20110901

Which culture will make the next major move?


Took a walk down to the Ersdal Bay and back via the harbor today again, as I did yesterday. 15 to 17 degrees Celsius, thus perfect. Time to make some plans for the fall. The overall subject that I am researching is which culture should carry mankind into the future. Into the unknown. It is not going to be just one. East and West will probably continue to run parallel. The two party system of the world. The main hypothesis is that the West has found out a path of higher fidelity than the East with a more mature political development. Thus assuming that there are no genetic differences between the two populations. The political system of the West is more mature for the simple reason that people are allowed to think and act politically. From Ian Bremmer’s book The End of the Free Market form 2010 it is possible to extrapolate that there is about 25% state capitalists in the world currently which is offsetting the balance and currently causing a slump in the West. Since the rich in the West are making money in the East as austerity is mandated in the West for ordinary people, notable billionaires are talking about paying more in tax for the sake of stability. Personally I think it is not wise with too progressive tax tables since the rich allocate money better than the state for the performance of the economy. Bremmer brings up this point, while claiming that the state is not that good as the shareholders in allocating funds, why state capitalism risks being less efficient economically.

Although I’m not so sure myself, it seems like most people think the power of science and innovation on all levels is going to play out equally well in the East as in the West. That would remove Joseph Nye’s argument of the higher recruitment of talent to the US than to China and leave Gideon Rachman’s focus on the economy more pertinent. The economy will depend on how people organize themselves in the functioning parts of the world and how areas like the Middle East and North Africa develops from lower levels. The fight on how to build up Libya has started and the obvious question is if it’s going to be free-market or state capitalism which is important since Libya’s development could become a blue-print for the entire area. State capitalism is probably easier to apply to a country of Libya’s type, Algeria is already state capitalist to a certain degree and also runs on oil, but I hope they will convince the Libyans to choose free-market capitalism due to the better harmony possible with the EU in this case. Bremmer has a series of comments in his book as to the prognosis of state capitalism and he seems to think that it represents a dead end, which I tend to agree with. Improvements of free-market capitalism are a more probably path of development. In an era where the economists have problems understanding the economy it is troublesome that we ask politicians to regulate it, understanding it even less, but it seems to be necessary.

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