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Originally Posted by LadyShea
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The thing is that kind of approach shoots itself in the foot long term. People who are dirt poor with no hope for improvement are much more likely to resort to violence than people who have economic security.
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Right, a workable economy cannot just sprout form the ground, it has to be built carefully. Whatever they hoped, it didn't happen. Most of the former Soviet countries are a mess  |
Yeah there obviously isn't only one, unique formula for a successful society. In all likelyhood theres a plethora of totally disparate societies that achieve a modicum of human happiness and the stability required for long term sustainability, be they libertarian, communal, authoritarian or whatever.
But as you so rightly point out an essential ingredient of achieving such a society surely has to be incremental development. I mean, something like capitalism, for instance, isn't just about laws and government agencies. It requires a ton of small habits that people have to be habituated to.
It requires consumers to actually exercise their choices and go somewhere else when they're not satisfied. It requires reciepts to be issued and kept. It requires contracts to be honoured, the justice system to be able and competent enough to ensure contracts are, in fact honoured. Anti-trust laws to ensure price-fixing and anticompetitive barriers to entry don't prevail (especially in former communist countries where entire state industries might simply get converted to singular private monopolies). It requires IP laws and understanding and enforcement of those laws. And so on and so on.
To maintain such a state, its not good enough that a small portion of the population knows how to play the game. The entire population must have a clear idea about how that particular kind of state hangs together, or at least a clear idea of how they can be a functional part of it. Its a lot of knowledge and when you've just emerged from an entirely different model of state, you can't just have it imposed on you willy nilly.
Shock therapy doesn't work. All natural systems evolve incrementally and human societies are natural systems. I just read an interesting article on a libertarian site linked to from IIDB about the Straussian influence on neoconservatives and one of the statements that jumped out at me was that the Straussian influence in neoconservatism is most marked in their desire to want everything now, to seek overnight change and instant ideological gratification, whereas true conservatism (tm) always seeks change in cautious increments.
While I'm no great admirer of true conservatives (tm), I do think the comment on Straussians and neoconservatives is particularly pertinent at this point in time.