Political Maturation in the West

People naturally dream of having the impossible before sadly returning to their reality—which is all that was ever on offer.  Politicians in both welfare democracies and socialist states offered the dream and did not worry too much about denial of reality.

Politicians have worked to actualize the dreams of the age, or at least persuade the populace that their dream was in the process of being actualized: just one more 5-year plan, one more big reorganization of the public sector, another super-size regulator with a «czar» with tougher rules and targets, house loans for all, or even an all-out war on poverty.

As result, many of society's institutions took on forms that had severe in-built limitations and that had to eventually fail. Many socialist countries have collapsed and are attempting to establish a legitimist ethos in Cycle-1. Welfare democracies may well be currently facing a collapse of their dreams by the corresponding transit in Cycle-2.

Despite ongoing demoralization, inefficiency and social failure in socialist countries, it was never possible to predict the date of a collapse. As it turned out, communism essentially disappeared around the world over a matter of months in the late 1980s—and with barely a shot being fired.

Life could never be about having our needs met by others as of right. Rather it must involve recognizing our responsibilities, and working hard to get what we want by meeting the needs of others. Our needs, interests and goals should be judged freely by ourselves insofar as is possible in our circumstances. After all, who else should or could judge?

This entails living and interacting with others in a constructive way.

Individually we can do this, but we have limited energy to give to changing our circumstances.  Most times we just have to put up with things, or else immigrate to a different society whose imperfections we must also tolerate.

The failure of socialism was inevitable. The idea of rationally planning something as complex as millions of economic interactions from a single centre of power is fatuous. The notion that individual enterprise and effort should not earn fair rewards runs counter to every person's deepest instincts.

Being impossible, due to its inherent contradictions and inconsistencies, the socialist-communist psychosocial contract must sooner or later lead to collapse. Its collapse resonates with the inevitable collapse of the divine right of kings.

The liberal welfare democracy, devised in its present form near the end of the 19^th century, fell into a similar populist trap.

Initially a lot was achieved, despite politicians mutually generating World Wars where supposedly civilized and cultured people got involved in killing many millions of their own kind re-labelled «the enemy».

Education and health improved. Economic conditions improved. Quality of life improved.  But as the century proceeded, politics got more extreme. The ideological battle disappeared in the 1990s, but inhuman behaviour by supposedly humanitarian governments continued.

People talked about the «right to health», the «right to housing» as if they were equivalent to the «right to association» or the «right to move about freely» and did not depend on realities like genetic make-up, hard work, personal habits and general prosperity.

What happened?  The unspoken contract between the people and politicians in the welfare democracies was that the people were free to be productive and accumulate wealth, as long as they paid taxes. The government could use these to redistribute directly and indirectly via services or even, at times, cash handouts.

When first instituted, welfare demands on welfare were limited—retirement was at the age of 65, and life expectancy was about 67 years.  Attitudes to entitlements were also restrained in the early days.

Taken too far, and with competing politicians that was inevitable, the effect is to drain resources from productive and prudent people, and to encourage the rest to become imprudent and unproductive via dependence on the state.  An entitlement culture developed and to feed it, governments had to go increasingly into debt.

By promising the majority wealth that was not rightfully theirs to give, politicians won elections.  The majority acted as if unaware that the money handed out came from themselves and the productive sector, and that debt spent on their behalf would fall on their children.

While the communist political system selected for tyrants and thugs as political leaders, the liberal-welfare political system selected for politicians willing to bribe and lie.

The end-result is the insolvency of governments and their banking systems following the global financial crisis of 2007.