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What's even more important, antagonism and competition between European states is a main driving factor of European success. China destroyed itself and faced a

What's even more important, antagonism and competition between European states is a main driving factor of European success. China destroyed itself and faced a century of humiliation (in fact at last 1.5 centuries, it's been a pathetic shithole by 1835 and still was in 1985), exactly because it had none of that, but a strong centralised government with nothing that could seriously threaten it. Preserving the status quo has become a lot more important than progress, and they found themselves at the very bottom of global food chain before they realised. In the Western world, we have a very acute perception of importance of all kinds of competition, and regularly get examples of how ugly things turn if it is thwarted. So, our disunity is our strength and our defining factor, not our weakness.

jgeada 4y ago
Funny because at corporation level competition is almost gone, and too big to fail makes most of the behemoths immune to consequences for bad decisions. And yet any time people want to enforce antitrust we get astroturfing about too much regulation.
- anovikov 4y ago
  And yet top rich lists are almost entirely made of new names. Few people are rich because they were born into it - fewer than ever before. Which suggests competition is still very much alive, we are further from "feudal" society than ever before.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Maybe it's more accurate to say "few super rich people were born super rich". Competition seems healthy in the upper 10% of society. For those having less than that it looks a lot less egalitarian though.
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      "For those having less than that it looks a lot less egalitarian though." Does it still hold when you look outside the US? Wealth relations have certainly changed a lot in Europe since the Iron Curtain fell. I remember Poland suffering from shortage of pretty much everything (in 1989, the shops were empty and your only recourse was the black market), nowadays they seem to be building more skyscrapers than the rest of the continent together.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    There is nobody in the top 20 list of billionaires that did not come from the top 5% or 1%
    - anovikov 4y ago
      That's right, thank God. I'd hate to be (economically) ruled by "rags to riches" kind of people.

jgeada 4y ago

Funny because at corporation level competition is almost gone, and too big to fail makes most of the behemoths immune to consequences for bad decisions. And yet any time people want to enforce antitrust we get astroturfing about too much regulation.

anovikov 4y ago
And yet top rich lists are almost entirely made of new names. Few people are rich because they were born into it - fewer than ever before. Which suggests competition is still very much alive, we are further from "feudal" society than ever before.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Maybe it's more accurate to say "few super rich people were born super rich". Competition seems healthy in the upper 10% of society. For those having less than that it looks a lot less egalitarian though.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    "For those having less than that it looks a lot less egalitarian though." Does it still hold when you look outside the US? Wealth relations have certainly changed a lot in Europe since the Iron Curtain fell. I remember Poland suffering from shortage of pretty much everything (in 1989, the shops were empty and your only recourse was the black market), nowadays they seem to be building more skyscrapers than the rest of the continent together.
- andrepd 4y ago
  There is nobody in the top 20 list of billionaires that did not come from the top 5% or 1%
  - anovikov 4y ago
    That's right, thank God. I'd hate to be (economically) ruled by "rags to riches" kind of people.