Whatever will come out of the " Arab Spring" ? Democracy say the hopeful. The lesson of history is that the most awful people like Stalin, Hitler and Napoleon are the usual products of revolution. Which sort of democracy will they try ? a) a capitalist democracy, based on a money system like the USA. I don't think there was a single president elected on a smaller "war chest". b) social democracy - mostly bankrupted by socialism when they get elected. Usually ineffective and largely toppled in The Middle East.
Your statements are slightly contradictory. How can union have too much power if corporations have too much power? I believe you look towards technological determinism which is a key driver in today society.
"Your statements are slightly contradictory. How can union have too much power if corporations have too much power?" The world is dynamic so many parts can have too much power in my view at the same time. My comment says that reversion to the mean is sustainable in the very long run and that an endless trend is not. Unions could have too much power (just for example in the teaching profession) by overpricing their labour against what a fair market would pay by restricting supply. They could reject technology that could replace many of them (online classes) with most cost-effective delivery, they could keep the worst of the lot equal with the best of the lot and thus encourage mediocrity, they could use union dues to push positions by using closed shops to enforce union dues to be paid etc. etc. Corporations could have too much power by owning politicians and influencing critical votes and court cases (indeed the ultimate corporation, organized crime, has already done this in Chicago years ago, Texas and California with the S&L crisis, America with the latest housing crisis etc. etc.), by buying up all the competition and blocking new entries during times of slowdown, by accepting bribes to pit countries and states against each other - "we will put jobs here so you will be elected but we need a grant to do it", by using using capital to unfairly influence the selection of the president away from ordinary citizens. I am not saying that any of these actually do or do not go on, but there are many ways simultaneously that overly complex legislation can give unfair advantage to different groups in different ways at the same time. Use your imagination for more examples or read books like the way to rob a bank is to own one and websites like deepcapture for example. My point is just that balance is required. Fair pricing is the market's strength and that some kind of better balancing mechanism is needed in the future society. The market method has shown to work better (IMO) when no one entity can hold control for a significantly long period of time. Competition eventually leads to the downfall of the non-competitive edge like what appears to be happening soon in the HFT world now.
"I believe you look towards technological determinism which is a key driver in today society." I agree with you here since this also has not yet been legislated or yet been able to be controlled so that it confers temporary advantage that leads to rapid and intense competition. Hence this is sustainable long term in a way. The trend reverts to the mean. The legal system is slow and uses written capital and blunt force but technology uses mind capital. I do think that dumping a lot of legal nonsense done under the guise of making a better world, would in fact make a better world in the long run. Just my opinions though.
What you mean is that there is intense competition when there is only a temporary advantage? When things settle, competition goes away? ... is it what you mean by the trend reverts to the mean?
I think that competition is a force that brings markets and society back to the mean. If there is no advantage to be had, then there is no reason to discover something to counter the trend. When things settle competition is no longer needed because the change is now a commodity item and becomes well known. That is the issue with knowledge - it is only an advantage if it is not generally know. It is temporary. Here is an example. Suppose I discovered a two-line crossover system that would make a consistent 1% profit 80% of the time. Using standard math, a system could be built that would make consistent money over many trades. If I employ this system, for a while it would work, but then as I applied it, some others would discover it and employ it also. Some others would find something similar and enter early. If the knowledge became too wide-spread, then there would be no advantage anymore. Who would sell to my buys knowing that it was an 80% loser? My system would self-destruct back to the mean. It would work approximately 50% of the time. It was temporary. Markets seek balance, all the time. On the edges when everyone is on one side of the trade (never really everyone of course) then eventually the trade busts. This will happen with gold for example one day. Trends can't keep going for ever. Some other force coming often from the extreme or fringes (which is what actually gives it its power -being generally unknown) comes to counter that trend. Governments, unions, corporations, etc. are similar I think. What leads to their ultimate destruction is their own success and elimination of competition or other balancing forces. The driver of societal change is actually not having something that others have. It is not having the same as everyone else. If we were all millionaires then being a millionaire would be meaningless. How does one create a society that naturally comes back to balance whenever some class or group wields too much power? I hope that explains my comments better.
What about the American Revolution? What about the Chinese Revolution? It's simply ignorant to say that revolutions lead to someone like Stalin taking power. Yes, there is a power vacuum, but a revolution is a turning point. The country can go up, or down. And revolutions happen because people want the turning point, eg. they want things to get better. If your view won out, the USA would still be a british colony with an 80% tax rate.
Perhaps one should remind some that countries including Iraq and Egypt were left by Britain with a democracy in the 1950s and quickly became, ...........well you know the rest. I hope someone can come up with a sort of democracy that is:- 1. efficient 2. honest 3. compassionate All those political graduates around the world's universities are just learning about the past, which is all very nice, but not coming forward with original ideas of how to improve the sluggish, incompetent, crooked systems we have currently. roll on originality
I'm super impressed with all of the posts in this thread. One of the most, perhaps the most, thought provoking ever on ET. Thanks to all the contributors. and especially to the OP who presented a very balanced, unbiased, viewpoint. To Founder, I want to say with regard to the reason for going into Iraq that possibly there is another reason altogether, and that may have to do with the Bush family being directly threatened by Saddam Hussein? (possibly others in the West were as well.) I don't know the answer to this question. It is rather obvious that "democracy building" had nothing to do with the reason, as you point out. That was only an excuse when the original excuse was shown to have holes in it. The tampering with the CIA reports by Cheney is strong circumstantial evidence, in my opinion, that the real reason lay elsewhere. Wouldn't it be nice to know the truth?