The digital revolution will reinvigorate the West, lifting us out of our big-government-induced stupor. The West arose because Europe, unlike the empires of the Ming, the Mughals or the Ottomans, was never politically centralised. Europe progressed because no oligarchy could ever impose its idea of what progress should look like. Since the Treaty of Rome, Europe has stagnated because a centralised elite is trying to run a whole continent on the basis of blueprints.
Maths and technology are about to do to the grand planners in the West what the collapse of Communism did to the socialist planners in the old Soviet bloc. We are about to be set free not only from the grand plans, but from the conceit of the grand planners.
I agree that it\’s a possible outcome.
But sadly it\’s not an assured one.
The trick will be to ensure that there is a market in everything. Yes, including tax rates, tax systems, systems of governance. There must be exit, at least the possibility of it, for anyone from any of these.
Above all, the fight is against those who would impose one system upon the entire world. Any system at all: whether it be about the legality of drugs (currently covered by a UN treaty) or who is allowed to have what money in which bank. For monopoly is the very antithesis of markets.
A suburb north of Athens has plain run out of money, so has announced it’s stopping refuse collection, etc.
A potentially cruel but interesting experiment. Will the community pull together, with the man with the van doing a run to the dump and the amateur cook doing meals on wheels. Or will it break apart?
I agree, Tim – that’s one possible outcome but it would be exceptionally naive to assume that will happen. People like Polly Toynbee, Richard Murphy, Eoin Clarke and Owen Jones remain in the ascendancy, with powerful support from the three pronged coalition of immigrants, welfare recipients and non- productive public sector employees, and the road from where we are to Pyongyang or Harare is much shorter than many might think…
Yes, a bit hopeful, but only because he doesn’t mention the necessary precondition of knocking off the oligarchs first.
And re BiS garbage disposal, I’ve lived in 2 US communities where you either took your own trash to the dump for free, or paid a (small business) contractor $10/week to collect.