OP-ED: The world isn't flat, it's flattened, By Spengler, Asia Times Online, Oct 28, 2008
Good baseline analysis, but hyperbolic to the point of hysterical on the follow-on implications.
To be read as an example of uncontrollable fear-mongering for a column that doesn't usually wet its pants in public.
Kind of embarrassing for the brand.
That's not to say that some of the listed bad things won't happen, just that they won't cause a similar pants-wetting on the U.S. side.
You see an article like this and you realize why only America can really play Leviathan. The rest of the world simply loses it during times of tumult.
(Thanks: Kurt Peters)
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Comments (4)
"The rest of the world simply loses it during times of tumult."
-In the lack of any qualification, that quote seems unreasonably ethnocentric. Surely you don't believe that Americans possess more emotional strength than anyone else in all the world?
Posted by jason | October 29, 2008 1:18 AM
ON questions of network tumult, yes.
I think we have, given our environment and economy, an unusually high tolerance for financial panics, because we have a very long history of them.
Posted by Tom Barnett | October 29, 2008 10:35 AM
Not at ethno argument, unless you can please name for me the American ethnographic makeup without just fingering a current or future minority, which is everyone.
Posted by Tom Barnett | October 29, 2008 10:38 AM
Cultures, environment and historical experiences result in political economy practices and concepts, not the other way around. Adam Smith's ideas stemmed from observing and reflecting on what worked, including dealing with crises, in his time and part of world. America produced similar pragmatists. Repeatedly, and over long times, China experimented and then found what had, and still, worked for its people and circumstances.
The political economy 'first' approach of other countries can seem great for awhile, but then they have difficulty noting emerging conditions requiring change and reacting to it by temporary change or real transformation. Whether from right or left, America's thinkers and leaders should realize that ideology checklists are only minor tools for observing realities and adjusting, if and when necessary.
Posted by Louis Heberlein | October 29, 2008 4:07 PM