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Thanks for your comment, it's really interesting and helpful to hear from someone who's actually seen this play out in real life. I suspect it's not you, but me

by svara 7y ago

Thanks for your comment, it's really interesting and helpful to hear from someone who's actually seen this play out in real life. I suspect it's not you, but me who's sounding naive here. I do believe, though, that there's something about stable, market-oriented democracies that makes violent conflict unlikely, and there's quite some empirical evidence for that, too. See Steven Pinker and so on. The history of Yugoslavia may therefore not generalize to today's Europe. Also, attitudes of people do matter, and they certainly do in a democracy. Many of the young men who went to fight in WW1 truly believed they were taking part in some great, noble, adventure of historic proportions. This world view just does not exist anymore, it seems about as close to my life as, say, the Spanish inquisition, and I'd wager that's true for most people in Europe today.

jacquesm 7y ago
You're not answering me, but for that it is worth I sincerely hope you are right and I'm wrong. And thank you for the exchange.
vasac 7y ago
> that there's something about stable, market-oriented democracies Yeah, things are stable when economy is good (worked for Yugoslavia too) but what's going to happen in case of huge economic downturn like in the 30thies with millions out of work? Attitudes of people change as a reaction to the changes in their environment (real or perceived). And you don't need a majority, you just need a critical mass of people to stray and start chain of events that effects everyone. I certainly believe that market-oriented democracies are more stable than Yugoslavia, I'm just not sure how much more stable they are. Maybe I'm just to pessimistic after everything that happened in the last 30 years here.