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re: the universe has no obligation. This is a central statement in the book of Job. The idea of prosperity theology is rebuked in Job: that better people are wealthy and therefore more godlike and vice versa. God and Satan make a bet, Satan says Job is only loyal to God because of his wealth. When that wealth is taken away as part of the bet, Job gets mad, and demands an answer about all this unfairness from God, who then (in effect) says: I have no obligation to make sense to you, I created everything, and you created nothing. Of course, that's what you'd expect a deity to say, but American Evangelicalism is chock full of prosperity theology adherents: good people are rich people, rich people are good people, they are closer to god, and rich people closer to god deserve more and better things: Privilege. Bloodlines. Family name. Everything should be a product so that the wealthy can buy anything and as much of it as they want. Everyone else gets less or inferior versions, including public education, health care, environment, and justice. It's foundational in all ideologies, except liberal democracies - which at least in political science we don't actually say the U.S. started out as one. Rather it was designed to be a polyarchy in contrast to a monoarchy, using representative democracy with highly restricted access (you had to be a "better" person to participate, i.e. white, male, landowner) but it is a potential liberal democracy and has tracked that way over time, but does often resist. It is tedious. But that is the system. Churchill said it was the worst form of government except for all the others. Most of history is not fair, indeed it was also not prosperous. It saw centuries of anemic economic growth, and it was very violent. Genetics show we aren't all that different, we're mainly products of environment, the bloodlines nonsense is just that nonsense. We are best off educating as many as possible, and mostly letting people make their own decisions. In aggregate, I trust most people most of the time make good choices slightly more than 50% of the time. If it's not true, and instead the state of man's nature is so hideously flawed that we need lords, then I saw we are doomed. We never get off the planet. We will destroy it, and ourselves with it. All rapid technological change brings risk to economic and political stability. I think it's useful to see anti-tech more as a desire to spend time being deliberate and integrate it, rather than as curmudgeon. I think it is less important that people have 100% trust all the time in their government, than trusting it's possible to change it when it is failing. When any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason |
I am not saying that things shouldn't be fair. I am saying the opposite. Things should be fair and you should make it so. That is sort of my argument here, that you can't expect things to be fair. If you design your system around hierarchies it doesn't necessarily matter if it is capitalist or socialist. Democracy isn't going to win that. China is amazing at being unfair.
Things don't stop at the border. If all your clothes are all made under undemocratic conditions or your real estate is bought by oligarchs, how democratic are you? In a non-scares world what defines you is what you don't do. China also produces things under even worse condition other Asian countries.
My thesis is that democracy doesn't fall with China, it falls with the West. Because we are the ones not finding our way. I mean, to take a capitalist approach we want China to not be able to handle technology. That is the somewhat point, that in democracy you can do more sophisticate things and still live to see it. Now instead we find ourselves at disadvantage because we don't now how to handle things.