Why I stopped loving and learned to worry about democracy (reply to Oberon)

[Oberon]

Egads...right, I shall break my reply down and type it out as I go along, bite-sized so to speak. I think this is the best way to reply to this, although it might get a little hard to follow later on in the conversation, but at least the reply quote function doesn't stack like it used to otherwise it would get messy.

Originally Posted by Skybird

@Oberon,

I try this reply to you in two “phases”, first I will address your paragraphs to provide a first general, more specific answer to most of them, although it will be incomplete hints only. After that, I will add – still meant as a reply – a longer text of mine, where hopefully I succeeded in bringing more background thought into a structure that makes it a readable and understandable model or line of thoughts.

Nothing of all that is originally my brainwork's fruits, while I have come to many arguments and criticism like classical libertarians and Austrian school economics all by myself, neither was I the first man on Earth to learn thinking like that, nor did I succeed in putting all those many lose strings together and form one consistent “model” of them, which left me in a state of delusion and irritation, without advice, for as long as I did not stumble over according literature that helped me indeed to put it all together. The value of said literature for me was not to provide me with criticisms and arguments on single details – that far I came all by myself. We all can see how things turn into mess around us, if only we are willing to let loose of our precious self-deceptions and are to open the eyes to the inconvenient truths. But to put it all together to form not many different but just one huge image: that is where I profiteered from these books and where I am thankful to the authors for the help they provided to me by writing these books. Without them, I would have stayed stuck in a dead end: angry, but helpless. Today, I am still angry (even more so than ever), but the feeling of helplessness got replaced by understanding the unforgiving mechanisms behind the events that lead us to where we are heading. That might not be pleasant, but I am a very rational, head-heavy person, my head clearly dominates over my heart. That's me, whatever that tells about me, and wallowing in shallow sentiments or hysteric pathos never was my thing. Understanding even unpleasant things still helps me to bear them more calmly and becoming less concerned. It is the uncertainty, the lacking understanding, that sets me on alarm. If we go down the drain, then at least I want to know WHY we go down the drain.

That's fair enough, although one has to keep an open mind in the matter that there is still the matter of 'if' we do go down the drain, and should we do so it might not be in the manner in which we expect. After all, things in this world rarely occur in the manner in which we expect them to.
You are certainly a 'head-heavy' person, and this I hold you in respect for, no matter what others may say about you, but certainly you write with a passion inspired by the heart and indeed other matters which have occurred within your life which have influenced you, matters which have likely not occurred within mine and thus my viewpoint differs from yours, however this is why we have these conversations so that we may get a better understanding of each others viewpoints. So, let us begin, I have some baroque music playing to help my brain open up a bit, although whether I'll be able to reply to all of this in one evening without sacrificing quality over velocity is another matter, but bear with me, I shall do what I can.

What is freedom? From libertarian POV, it is neither an idea nor an ideal. It can only be defined usefully by understanding that it needs to be understood as a material condition. It bases on property – the ability to gain it (the individual's skill in harvesting wheat from the field it owns, and baking bread), and the right to use it (to consume it, to bake bread – or do something different with the wheat).

When you say property, do you define it as physical property or also include non-physical property. When I think of freedom, I think of the freedom of expression as opposed to a physical object, therefore whilst I am concerned about the erosion of the freedom of speech in some western countries, it is still a much better situation than in the Peoples Republic of China where speaking out against the government might net you a visit from the MSS, likewise in Nazi Germany or the Warsaw Pact, although admittedly you could express discontent with the government in both those nations at a low level without being arrested, but even so, certainly if America was a dictatorship as some people fear it to be, quite a few members of this forum would suddenly disappear. That is not to say that it cannot ever become so, and I can understand peoples concerns about it, but in many cases these concerns turn into paranoia, in a manner of the 'Red Scare' of the 1950s and that can equally be detrimental to the freedom of speech via witch hunts and the like. However, that's enough waffling about what I perceive to be freedom.

It's just that we have been there already. There is a full thread about Hoppe for example
( http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...=202945&page=3 ),
and all links I gave in this actual thread, above, have been given before as well. I do not unleash my anger at modern states for the first time either, I have not hidden my uncompromised hostility to our modern ways and goings on several opportunities. I do not will to re-invent the wheel every time. I take it as a basis once it is there.

Even so, within that thread you highlight, you end the introduction with, and I quote:

"If you prefer to still dream on of democracy being the best of all bad options, and consider it to be just and lawful - don't touch it then. Your idols are unlikely to survive this lecture."

Which, whilst placed at the end of a decent appraisal of your feelings towards Hoppe, sour the whole tone of the piece by essentially telling readers that 'if they don't conform to my way of thinking then you have my contempt' which is generally acknowledged to be an inefficient manner of persuading people of your viewpoint. 'My way or the highway' I believe is a saying used to describe such sentiments. Generally this method of presentation leads to driving more people away than it does encouraging people to read your thesis.

??? No. I do not even know the models anthropologists have formed of how it might have been in that era.

When I attack Western states, and states in general, I do it due to two different perspectives on things.

The first is that I see the democratic model being different (already since the ancient Greek) than what it is claimed to be today, and that it does not work, just does not work as advertised – quite the opposite is the case, and many of those malfunctions that in summary are self-destructive to the community, are inbuilt features that do not indicate an aberration of the idea, but are features of it, implications that cannot be avoided.

It's generally understood that mankind began as nomadic tribes moving out from the birth of mankind in Africa, from there some tribes stopped being nomadic and discovered that they could settle down and farm the land. Now, obviously if you take this and run with it, you can see that the more nomadic tribes that settled down, the more settlements there would be, and likewise that those settlements would get larger and maybe even split as the population increased. Then at a certain tipping point two settlements would have a dispute over a stretch of land and conflict would begin. Now it makes sense that there is a safety in numbers, and such separate settlements would band together to protect themselves and their land from external forces, and as such nation-states would begin. This eventually leads, usually through conquest, to the states becoming larger and larger until one large state rules over all the settlements. That has lead us to the current age where the whole world is filled with nations and there is no new land to expand into that is not already occupied by another nation (on this planet anyway).

I agree that the democratic model of today is much far removed from the model envisioned by the Ancient Greeks, as indeed are most ideas that were founded in that era, the world is, after all, a different place and as such ideas have been changed in the face of new challenges. Although I do believe that the Ancient Greeks would have positively loved the way that the internet has brought the world together in a manner to discuss philosophical matters on a scale which dwarf even the largest fora of old. They probably would have enjoyed the porn as well.
Certainly one could argue that democracy as it was originally envisioned in the days of more recent times, has also changed and failed, in that the power is once again placed in the hands of the rich and privileged whilst the poor are expected to toil to feed the aristocracy. However, when you compare the living conditions of the modern age with that of two hundred years ago, you realise that there have been definite improvements, and even so there have been improvements in the equality of democracy. Three hundred years ago the thought of a female Prime Minister would have been unthinkable, in fact just the other day in the United Kingdom we celebrated a woman called Emily Davison, who died in 1913 after throwing herself in front of the Kings racehorse at the Epsom Derby in support of Womans sufferage. In less than a hundred years from Emily Davisons death, women have prominent places in office and there has even been a woman Prime Minister. Of course, it is still a male dominated world, and it is harder for women to advance in British politics than it is for men, but the point is that it is happening.
Democracy is flawed, yes, but so is every single other form of government, there is no magic bullet as every government is made up of people of different ideologies and beliefs, so no matter who is in power and no matter what they do, they will upset someone. It is the curse of the office, and I would not swap places with the President of the United States for all the tea in China, despite the great promises of wealth and power, since no matter what policies I introduced, I would be lampooned and hated by some manner of people.

The second perspective is that I find the alternative ideas that I introduce quite convincing from a rational and reasonable perspective. I know that I argue from a theoretic standpoint on the latter, which is true both for libertarian economics and the libertarian understanding of liberty and ethics. And that theoretic basis by nature is, as Rothbard and Hoppe both explain, a so-called a-priori-theory, which means that its conclusions and theorems base on assumptions and statements that cannot be rationally, logically or reasonably be rejected without creating contradictions or logical fallacies. Is it a proven theory? No, obviously not. But reason speaks strongly in its favour, and refusing the fundament it stands on – natural law – brings you into hell's kitchen.

I can see where you are coming from, and for each of us out there, there is often a well published individual who has expressed ideas who we agree with. The problem comes when these theories are attempted to be placed into reality. Karl Marx made some engaging arguments in his original work, however when it was filtered through humanity we wound up with the Soviet Union which was in many instances a direct contradiction to the ideas of socialism. For each political system that has emerged on this world, it has rapidly differed from the thoughts which gave birth to it.
'No plan survives first contact with the enemy' is a classic saying, oft quoted by those of us who enjoy strategy and tactics alike, however outside of strategy it is still valid in that no political theorem can survive the ravages of human behaviour that is placed upon it, even through the best of intentions, but more often through a sense of greed and lust for power.

My criticism of the present Western states bases on observation of the reality I presently live in, and what I see is going wrong although by democratic theory it should not only not go wrong, but the scenario where it goes wrong should not even be imaginable . When that theory says it should function beautifully, with things breaking apart around me, then that theory cannot be what it claims to be. In other words, it must be faulty, if not all-out wrong..

The gulf of the difference between the theory and the fact can be quite large, and there is no theory out there that would remain unblemished by an attempt to reproduce it in the real world. Even more so, the longer a theory is put into practice, the more it changes, the less it resembles the original theory. For at each turn it is changed, moulded and altered by those within it, either to suit the circumstances of the era or to suit an individuals desire. Does this mean that the theory is wrong? Perhaps, perhaps not, or perhaps it is another example of the gap between our brains and our hearts in that our brains can often come up with fantastic ideas, but our hearts can smash those ideas within minutes. Rational thinking is not the strongest point of humanity, after all, if it were then the world would be a much different place.

This may or may not have been the case in that long ago era. However, in the era we associate with the term “high cultures”, trade was the deciding factor that led to the lasting economic foundation of huge empires, or not. The complex production cycle allowed complex interaction and cooperation only when monolithic values, like land property or a huge rock of precious ore, could be broken up into smaller quantities of value in order to trade these for small gains one desired (a craftsman's daily service for example) and the gain being so small that it was not justified to give the harvest of one field away for it, or the field itself. You do not trade your barn for getting a liter of salad oil. The solution was an intermediate variable: the introduction of money. And this money was a common trading good like any other, and its value was decided by market interactions amongst trading parties like the value of any other good. Instead of trading A for getting C, which would be a oss to you maybe, you traded A for several quantities of B, and then one quantity of B for C, keeping the rest of Bs for other purposes. This was a revolution in how trade, bartering was done, and only this allowed cooperation of bigger communities to achieve things that one man alone never would be able to achieve.

This gets very comfortably explained in a surprisingly small amount of pages in Rothbard's “What has government done to our money?”, part II, chapter 1-13, 45 pages only. LINK- http://library.mises.org/books/Murra...ur%20Money.pdf

This is true, and certainly I cannot argue that the system of economics now is so bloody convoluted that it is baffling to the simple man on the street, which has probably helped create the divide between the city and the nation which exists in many western European nations, particularly in the UK.

I just hinted at it: civilisation is trade, trade before anything else, trade generates the revenue to pay for the civilisation growing, blossoming, developing. It is an evolutionary process, and beyond the easiest level of trade – 1 fur for 10 fishes -, when complex production cycles set in, you depend on this intermediate variable: money. No money - no complex trade, no complex production cycles, no communal cooperation efforts producing results surpassing what the single individual could achieve, no specialisation of the individual (which also is an essential quality: specialisation) – in brief: no complex civilisation.

Trade is a founding block of civilisation, I fully agree, and the foundation of money has definitely enabled more complex trading and complex civilisation, and money and trade has also fed that part of human nature that desires improvement by setting forward an easier manner in which a person can achieve his desires. What is being sold has varied over the years, from materials in the early eras, to manpower and ideas in the later years. This has enabled both physical and intellectual labour to flourish through a reward system. As much as I would love to see a world that did not require money to exist, I do not think that such a thing could occur.

Needless to say: we do not have that kind of money anymore, it got intentionally destroyed by states to expose citizens in greater helplessness and vulnerability to the state. More on that later.

I would say that this varies, there is still a market for barter through private means, ebay for example, and although it is a very competative market, there is a market for intellectual labour too. If there was not then people like Mark Zuckerberg would not have amassed a great fortune.
The opportunities are still there, but the competition is so great that many people are unable to get into the market. Is this the fault of the states or the inevitable result of a free market? But yes, we will cover this later.

As I hinted above, the reason for the rise of civilizations is: trade. Help it and foster. Hinder it, see it declining, and see civilization decline and empires fall. And then again the complex productivity cycle, specialisation, all what I said above. If I understand you correctly in what you say, then I think you are misled there in so far as that you seem to misidentify or misinterpret the solid material factors that enable empires and civilizations to blossom. Where there is plenty of ground and population to be supplied with food and stuff, there is needed an infrastructure, a transport of food and water and items and goods and services, there needs to be information traffic for coordination. All this needs specialisation by the individuals, and specialised individuals forming huge communities depend on means and a system of making all these quantities and items “inter-changeable”, so that you could compare their valuer: economic management, fiscal cost-effect calculations. Just having a government, no matter which kind, saying it should be like this or that, does not work. And this is one of the most devastating creiticism you can aim at today'S tyranny of government printed FIAT paper-”money” and fiscal regulation by the state: that both prevent everybody joining the market as producer or customer to form such value comparisons and fiscal cost-effect calculations by eroding the basis on which such comaprsions could be run. For that, a free value-determination of money by the market is inevitably a precondition. But that is what politicians desperately try to prevent.

I am not entirely sure where you are coming from in this respect. I agree that the growth of a civilisation requires the networking of food, water and services...but where it falls apart is when you start mentioning about the prevention of everybody joining the market as producer of customer. Surely we are all in a market of some nature as a producer or consumer. For example, I produce security and cleanliness during my night-shift, for this I am paid and this money then goes into the purchase and consumption of both leisure and necessary items. Therefore at the most basic level I am a producer and consumer. Of course, there are people who are unable to produce, and some who are simply unwilling, and the latter spoil the life of the former by prejudicing the general public and government against them, but that is a rant for another topic completely.
In an indeal world for a government, every member of society would produce work-hours and consume the result of the work-hours of other people. For example, my security and cleanliness enables people who stay at the hotel I work at to sleep in the knowledge that the place is unlikely to burn down around them and when they eat their breakfast in the morning it is unlikely to be shared by a cockroach or a rat. Equally, when I go to a shop, I am paying for the products of someone elses work, be it a person working on an assembly line, or a farmer growing the crops that I eat.
Obviously in todays market the person who grow the crops is likely to live on the other side of the planet, but aside from the fact that the entire world (well, most of it) is a market now, what is the difference between this and the world of six hundred years ago when democracies were rare and few and far between?

Yes - by force and imperial demand of the centralist power. From libertarian POV, enforcing the union that way of course is illegal and immoral. Well. Libertarianism encourages local separation of regional communities from the – national – higher entity. It also is a moral right of the local population to do so, since other people outside that region have no legal or moral claim to make that they must obey these foreigner's commands. We are nobody else's possession, we are nobody else's slaves, we owe nobody our loyalty just because he demands it or due to the fast that we got born. That is the sovereignty of the individual, and it cannot be taken away from nobody and by nobody in a moral way. The political entity on the next higher level of hierarchy of course does not like subordinate regions breaking away, since this means a weakening of its influence and claim for more power. However, to have many city states and small regional communities, where people self-govern their affairs and decide themselves how to interact and trade and have treaties with neighbouring communities and cities – or to compete with them! Very important, this is what has brought Europe to the top of the list of influential civilisations known in human history! - to me seems to be the most promising way to go – although I know it is unlikely that all Europe will go that way. Nevertheless, I mind you that since Brussel claims more and more powers, independence movements that previously existed, got more support, and new movements get founded every year. The crisis in Europe causes many conflicts between people and regions, and the EU is directly responsible for having caused a massive rise in alienation and hostility – it achieves exactly the opposite of what it claims the Euro should bring and what the EU claims to want. Heck even here in Germany some would like to see Bavaria breaking away from Germany. If they would, I would move there, probably, if then they still let outsiders in.

Yes, I understand what you mean here. There is only so far that unity of nations can go before it reaches a tipping point. Some people outside of Europe question the likelihood of a giant European superstate emerging, and I laugh at them, since it is incredibly unlikely that European nations could agree on something long enough to do so.
There is definitely a move towards devolution in modern society, in the United Kingdom we have the Welsh assembly and the Scottish parliament, both of whom have to pay lip service to Westminster of course, but it is something that did not exist a hundred years ago.
Of course, the problem lies that, if Bavaria, for example, did seperate from Germany, what would stop Poland from invading and occupying it? Other than the knowledge that to do so would lead to retaliation from the entire German nation, so...even though Bavaria would be seperate from Germany it would still be tied to it in a manner in which the Falkland Islands are tied to the United Kingdom despite being on the other side of the planet, the need for support from an entity larger than itself.

I read that some historians point out that this kind of conflict – separation, or enforced unifying - also probably played the dominant role motivating the American civil war. Where the war for independence was a revolt against the British who after some time of relative laissez faire wanted to impose a stricter tax system again and tighten British control over and possession of “their colonies”, and the revolt thus was a self-defence on behalf of own sovereignty and own freedom, some historians, but also Hoppe, refer to historical quotes by Lincoln that reveal that Lincoln's decision for war against the South seems to have had not much to do with freeing the poor slaves, but with enforcing a claim for centralist power by Washington not only over the North, but the South as well. I got the impression that he just instrumentalised them for his - very different - intentions, but that ending slavery was not an item he had on his radar for the worth of the very issue itself. Also, apparently the centralised power by the whole union's government should had been supported by destroying the independent currencies circulating in the South (there were several, which from libertarianism's POV, seeing money as just a trading good like any other, was perfectly okay and imo makes more economic sense than any other monetarian model I have read about or heard of, and certainly much more than the bad joke of a paper money we have today). The result was a war that ended the southern money market, destroyed the South's economy and thus it's basis for independent survival, and paved the way for the North's centralised political regime taking control not only of the northern but the southern “provinces” as well.

It is certainly an arguement that can be put forward, and from a rational viewpoint it makes perfect sense, after all 'A house divided against itself cannot stand'. If America had remained split into two entities when the First World War broke out, would either entity have intervened in Europe? Or would the war in Europe spread to America in a resumption of hostilities between the North and the South? Either way America as we know it today would be radically different, and I believe not for the better.
So, yes, a rational and calculating mind would certainly see that an empire that is united is stronger both financially and militarily than one that is divided in on itself. A civil war makes for a weakness, and a weak empire is one that is oft preyed upon by other empires. Were it not for the powderkeg like situation in Europe and the dash in Africa, would Britain have decided to invade the US again whilst they were struggling against the CSA? All situations that have been explored in fiction but certainly one cannot deny that Lincoln and those around him would be acutely aware that a divided house is politically, financially and militarily weaker than a unified one. Having the moral crusade to free the slaves makes it easier to sell to the public, and is certainly a just a noble endeavour, be it the primary or secondary objective of the American civil war or not.

Somebody would write later that any democratic state cannot afford to leave its citizen the simpliest form of defence against and escape from state control, that the state must secure total and undisputed control over the citizen's private wealth and property, and that a democratic regime can only live if it installs unhindered access by the state to private property and wealth to be able to expropriate it at will. And that is what Lincoln seems to have been about when destroying the sovereignty of the south, the southern economy, and especially the Southern money system. The same is being done in European states since WWI and the defeat of monarchies by the republican paradigm. The development of money and the rise of the central banks also must be seen in this light. The book on money by Rothbard explains that nicely in the parts III and IV. It is already such a compact book and so easy to read that I will not summarize its content any further. It already is a summary.

I would struggle to suggest that this is a democratic speciality. The control of a citizens private wealth and property is something that has been sought after by the state since the idea of the state was created. This has been going on for longer than the United States of America has existed and certainly before the First World War.
Absolute monarchies, despotism, fascism, socialism, democracies, republics, all of them are governed by people who want control over the people below them. If anything, in todays democracy we are actually able to keep more than those of us who lived three to four hundred years ago, for if one were to scale the sort of tithe taken by feudal lords back in the medieval era to the taxes we pay today, it would be something like 80% of our earnings, with just enough allowed to eat. Nothing for electricity, nothing for internet or luxuries or leisure, and forget education because that would be a challenge to the dominance of the lord over you. Is this merely bread and circuses? Maybe, but it's clearly not wasted on everyone otherwise we would not be having this conversation.

Ever saw a deregulating, declining bureaucracy? A shrinking government? Spendings declining for longer time? Politicians deleting laws? Taxes taken back even if at entry it was said they only are temporary? Sorry, Oberon, if you believe what you say there, then that is very naive, and you prefer to believe what you want to believe only. A bit down this text, I hopefully succeed in explaining that the very nature of a state and especially the democratic state is totally against it. It does not shrink, it mutates, like cancer, it squeezes itself in more and more aspects of people's lives. You cannot deregulate a bureaucracy, for bureaucracy blossoms from expanding regulation. European states and the US are financially suffocating by their ever growing law canons and bureaucracies and ever expanding regulation canons. I read that in the US the number of administrative regulations additional to the laws, that touch upon just every single detail you can imagine, in the past twenty years alone have grown in number and volume by a factor of 120. In Germany, so I read, it is even worse. And more than the half of all global literature about tax systems and laws, written in just any language, more than half of that is about the German tax system alone! The EU promised the believing public that it wanted to battle bureaucracy and over-regulation, and had a commission for deregulation set up, which released regulations to regulate down regulations , resulting now in the labyrinth of regulations having grown even faster.

Oh good lord, I would be naive if I did believe in the ability of the state to self-govern. No, goodness no. I agree that the state does bloat itself out somewhat, sure it tries to cut bits here and there, but civil servants are like cockroaches, you can't get rid of them. There was an old joke that referred to the early L85A1 rifle as the 'civil servant' as it "didn't work and couldn't be fired". Of course, some of these civil servants actually do keep things ticking along in government, more so than any of the politicians whose faces we see on television or in the newspapers. Earlier I stated that I wouldn't be the President of the United States for all the tea in China, because it's a job in which you are doomed to fail to please everyone. Well, when you factor in the grey men which stand behind the President you see that he is merely a sail in the wind, he may push the boat in a certain direction, but it's the civil servants who are the wind that push the sail.
Again, however, this is hardly a byproduct of a democratic system, although it is perhaps more noticable in one because of how much of the system we can see versus how much of it we cannot. Even in an absolute monarchy there were advisers, councillors, the little men who influence the ultimate decision of the monarch.

You are totally on the wrong path there. You believe what officials tell you, probably. That is a very very big mistake. It is officials who live by the system. Limiting the system, limiting its reach and powers, would limit their own material profiteering from it. What do you expect...? I will later argue that politician's best interest is to act immoral and to abuse the public as much as they can. In a causal understanding it is reasonable to do so, in a democracy. Even worse: it is inevitable.

I believe what history and my understanding of the human race as an ultimately flawed species has told me.

But I would like to already question the very premise of your above quote already: why having a king government, nation in the first? The state does nothing better than private initiative and the basis of honest, grounded private business and craftsmen. In fact, states manage everything they take away from private responsibility of people much worse, having smaller net effect while wasting far more resources of that, and causing a plethora of follow-up costs. Spending money that is not yours, is more fun than to spend your own, you know. Pah! That also is an inbuilt feature of democracy, and states in general, that you cannot avoid. And the financial budgets of your nation as well as mine prove it, year for year.

You simply cannot put the genie back into the bottle, my friend. Nations came about through interconnectivity and a need to be strong to prevent other nations from conquering them. Once one group of people banded together they were stronger than those around them, they could take and do anything they wanted, and the individuals around them could do little to stop them, after all, which is stronger in a fight, one person with one gun, or eight people with the same type of gun? As the old saying goes, 'Quantity has a quality of its own', and so to combat this new threat, other individuals had to band together to form their groups.
Now, if a group of people were to split back up again, with no outside aid, it would be quite simple for their neighbours to walk in and help themselves to whatever they wanted through force.
As August put it, those who live by such principles are doomed to be overrun and enslaved by those who do not.

Imagine there are no other states. And in the past, long before kings established relations to far away empires, relations already were run- by traders going there, not even speaking the language at first. But trading instead.

This was in the days when communication took months, nowadays it takes seconds, the world is too small for there to be far away empires any more, and even in those eras, the traders were quite often soon followed by diplomats, or sometimes co-erced into becoming diplomats themselves.

I mind you of one thing: I do not say my suggested “methods” would work in the context of the today existing environmental context. I talk about the environmental context being changed. The question is how to get from “here” to “there”, and honestly said I have little optimism there, and so said Hoppe and many other late libertarians as well. Nevertheless, it is the right thing to suggest the goal to reach out for. It is right to criticise sticking to the self-destructive old ways. If we dare the new ways, maybe we succeed, maybe we lose. If we stick to the old ways now, we are guaranteed to lose, with no chance to even just keep what we gained. We will lose it all.

A good point, and one that should be put in bold really because it is a statement of humility which is something that not enough people connect with your statements on this forum. Of course, the primary problem lies in the old frying pan and fireplace situation, would the new way become even more self-destructive than the old? Would the new way lead to a massive war which would result in the loss of it all? Perhaps, and indeed, you state that if nothing is ventured then nothing is gained, but I think that right now there is far too much inertia in the system for such change to occur.
However, in the near future when resources start becoming more expensive to acquire, and the situation is more dire...well...nothing motivates a person like an empty stomach as they say. Who knows what will come about in the next fifty years in Europe alone, let alone the entire world. I certainly do not expect the sort of fluffy utopia that some do, but a world in which technology may have advanced but human nature remains the same.
Time will tell more than any single word of this conversation can.

That is neither any comfort, nor does it explain why it is wise to stick to democracy. Even more so when the deficits of it necessarily must always pervert it into what it claims to be its opposite: socialism, centralism, totalitarianism, collectivism. Already the ancient Greeks warned of that, they only argued about the order in which these things would follow each other. And they did not appreciate democracy, originally. Not one bit.

Indeed it is no comfort, but it is reality and there is little comfort in it as you and I both well know. In the vast long term perhaps this democracy will not last, Rome did not, and that was hardly a democracy by the end of it. There are hard times ahead, I think we both recognise that, that this Pax Europa will not last. Next year we will mark a hundred years since the Great War, and every time I go to the war memorial in our town and I see the children from the local primary school lined up and reading 'In Flanders fields' I wonder to myself what wars they will see in their lifetimes. Will there be another great European war? Will it involve nuclear weapons? I do not know, although I think the fear of the destruction of what has been built currently weighs greatly on the minds of the people who make the decisions to go to war. It is far easy now to destroy in greater magnitude than it has ever been before, and it is perhaps this fear that has prevented major wars in Europe? It certainly helped to prevent the Cold War from going hot. Again, this is something that only time will tell.


TO BE CONTINUED.

I have run out of time this afternoon to continue writing, so I will continue more tomorrow if and when I have time to get into the right frame of mind.

I can see where you're coming from Skybird, I really can, although at this point in time in this discussion I think that you are prescribing far too much blame towards a system rather than the reasons why that system is corrupted. That being said, I do see through a brief read of the next paragraph that you are moving on to compare the systems, so I shall address that later.