From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 21:40:02 MDT
What follows is a response to my forwarding a link to
my recent posts here to David Brin, with whom I've had
other recent correspondence.
(I'm trying to figure out his references to my alleged
defense of the British Empire in India... Not that I
haven't made such a defense on occasion, in reference
to the British manageing to finally stamp out the
Thugee Shiva Cult that practiced mass ritual murder of
innocent travelers throughout most of India,
thoroughly corrupting the local Rajah rulers by a
combination of death threats and bribes of stolen
goods, among other endearing religious rituals, as one
example, but my overall feelings are hardly
enthusiastically with colonialist powers, altho
sometimes they represent a major improvement.
I don't recall any conversations or exchanges with
David re any of this, however, so I'm assuming that
he's confusing me with someone else on that particular
issue.) Still, a viewpoint worth throwing into the
fray...
Hi Phil.
I cannot see how to reply to the articles at
http://www.extropy.org/exi-lists/extropians/0304/7321.html
so I'll
just answer you . Post if you want.
1. Burden of proof is on those who would police the
contents of
other peoples' minds, or who contend that it is even
remotely
possible to base a society's freedoms on blinding the
mighty,
something that the mighty will simply never allow.
Defense through obscurity is the weirdest delusion
I've ever seen.
For ten years I've asked adherents to point to one
society, ever,
that tried that approach and achieved anywhere near
what we've
achieved through general openness and general
accountability.
The whole point of The Transparent Society was not to
predict or
prescribe an end to privacy, but to ensure that a free
people have
enough sovereign power - based on general openness and
knowledge - to
vote themselves and enforce a bit of privacy and make
it stick.
2. THE SHORT VERSION ABOUT 'WORLD GOV"
Last year I gave a dinner speech for the World
Federalist Society
(led by former independent Presidential candidate John
Anderson) at
which I pointed out a few relevant factors. (A couple
of months later
I also did a keynote for the Libertarian convention!)
1. Antipathy toward increasing world structure or
'government' has
different sources, depending on where you look.
Dictators and oligarchs see it as a threat to their
local power.
Small nations see it as a vehicle for hegemony by
the US et. al.
Major corporations see it as likely to become a
taxing authority.
Western political classes see it as arising out of
the UN, and thus
becoming an impotent talking society in which action
becomes
impossible and 3rd world perceptions dominate.
Western citizenries perceive it as a potentially
dangerous
accumulation of centralized power.
The thing I focus on is the last of these. (Citizen
empowerment is
my fetish. See:
http://www.futurist.com/portal/future_trends/david_brin_empowerment.htm
)
My own son, at age six, expressed a deep worry
about even the
notion of a World Government, since "There wouldn't be
anywhere else
to run away to, if it turned bad." (Clever boy!)
I think it's very important to peer closely at the
average voters and
citizens in the West, since they will ultimately
decide whether this
issue becomes a front burner item. They are the
people your book
might persuade.
In dozens of talks and speeches, I have found
that nearly all of
the people I meet express a set of shared values --
whether
republican or democrat etc -- a vast majority of them
declaring (a)
suspicion of authority, (b) individualism, (c)
accountability and (d)
tolerance as high values.
Their principal difference is nearly always WHICH real
or potential
center of authority they worry about. But nearly all
deeply worry
about internationalization of authority.
2. The 'anti-globalization movement' is currently a
transfixing
focus for what used to be called the Activist Left.
Young people
follow world leaders around, creating urban theater
neat World Bank &
other meetings, decrying abuse of the environment, of
labor, of
children, etc. The irony is that each of these
problems was
addressed in their home (western) countries by the
very last method
they think of using -- politics and law.
In other words, their reflex revulsion toward
'globalization' is
ill-considered. Labor, children, and the environment
all benefited
in their homelands from INCREASES in political and
legal structure.
The decreases in structure that they demand can only
succor local
oligarchies that currently are the main enemies of the
environment,
labor and children.
3. THE LONG VERSION ABOUT WORLD GOV:
Dear Phil
While I agree with much of your criticism toward the
British Raj, and
especially the way it favored the rapaciousness of the
rich, there
were aspects to the story of Pax Brittanica that
illustrate a glacial
movement of imperial power toward the era of
transition that we live
in today.
For example, the notion, publicly trumpeted, that at
least there was
a GOAL of education and social mobility under a civil
service
meritocracy. True, this was largely lip-service but
lip-service can
be under-rated since it represents a core value that
the idealistic
can always appeal to.* It was always assumed that
India would
eventually achieve some sort of autonomous home rule,
for example...
though the Brits figured it would take till 2300 AD
and that the
elevated wogs would then be forever grateful. True,
this was racist
and patronizing. It was nevertheless relatively new in
the way
empires approached their satrapies and Ghandi was able
to exploit the
core assumption -- that the ultimate purpose of the
Raj was to serve
Indians.
My point remains that through most of recorded
history, there were
three main conditions --
1) chaos,
2) conflict between kingdoms, and
3) peace&order under an imperium.
Though all three circumstances all had their bad
aspects - we are
now able to imagine something better (e.g. the
politically correct
goody 'federation' of Star Trek) - it is important to
remember what
enabled and freed up our imaginations. It has been a
new kind of
peace and order.
Focus on the imperium: even in early times, a "pax'
generally
operated under some kind of law and a notion of limits
to individual
power. If a local kingdom was ruled by a genocidal
madman, there was
always the possibility that the Imperium might
intervene. It was a
recourse. Inefficient, often cruelly callous or
indifferent, but
always there as a possibility. To intervene if things
got really
grotesque.
By the standard of all past imperiums, Pax Americana
(PA) is an
improvement. Take for example the mercantilist
trading patterns you
referred-to, in which local Indian mills were crushed
by preferences
favoring textiles made in Manchester. This was
Ghandi's biggest
economic complaint. All imperiums did this... except
ours.
Under George Marshall (See my essay calling him the
"person of the
20th Century at http://www.davidbrin.com/) PA
established
COUNTER-mercantalist policies, allowing former enemies
and allies to
keep out American manufactures while sending their
output to us.
Why did Marshall and Truman do this? Perhaps it was
the low
unemployment and sense of superabundance that America
felt after
WWII. Or the fact that these two men were
exceptionally disconnected
from traditional ruling classes. Or something else.
The result was the greatest transfer of wealth in
human history.
Several TRILLION $ poured from America to other
countries, far
outweighing all over forms of aid combined! Only we
get no credit
for this 'aid', since it consisted of Americans buying
mountains of
crap they never really needed, thus creating
investment and jobs and
infrastructure etc in foreign lands that exploited
their local cheap
labor... but not without benefits across the entire
spectrum of
society.
The children of the exploited in these countries
went to college.
Make no mistake, this is the exact phenomenon
that lifted first
Western Europe, then Japan, Taiwan, Korea etc. It
was the
transforming tool of the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
Today, it is China's turn to by raised up by this
beneficence - if
you can call it that.
Ironies abound. One can argue that we've benefited
with cheap
goods (duh!) and therefore deserve no credit for
kindness.
Still, it matters. It was wiser by far than the
trade systems set
up by any other empire. If China joins the middle
class, it will be
80% because we bought enough cheap crapola to sink the
state of
Florida.
Likewise, toppling Saddam has to be seen in context of
history. The
imperium is the court of last resort in a world
without true law. I
am quite pleased that we stepped in and, at small
human cost, exerted
our imperial whim to finally topple a vicious
psychopath that we
created in the first place and cynically left in power
in 91. I
don't think it was necessary to ruin the Western
Alliance in order to
do it, or to pee in everybody else's lunch, or to save
the Oil
Ministry while ignoring human or historical needs.
But maybe that's
just me.
Whether we've behaved better that other empires is
nice, but
insufficient. We seem to be falling prey to the mental
and emotional
sicknesses of imperial ego - much like the "Hail
Brittania" frenzy
that surges in the Late Victorian era ... frantic
flag-waving while
nursing an illusion of omniscience, omnipotence and
infallibility.
Yes, we often ARE right.
That doesn't make those illusions any less stupid
or dangerous.
The thing that counts is that we, as Pax Americana,
MUST behave as
if we are to be the LAST empire.
We must set an example and use our narrowing
window of influence
to help design Whatever Comes Next (WCN) -- or what
George Bush Sr.
called a new world order.
What nobody talks about is that WCN must be
something that offers
RECOURSE against abuse by capricious power. That is
the basic
measure of law. And recourse must be offered not only
to nations and
corporations, but to individuals who suffer abuse at
the hands of
nations and corporations.
That kind of recourse to law implies citizenship in
something
larger and more universal than the old model of
national sovereignty.
Ideally, WCN will follow American-led values of
individualism,
dispersed authority, multiply-redundant accountability
and safety
from oppression by all kinds of tyranny -- including
tyranny by any
voting majority. Any other kind of World Governance,
we know, will
collapse into Big Brother. I share this conviction
with my fellow
countrymen. Most notions of "world Government" send
chills up my
spine.
So? We are the experts on checks and balances. On
distributed
authority, accountability and protection of
individualism from mass
homogeneity. We can influence - and even take the
lead - in
designing WCN. But only if we participate -- and
that's the problem.
What empire will willingly contemplate helping to
shape its own
replacement?
The last thing you will ever hear a politician
speak, lest he/she
face public suicide, is the phrase "World Government."
So instead, by default, we are allowing WCN to take
shape in the
weirdest and most ugly way -- through the creeping
creation of
international bureaucracies and civil service cabinet
departments
like the World Trade Agency.
These major agencies are in effect pieces of
World Government,
taking shape in the European manner, following
European models and
European bureaucratic sensibilities.... all without
the moderating
influence of a genuine executive or legislature who
are answerable to
voters, or a court system answerable to lawsuit.
The multinationals and the rich like this system,
because such
bureaucracies innately serve their interests. But
meanwhile,
individual citizens have no standing in such bodies.
They cannot
step up to seek particular recourse, not in any way or
at any level.
In other words, corporations can be citizens of
Earth and speak to
its governing bodies, but you and I cannot.
Why are we allowing this to happen?
Because these portions of World Government can
take shape in
gradual stages, never uttering the dreaded "WG"
phrase, while
maintaining an illusion that nation states still reign
with complete
sovereignty.
But of course they don't. America proved that by
proclaiming we
can and will go wherever we feel threatened, with the
power and full
rights of a police force, though without the systems
of oversight. We
claim this, justifying it in the manner of all past
imperial
states... because we can.
In response the world can only sigh and be grateful
that the big
cowboy is, after all, America -- and therefore a wee
bit more
well-meaning than not. A bit more likely to be right,
than not. This
could be much worse.
That the imperial model must fade away is obvious to
anyone who reads
science fiction, or looks ahead more than a decade
into a future of
change. The present situation will not last, any more
than other
empires lasted. Today we are arrogantly driving the
mighty in places
like Paris, Beijing and Moscow into each others arms,
to mull over
ways of 'restoring balance' from a unipolar to a
multipolar world.
Allowing this to happen is highly unpragmatic.
Yet we avoid taking our proper leadership role in
designing WCN,
because the task frankly frightens the hell out of us!
Creating a
lawful and just and wise world commonwealth of 6
billion autonomous
and independent citizens is the mightiest task ever to
face a
generation. We show no sign yet of any willingness to
confront it
head on.
Far better to nurse an illusion that America will
always be supreme
-- and decent and good -- and that proliferating
technologies - soon
delivering weapons of mass destruction into the hands
of blithe
hobbyists (!) - won't make it absolutely essential
that we finally
enter a new era of human history, the era of genuine
law.
With cordial regards,
David Brin
www.davidbrin.com
* (Today it is simply considered evil to be racist,
even among people
who were unabashedly racist 20 years ago. They squirm
and
rationalize now, in order not to think of themselves
in a category
they once proudly avowed.)
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