The End of History

[garbon]

[Queequeg]

I don't think people are grappling with it yet.  Between global warming, the return of great power bickering, the concentration of financial capital and the rapid development of industrial automation we're in phenomenally interesting times and I'm not convinced Liberal Democracy as we currently understand it will change fast enough.  It isn't right now. 

[Siege]

I had no idea Grallon was such an anarchist.

He's more of a nihilist, it seems.

Those new hillbillists are becoming a problem.

[Siege]

By that definition, didn't history end with the Enlightenment? I mean, there have been set backs, but overall these have been two solid centuries of liberal democracy gaining more ground.

That, in a nutshell, is more or less my critique of his thesis. WTF was so damn special about the end of the Cold War? Why does that represent the "end of history"? The development of liberal democracy has been centuries in the making, and no, I don't think fascism or communism were serious "competitors" in the "evolutionary" sense, any more than Putinism or Islamicism is now - only, the fascist and communist 'barbarians at the gates' were (1) a lot more threatening, and (2) some deluded academic types *thought* they were "competitors". They were dead wrong then, as has been proved now.

I think you are wrong in the evolutionary sense. If fascism or communism had defeated the liberal democracies then it would had selected democracy as a failed system. If anything, I think the 20th century proved that social structures that allow certain level of independence to the individual, to make their own decisions and contribute to society where is more convenient to the individual, are evolutionarily superior to social structures in which the individual is coherced by the state to contribute to society were the state believe his work is needed.

The question is if this trend will continue and at what point it will correct itself and start leaning in the opposite direction.

It should be noted that China seems to be an ecception to this, so far, and I think is because the Chinese central party resemble more the roman senate than anything else, and have a succession rule that forces out whoever is power every 10 years. This 10 years max in power seems to be the stabilizing factor in allowing the different factions in the central party to share power.

[Ideologue]

I have no idea why anyone would ever use the collapse of a Russian empire as a validation or invalidation of any ideology.  "Look, everybody, the historically dysfunctional state was unable to meet the challenges that faced it when it tried to jump from an agricultural backwater to an industrial-consumer society!"  It's not a surprise.

[Eddie Teach]

East Germany didn't make it work either.

[Queequeg]

The closest you get to it working are the Kibbutzim.  And they didn't work. 

[mongers]

East Germany didn't make it work either.

I don't know, they ran a highly successful surveillance state, something the UK and USA are only now fully getting to grips with.

[Ideologue]

East Germany didn't make it work either.

East Germany was a satellite of ______?

Communism will be back.  Technocratic administration from the center is the only sensible arrangement.  The lies of market liberalism and its political creation, liberal democracy, have been largely exposed; a morality based on enlightened collectivism will return, but it'll take time since we've been acculturated in an horrific atomized society.

In any event, I'm not sure the Hegelian dialectic really explains history.  It's more like an ongoing experiment in grafting systems onto human society, but human nature keeps subverting and defeating them.  This happened to old-line communism; it's happening to contemporary capitalism.  In the final analysis, I'm with Siege, as unlikely as that is: human nature will be changed to fit society, and our descendants will be a lot more pleasant and happier than we ever were.

Until then, a retreat from individualism and the birth of the powerful-but-accountable state are together quite attractive.

I don't know, they ran a highly successful surveillance state, something the UK and USA are only now fully getting to grips with.

Crybaby.

[garbon]

Until then, a retreat from individualism and the birth of the powerful-but-accountable state are together quite attractive.

For whom?

[Admiral Yi]

And how is your enlightened despotism going to motivate work Ide? 

[Ideologue]

Same way capitalism does, but without retarded differentials.

[Admiral Yi]

So a burger flipper would make like 15 an hour, and a brain surgeon would make like 20?

[Siege]

He is trolling right?

To whom is the "powerful-but-accountable state" accountable to?

[Eddie Teach]

He is trolling right?

To whom is the "powerful-but-accountable state" accountable to?

La gente. Theoretically.