would only loosen their grip, their victims could purchase vastly cheaper healthcare (patients could give up the right to sue, or buy health insurance that doesn't cover the most expensive procedures).
The real estate market could be overthrown by high-quality mobile homes (long overdue).

Of course all that would be extremely illegal. Evil demon-bastards, I mean highly respected statesmen such as Ted Kennedy, have spent decades engineering regulations to protect established donors, affecting zoning to licensing to liability to mandates (Notice I called him evil but not fat. That was the least bad thing about this monster).

Things will get worse. Politicians are entrenched by the most powerful conformity.
They can't really be defeated, only be made irrelevant by an unpredictable outside shock.

  

Our worst problems would evaporate if the world could become twice as rich. It might take weeks to invent a new set of problems then.
This is a primitive planet with deliberate complications. Inhabitants live in squalor and are functionally illiterate. It's much easier to create new people than new products. Places like the Sudans and Bangladesh have more slums than functional bathrooms.

The first problem is energy. Oil is running out faster than admitted, despite fracking. Government programs can't make solar power work. Religions, genetics (above all), culture, and science teachers all discourage innovation.

The first solution involves the 'C' word: Conservation will require some (technically easy but socially difficult) lifestyle reductions.
Cars will have to get flimsier, slower, and less cool looking. It will take an hour longer to fly cross-country powered by high-bypass propfans.
Telecommuting should be encouraged. It's relatively easy to track everyone's contributions, but most jobs have strong social hierarchy aspects.
New homes in the remaining high-density zones will need to be smaller. Obsolete downtown business districts will eventually be converted into housing. With improved VR illusions, the cheapest homes will shrink into living pods.
This would violate human wealth flaunting instincts.

Economic growth will require new small nuclear power plants. This is both a technical and a democratic problem. Among other things US politicians have arranged for their good friends the trial lawyers to be paid about a trillion dollars before the construction can be completed. Every American will pay thousands in legal and bureaucratic fees through higher taxes and utilities.
Most countries have hipster Green movements. Obama banned the safe burial of nuclear waste under a desert, after billions were already spent on the facility. Trump of course never reversed the order.

Mass-produced solar cells automatically shrink-wrapped onto existing roofs would take immense breakthroughs to invent.
The real problem is that science and engineering are literally incomprehensible for most people. Better than a new energy source would be a new education method, instead of the ancient techniques still used in classrooms. I've been waiting my whole life for that. It's just not happening.

If mankind can't be made smarter, it might be made to behave.
This includes passive skills: not wasting money, plus minimal planning and basic negotiation abilities.

Mankind is less than sane when it comes to rivalries, as in the Cold War. Any change seems bad, even if it's an improvement.
Just visit any supermarket or fast food place with its wasteful, environmentally unfriendly, and delicious factory-farmed meat products. Perfectly serviceable synthetic meat can be manufactured cheaply from processed soybeans, fungi, and grains, and tastes almost as good as the real thing to quite a few people. Those meat substitutes that do exist are way overpriced, however.

If Middle Easterners became less boring, the Middle East would become more boring, which would be very good.
Strangely, a more advanced world would appear less civilized. Less effort would be spent on appearances. But the news would become stranger.

In this imaginary future, more people could spend their days relaxing, instead of being forced to work themselves numb.
At long last freedom. All the suffering of history will have been worth it to them. For a while, all will be well.
Sadly, every solved problem will eventually be replaced by unimaginable new ones.

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The best hard SF novel ever written? Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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