Many thanks for your comment and this reference -- he looks like a very interesting thinker.
103 karma · joined June 11, 2011
This is a very difficult question. I am sympathetic to the view of Spengler, which is similar to that of Toynbee.
But in practise, I think what constitues the West is constantly changing. The historical base is Western Europe. If Western Europe and the US diverge in ideology over the next few decades (not necessarily a bad thing) then as a category the West will shrink back to the base. Possibly a bit larger if the EU stays intact or integrates further, as I hope it does.
If one was to scientifically determine it they would look at how strong cultural transmission is across the different units -- probably looking at the distribution of movies and other media, as well as how quickly new phrases and political ideas spread across social media.
These are very reasonable criticisms and I will take them into account.
1. I think what constitues the West is constantly changing. The historical base is Western Europe. If W. Europe and the US diverge in ideology over the next few decades (not necessarily a bad thing) then as a category the West will shrink back to the base. Possibly a bit larger if the EU stays intact or integrates further, as I hope it does.
2. I would define failure as a near complete and permanent loss of control by a society over itself and its internal territory. So the Bronze Age Collapse would definitely qualify, as some of those societies never rose again. But under this definition the French Revolution and the Long March would not qualify. The conquest of Greece by Rome could count, but the re-emergence of Greece in the Byzantine Empire complicates things. Some see the latter as a different culture -- I would need to read more myself before coming to a view on this.
It's true that some thought of themselves Roman well into the 600s -- such as Gregory the Great, for instance. But they weren't in control anymore, so that would be a partial collapse under my definition (as the Eastern Roman Empire persisted)
"A Culture is born in the moment when a great soul awakens out of the proto-spirituality ( dem urseelenhaften Zustande ) of ever childish humanity, and detaches itself, a form from the formless, a bounded and mortal thing from the boundless and enduring. It blooms on the soil of an exactly definable landscape, to which plant-wise it remains bound. It dies when this soul has actualized the full sum of its possibilities in the shape of peoples, languages, dogmas, arts, states, sciences, and reverts into the proto-soul."
Spengler, Oswald. Decline of the West: Volumes 1 and 2 (Kindle Locations 2294-2297). Kindle Edition.
Spengler referred to the Medieval Era as Spring because that was when what he saw as the key cultural forms first emerged -- such as linear perspective in painting, and soaring Gothic cathedrals - all of which he saw as manifesting a new cultural tendency to reach out to infinity which later seeped into maths and music.
For Spengler, this sense and longing for infinitely wide and profound 3D space marked out the Western individual.
I think what constitues the West is constantly changing. The historical base is Western Europe. If W. Europe and the US diverge in ideology over the next few decades (not necessarily a bad thing) then as a category the West will shrink back to the base. Possibly a bit larger if the EU stays intact or integrates further, as I hope it does.
I guess to solve the issues you need to tolerate staring them in the face for quite a while!
To repeat what I said below: I'm personally optimistic -- I think the ideas are there to avoid protracted decline and there's also a historical awareness which most previous civilisations didn't have.
I'm personally optimistic -- I think the ideas are there to avoid protracted decline and there's also an awareness which most previous civilisations didn't have.
To repeat what I said below, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to internal aspects of decline -- social cohesion, creativity, quality of governance, and so on. It's possible to be in relative geopolitical decline but culturally and economically quite vibrant e.g. Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then.
Some countries (or at least their governments) are also starting to reject the Western secular cultural template -- Turkey, Pakistan, Hungary, and Poland.
On your second point, I think the big problem is that status is increasingly linked with consumption -- having a large house, relatively new car, frequently travelling, and so on. This link has always been there, but perhaps non-material ways of obtaining status have declined (religious vocations, public service, etc.)
I have already read part of that book (along with the book review), but haven't finished it yet. I find that model highly plausible, and think it offers useful insights into what is happening today (even though there is a major difference between the agricultural societies which provide all of his cases, and the modern situation).
I will address the overproduction of elites theme in the chapter on selecting and training a new elite. My central innovation is to try to create an alternative to top-down elite selection and training. Essentially, requiring an aspiring elite member to work with others in small groups at a young age, after which their performance would be peer assessed -- which determines whether they could enter the elite. I hope that this could dissolve the tendency of hierarchies to select people who look/think/talk just like themselves, and thus create an elite more reflective of the diversity in society. This component of the elite would be numerically limited (1 per 100, or 1 per 200).
I address the issue of inequality in other chapters. One idea follows from the above: if the groups above choose to spend their time together to form companies, then some of the shares should go into a Public Equity Fund, in which each citizen would have an account (a fair exchange in return for facilitating the activities of the group). This would mean that everyone would benefit from the formation of new companies. More details on all this in the coming weeks.
But there are other ways of failing which I think also need to be insured against -- hence my engagement with the cyclical models of history, to see what insight they have to offer.
For the first, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to internal aspects of decline -- social cohesion, creativity, quality of governance, and so on. It's possible to be in relative geopolitical decline but culturally and economically quite vibrant e.g. with Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then.
Enjoy and feedback welcome!
With regard to that 10%, don't forget that much of it is spent on the salaries of the individuals actually allocating capital (i.e taking money from some source, such as depositors or investors, and acting on their behalf to invest or loan it elsewhere), such as bank managers, fund managers and investment bankers. Bitcoin cannot decide whether a firm or individual has a good chance of paying capital back, and so its role in allocating capital in nil I would say. An algorithmically-determined money supply would however render infeasible the idea of discretionary or near-discretionary monetary policy, which would free up many economists from the ECB, Fed and Bank of England, and so would free up resources in that regard (whether that is optimal would depend on the algorithm of course).
For any computer system to do allocate capital optimally, it would need to have to sort of assessment ability a human has - or else have a very, very good dataset.
If a government were to create it with the intention of it lasting, then I would imagine they would have designed it such that the supply of the currency increased with the number of transactions; I'd like to hazard the guess that this is both possible, and would prevent both inflation and deflation. Why is preventing both of these necessary? Had they included inflation, it is unlikely bitcoin would have attracted its initial users - that is, the libertarians et al. Similarly, had it been deflationary, then this would possibly constrain government; no seignorage, and the real value of debt rising over time.
What you propose would reduce output; if it was optimal for firms to hire the unemployed, in place of those already employed, then they would do so - unless they are prevented from doing so by labour legislation, which doesn't seem to be the case the U.S.
That the unemployed are not hired might make sense when there are costs to hiring and training a new worker, which don't exist for a worker already in place. On an aggregate level, this policy would increase the cost of labour, and consequently reduce its demand, so less overall would be employed (though the rate of employment would probably stay about constant because you reduced the denominator by reducing the labour force).
Probably a better explanation here: http://www.economist.com/economics-a-to-z/l#node-21529454