polite_gandalf wrote on May 4^th, 2016 at 8:46pm:


Yes, but South Korea must have got the message.

Not to mention cute and cuddly Malaysia, axis of evil Iran, Saddam’s Iraq, our friends the Saudis, etc, etc, etc.

Erections set the Roman republic apart - from empires half a millenium later.

freediver wrote on May 4^th, 2016 at 8:58pm:


We're all trying to work out what you even mean by 'inclusive' fd, for some reason you wont say.

An 8000 word article on Roman Republican elections? Gosh i must have missed that one. Silly me.

polite_gandalf wrote on May 4^th, 2016 at 9:17pm:


http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/heavy-legacies-our-past.html#inclusiveness

It has become popular among socialists and other groups with an axe to grind against capitalism, economic freedom, democracy or even white people in general, to insist that the rise of western Europe and its colonies is a result of slavery. This can be an attractive fallacy, given that the recent rise of European powers coincided with their involvement in the global slave trade. However, it is a correlation, not a causation. I argue here the opposite – that freedom and democracy are the cause of Europe’s rise.

The historian Daron Acemoglu uses the broader terms of political and economic inclusiveness to describe this theory. This is in part to avoid inevitable arguments about what constitutes true freedom, democracy or capitalism. Furthermore, his argument is (rightly) that these are opposite extremes on a spectrum, and more significantly, that this is a naturally polarising spectrum. That is, countries tend to drift towards the nearest end of the spectrum. In his book, Why Nations Fail, he explores the positive feedback loops (ie, self-reinforcing mechanisms) that make this happen.

To summarise his (expansive) thesis: Political and economic inclusiveness are self reinforcing, and reinforce each other. They also create wealth. The opposite (oppression and exclusion) are also self reinforcing. Thus societies tend to drift towards one extreme and the middle ground is unstable. In transitioning to liberal democracy, the theory does not demand one to come first, but predicts that one inevitably follows the other. Likewise, loss of democracy leads inevitably to loss of freedom, and democracy cannot function without freedom of the press, free speech etc. Political and economic inclusiveness refer to institutions that pervade all levels of society and are very resilient at either extreme. The consequence of this is that liberal democracy and dictatorship are very resilient, as institutions. Dictatorship is far harder to get rid of than merely toppling a dictator. A dictator may fall, but no matter what promises his usurper makes, the existing institutions will almost certainly cause him to become corrupt and dictatorial in order to cling to power. Thus, chopping the head off a corrupt regime and putting democracy there is unlikely to work, because the whole body is corrupt. Likewise, the Nazis may do away with democracy, but if it is institutionalised through society, it will spring back to life if given the chance. Countries between these extremes are at a historical crossroads, but even here intervention is fraught, as the corrupting elements of society are ingrained in the culture. I suspect this is why the US insisted on rooting out the Baathists in Iraq and abandoning much of Iraq's beuracracy. Likewise, the French were more succesful in continental Europe because they were there to stay, intended to turn society on its head, and were not afriad to shed some blood in the process.

In the context of the arguments regarding slavery under recent European imperialism, I would phrase it thus: only a small advantage was needed for European nations to have the upper hand and take over the world. The historical tendency for corrupt nations to reinforce their oppressive social institutions meant that Europe’s competitors were at the opposte end of the spectrum and easy to overtake. This, combined with Islam’s grip on the bulk of western civilisation, meant that European countries did not have far to go to get that upper hand. Although Europe was rapidly transitioning towards liberal democracy, history would not wait for perfection, and so a society recently risen from barbarity found itself ruling the world. Thus Europeans ramped up the slave trade, as they ramped up all global trade. But they also brought their liberal morals in whatever form they took at the time, and as the path to liberalism continued they wound down the global slave trade, while continuing to ramp up the free global market.

freediver wrote on May 4^th, 2016 at 10:21pm:


Thanks FD, that clears everything up.

Is that the 8000 words on Roman republican political inclusiveness you were talking about?

If this routine sounds familiar its because we've been through this before. This is the most detail FD has ever managed to come up with on Rome's alleged 'inclusiveness':

freediver wrote on Jan 29^th, 2015 at 8:20am:

Quote:


It is the very first figure in the article - the plot of Morris' human development index vs time. This is not the same thing as size or stability of an empire - as the Islamic example demonstrates. This index clearly shows trouble developing within the empire long before the symptoms that are more visible to us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_Civilization

I have added the following paragraphs:

To clarify the meaning of these terms, political and economic inclusiveness are the absence of dictatorship and oppression. They are the absence of artificial barriers to becoming wealthy by your own hand, having a say in your governance and becoming a political leader. They are the social institutions (rules, customs, traditions, values, expectations etc) that enable meaningful participation and capture both the number of people with access and the nature of that access. They are a measure of the extent to which a society meets the higher and more absolute standard of liberal, capitalist democracy, and are intended to invoke a spectrum of possibilities between dictatorship and democracy. Where I have used the terms freedom and democracy too broadly above, it reflects the lack of familiar language to communicate these concepts.

The transition from uncivilised freedom, to oppressive civilisation, to liberal civilisation has always been a blind one. Despite our sense of achieving freedom and equality, there is no absolute end to the spectrum. There was nothing fundamental forcing people to live together in greater numbers, though historians have plenty of reasons why it was almost inevitable. There was nothing forcing people to create oppressive regimes in the first large communities, although it happened in parallel plenty of times through history. There was no limit on how oppressive society could become, and our fiction authors have dreamed up all sorts of plausible scenarios. Likewise there is no limit to how far freedom and democracy can spread across the world, or to how much more liberal and politically engaged we could become. The spectrum of inclusiveness may appear to have solid, fixed ends: at one end, slaves building pyramids and on the other, modern society. However this is merely a reflection of our limited experience. In reality we are blindly pushing the boundaries of inclusiveness into unknown territory, like the Romans before us.

Discover how voting by delegable proxy can combine the best aspects of modern representative democracy and Greek-style direct democracy.

To summarise Acemoglu's (expansive) thesis: Political and economic inclusiveness are self-reinforcing, and reinforce each other. They also create wealth. The opposite (oppression and exclusion) are also self-reinforcing. Thus societies tend to drift towards one extreme and the middle ground is unstable. In transitioning to liberal democracy, the theory does not demand one to come first, but predicts that one inevitably follows the other. Likewise, loss of democracy leads inevitably to loss of freedom, and democracy cannot function without freedom of the press, free speech etc. Political and economic inclusiveness refer to institutions that pervade all levels of society and are very resilient at either extreme. The consequence of this is that liberal democracy and dictatorship are very resilient, as institutions. Dictatorship is far harder to get rid of than merely toppling a dictator. A dictator may fall, but no matter what promises his usurper makes, the existing institutions will almost certainly cause him to become corrupt and dictatorial in order to cling to power. Thus, chopping the head off a corrupt regime and putting democracy there is unlikely to work, because the whole body is corrupt. Likewise, the Nazis may do away with democracy, but if it is institutionalised through society, it will spring back to life if given the chance. Countries between these extremes are at a historical crossroads, but even here intervention is fraught, as the corrupting elements of society are ingrained in the culture. I suspect this is why the US insisted on rooting out the Baathists in Iraq and abandoning much of Iraq's bureaucracy. Likewise, the French were more successful in continental Europe because they were there to stay, intended to turn society on its head, and were not afraid to shed some blood in the process.

Discuss Daron Acemoglu's theory that political and economic inclusiveness are self-reinforcing and the ultimate cause of modern wealth.

Discuss the role of slavery in the rise of western Europe