Western Declination, Eastern Rise

NFG

(Administrator) 2009-12-28, 16:53 #1

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Subject: Western Declination, Eastern Rise

Recently, This Financial Times article discussed the end of 500 years of Western rule, the kind of rule that sticks, in the history books. Financial, cultural, the rule of an Empire so total that the entire rest of the world was left behind in mud huts while we paved and conquered all before us.

I have long believed that we were due for a fall. Luckily for most of us it will be a long one: just as the Mediterranean didn't fill in a day, empires don't fall overnight. Instead we have a long and dark old age to look forward to, as our once-powerful engines - of industry, of capitalism, of democracy - can no longer exert the same force they used to.

Old men don't get old with the flick of a switch, and neither will our culture fall with a single act. Instead, we'll find that more and more our power is simply not attractive anymore. The young bucks are taking centre stage now, and the best we can do is die gracefully.

We could change it, but we won't. We started off young, full of ideas and drive and we changed the world, but an old man's attention turns to protecting what he has, and we slowed down. Wages went up, worker and consumer protections raised the cost of business, everything started to cost more, so we asked those who didn't suffer these luxuries to prop up our lifestyle. They built it for us, in their slums and dirty windowless factories, with their shocking records of abuses and accidents, and we paid them handsomely.

And now, flush with our money, they're coming of age. We still want their labour and they still need our money, but they're slowly weaning themselves of a need for our expertise. They have their own consumer class, they have tremendously more people, and they've got the drive we've lost.

They're already casting about for lower prices from the lower classes, and soon - very soon, for I see these cycles becoming shorter - they'll be in our position. Old, too soon decrepit and too soon realizing their engines are slowing down too.

Ten years ago China's gross domestic product was one eighth of Americas. Today it is one quarter. In twenty years, it'll be more. With five times the population, China's engine will boom far harder and faster than America's, which was harder and faster than Britain's.

That's the cycle, ever more rapid.

Such is life.

I don't see that China's empire will be more than superficially as effective at changing the world. At the same time they're building their engines, they're modernizing and trying to shepherd their people from mud huts to skyrises. Their rise took less than one lifetime, and to be frank I don't think such incredibly fast expansion can be maintained. Their engine is more fragile, perhaps doomed to flame out as hard and fast as it started.

We're in for a pretty interesting show. =)

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NFG

(Administrator) 2010-01-14, 13:23 #2

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Subject: Innovation Without Upheaval

By way of Techdirt, a very interesting article that talks of this exact thing in some detail:

...it compels us to consider how we balance economic dynamism and growth against the unity and stability of our society. After all, we must have continuous, rapid technological and business-model innovation to grow our economy fast enough to avoid losing power to those who do not share America's values -- and this innovation requires increasingly deregulated markets and fewer restrictions on behavior.

This is the tipping point of every empire, as it shifts from Wild West-style lawless aggression and expansion, to a civilized society with protections for its people, legal framework, etc etc.

If you remove the artificial impediments to innovation, you can regain your entrepreneurial spirit and create all sorts of new business opportunities, but at the expense of social order and predictability.

How many of us would trade security for opportunity? That is essentially the privilege of the young, and like all men, a society reaches middle age and starts to protect rather than conquer.

The decline of empire is thus inevitable, unless a new method for running amok safely can be found.

Read the whole thing...

Techdirt doesn't necessarily agree with the options presented, but the analysis of the situation seems very much spot-on.

This post was edited on 2010-01-14, 13:31 by NFG.

NFG

(Administrator) 2010-01-19, 16:22 #3

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Subject: It might not be an Eastern rise...

This article has some very fascinating things to say. It's stuffed full of interesting things, and I can do little better than bullet-point them. You should read it, if this sort of thing interests you.

After WWII, America was unusual in not pursuing a strategy of conquest, but instead setting itself up as 'first among equals' in a new, free world.

Europe spent the same time trying out a top-down, government-controlled system of protecting the vulnerable middle class from the disruption and unpredictability inherent in rapid technological change.

America cannot sort its shit out without great pain, and without other countries - who will not wait - passing it by. Neither inaction nor action will be easy, but the latter will ultimately prove worthwhile.

Reagan freed up America to run ever faster with a policy of deregulation, but this only delayed the inevitable as America managed to stay ahead of other growing economies without increasing its lead.

From 1980 through today, America's share of global output has been constant at about 21%. Europe's share, meanwhile, has been collapsing in the face of global competition — going from a little less than 40% of global production in the 1970s to about 25% today. Opting for social democracy instead of innovative capitalism, Europe has ceded this share to China (predominantly), India, and the rest of the developing world. [...]

It is common to think of the post-war global economy as a baseline of normalcy to which we wish to return. But it seems more accurate to see that era as an anomaly: the apogee of relative global economic dominance by the West, and by the United States within the Western coalition. The hard truth is that the economic world of 1955 is gone, and even if we wanted it back — short of emerging from another global war unscathed with the rest of the world a smoking heap of rubble — we could not have it.

Yet the strategy of giving up and opting out of this international economic competition in order to focus on quality of life is simply not feasible for the United States. [...] We do not live in a Kantian world of perpetual commercial peace. Were America to retreat from global competition, sooner or later those who oppose our values would become strong enough to take away our wealth and freedom.

So the collapse of Western competitiveness is perhaps less this than the re-alignment with the norm. Less a fall from height as a return to the way things were.

Balance must be found between social protections and progress. Either one, taken to the extreme, prevents the other almost entirely.

America's society is polarizing: the rich get richer, the poor are experiencing complete societal breakdowns.

Right-wing attempts to preserve 'traditional values' sprang from the belief that a sound, moral society would better perform with their deregulated system: pure hearts would not abuse their freedoms. Unfortunately, this is obviously not how things worked out.

The new normal, however, is different from the old normal. [...] The wealthier and better-educated segments of our society, for example, have re-established the primacy of stable families and revived their intolerance of crime and public disorder. But they have combined this return to tradition with very non-traditional attitudes about sex, masculinity, and overt piety.

Now THIS is some encouraging news, isn't it? THe parts of our society who are better educated (and largely wealthier) are big fans of stable families, are sexually tolerant and aren't hugely religious. That's societal change I can get behind!

In 1965, nearly all mothers had been married at least once. Today, some 25% of mothers without highschool diplomas have never been married, but college grads are still quite traditional, at 3%.

In 2009, nearly 40% of all children born were to unmarried mothers. 70% if they're black or hispanic.

It is hard to exaggerate the chaotic conditions under which something like a third of American children are being raised — or to overstate the negative impact this disorder has on their academic achievement, social skills, and character formation. There are certainly heroic exceptions, but the sad fact is that most of these children could not possibly compete with their foreign counterparts.

Political correctness has replaced good manners.

Environmentalism has replaced self control of consumption and waste.

This is somewhat disturbing, and I am not comfortable with the idea that people need external reasons to be logical about their life choices. Still, I suppose good manners and a modicum of restraint should be encouraged...

A welfare system protects the vulnerable from harm, but relies on the same social generosity and maturity that it destroys by protecting people from harsh realities. People who don't need to work rarely will, and this leads to decline.

There are about 30x more millionaires now than in 1982.

A shift away from an economy producing goods to one driven by services produces a better environment for the intelligent, but decreases the prospects for labourers and the working class.

Growing inequality was a price we paid for the economic growth needed to recover from the '70s slump and to retain our global position.

Living standards are up since 1980.

Wages are not (though in America, since the employer pays for ever-increasing healthcare costs, this helps offset the lack of wage increases).

The premise is that you can now buy more, live better, with less. I don't reckon this will last, there seems to be a re-evaluation coming soon, especially on food prices which certainly are too low. Considering how important food is, how poorly we treat our farmers and how much of a devastating impact food animals have on our environment, I can easily believe food prices are going to rise. They'll become a much larger part of our budgets, which I think is a good thing.

the divisive effects of this cluster of trends [...] are only intensified by [stuff] and an increasingly crude and corrosive popular culture combined with the technology-driven fragmentation of mass media.

How interesting, that our pop-culture combined with mass-media fragmentation leads to more and more of this sort of unpredictability and social fracturing. I guess it makes sense - when 500 disconnected voices try to influence you, the effect is going to be quite different than the handful of voices our parents listened to.

Fewer Americans (and I believe, Westerners) are able or willing to compete globally.

Of those who can, or will compete, they are increasingly few compared to the global whole.

The current status cannot last. I've been saying this for a while: the West is in decline.

Honestly I don't know if I can compete either. I work so I can play, the idea of shifting my balance - working far more and playing less - doesn't appeal to me. I feel I must resign myself to this fate: the Chinese will take over and I will be marginalized, and I will have been the enabler for it all. Made my bed, lying in it, thanks. =(