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While I agree with your overall point, I am not sure I would attribute defeatism to the rest of the world so much as the West. It is the West that is set to rem

• Zaphods 7y ago
  > The Chinese, Russians and Arabs are just copying the West. The problem with that line of reasoning is that those countries are categorically different from democracies. Those countries do not have the interlocking systems of laws, elections, values, that constitute democracy, things like 1) rule of law 2) private property rights 3) protections for minorities 4) independent judiciaries 5) systematic transitions of power through electoral systems with competing parties 6) independent constitutions that require 2/3rds or more majorities to amend, 7) separation of church and state (this includes cult of personalities), I could go on. Superficially, it seems fair to compare democratic western countries to China, Russia, and Arab monarchies/dictatorships. But you easily slide into a category error. The very fact that they are not democracies means the people in those countries lack concrete tangible mechanisms and systems to ensure their freedom, independence, and safety, in a productive society that also protects minorities. The people are just fundamentally less free than they would be if they were in a democracy. Your criticisms of western democracies are well founded. The biggest problem in modern democracies is simple greed and regulatory capture (and intensification of capital in a low % of the population but that's connected to greed and regulatory capture). But that's not an argument to adopt a Chinese, Russian, or Arab, system if there is one beyond greed and authoritarian control. That's an argument to fix our democracies (ironically, the idea of fixing a government and society in this way is unique to happening within a democracy, otherwise what are you fighting for? more oppression?). The grass is always greener when you assume you'll be in the powerful, rich, or successful, portion of society. But you can't assume that. So we have democracy.
  • njepa 7y ago
    I don't disagree with democracy. It is just that the system isn't its idea, but what it delivers. Most people never looked up to the US because it was the most democratic, because it wasn't. But because it delivered relative to other systems. The US system gave some of its people prosperity as in a decent sized house, the independence of a car to use the extensive highway network, an education and a career. Essentially a future. Today it doesn't deliver. People go to the US because the status and the money, despite the visa process, the education system, the housing market and the infrastructure. Soon enough they will catch up to the status and the money, and the West will have little to offer. It is easy the point the finger to everyone else, but it is the West that aren't fighting for it. We want the global markets, the large companies and the Chinese investments. You can't have both. You can't on the one hand have an idea of how things should be, and on the other sell it to highest bidder. There are probably hundreds of articles about China "stealing" industries from the West. But overall they are just buying them to the delight of the owners, either with money or effort. And then the West somehow thinks that the Chinese should be the ones considering them successful.
    • 0815test 7y ago
      > Soon enough they will catch up to the status and the money, and the West will have little to offer. You'd think that, but the middle income trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap happens for a reason, and widespread liberal or even democratic values might be required in order to escape it. The thing is that the wealthiest countries in the world, aside from special cases like big natural-resource endowments, have always featured broadly-liberal values and a reasonably-diffuse power base. Starting at least from the Italian and German renaissance, The Netherlands in the early-modern period, etc. And this dynamic has only become more important in a modern service economy where growth is powered by continued entrepreneuship and innovation - it would be huge news if this became suddenly untrue.
      • njepa 7y ago
        I don't know. Seems like we are the ones in the trap. We make more money, but we generally don't get more for it. 20 years China couldn't produce cars, at least not as far I know. Now they bought Volvo. They bought KUKA robots. High speed trains. And can import almost anything if they want to. Chances are if you look back at those societies it wasn't the liberalism. They were probably horrible by modern standards. It might just have been the trade of information and resources. Today you can do probably do that without the values. Or at least if the West doesn't do it that way, who is the competition? If everyone in the US is worried about their mortgage, who is going to be more creative than Google to the point where Google can't just buy them? The same probably goes for society. If the West doesn't do democracy very well, who are the Chinese losing to? Maybe you are right, but I still would trust the future to some idea. That is when you lose. When you think "well this can't happen" and then it does. Because the quote about astrophysics also goes for society, that "the universe has no obligation to make sense to you". Chances are it doesn't have to be certain way at all. Most of history certainly isn't fair.
• matachuan 7y ago
  > If the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions. Where we run our countries, our infrastructure and invest in scientific progress together. And where we believe that running businesses in line with the values of society is better. Then they would want democracy as well. In that matter, don't you think it's the financial status that pushes all the ideas back? There is a fundamental tradeoff between resources spent on individuals vs total resources.
  • pjc50 7y ago
    > There is a fundamental tradeoff between resources spent on individuals vs total resources. Indeed. The world as a whole is heading towards a situation where a larger and larger fraction of resources is under the control of a shrinking number of extremely rich people.
    • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      It's important to note that this is the narrative, but what's really happening is that a larger and larger fraction of resources is under the control of a shrinking number of extremely rich corporations. The corporations largely have diffuse ownership (they're owned by a hundred million people's 401(k)), and the top level executives are generally "rich" but e.g. Tim Cook has less than 1% as much money as Apple Inc.
      • pjc50 7y ago
        And who controls the corporations? Shareholder activism is really limited; to a great extent execs can pay themselves what they want, hire who they want, and donate to the politicians they want.
        • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
          But that's a completely different dynamic. It's like saying "who controls the government" because democratic control is really limited in a two party system where both parties have similar (or equally problematic) policies on many issues, unelected administrative agencies have wide latitude to set policy (including ones that profit them personally through the revolving door), government employees and government employee unions are a large voting and lobbying block despite the obvious conflict of interest against other citizens, etc. The problem isn't that Bill Gates has too much money, it's that we have institutions with too much power and not enough accountability, both government and corporate. And then they use that power to conspire together against ordinary people. What we need is to shrink the size of all entities to be less monolithic and more local and manageable.
• dnautics 7y ago
  >It is the West that is set to remove any form of commonality and turn to a state of legalized corruption and nepotism. This is silly, the west has always had legalized corruption and nepotism. John f Kennedy employed his brother as secretary of state, and raped his 19 year old intern. Things are getting better, not worse.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • njepa 7y ago
    I do think things are better in general. But as I said, if the lesser corruption doesn't deliver then it doesn't matter. The West can keep pretending that increasingly not delivering cost effective housing, education, health care and other things of importance in a knowledge economy is just repeated "flaws" and not a result of the current system. Maybe is better to pay consultant instead of corrupt politicians, even if the consultants then tend to award the politicians after the fact. The problem is that the corrupt politicians in some of these other countries are now delivering results. Shenzhen has opened a new subway station every month on average for the last 15 years. And there are certainly cities in the West that need more subway stations. Maybe cities in the West could even produce subways better than the Chinese. With less corruption and at lower cost relative to income. But as long as that isn't happening, the ability to do so doesn't matter much. So at least to the extent that the West can't produce these things it is still a problem.
• jeffdavis 7y ago
  "the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions" That sounds more like a value system rather than a philosophy of governance. An authoritarian or a libertarian could make a case that their way will deliver those things.
  • njepa 7y ago
    I don't think the would, or at least hopefully could. De facto egalitarianism is to a large extent a democratic ideal. An authoritarian or a libertarian don't in general care about equality, but that the inequality is fair. They would say as long as the system or the conditions are fair the outcomes are also fair.
    • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > An authoritarian or a libertarian don't in general care about equality, but that the inequality is fair. They would say as long as the system or the conditions are fair the outcomes are also fair. Can you be more specific about what you think the difference between fairness and equality is? For example, if one person is smart enough to become a doctor and another isn't, but then doctors get paid more than housekeepers, is that the difference? The system is fair (anyone smart enough and willing to can become a doctor) but not equal (some people aren't smart enough and doctors get paid more). But using that as the difference is more of a communist ("to each according to his needs") ideal than a democratic one. And authoritarians generally don't even care if the system is fair -- if it's unjustly enriching their own people then it's authoritarianism working as intended.
      • njepa 7y ago
        From a democratic perspective the doctor can in theory earn much more as long as that doesn't grant them more influence or rights. Someone having a sports car isn't in isolation a democratic problem. Access to education, communities and security is. I guess there in theory there could be libertarians that have very high criteria for what an informed choice would be. To a point where it would be democratic. But that is probably closer to social liberalism. One can of course question whether most authoritarians care much about their own ideology. But as an ideology they do care that the system is fair, just not society overall. People do believe that it is fair to have a "strong leader". They might not care much if the leader is enriching themselves as they aren't equals. They would care if the leader loses face and don't seem as "strong" as thought. Because then their position would be unwarranted.
• AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > If the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions. This seems to have been caused by democracy and lack of adequate checks on it. Our political system has gotten too good at pitting people against themselves. For example, housing. It costs too much and people can't afford it. There are multiple policies we could adopt to address it. One is to make housing prices go even higher. It's not such a problem to pay $500K for a house that should cost $200K if it can be sold for $1M by the time you retire. People like the idea of this because it allows them to make money "for free", especially the people who have already overpaid for a house. So it remains a popular policy even though it's blatantly an unsustainable ponzi scheme. Another is to have the government subsidize housing or otherwise adopt policies like rent control or designated affordable housing. But the common factor in all of these policies is to have the effect of raising overall rents, and on top of that the ones that cost money then have to be paid for from taxes that could otherwise have gone to something actually useful. So then the middle class gets presented with a false dichotomy which is really squeezing them from both sides. Then the ones who think they're going to be rich choose policies that purposely increase housing prices so they can make money even though they're just inflating a bubble that may pop before they can get out. The others support policies they think will make housing more affordable, not realizing that they won't qualify for the programs so they're really the ones paying the higher rents and taxes to support them. Then the half of the middle class that votes with the rich allows them to get their policies, and the other half that votes with the indigent allows them to get their policies as well, even though both policies hurt the middle class. The traditional solution to this was to place limits on government power so that they're not even allowed to enact the policies that bring about this kind of myopic kleptocracy, but that seems to have fallen out of favor, presumably because enacting it requires being in power and if you're already in power then it's more profitable not to limit your own power as a kleptocrat. Or even more problematically, to expand it every time you have enough of a majority to do something like passing the Seventeenth Amendment, threatening to pack the Supreme Court if they won't uphold your unreasonably broad interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, or removing state-level restrictions on what kind of zoning/housing laws individual cities can pass.
  • njepa 7y ago