5 ms·

> 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 d

> 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.
    - cmurf 7y ago
      re: the universe has no obligation. This is a central statement in the book of Job. The idea of prosperity theology is rebuked in Job: that better people are wealthy and therefore more godlike and vice versa. God and Satan make a bet, Satan says Job is only loyal to God because of his wealth. When that wealth is taken away as part of the bet, Job gets mad, and demands an answer about all this unfairness from God, who then (in effect) says: I have no obligation to make sense to you, I created everything, and you created nothing. Of course, that's what you'd expect a deity to say, but American Evangelicalism is chock full of prosperity theology adherents: good people are rich people, rich people are good people, they are closer to god, and rich people closer to god deserve more and better things: Privilege. Bloodlines. Family name. Everything should be a product so that the wealthy can buy anything and as much of it as they want. Everyone else gets less or inferior versions, including public education, health care, environment, and justice. It's foundational in all ideologies, except liberal democracies - which at least in political science we don't actually say the U.S. started out as one. Rather it was designed to be a polyarchy in contrast to a monoarchy, using representative democracy with highly restricted access (you had to be a "better" person to participate, i.e. white, male, landowner) but it is a potential liberal democracy and has tracked that way over time, but does often resist. It is tedious. But that is the system. Churchill said it was the worst form of government except for all the others. Most of history is not fair, indeed it was also not prosperous. It saw centuries of anemic economic growth, and it was very violent. Genetics show we aren't all that different, we're mainly products of environment, the bloodlines nonsense is just that nonsense. We are best off educating as many as possible, and mostly letting people make their own decisions. In aggregate, I trust most people most of the time make good choices slightly more than 50% of the time. If it's not true, and instead the state of man's nature is so hideously flawed that we need lords, then I saw we are doomed. We never get off the planet. We will destroy it, and ourselves with it. All rapid technological change brings risk to economic and political stability. I think it's useful to see anti-tech more as a desire to spend time being deliberate and integrate it, rather than as curmudgeon. I think it is less important that people have 100% trust all the time in their government, than trusting it's possible to change it when it is failing. When any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason
Aunche 7y ago
> 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 China does have these mechanisms. They may not be as effective as the ones in democracy, but they do exist. For example, their affirmative action policies are among the strongest in the world. Also, China faces growing pains that the US already dealt with long ago. Just like how Americans viewed native Americans as fundamentally incompatible with contemporary civilization, China views the Uighurs and other minorities the same way. The American solution was war and driving natives on to ever smaller patches of land. The Chinese solution is forced assimilation. While I'd like to think that the US could deal with this problem a lot better today, our pattern of military intervention leaves me skeptical.

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.
  - cmurf 7y ago
    re: the universe has no obligation. This is a central statement in the book of Job. The idea of prosperity theology is rebuked in Job: that better people are wealthy and therefore more godlike and vice versa. God and Satan make a bet, Satan says Job is only loyal to God because of his wealth. When that wealth is taken away as part of the bet, Job gets mad, and demands an answer about all this unfairness from God, who then (in effect) says: I have no obligation to make sense to you, I created everything, and you created nothing. Of course, that's what you'd expect a deity to say, but American Evangelicalism is chock full of prosperity theology adherents: good people are rich people, rich people are good people, they are closer to god, and rich people closer to god deserve more and better things: Privilege. Bloodlines. Family name. Everything should be a product so that the wealthy can buy anything and as much of it as they want. Everyone else gets less or inferior versions, including public education, health care, environment, and justice. It's foundational in all ideologies, except liberal democracies - which at least in political science we don't actually say the U.S. started out as one. Rather it was designed to be a polyarchy in contrast to a monoarchy, using representative democracy with highly restricted access (you had to be a "better" person to participate, i.e. white, male, landowner) but it is a potential liberal democracy and has tracked that way over time, but does often resist. It is tedious. But that is the system. Churchill said it was the worst form of government except for all the others. Most of history is not fair, indeed it was also not prosperous. It saw centuries of anemic economic growth, and it was very violent. Genetics show we aren't all that different, we're mainly products of environment, the bloodlines nonsense is just that nonsense. We are best off educating as many as possible, and mostly letting people make their own decisions. In aggregate, I trust most people most of the time make good choices slightly more than 50% of the time. If it's not true, and instead the state of man's nature is so hideously flawed that we need lords, then I saw we are doomed. We never get off the planet. We will destroy it, and ourselves with it. All rapid technological change brings risk to economic and political stability. I think it's useful to see anti-tech more as a desire to spend time being deliberate and integrate it, rather than as curmudgeon. I think it is less important that people have 100% trust all the time in their government, than trusting it's possible to change it when it is failing. When any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason

Aunche 7y ago

> 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 China does have these mechanisms. They may not be as effective as the ones in democracy, but they do exist. For example, their affirmative action policies are among the strongest in the world. Also, China faces growing pains that the US already dealt with long ago. Just like how Americans viewed native Americans as fundamentally incompatible with contemporary civilization, China views the Uighurs and other minorities the same way. The American solution was war and driving natives on to ever smaller patches of land. The Chinese solution is forced assimilation. While I'd like to think that the US could deal with this problem a lot better today, our pattern of military intervention leaves me skeptical.