There’s a sense from the romantic support for supra-national efforts like EU, NATO, UN etc, that nations, national borders are a hinderance to freedoms – of (movement of) people (and capital) – freedoms managed by supranational intersts. “Imagine no countries” as Lennon opined … (If only – see Jonathan Haidt, and notice that is more than a decade old – pre-Trump! See his “Lennon vs Durkheim Test” from about 3:35 minutes in.)
The division between individual “parties” (both people and legal business entities) freedoms and rights on the one hand and the values of collective responsibilities (to humanity and the planet) on the other, much more closely define our 21st C political polarisation than any old left<>right labels. Much closer to a libertarian<>liberal political compass axis these days. But all labels are just short-hand for complexity.
All Systems Thinking (ie Cybernetics as a response to complexity) leads to questions of national and supra-national governance (ie Cybernetics as literally conceived) so better political models has already become a core issue here. Democracy still wins the best-of-a-bad-bunch contest – after Churchill – but there are still so many variations we need to get right within the idea of democracy – institutions, arrangements and processes.
Quite simply for today’s post, I’ve in recent years been defending the need to honour borders which might make me sound on the right – “build the wall”, “stop the boats”, (*) you name it – (naming see?) The need to honour borders, recognise nations and jurisdictions is a purely pragmatic Systems Thinking view. The larger a jurisdiction gets – one world, one nation anyone (*) – the greater and more complex become the internal divisions and diversity of values and interests, the less governable the whole without authoritarian “strong-man” governance and the loss of democratic values.
There’s a dynamic balance between the manageable size of democracies, which can always grow by evolution if successful – the mother of parliaments anyone – and the need for supra-national (federal) arrangements where interests and values conflict across borders.
Our ability to achieve this kind of meta-stability is thwarted by interests that are actually bigger than nations and their governments. That is multi-national businesses generally, the tech giants specifically, and increasing wealth-power of individuals – again both human and legal entity individuals. Jurisdictions need to be able manage their values, enforce their laws and raise the finances of their own governments, big or small. The imbalance of wealth-power between individuals is one of the things jurisdictions need to be able to manage.
These “elites” in terms of power and influence always start small like me and you, even the corporate and family inheritances started somewhere. Becoming ungovernable imbalanced elites is a feature of the system of how wealth-power is managed relative to national jurisdiction power. It’s the imbalance of power that corrupts, not original corrupt intent in the will to succeed. In the interests of democracy national jurisdictions must have sufficient power to govern such individual and corporate elites, or conversely national and supranational jurisdictions must ensure those elites cannot become bigger and more powerful than the idea of nations. Individual nations must fall within supranational jurisdictions.
The undermining of supra-national arrangements by individual nations and the undermining of such jurisdictions by corporate and individual wealth-power make democracies impossible. An “above the law” Trump is bad enough but Musk’s purchase of government power is the very anti-thesis of democracy. Conflict of interest writ large, conflict with democracy itself. Small national governments are regularly “bought” by commercial interests, but a democracy the size of the USA doesn’t bear thinking about.
Such chaos must be contained within one term. World order, national & supra-national order, must be restored to sanity if we value democracy. Specific “anti-woke” agendas pale into insignificance by comparison, a distraction. #PartOfTheProblem
For more on the general point of the political distortions created by individual and corporate wealth-power greater than national and supra-national governments – this recent episode of “Thinking Allowed” is recommended.
Laurie Taylor talks to Brooke Harrington, and Guido Alfani about the super-rich, more powerful than nations, and the off-shoring of finance, evading jurisdictions beyond national borders. Essential listening.
[Note (*) In case it’s not obvious these are NOT policies, campaigns or slogans I subscribe to 🙂 Any conservatism here is small (c) conservatism.]
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The idea that the U.S. has been bought, or at least is owned, goes back as far as the “military-industrial complex,” and figures prominently in Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent. The World Socialist Web Site tilts regularly at the Democrat and Republican parties as agents of capital, administering a sham democracy.
The idea that the U.S. has been bought by one man is new, though, and it has brought the old question into the limelight and given it a sharp focus. Not a moment too soon! And maybe several moments too late.
Absolutely. I also use that “military industrial complex” (also in scare quotes) in my writings about the beats, hippy and zen movements of the 60’s and 70’s.
Not new but scarily TOTAL with “Trusk” actually calling the shots inside the administration of the largest national power on earth!
Like you, I feel we’ve been warning about what’s been going wrong for decades, but with the public messaging controlled by the same interests, it’s a losing battle fixable only be education and moderation. It’s not that the interests are “evil” or badly motivated conspiracies, but they / we have forgotten what matters when it comes to truth and values, and allowed a simplistic mindset rule the world more generally.