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To: glenn_a who wrote (12596)	4/25/2004 2:33:59 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

I personally don't know why democracy has to be "liberal". it doesn't, and that's Fukuyama's point in distinguishing between a country that is liberal and not a democracy (19th cent. Britain) and the opposite (modern Iran). btw, it's not like i am touting Fukuyama's ideology at all; i just thought it was a useful definition of two words--"liberal democracy"--that are too-often used without being defined. and obviously democracy can originate in different ways. one way is that of post-Mycenaean Greece, where it emerged out of the concept of property rights. another is Iran, where it emerged in reaction to exploitation by imperialistic Western Oppressors. the point i was making is whether "liberal" as defined or "democracy" as defined are useful in terms of real economic growth. and the historical evidence shows property rights are more important democracy per se in this regard. I see [no] reason why democracies need to have at their basis the rights of capital "over" the rights of the will of the people, they can have whatever they like. but if you want a democracy to have real growth, then it must use resources efficiently. and resources are MUCH more likely to be used efficiently if there is an element of personal property at stake. the reason for this is that productivity growth, which is essential for real growth, extends from technical innovations and risk-taking which occur much more frequently in societies where personal property is a protected right. in collectivist societies, or those with arbitrary but fleeting protections, there is either no incentive for these things, or there is a greater incentive to protect one's property than to use it--thus people literally bury their treasure instead of putting it to use productively. of course, if a collectivist society does not care about growth, then they do not need property rights even if they are democratic. what does the use of the word "property rights" above really mean? it means, e.g., a person can acquire property which cannot be arbitrarily taken by the state; and the property is alienable, i.e., can be transferred or sold. only with these assurances will owners increase productivity. thus the early independent Greek farmer--the georgi--acquired personal lands on hillsides. although these lands were less desirable than the feudal/collectivist bottomlands, innovations and productivity increases led to greater wealth for them, and they eventually started buying out the bottomlands. and of course one does not have to look to hard to contrast productivity of Western capitalism vs. communism in the 20th century. the societal context of the Iroquois Nation. From my knowledge, this was a highly representative and democratic form of social organization. Yet, they did not view ownership of the "commons" as did a "liberal" industrial society well, there's nothing wrong with that. without knowing anything about the Iroquois, i would venture to guess that their productivity growth was quite low. this was the case throughout the world in agrarian societies until property rights came into play. It's corrupt elite sold off core components of the societal commons - mining rights, water, land - to local and foreign investors. What about the people who live on this land? What are their "rights" vs. the "rights" of the new owner of the local river's water supply. Do they have any? these are a few of many examples where, in today's more complex world, the concept of what should be open for individual property and what should remain collectivized is difficult to answer. basically, what you can say is that, at a minimum, there are resources in which we are all "stakeholders". the environment is such an area. so when a capitalist pollutes on his own property, it damages the collective. and the theft of collective resources in kleptocratic states like Argentina and FSU is another case. it is my feeling that Western capitalism and its pseudo-liberal pseudo-democracy is now sowing the seeds of civilization's destruction, basically due to scale issues--the kind of things that worked for the Greeks and Adam Smith no longer work when you scale them to the permanent depletion of nonrenewable resources (oil being chief among them), and the increasing concentration of wealth in pluto-kleptocracies such as the US means the large-scale controllers of capital can continue this exploitation of resources and the environment until we are either depleted, or irrevocably destroy the environment (new Ice Age), or both. just as an example of how the world's institutions have not kept up with the scale of resource exploitation, we should really have a global EPA, since the scale of exploitation has global impact. but instead we just have a US EPA, so large-scale exploiters can easily work around local regulations and continue merrily polluting into the next Ice Age.