Is Pax Americana worth defending? Or at least forgiving?

First another sign that grownups are at least trying, again.  At last, a major US figure is proclaiming what we've long known, that nothing can be accomplished to forestall the creation of a lordly, trillionaire caste that towers, omnipotent and impervious above all nations, unless the remedies are done internationally, by worldwide treaty. Janet Yellen's call for a global minimum corporate tax rate would be a fine start, limiting incentives for mega corps to 'shelter' trillions in tax havens.

Moreover, make no mistake. Preventing stuff like this is Mitch McConnell's actual, underlying reason for desperately trying to cripple the Biden Administration.

In my novel Existence, I posit that the world agreed to a "Big Deal" in the late twenties, that decelerated the drive toward oligarchy in ways like this. But something much more assertive is needed. Something that would not affect YOU or me or honest taxpayers or honest corporations one scintilla. See my proposal for a Worldwide Transparency of Ownership Treaty.

That's preferable over the last resort that I portrayed earlier, in EARTH. The Helvetian War.

== Trying to arue facts with those who despise them ==

As usual, the Good Guys in this culture war and political struggle seem to lack even a clue how to use judo tactics. For example, it is an exercise in polemical futility simply to accuse the PRC of oppressive minority-repression in their hinterlands and applying sanctions to rebuke those actions. Oh, the sanctions may serve a realpolitik goal, but as a public polemic? All they do - always - is shout back "who are you (the U.S.) to lecture anyone about moral or decent behavior? Your own young people and human rights activists denounce the USA faults daily! From incarceration rates to police misbehaviors to electoral cheating! What hypocrisy!"

And how does that reply play? 

Well, it plays very well! Many in the West - including, likely, some of you - nod sadly and murmur "Yeah, how dare we lecture anyone? What hypocrisy!" ...

...ignoring the elephant in this room: the fact that we train generations of Americans in Suspicion of Authority and the value of corrective criticism. The folks nodding their heads sadly - including many of you - are indications of health and strength, not the opposite. (For more on this concerted training program, found in almost every Hollywood film, see Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood.)

While I never cared for some of his endeavors, Jean-Paul Sartre had a keen sense that good argument among opponents - facing each other with facts and good will - was the fundamental tool of every Periclean Enlightenment: the only times in the long, dour history of our species when actual progress was ever made. The following Sartre quote wasn't just about anti-semites, but all fascists and every other cult that strives to evade fact and bring the enlightenment experiment crashing down:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

 And hence my proposal for methods of shaming blatant playground cheating, by going to the viscera core or such macho-romantic jerks -- their pretensions of manliness! And demands for wagers work better than any other. A wager demand is concise. You are refusing to be drawn in for their entertainment unless they show the balls to step up with cash. And when they flee, those balls are revealed - before onlookers - as hollow and made of dust.

There are ways to judo this polemical tit-for-tat. I have suggested several unusual and likely-effective tactics for years. Some of them can be found in Polemical Judo.

== Applying this to international 'accusation tiffs' ==

And let's be clear. This polemical level of combat is vital! Good maneuvers at that level might prevent other levels from going hot! A certain rising rival nation's Politburo is right now egging its own population into warlike hostility... even hatred... of purported American campaigns to "keep us down," despite the proved fact that we are exactly the reason for their rapid rise.  

By inciting such chauvinistic hatred, those paramount masters mean to use a trumped-up foreign threat to distract a billion humans from looking at their own hierarchs. But history shows that kind of riled-up popular fury can often be a tiger that's impossible to constrain or to ride. Among my many suggestions is to confront the actual history of our nations' relations -- (look up a fellow named Anson Burlingame, for starters). As the Genie sang to Aladdin "You never had a friend like us." 

But another approach is even more effective and you've seen it here before. It works better than anyone admits, toward all elements of the anti-fact coalition.

Next time US officials complain about concentration camps - and they answer with "incarcerations rates!" - don't just leave it all lying there! Follow up with a proposal to test our moral positions experimentally! "Let's put this to experiment. From both countries' census data, pick 1000 RANDOM CITIZENS and invite them (with immediate family) to gatherings in each others' capitals, with cultural and educational immersion, followed with an opportunity to be taken on a week of tours to any geographical location that they pick. 

"At the end of that month tell each of those thousand (and immediate families): "Here are two envelopes. One contains a ticket home. The other contains a rent-free, 3 year lease on a small, average apartment and a residency card. Which envelope will your sampled citizens choose? And which envelope would average, randomly chosen Americans pick? Shall we bet on it?" And sure quibble over average GDP or any other factor you like. Envision those factors adjusted and weighted. Shove your thumb on the scale all you want! You know the outcome would change by no more than a few percentage points. My point? It is not about any particular adversarial relationship or nation! It is not about immigration or any of the details.

It is about the stubborn insistence of our own political castes to keep avoiding anything like agile tactics! And yes, this applies to both the goodguy Union side and the evil Confederate side of this dismal, tragic, national civil war. 

One clade is good and decent and trying hard to overcome the outright and deliberate treason of the other, and yet they are all stooopidly rigid.

== The core accomplishment of the American Pax ==

Oh, then there is the argument that America used to be the protectionist stealer of inventions and intellectual property. Well, sure. And a certain amount is to be expected from rising nations!  Indeed, the U.S. was protectionist till WWI for the same reason that the U.S. after World War II was indulgent toward nations that used protectionism for the same purpose.

But this ignores the stunning U.S. policy of COUNTER-mercantilism that the New Empire imposed after World War II, unlike the mercantilist ripoff trade systems imposed by every other imperium across 4000 years. The reversal of that traditional behavior is the salient fact - more than any other - about Pax Americana.

in 1945, George Marshall and others held meetings that - for the first time in the dismal history of humanity - asked a simple question. "We're about to become the world's paramount power. What mistakes did all other empires make and how can we avoid them?"  

Again, all other Imperiums practiced mercantilist policies that stole gold from the peripheries and funneled it to the central zone, leading to poverty and hatred in the periphery and eventual the fall of it all. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was only the latest example of this wretched reflex, and the calamity that it caused almost slew us all.

That was what Marshall and the others decided to avoid, as a matter of deliberate policy. Starting with Europe & Japan, then Taiwan & Korea, then Singapore and other nations, indulgent US trade policies allowed and encouraged them to practice protectionism letting them draw in first textile mills, then assembly plants, then higher production while the workers' kids went to school... and all of it propelled by American consumers buying 100 TRILLION dollars worth of of crap we never needed.

Raised in a spirit of self-flaggelatory reflexes, liberal Americans - especially well-educated ones - simply ignore this deed, which may be the greatest accomplishment across all the annals of all nations and times, lifting a majority of humanity out of grinding poverty and transforming now China AND India at the same time!

I despair of anyone, anywhere, ever blinking and staring and finally realizing this blatant fact, that the greatest men of the 20th Century and possibly all of human history set up this greatest deed, after just finishing crushing the worst evil of all time. 

But it is simply true. We are still doing it. And without this deliberate policy, our supposed 'rivals' would still be almost all dirt roads today.

You're welcome.

Sci-Tech: Globalization will end because of technology, not politics!

This is a science and technology posting… but we’ll start by posing a political question and then answering another... then using technology to answer a big one, about the future of globalization.

1) Candidates, where do you stand on science?  56 scientific organizations representing 10 million scientists and engineers, led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), have posed a list of twenty science-based questions, offered up to Clinton, Trump, Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. They have until Sept. 6 to send in their answers.

"Most of the questions are entirely unsurprising (and sadly still controversial): AAAS asks how candidates plan to address climate change and growing global energy needs. Some questions are new this year. “There is a growing opioid problem in the United States, with tragic costs to lives, families and society. How would your administration enlist researchers, medical doctors and pharmaceutical companies in addressing this issue?” 

Other new issues included immigration, mental health and biodiversity." Intriguing stuff... And short of nuclear war, can you think of anything more important? Yet more politically neglected?

At this even longer have been the folks at sciencedebate.org - (led by Shawn Otto, author of The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It), who have been relentless in trying to get candidates to admit we live in an era of science and that facts matter at least 10% as much as polemics. 

I'd go farther. I'd demand that every member of Congress name his or her science adviser.  If they name a fool or a shill, that would hurt them.  If they name someone eminent from their district, then that eminent person might either sway the politician... or embarrass him.

2) Some of you ask why I pal with John Mauldin, a conservative economist, government-skeptic and dedicated (though less-so with Trump) Republican. What? Other than the fact John’s a terrific guy? Also, his insights and critiques are everything that a sane American conservatism could bring to our national conversation… pro-science & diversity & tolerance-friendly, pragmatic, pro-small-business… everything that today’s GOP is diametrically opposed-to. We need that conservatism back at the negotiating table! Though it will only emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a monstrous Confederacy-madness that Rupert Murdoch raised with his 30 year satanic rites.

How does that relate to today's topic? Here’s a link to one of the best articles on globalization I ever read, by John’s partner Patrick Watson. It explains how globalization got its start with four major technologies… 

...and why four more will bring about its end, returning us to an era of local production, when fleets of ships and pipelines and trucks will no longer be the lifeblood of the world economy.

And yes, they point out that while some have lost, due to globalization, most of the people of this planet have benefited spectacularly. And those (of you) who oppose globalization strictly as a convenient excuse for simplistic protectionism are thus reflexively committing horrific racism.

Those eight technologies changed - or will change - the world. But what Patrick and John leave out is the topmost driver of 70 years of globalization. Pax Americana. Not only did the planetary order set up by George Marshall and Harry Truman protect the world from major war for an entire human lifespan, allowing 90% of nations to spend amounts on arms and armies that were minuscule compared to any past generation…

…but the trade networks they erected were diametrically different than the mercantilist regimes erected by Pax Romana, Pax Sinica, Pax Brittanica and every other empire. Pax Americana has been ANTI-mercantilist, allowing, even fostering, the development of local industries, all over the globe. This simple measure is the one innovation that uplifted first Europe and Japan, then Korea, Taiwan and so on… till now the American consumer is raising-up masses in both China and India at the same time. It is the chief reason that 3/4 of the world's children bring school books back to homes with electric lights, toilets, running water and a modestly well-stocked fridge.

It is the prodigious American accomplishment that historians of the future will most prominently note, far above measly moon landings. And we did it by buying several trillion dollars worth of crap we never needed. Oh, irony.

== End globalization right! ==

But yes, it's time to move on from carbon-spewing globalized trade! For example: 
      "General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt says that “wage arbitrage” is over. Robots do not care where you install them. They cost about the same and work at equal speed no matter where they are. Robotics will greatly reduce the incentive to make goods far from the end user simply to save on labor costs. The new incentive will be to produce in proximity to your customer. This will let you deliver faster and offer greater customization."

Local production, robotics, local food, these trends will build, bringing benefits and troubles of their own. But all the tech trends seem to point in this direction. And about time, because all those cargo planes and cargo ships are helping to cook us!

Given the nature of their newsletter audience, John and Patrick only glancingly nod at the top reason to reduce our use of fossil fuels. 
(Psst... it's pollution-driven climate change!) 
But I won’t begrudge them the gentleness of their ministry to the near-terminally delusional.  At least they are trying.

Oh… before we shift topics... here’s just a couple of science-y news items showing how we will de-globalize.

Vertical farming stacks crops on top of one another in a climate controlled, indoor facility, using aeroponic technology, which involves misting the roots of the plants, using an astonishing 95% less water. The plants are grown organically, in a reusable cloth made from recycled plastic, so no soil is needed. What’s cool is that the technology is mature… it actually works on pragmatic and commercial scales, at least for table greens. Doubtless there are some crops that won’t apply.  But this — plus tissue-culture meat — could loosen humanity’s death grip on the planet’s arable land, just in the nick of time, and make our cities much more sustainable. 

And a Tesla car drives owner to hospital after he suffers pulmonary embolism.

A day after Elon says the "era is coming faster than we think."

== Science in trouble? ==

This lengthy and illuminating article -- The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists – began when the authors sent scientists a survey asking this simple question: If you could change one thing about how science works today, what would it be and why?  

According to one researcher the selection pressures in science have favored less-than-ideal research: "As long as things like publication quantity, and publishing flashy results in fancy journals are incentivized, and people who can do that are rewarded … they’ll be successful, and pass on their successful methods to others." 

The article offers in-depth reflection on a number of problems ranging from peer review to publish-or-perish to funding misallocation and lack of incentives for replicating or disproving earlier works.  Note also a recurring theme that I have promoted for decades, that of transparency – a concept and a methodology that, if not invented by science, certainly has been promoted in this civilization foremost by science.

Alas, the article also has its own problem – a complete lack of big picture perspective.

Dig it, every single one of the listed problems was with us in the past! In most cases far worse than today, with fewer corrective measures in place.  Indeed, the gripes – and proposed solutions – presented in this article are manifestations of a very strong, ongoing, self-critical, self-improvement campaign within science. In large part, we are not witnessing a deterioration of scientific behavior but rather a steady rising of awareness and standards. 

In other words, Criticism is the vitally important Only Antidote to Error.  But not all mea culpas come from realization of turpitude. Reflective criticism can also be a declaration: “let’s get even better!”

It is no surprise that fallible human beings have trouble measuring up to the most honesty-driven pursuit in the history of our inherently delusional species. What stands out is that millions want to try. The very standards by which scientists find their own field lacking are standards brought into our civilization by science.

Of course the background for all of this is a drumbeat War on Science, being waged by bits and corners of one end of the political spectrum… and every corner of the other end. Science and scientists have earned the respect they have from most, sane citizens. Beyond any reasonable doubt, fanatics are hurling much of their calumny out of jealousy.

Indeed, that is why critical self-examinations like this one merit both our serious attention and heed to historical perspective. Clearly, scientists are faulty humans and have a long way to go, like the rest of us.  They are merely (on average) the best and smartest and most knowing and most honest of all professions.

== A science roundup of wowzer amazements ==

The latest – cool-looking – attempt at a flying car. 

A new kind of luminescent cement will be able to absorb enough solar energy to then remain illuminated for up to 12 hours at night, even when the day is cloudy. Brilliant. 

This 250 ton monster digger scours the ocean depths, looking for mineral wealth - gold, copper, nickel, zinc and cobalt. 

A fascinating story of how Oregon scientists discovered the first new blue pigment in 200 years, both brilliant and extremely durable.  

Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal has developed an automotive steel sheet that is 30% lighter and 25% stronger than the toughest high-tensile steel now on the market, hoping to help carmakers build more fuel-efficient, safer vehicles.

Using neuro-imaging data, Carnegie Mellon University researchers have identified four distinct stages of math problem solving -- encoding, planning, solving, and responding. Although the study focused specifically on mathematical problem solving, the method holds promise for broader application.

Led by Richard Carson, a Yale-led team of researchers has developed a way to measure the density of synapses in the brain using a PET (positron emission tomography) scan. They invented a radioligand (a radioactive tracer that, when injected into the body, binds to a type of protein and “lights up” during a PET scan) that is uniquely present in all 100 trillion or so synapses in the brain.  With this noninvasive method, researchers may now be able to follow the progression of many brain disorders by measuring changes in synaptic density over time or assess how well pharmaceuticals slow the loss of neurons.

Salvaging a Sane "Indispensable" American Involvement with the World

We are hearing the word "indispensable" a lot, in conversations about the role of the United States in an ever-changing world.  A word almost as misused as the phrase "American Exceptionalism" as a way to create false dichotomies and substitute reflex for thought. 

I’ll get to dissecting some of this flawed analysis of foreign policy in a sec.  But first –

== Doubling down on insane delusions ==

Well, Republicans are nothing, if not consistent. Having doubled down on “Supply Side” fantasies for 30 years, they relentlessly promise that every new tax cut for the rich will “pay for itself and erase federal deficits,” after the rich use each new largesse we pour unto them, to invest in productive enterprises. 

Ah, but then how inconvenient is it to the narrative, that they never did that thing? Instead, as Adam Smith himself said of the “rentier caste,” they almost always pour any excess funds into rent-seeking and asset bubbles.  (Techie billionaires are, of course an exception: but they tend to be democrats and urge credits for RandD, not across the board gifts to the aristocracy.)

And so, instead, every tax cut for the rich sent us deeper into steep deficits and debt. Now? Are they correcting a single assumption, based on 30 years of contrary evidence?  Hah! They're doubling down on the voodoo!

Let's be clear about the contrast: switching to well-proved “demand side” would have hired half a million workers to repair bridges and infrastructure — things we will have to do anyway -- sending high-velocity cash passing quickly through poor pockets and stimulating the economy. They know it would work.  But that would mean admitting Keynsians were right. Indeed, preventing that hi-velocity recovery is one reason the GOP blocked the Infrastructure Bill. (And when bridges collapse and trains topple, you will know whom to blame.)

So, what do they want now? To end the Estate Tax, a cut costing the treasury $269 billion over a decade, “that would exclusively benefit individuals with wealth of more than $5.4 million and couples with wealth of more than $10.9 million. That’s a tax break for only the 5,500 wealthiest households in the country.” And as proof of pure stupidity, the “populist” Tea Party movement backs up this proposal, to the hilt.

Read this article: Republicans push for a permanent aristocracy! Only it leaves one thing out. The Estate Tax need never be paid! Just create a foundation and use most of your riches to do some cool thing in the world, in your name, instead of pursuing the ancient and animal-reflex ambition of inherited aristocracy.

See proof of supply side’s failures here: Do Outcomes Matter More than Rhetoric?

 No wonder they hate science and facts. Feudalism failed across 6000 years.  So those aiming to bring it back must rely — as the Lords always did — on incantations and fantasy.

== Thay’r Baaaack!  The neocons lift their heads… ==

At the urging of economics guru John Mauldin, I’ve read Ian Bremmer’s new book, SUPERPOWER: Three Choices for America's Role in the World.  Alas, I must say that I am less impressed than John is.  Bremmer sets up three possible future scenarios for how the United States (both government and people) might interact with a rapidly changing world.  

Alas, the “scenario” process of engaging with the future is fraught with mental perils and one of them is tendentious leading-the-conclusion.

Of Bremmer’s three scenarios, Moneyball America (aggressive self-interest) and Independent America (isolationism) are clearly set up as strawmen for the author to knock down - knowing that his readership will reject them. He does this in order to extoll an oversimplified third option called Indispensable America – still the key planetary player that must remain engaged with the world, helping it to move ahead toward better and presumably more lawful times.

Well... um… duh?  I am on-record elsewhere demanding that critics of Pax Americana offer up any plausible scenario that would have handled the last 70 years -- setting aside some awful blunders --better in the broadest sense, maintaining a general peace that allowed most (not all) nations and peoples to prosper as never before.  Name one past “pax”… or period of interregnum… that was handled even 1% as well.

Oh, but those "awful blunders" have done harm!  Especially devastating America's ability to continue in a benign leadership role.  And here you get to the tricky part.  Because "Pax Americana" is not just one thing.  When well handled, in the traditions of Marshall, Acheson, Truman and Eisenhower, you get something that at least tries, sometimes, to be decent and mature. At least tries.  More often than not.  Enough to average positive. And proof of that is the plain fact that the USA is clearly the least hated pax in the history of the world.

In sharp contrast, when the U.S. "pax" is pushed as an imperial dominance trip -- the approach declared gleefully by neocon madmen like Wolfowitz, Nitze, Perle, Cheney and both Bush presidents, raving manifest destiny babble concocted by an insane philosopher named Leo Strauss -- then you get calamities that wreck American influence and prestige and even USA power.

Of course we all know that, now.  Both Bushite eras revealed domestic and foreign policy stupidity on a scale of insipidity that might be better suited to 12 year olds, playing DandD, while stoned on Wild Turkey. I have open challenges for republicans to name a single unambiguous and attributable statistical metric of US national health that improved across either span of a Bush Presidency.  (Most such metrics have improved markedly across the Clinton and Obama spans.) This disparity of outcome is so devastatingly clear – like the demolition of Supply Side “economics” fantasies – that it explains the current GOP fixated hatred of science.  Anything having to do with facts is now anathema. 

Bremmer cannot defend the neocons openly, so he goes for a trick, a bit of polemical legerdemain. He proclaims that this mania crosses every partisan divide: "US foreign policy has been reactive and improvisational for 25 years. And we can no longer identify a Democratic or Republican approach to foreign policy."

This amounts to "All right, I am forced to admit that my side has been awful, but... but our opponents are just as bad!"  The clarion call of any modern Republican who has retained a glimmer of sapience.

But it is… um, wrong.  In fact an outright lie. Indeed, I show here that Democrats and Republicans handle matters of war and peace in diametrically opposite ways.  Democrats do fight!  But in totally different styles.  Likewise in every domestic policy at-contention, the differences are total and as clear as they were in 1863.

 Those on both the entire right and the far-left who assert “They’re all the same” are playing up a narrative with one agenda, to staunch the arterial bleeding of sanepeople from an insane GOP, a fevered exodus by almost every person of skill and knowledge.

Sure, there were very cogent moments in Bremmer'sbook! He is a bright fellow and there are decent observations, on a case-by-case level. But sorry.  It is clearly a polemic, arguing slyly that we should let the basic neocon perspective back in, for another go.

No way. America is indispensable for the foreseeable future... and indeed, "exceptionalism" has certain merits. But not as excuses to give reins of power back to the maniacs and morons who today constitute the entirety of the "intelligencia" of the American (confederate) right.

== Others are saying this ==

Sometimes a journalist sums things up just right: "None of the conservatives running for president want to be associated with the last Republican president — not even his brother (for whom stepping away is rather complicated). After all, George W. Bush left office with an approval rating hovering in the low 30s, and his grandest project was the gigantic catastrophe of the Iraq War, which we're still dealing with and still debating. If you're a Republican right now you're no doubt wishing we could talk about something else, but failing that, you'd like the issue framed in a particular way: The war was an honest mistake, nobody lied to the public, and anything bad that's happening now is Barack Obama's fault."

In this cogent and compelling piece -- George W. Bush didn't just lie about the Iraq War. What he did was much worse -- Paul Waldman dissects this assertion both ways. 

If the trillion dollar debacle of Bushite Wars - whose only winners were Iran and Bush-Cheney family companies like Halliburton - was based on lies, then the entire Republican establishment shares decadal and epic levels of blame for outright treason. 

But supposing that George W. Bush and the GOP establishment actually believed those delusional rationalizations… as his father believed it was right to over-rule Gen Schwarzkopff and betray Iraq's Shiite majority, laying bitter dragon seeds for us to harvest … then in fact, the narrative turns even worse. Instead of their treason the blame is our stupidity, for having failed to remove power from the hands of idiots.

The absolutely unalloyed record of negative outcomes from Bush eras - in every statistical metric of US national health - would then reflect a "marching morons" effect of staggering magnitude and implications.

Only it gets worse, as the latest scion of that monstrous family calamity for America now asserts that Iraq is all Obama's fault.

 ooooog… What does it say about today’s Republican party that James Baker is persona non grata and John Bolton is a hero, urging war with Iran on the op-ed pages of the New York Times?

Notice that I am no longer calling on “ostrich republicans” to lift their heads and notice what has happened to the once-proud movement of Barry Goldwater.  There is only one solution left.  To end this phase of the American Civil War the way the others did.  The Union simply has to win.

Asides: on Pax Americana, Libertarians and where the #$#! are our Roosevelts?

Mid-week, let's pause to get a few points out of the way. Below I will have some things to say about current American politics -- about "Galt's Gulch in Chile" and about... "The Roosevelts."

But first... clearly my most provocative stance is to defend the period -- post WWII -- called  "PA"… or Pax Americana.  It's a topic wherein I think we can distill what is loony about both sides in the current, re-ignited US civil war... as well as simplistic and comfortable cliches that are clutched by many of our friends, overseas.

PA has lasted all our lifetimes, since WWII saw the passing of Pax Brittanica… the “British Peace.”  "Pax" referred originally to Pax Romana or the Roman Peace that kept the Mediterranean placid and open to commerce for 600 years. Pax Sinica refers to similar epochs across China and east Asia. Pax Hispania was the greatest empire the world has ever known, in which Columbus's discoveries -- then Magellan's -- led to a "peace" that preached its own absolute goodness while it spread deliberate genocide for 400 bloody years. But at least there was no hypocrisy.  

Here is the crux. With the likely exception of Pax Hispania, almost every pax era has been better for average people on planet Earth than almost every era without a pax empire, when competing kingdoms would send armies slashing and burning and looting across each others’ territories. The Chinese, for example, admit that the First Emperor Chi'in, who unified the five warring states, was something of a murderous madman. But he also made it safe to travel and trade and paved the way for the Han Dynasty renaissance. He was hell on scholars and dissenters, but made things better for average folk who just wanted to live out their lives, pay taxes, practice a trade and be left alone.

Are there costs, whenever there is a ruling imperium? You bet! When the First Emperor crushed the Five Kingdoms, peace then reigned… along with brutal tyranny and a collapse of the vibrant, cultural competitiveness that had prevailed, before. Minorities had plenty to complain about, under Pax Parthia, Pax Alexandrine, Pax Romana, Pax Mughal etc, and homogenization under a single oligarchy is often harsh on progress. (So harsh that it might help to explain why few or no alien species made it to the stars.)  Indeed, it was when the nations of a divided Europe -- circa 1400 to 1900 -- vigorously competed that humanity made some of its greatest, if morally mixed, strides -- including strides toward both liberal enlightenment and industrial grade genocide.  

This is not a matter for taking sides, but for being open-minded about many pros and cons, so that understanding might help us to navigate a future course, between the Scylla of violent chaos and the Charybdis of stifling empire. Those of you out there who leap to just one, simplistic stance on all of this, making grand and righteous declarations, may thereby feel good, but you understand little about the complex morass that is human history.  And thus you are no help at all, in steering us toward better days.

== The current pax ==

Where Pax Americana is different is in having operated under a mythic system that -- even when it was only hypocritically paid lip service -- at least spoke repeatedly that there should be no empires. Indeed, while American commercial interests may have been predatory, during the weak end-days of the Chi-ing Dynasty, U.S. policy was always on China's side, at least officially, demanding that European and Japanese powers give back the colonial "concessions" they had wrested from the weakened central kingdom. Not one other nation in all of China's long history ever stood up for her that way.

Does imperfection disqualify everything? de Rochefoucauld said "Hypocricy is the homage that vice pays to virtue." Indeed, though betrayed often, the moral stance against empire has been relentlessly conveyed in American propaganda -- e.g. Hollywood films, which portray "empires" as bad things and tolerance of diversity as the greatest positive virtue.  Indeed, those of you who are now seething in anger at me, for daring to say good things about PA... um, have you thought of where you got the value system by which you judge these things?  Can you name another major culture that preached "by all means criticize the center of power!"

Ironies abound. The best that PA can preen about is that it reduced most of the bad outcomes of a pax era. Rigid domination, imperial mercantiism and repression of diversity. A priesthood with a lock on "truth." Outright and barefaced conquest.

We are talking human nature here... what groups of people do when they find themselves in a position to dominate. Go on now and name for me one people, across all of time, who behaved well when tempted by such power. One. We can wait here if you like, all day.  The real enemy is that temptation, which seems rooted in our natures.

But it can be controlled.

My assertion has been that: 

(1) The ratio of good deeds to bad - by Pax Americana - is stunningly better than any other pax power across time…

(2) Should we expose and dissect and atone for wretched events like Vietnam and Allende -- all the way down to negligent crimes of poor supervision, like those exposed in Iraq by WikiLeaks? Absolutely! I am Mr. Transparency.  And criticism is the only known antidote to error (CITOKATE.)

But these crimes, while calling for fierce retrospection and learning, do not alter the fundamental fact, that outcomes have been vastly better, under the PA system designed by the greatest human of the 20th Century, George Marshall.  

Average humans today live in more peace than at any time in the history of our species, as shown in Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, with only a few percent ever experiencing personal and direct contact with war in their lifetimes. One top benefit: Pax-protected world trade has uplifted 2/3 of the world’s children out of poverty.

(3) That propaganda campaign about tolerance and suspicion of authority and individualism may have been hypocritical! Nevertheless, it engendered people like you who are generous in your citokate-criticism and who push for exactly those values! Memes that you express, even as you fume at me for praising the pax that taught you all those values. While never once pausing to realize "Hey I am part of an organic process!  And any other empire would have killed me for this, by now."

(4) Combine all this and there may be a unique opportunity -- that we might actually tip into an era when pax law is no longer needed. An era portrayed in Star Trek, when the very idea of one dominant power is viewed by all as repugnantly retro and archaic.  No other culture ever preached that eutopian notion, though you illustrate it right now, as you seethe at these words. 

Here is more about Pax Americana: Pondering Pax Americana and the Government Shutdown.

== Basics ==

It merits reiterating. Was PA awful at times? Sure... except compared to every single other nation that was ever tempted by such power. If you make that comparison, PA is day to their night. Moreover, you know it.

Was PA drooling-insane-stupid under both Bushes? Sure. So much so that you have to wonder if that Saudi-owned family did it on purpose. (The wretched irony? That the phrase "Pax Americana" is only uttered nowadays by right wingers, who eviscerate its promise at every turn, with almost every immoral and incompetent act of foreign and domestic policy. Meanwhile the liberals who are PA's true spokesmen, glower at the one thing that made their dreams possible. Oh, we are weird, all right.)

Should Pax Americana be replaced with something grownup, at last, bringing an end to all empires? Sure! That's the idea!

Would Star Trek be better? Yep! 

Do you have a better idea? We'd all love to see your plan. But please, one that is only half impractical preaching but also looks at what progress has been made, so far, and how that progress happened.)

Will the end of all empires come, if PA simply goes away? Or prematurely stops enforcing peace? Baloney. Before you prescribe nothing as a replacement to the current pax power, please find for us, across 6000 years, a lasting era when that prescription worked well.

PA is the only empire that ever had as its (hypocritically uneven) policy "there should be no empires." And that hypocrisy has one saving grace...

...it will make itself come true.  

== Too-big means get-smaller ==

And now a couple of politically redolent items: The Federal Reserve is pushing the biggest U.S. banks to shrink so that they're less of a risk to the financial system. Fed proposals include imposing additional capital requirements for the eight largest banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America — that exceed the levels mandated by international regulators. “Capital surcharges" would increase in proportion to how risky the regulators deem a bank to be.

Which leads one to ponder...

Ken Burns documentaries are always a great buy, for your viewing time. His most recent — “The Roosevelts” -- focuses on Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor. Terrific. Fascinating stories. 

Only… I find my own thoughts drifting  -- and as I watch this series I can only contemplate our parents in the Greatest Generation... who overcame the Depression, crushed Hitler, prevented a mad Soviet Empire from world conquest, built a vibrant/free/open/flat/fair capitalism that created so much wealth that we could then afford to take on ancient, bad habits like racism, sexism and environmental neglect.

That generation... so admired by folks on the American Right... try asking your Fox-Watcher... "which human being did the Greatest Generation of Americans -- and indeed, nearly everyone on Earth -- adore, above all others?"

Watch them go goggle-eyed and choke. But make them say the name. Aloud.

== And finally? ==

Galt’s Gulch Chile? One common theme that spans from leftist-hippies to followers of Ayn Rand is the notion of anarchic utopianism — that those who have free spirits and the right ideology can create an ideal community, free of the ills they perceive in our complex, compromise-ridden civilization. On rare occasions, these communities have thrived… ironically those that have been run patriarchally by brilliant administrators, replicating feudalism-of-old, with a patina of egalitarian catechism. But most such experiments swiftly collapse. As in the case of the AnyRandian ideal community described here.

This is not the only libertarian dream community in the works. Perhaps more sturdy, but still problematic, are seasteading efforts propelled by Patri Friedman and Peter Thiel.

In the end, however, this is tragic for us all. Libertarianism might have served as a rational and pragmatic counter-balance to the other utopian tendency, to try solving all problems with statist approaches. It might also have held true to the sane vision of Adam Smith - to do what is needed in order to maximize the number of skilled and capable young competitors in a flat-fair-open society. 

Instead, it has been hijacked by solipsists who never, ever mention the word “competition” anymore, in their obsessive defense of towering accumulations of PROPERTY, never noticing how this serves the proto-feudal wishes of the oligarchs who were denounced by Adam Smith, and have always been the greatest enemies of markets and freedom.

See my dissection of Any Rand here: http://www.davidbrin.com/aynrand.html

==Return to Part One of this Series: An Unstable World