Reuters: “The United States has halted a program that united African refugees with relatives in America after DNA testing revealed many people were lying about family links, the State Department said on Wednesday.”

As one European blogger remarked: “…the truly shocking element is why anyone want to leave the tranquil idylls of Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Gambia, Somalia, Ethiopia, or Liberia, for a life of serf-like squalor in the United States?… Perhaps these misguided souls attempting to gain entry into the United States do not read the Guardian?

I don’t mind if the Russians don’t want democracy, as long as they stay on their side of the fence. They have massively overplayed their hand. I think most pragmatists were willing to let them have S. Ossetia and Abkazia, but if they insist on staying in Georgia, the US may be forced into stronger action to make them move.

Joshu’s Mu
Joshu (A.D. 778-897) was a famous Chinese Zen Master who lived in Joshu, the province from which he took his name. One day a troubled monk approached him, intending to ask the Master for guidance. A dog walked by. The monk asked Joshu, “Has that dog a Buddha-nature or not?” The monk had barely completed his question when Joshu shouted: “Google!”

You’re right. The cost of getting space resources down here is unacceptable and the carrying capacity of Earth for humans is maybe two billion. And both points illustrate a classic failure of those who try to predict the future – a failure of imagination.

Leave the stuff at the top of the well, where the sun shines 24/7/52. And soon enough the people will follow, and maybe your grandchild will be one of the first to walk the snows of Enceladus or take snaps of Jupiter from the surface of Ganymede. And the human race will have more than one basket to put its priceless eggs in.

Many things could end civilisation, and some of them could end us; Yellowstone letting rip, a major comet strike, Cumbre Vieja blowing its top and a large chunk sliding into the sea (and putting the east coast of the USA under 300 metres of water), catastrophic global warming, the next ice age, a major coronal mass ejection destroying most of our tech base – and of course some lunatic pushing the Button. I’ve probably missed some.

Get out there, en masse, and we are safe, and nothing can dislodge us all.

“The Earth is the cradle of mankind; but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.”

wretchard:

What if the institutions of liberal democracy could actually inhibit scientific inquiry? In this bizarro universe, real science would atrophy due to a lack of popularity, new technologies would get blocked by special interests, and “free speech” would be used to promote a new “bonfire of the vanities” against unpopular ideas.

Meanwhile, an enlightened dictatorship would subsidize scientific inquiry and fiercely protect the academic freedom to study unpopular subjects. This dictatorship would make it a condition of doing business that it would reverse engineer every piece of foreign technology. The “enlightened dictatorship” would protect all inventions and make it a felony to patent any innovation that had actually been invented by somebody else, thus discouraging technological monopolies created by ruinous litigation (such as the Hughes fortune).

Imagine if a modern-day Lysenko could stifle scientific inquiry by leveraging his political clout to promote his own crackpot theories. He would create movies to promote his worldview while dissenters would face budget cuts due to the unpopularity of their ideas. The models of Prussia, Singapore, and the Ptolemaic Empire would be juxtaposed against stagnant democracy.

In the early twentieth century, many American academics admired Germany because its military muscle, planned economy, superior universities, and technological prowess were impressive. For many progressives, the German model showed the way of the future. According to a “Ptolemaic” view of history, Germany erred in becoming too democratic, with the effect that a bunch of low-class bums ran the government and banished Europe’s best researchers to America. Without democracy in Germany, it is easy to imagine that Europe’s best minds would have invented the atomic bomb in Europe instead of inventing it in the United States.

Suffice it to say that the United States itself would likely have been a failure were it not for the fortuitous accident of the du Pont family coming to the United States and establishing their munitions factory here. Given how Alexander Hamilton’s idea of a federal arsenal was blocked by Congress, and given how explosives manufacture requires at least some technological expertise, it is far from certain that a munitions industry would have been established in the United States were it not for the du Pont family.

So yes, if an autocratic meritocracy can create a legacy of wealth and technological achievement, it would effectively challenge the primacy of liberal democracy in the marketplace of ideas.

By the traditional definition, liberal democracy IS a capitalist economic system. The philosophy of Adam Smith was liberal in that it encouraged economic activity, regardless of social class.
In Europe the terminology is Social Democrat (*progressive*) vs neoliberal. European conservatives advocate aristocracy and monarchy, quite the opposite of our ideal of free markets.

I assume you mean China. In their case it only works in the short term. Absent private property and the legal system that supports it, China funds most economic activity with debt. Their system therefore lacks the flexibilty and adaptability inherent in the capitalist economic system. China’s economic model will inevitably crash when it hits moderate to severe economic turbulence, which will then disrupt its social model big time.

I would submit that the US is Exhibit #1 for the case that liberal democracy will only thrive and flourish when it is accompanied by a capitalistic economic system.

I recommend that you read Fukuyama’s book “The End of History” instead of just spouting opinions about it. You obviously are a very smart guy who will appreciate Fukuyama’s thinking.

And the woman answered him saying, “No.”

The ICEman spoke unto her, “You will have to leave this land.”

The woman again answered him saying, “My child was born on this land. She is an American citizen.”