"it precludes any positive action" Not really. On a nation scale its more or less a justification of imperialism or at the very best unequal alliances. That

"it precludes any positive action" Not really. On a nation scale its more or less a justification of imperialism or at the very best unequal alliances. That is going thru a bit of a popularity lull at every scale from large imperialism 19th century style down to recent brexit. Its smaller scale equivalent in the welfare state has been under intense turmoil for decades... was the CCC a great idea or a horrible unconstitutional experiment? Was closing all the mental hospitals some of which were abusive and tossing the crazy people into homeless shelters a wise idea? A large fraction of economically non-viable young black men are very expensively warehoused in prisons, that's not going to scale much larger either financially or ethically although it's worked very well up to this point (for everyone but then incarcerated economically non-viable young black men, anyway). The general zeitgeist at the nation level seems to be to let them fail in place and kind of ignore the problems, while patting ourselves on our backs for our wise non-interference. Look at the path from Somalia to Zimbabwe to South Africa and the inevitable outcome of western civilization doing nothing. Or the future of a country like Nigeria where they're gonna give birth to a billion people, but they'll never produce food for more than 50 million long term sustainably or maybe 100 mill temporarily western industrial ag style, but we're hands off in the west, so unless China saves them ... (and Chinese gotta eat too, so what are the odds of that...). I figure based on the above national level analysis, the individual welfare level analysis should anticipate the checks getting cut off in the coming decades then its sink or swim time. That'll be an interesting time to live in Detroit.