China -- on the verge of economic greatness

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/world/asia/14china.html?_r=1

One of the most interesting developments in the last 20 years has been China's development in the global economy. One day the old guard will be the new...what? Will they be guards or proponents of a new style of capitalism which provides more freedom for the people of China?

China is already an economic powerhouse, and if they instituted more liberal policies internally, they could be a modern economic wonder which would transform global international relations. The clash between capitalism and communism within China is something many never expected, and the outcome might obliterate any lingering Marxist influence and strengthen capitalism's influence in third world countries.

At a time when the U.S. is doing everything possible to strangle capitalism, it would be wise to watch the developments in China and India.

Afghanistan and Iraq

In an attempt to understand the neo-con position regarding the Middle East, I've read a lot of the neo-con writings, including Norman Podhoretz's book -- World War IV. Podhoretz makes some good points regarding the danger of terrorism, and the failure of the paleo-conservatives, isolationists, realists and liberal internationalists to come up with a better response to terrorism than Bush's two-prong attack on Afghanistan and Iraq, but only as his points relate to the resistance of the Bush Doctrine being an obsession to destroy Bush and put Israel in its place rather than an alternate solution to terrorism. His points justifying preemptive attacks and the goal to democratize the region are not very good points, but then I'm a crazy non-interventionist -- not an isolationist, though, because I think we should interact globally through free trade while maintaining a policy of defensivism against terrorism -- more about this at the end of the post.

It appears there's a lot of pressure now for the U.S. to return to liberal internationalism, yet, there isn't much movement going on to reverse what Bush started. The rhetoric coming from the Whitehouse is influenced by liberal internationalism, but the actions are a continuation of the Bush Doctrine. You could say that we've gone too far to turn back in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I'm not sure this is correct -- we could pull out now and claim we've done everything we can, and that the region is now responsible for its own destiny, that this is as close to victory as you can get in this type of war with this type of enemy. I can't imagine anyone calling a pullout now a defeat, except the most ardent neo-cons who have been thoroughly discredited by the media and universities and liberal establishment as Podhoretz shows in his book. Obama won, so he can now establish his own doctrine as Commander-In-Chief.

The liberal internationalist rhetoric hasn't produced much support for a continuation of the two wars and the U.S. is practically going it alone, although I don't hear the cries of unilateralism, but that's another issue. The neo-con position is that a pull-out would encourage the terrorists to continue their war against the U.S., and would make Israel vulnerable, that it could be another Viet Nam-type disgrace, but I'm not sure this is the reality now -- perhaps a couple of years back it would have been. I don't really know how Obama is going to do anything different, though, than what Bush was doing. Oddly, there has been little indication of the long term plans regarding Afghanistan and Iraq. The recent report I linked to above shows some support for an early pullout from Iraq, but the adminsitration might be worried that an early pullout could backfire -- isn't this the neo-con position? Plus, even if the administration pulled out early in Iraq, all indications are that it would do so in order to concentrate more effort on Afghanistan -- but to what purpose?

I don't know -- it seems to me that the image projected is one of liberal internationalism, but the actions are more neo-con. Obama might be trying to put his own style on the leadership, but the goal seems to be to democratize the region. It could be a more realist goal of stabilizing the region, but this remains to be seen -- one thing is for sure, liberal internationalism is not working so far. And, to be fair to Obama, I doubt he will use preemption as a strategy in other countries such as Iran or North Korea -- so, perhaps he's winding down the current situation, looking for an escape hatch, but it sure seems like he has grander plans for Afghanistan for some reason which are, so far, unrevealed.

In the spirit of my previous post - Private Voices in The New Media - I believe our continuing focus on politics and government is leading us astray, even in foreign policy, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the whole war on terrorism -- and this is where I disgree with neo-cons and whatever we call Obama's doctrine when it materializes -- perhaps roll-back of regimes who don't follow our global vision. In Afghanistan, the enemy is becoming invisible. Around the world, small countries have options other than the U.S. -- China and India -- and it's becoming mainly economic options. As we waste our resources over-seas, being bled by invisible enemies who pin-prick us to financial collapse -- and as we pull in at home, centralizing and regulating and hamstringing business -- other countries are making economic advances and increasing their influence around the world, while despite the liberal international rhetoric, we're seen more and more as the dinosaur with a big stick. The big stick approach will not work in the global economy.

We've got to get down to the business of production, business and competition. Our problem is not terrorism, it's wasting our resources on fear of terrorism, and wasting our resources trying to be the leader of the world. Let the world take care of itself, we'll all join in competition and those who stay behind in superstitious ignorance will change or collapse. Yes, we have to defend ourselves against real threats, but we're smart enough to figure that out, or should be, without falling into the trap of our Middle East presence where the plan is to bleed and distract us to death, slowly. While we play this political game of American world leadership (control), China and India are moving forward economicially, and we're going backwards.

National Awakening -- part 3

In other posts written a few months back I've argued for specific areas of government control to be moved to the private sector, but here I want to write about the obstacles to privatization and the false dichotomy of statism vs a Hobbesian war of all against all. We're supposed to believe, according to the contemporary liberals, that if we don't have a powerful state controlling the dangerous excesses of unregulated capitalism, society will be afflicted by all sorts of evils, not excluding starvation, old people freezing in cold flats, sickness and despair from lack of insurance, a two-tiered system of the filthy rich and oppressed paupers begging for dimes from patronizing charity organizations, and children subjected to the commercialization of education whereby corporate schools process robot consumers who buy useless goods in a trance.

Until now, society, for the most part, has seen this choice as the only choice and has supported the state in its efforts to regulate capitalism in spite of the poor performance of government to deliver the utopian world in which the lowly rise to positions of power as a group equal to the capitalist manipulators. Although the union gained strength for awhile, it's eventually become evident that government misled workers into a bankrupt situation of company loss and layoffs. Economic reality has been denied in favor of wants and demands to the point that reality is lashing back in objective inflexibility, as if reality is saying -- "You've gone too far." 

Yet, the enlightened liberals propose that the solution is smarter, more efficient and caring government. The regulations which reality resists can be empowered to overcome resistance by intelligent adjustments, more control over the owners of capital so that equality can be achieved through direct management. The liberal view shows that capitalist management has resisted the force of equality and is skimming profits for a select few under the guise of valuable performance. This self-protection of management to the detriment of workers and the public at large, say the liberals, needs to be regulated so tightly that capitalist pigs can't manipulate the wealth from the top.

The liberals look across America and see a pile of potential wealth which only needs intelligent engineering so that money flows to the proper source of needs. This idea that government must engineer society in order to avoid the evils of capitalism is falling apart. The psychological buy-in from the public enamored with the idea of fighting the power structure of protected wealth is being subjected to second thoughts and other options in light of recent information and evidence which shows more clearly than ever before the reality of government incompetence and duplicity.

It appears many Americans are feeling duped by the government they placed so much hope in as the connections between corporate thieves and government protectors are revealed in sordid detail -- even the contemporary liberal government which supposedly championed the poor and middle class for so many years. The national awakening is the realization that the "capitalists" they hated all along are partners with the protaganists in the story of justice and equality, and that they really aren't capitalists at all, just protected government cronies in business to protect power and wealth. Our government has been an alliance of representatives and unscrupulous businesspeople using the nation's wealth to rig the game. Our taxes have been going to support this rigged system and all the goodies we've been given are pay-off to look the other way.

The good news is that there is a nascent national awakening, the bad news is that the unholy alliance won't change with more intelligent people in charge of government, and it won't change with more regulation and more control -- that's just part of the overall con job to keep the game going and ensure more protection for the power players. We have choices, though.

We can begin limiting government power and stop all corporate welfare. This will require a national psychic change. The storyline that government is the protector against capitalist greed and corporate power has to be rewritten -- the American people are the protectors of their freedom and the private sector freed from statist control will flush the protected corporations out of the system, so that smaller players can succeed and economic growth will spread in thousands of smaller, more efficient ways. The era of big, protected and powerful is coming to an end -- decentralization is begining to destroy the foundation of the government/corporate enmeshment.

The idea is not to institute dog-eat-dog, which was never a danger to begin with, but to allow competition and cooperation the freedom spontaneous order needs in a free society to resolve problems, grow the economy in diversity and prosper in many more ways than wealth accumulation. The focus on wealth accumulation is a red herring diverting attention from what a free people can accomplish if left to their own choices -- better education, enriched community life, diversity of niches to find the best means of discovering purpose and creative expression, less warring over national disputes, more free trade and peaceful relations with foreign nations, better healthcare solutions as innovation finds ways to drive costs down, charity organizations which efficiently work with temporary set-backs through insurance arrangements and pay-back models when situations return to normal, energy solutions which break the dependence on unfriendly sources of energy, more public involvement in the market of ideas to find the most moral paths and the most reasonable expressions of justice, less concentration on equality as income disparity and more focus on values which transcend the millionaires club.

In a free society where the government feeding trough is destroyed, no politically savvy business interests will have the lobbying power to receive favors and they'll be forced to put up or shut up and go out busines, as more eficient and valuable business interests take their place, and employment will follow the most successful undertakings as workers develope a plan of learning that's a life-time process -- avoiding boredom, rote and stale sameness. The ingenuity of any nation of free people will trump the static weakness of England or the centrally panned "capitalism" of China or the mixed devastation and squalor of India or the haughty paternalistic mediocrity of France and what's becoming here the liberal, crippling proceduralism of American statism.

Any one of these countries could develope a free market, limited government approach and they would raise the quality of living in no time, but the mindsets of most nation is a submissive mindset content with government protection and safety -- yet these governments are showing signs of strain as more and more resources go toward central planning and unintended consequences. Capital is being misdirected around the globe and America has been following the trend. If our goal as a nation is to create the best living situation for all, living in peaceful co-existence and working together to support a system in which people can freely trade goods, services and ideas and choose the lifestyles most suitable to their value-judgements, then our methods to achieve these goals are moving us in the opposite direction. If our goal is to get revenge on the unfavored wealthy and set up a system governed by a few elitists who protect a power structure made up of professional politicians and favored corporations, then our methods are effectively achieving the goal.

These are the choices, not statism or dog-eat-dog. I'll wrap up tomorrow.