Sacrifice democracy, while you still have time
medium.comAnybody who's read anything about US history would have a chuckle at the idea that a democracy cannot build canals.
I'm also a little puzzled that your post-democracy solution, apparently, is the House of Commons and the House of Lords, more or less.
IDK why this is top 50 on HN.
Not to be "mean", but it's either broken thoughts or broken English (not sure which), and off topic to boot.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points.
Communism doesn't have a great track record either.
1. Tienanmen square
2. Great firewall of china.
3. Most of the judicial system in china
4. cuba
5. venezuela
Also, the stock market and the 24 hours news cycle hasn't had as long a time to corrupt china like it has democracies.
Most of the US is optimized for better stock results.
So, I am not saying to adapt communism. But to think of a better alternative that should at least sound logical (unlike democracy). We need to understand the faults in our democracy rather than criticizing china's government. Because I know there are many conflicts within china but the economic growth there is much better.
The ancient greeks designed this whole concept. Can't we? Do something better? A healthy discussion was the reason for its partial working at that time in Greece but its not possible now. It is simply not feasible.
Modern democracies don't look that much like Athenian democracy did.
This is a topic that in general warrants a lot more discussion and attention than it currently receives. Also, while the components of it's analysis exist in the academy (economics, management, sociology, psychology etc) I don't think it exists as a separate domain and I don't think anyone publishes about it. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
In my limited understanding, as I've spend a lot of time pondering about these questions, the problems the writer is concerned about (corruption, inefficiency, distribution and management of resources) are not a side effect of democracy itself. Democracy allows for these problems to be corrected, and indeed in many democratic countries they have.
Regarding the slow development of India (and much of the world) in comparison to China, there are quite a few pieces to the puzzle that the author misses. China was both lucky and unlucky. The reason they were allowed to advance so fast, unlike India, Africa and much of Europe actually, is because they accidentally (in my opinion) managed to strike a number of conditions, which allowed them to develop while in control of their country. Similarly with South Korea.
That is that they joined the era of globalization with a strong, central, national and authoritarian government and a lot of impoverished workers. The Chinese government managed to be "left alone" by US corporations by playing on capitalism's greed without borders: They provided a very cheap workforce, by the condition of managing it themselves. By keeping the cancer of foreign corporate infiltration off their land, they could reinvest the profits on local infrastructure, which gave them a high ROI (as they were selling the developed countries) and simultaneously acquire technical know-how on production technologies.
Foreign powers tend to leave systems that work for them in place, ie nobody tried to fix India's caste system when they first arrived, because it provided stability for them. Similarly, the modern western corporations saw the Chinese government as a tool to control and manage a billion workers for free.
This is in contrast with much of Latin America's countries. When people took control of their own country, completely opposing the interests of US corporations, they would be murdered by US-funded coups and dictators. So that leads me to believe that the practical road to success for small countries lies in taking advantage of the predictable behavior of foreign powers and gradually taking out the leash from their necks.
And what holds for international issues scales down to intra-national ones. Proper organization and coordination between parts of society can lead to a practical, achievable path to a better world. It's a very complex problem because knowledge of the proposed solution can lead to an alteration of the circumstances, but it might be solvable.
Sorry for the blogpost.
I wouldn't say China's rise to global power (in many different categories) was due to "luck". China has been one of the most advanced civilizations in history. They also have the second largest military force. The US did not have to manipulate the Chinese workforce into global trade. China was a willing and very capable participant. You need to realize they are a large and powerful country. Not a banana republic.
Further more The Great Leap Forward is estimated to have cost 20-50+ million Chinese lives. I'd say China did pretty well on its own with out foreign intervention when it came to "greed".