Nice channel idea! All technocrats and luddites unite;)

Articles like this and many others about other facets of the Indian engine of development show that high exports, rapid urban development, technological progressive industries and outsourcing do not necessarily mean an improvement in the standard of living for all citizens. The same applies to China.

I found it baffling back in college when economists and my fellow students would talk in awe of the economic development of both of these nations, yes on paper they look wonderful as numerical figures however with regards to real tangible economic progress both nations have much more to achieve specifically improvement in basic infrastructure, welfare reforms for the poor, educational reform across the board focusing more on technocratic education not labour based drones and most of all actual re-investment of earned income back into developing the nation itself.

There is a reason most Chinese and Indians who are educated aboard choose to stay abroad instead of going back to their respective nations.

That's a simplistic argument to make, that Russians 'tried' democracy and it failed. The fact is that Russian's never got to experience democracy at all, with the coming of Yeltsin into power the centralized market system was thrown out overnight for a capitalist economy, workers were issued shares for the companies they worked in, the Russian currency collapsed, pensions were stopped, all due to western economists (who arrived in droves) believing that the spirit of entrepreneurship would suddenly infect the souls of people who lived under communist rule for over 60 years.

But what happened was that some individuals within that system started buying out the shares from the workers who needed to sustain themselves at that point, seizing massive control of various industries, thus creating the oligarchs. The same people who now own various football clubs in the UK.

The people as a whole felt robbed, they blamed democracy for that, failing to see how the economic reforms worked against them, instead of blaming the transition many more people assumed it was democracy that was at fault. What should have been a long term phased switch into a market economy like the one seen with China was rushed within the space of a few years, incomes and welfare of course fell. Look at how gradually China introduced free market zones, by cordoning them off to small regions, then allowed foreign direct investment there. The whole motto of their capital development was "import 1st product, assemble 2nd product, manufacture 3rd product".

The current Putin government is full of KGB cronies who have muscled their way into acquisition of the most important sectors of the economy, most significant of them being the oil sector, which is wholly responsible for the economic boom in Russia. The war in Iraq and possible war with Iran has seen the Oil price soar year on year since 2000 and Putin's coming into power and the economic boom in Russia, that's not coincidental. This is why Putin visited Iran, instability in the Middle East sustains the high oil price and Russia's development.

Putin did give something to the Russians, and that is pride in their nation, a seeming return to the heyday of the Soviet Union with it's planting of flags in the Arctic, stance against the American government and nuclear armed patrols that hark back to the Cold War era. But it also came with government control of oil resources, elimination of civil rights, elimination of freedom of press, state control of media, needless military expansionism, Byzantine rule of government, political oppression through assassination of those who oppose the government.

Just this past month he imposed a collective freeze on food prices until after the elections sometime in January, this was done so as to keep the appearance to Russia's poor that the economy was doing well when in reality food prices across the world are rising, once elections are over they can remove the freeze.

A good article on "Why Putin Wins" is Sergei Kovalev's article , who gives a realistic breakdown of Russia as it is now and what is its future. As Scott Horton says in "What Putin Wants":

The challenge will be for America more than for Russia. In America, there is still a hope that the democratic process can work to effect a rollback of creeping authoritarianism and a restoration of the beacon of hope that the land once held up to the world. In Russia, all sight of that beacon is lost.

Your argument that non-democratic states like Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offer a higher standard of living is ridiculous, most of the population lives in poverty as the wealth is concentrated in the Royal family and even then only through the continual oil production, almost everything it produces is sustain through government subsidization, much more of its products are simply imported. Jordan differs because they possesses a technocrat King who believes in development, that doesn't mean tomorrow a tyrant will take power.

And am sorry but slave like hours on minimal wage for 90% of the population making Nike shoes does not translate into a higher standard living for the Chinese as a whole, not to mention that development is confined to the coastal areas, while inland China lives in poverty due to lack of investment and encroaching desert taking away valuable agricultural land. China possess an incredible amount of income disparity, firms are still mainly controlled by the Chinese government. It is true that there is slowly an emergence of a middle class, that is being educated abroad and not going back to mainland China, because opportunities in the west are much better.

The argument that ANY government policy has a potential to achieve strong economy is simplistic, the market system works because various agents start to develop products and services to supply a demand of other agents. That requires freedom of enterprise, the ability to freely form business solutions. That means reform laws that actively invite business activities to take place. Communism or centralized market economy does not lead to a strong economy because the demand and supply signals do not exist, the government decides what is important to produce and does it. It leads to a mis balance and a concentration of power in the hands of the few, this is why the USSR failed, and why China started to put in place free market reforms in the 80s. States in the Middle East still sustain their perverse development through oil money, without which all of them would quite realistically fail, as they are overly reliant on foreign labor and are not actively developing their skilled labor force, not to mention the sheer amount of corruption that occurs between those in high office and citizens.

Your mention of a few democratic states that are in poor shapes is simplistic again, they are not failures of democracy but rather a lack of proper reforms and rule. Brazil is doing rather well now actually even though government corruption is still rife as is political instability. Nepal is constitutional monarchy, where the King has assumed emergency powers and holds all executive power so I have no idea why you lumped it in there. Albania on the other hand has had successive government instability with the neighboring war, socialist, democratic governments in succession, the economy however is steadily developing even though stability has been hard to attain since 1990.

The idea behind democracy is that citizens can have a say in where their nation is heading, being elected to government doesn't make saints out of people where they suddenly selflessly try to achieve economy development for the people as a whole. The African nations where strong armed authoritative ruler one after the other prove this, as does Hugo Chavez who after winning the trust of the poor is now concentrating all executive power under his own control, as does Iran where Mahmoud's promises to the poor for oil revenue sharing amounted to nothing but continuous tensions and sanctions from the west.

I think you need to further broaden your understanding of the complexities of government rule and policy with regards to economic development as they are rather basic right now.

Actually I'm pretty cynical, but mostly about politics and society. I am however a positive technocrat

As always QMs argument consists of nothing but assumptions, conjectures, and malicious retreading of history rather then basing anything in reality.

The National Intelligence Estimate has clearly stated that the surge has failed to bring about the most important objective of the 'surge' to allow drawdown in US combat forces letting the Iraqis take over, and this is after General Petraues toned down it's findings. Generals in Iraq operate in quick spurts of over blown security, political and press delegations are taken in on DOD/Pentagon secured dog and pony tours of the country, with high security provided by US forces boosted further PowerPoint presentations behind the secured walls of the Green Zone. Top commanders are differing on their own assessments about the way forward. The House is going to hold it's own hearings on the Iraq war because it probably cannot trust the White house anymore. Thus the picture being presented is false.

But that doesn't really matter because the same policy will stay in its form until about April 2008 at least, I don't see any surprises as about the testimony from Petraeus and Crocker coming up on September 11th (or whatever date it is now), just more of "Give us time and we will achieve success", much like what we heard in Vietnam over and over again until the US had no choice but to leave.

Which to me ultimately reads more like a fervent hope then any real strategic plan or foresight, I mean we supposedly 'accomplished the mission', 'turned the corner', were on the verge of success so many times before, yet goshdarnit we just missed it every time mostly at the expense of Iraqi and American lives.

At the end of the day a maintenance of the current strategy in the long term will result in two very obvious consequences;

US ground forces will capitulate as you cannot simply extend tours to 15 months and expect people to go back for the 5th or 6th time, the draft would have to be re-instated to provide more ground forces (for Iraq, Afghanistan and any planned incursion in Iran). More reliance would be placed on private military contractors to provide additional force components.

The expenditure towards the conflict would simply sap the US economy eventually, as it's foreign debt obligations increase further, and as the administration pulls more and more funding into the Iraq war without any logical consequence or trickle down to the actual forces doing the fighting. I mean the US will not fail catastrophically, it will just mean that spending on everything else will just vanish. Higher taxes are obviously out of the question, so that would mean more borrowing from other nations.

Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meaning the war costs come to roughly 3 billion every week. Who pays for that eventually? the US taxpayer who is already on track for a $59 trillion obligation. Now there is talk of a confrontation with Iran.

Strategic oil resources are an important unmentioned factor in all this, the US doesn't want Iran influencing the actions of any Iraqi goverment structure that could possibly come into effect, yet it believes that that it is the only one that stands in the way of such a thing occurring, even as it's spent nearly $20 billion in supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait and other smaller GCC nations.

All the war drumming against Iran in the US is only helping Iranian goverment clamp down further on political dissenters because it can point out a clear foreign threat that is gathering - eliminating civil liberties, attacking free press, and intellectuals by labeling them as foreign agents trying to destabilize the goverment. So in many ways both the Bush and Ahmadinejad are reaching their own objectives, Bush gets a pass on the Iraqi war by labeling Iran as a new threat, Ahmadinejad gets to garner more power and install more cronies into the goverment replacing technocrats.

But then again you probably read Blackfive so I wouldn't bother going into too much detail lest the facts overwhelm your preconceived assumptions.

The Matt Groening & Friends Appreciation Society collective. You should associate the video you sifted up with it.

In reply to your comment:
“umm till I joined what?

In reply to your comment:
“Was this sifted up after you joined MG&FAS? I think so... please add http://www.videosift.com/video/Technocrats-learn-some-humility-in-Springfield to the off.videosift.com collective! ””

umm till I joined what?

In reply to your comment:
“Was this sifted up after you joined MG&FAS? I think so... please add http://www.videosift.com/video/Technocrats-learn-some-humility-in-Springfield to the off.videosift.com collective! ”

Was this sifted up after you joined MG&FAS? I think so... please add http://www.videosift.com/video/Technocrats-learn-some-humility-in-Springfield to the off.videosift.com collective!

> Krupo, the fact that you assume a large proportion of people responding to a poll can't think to
> read the question they're answering says more about your attitude to people than the people
> themselves.

Thank you.

(He didn't mean that as a compliment)

I know.
----
Thing is, on a pessimistic day I could even grant the shadowy forces behind the US Government the lack or morals to pull off such an attack - a cursory review of 20th century history will give you more than enough justification - but to actually plan and coordinate it all? That would require a level of leadership and inspiration I find lacking in the US. You've got Coke Junky McCrackhead in office and a faceless army of technocrats in the bureacracy. I was reading about Section 31 and all that fun Star Trek stuff from DS9 - now *there's* some 'inspired conscious-deprived leadership' that you can rely on.

I know the Bush Administration lied its way into justifying its invasion of Iraq - whether they did the LIHOP/MIHOP thing is a moot point if no one is going to face justice in this world (face it, if they're as effective at covering this up as you think they are, nothing short of a magic truth serum will bring it out of them): at least it's possible to take comfort that there's a nice miserable spot in hell waiting for them if they did do it. Justice may be long in coming by our timescale, but the punishment will be eternal.

Now if I was an American citizen I'd be out in the streets organizing riots and uprisings to overthrow the government back when the Supreme Court awarded the election to Dubya - but interfering in foreign countries' affairs really isn't my prerogative, as much as I wish I had the resources to make it so.

As you can plainly see, this is less a 9/11 thing than a 1. sad judgement/opinion on people, and 2. same thing, the powers that be.

How many can speak a foreign language? How many have ever been out of the country? How many know someone from a different culture? How many have ever taken personal responsibilities beyond respecting taboos? What kind of a learning environment is a fanatical-technocrat factory? The whole point of being in a diverse environment is to be able to defend your beliefs in the face of differences of opinion, not to merely learn rethorical techniques to impose them in the public arena...

Besides, what kind of badge of safety is it that someone has been homeschooled? Sure, the public education system in the US is a disgrace, but does putting a child's education entirely in the hands of parents who aren't necessarily qualified and who mix a lot of different functions (isn't part of the point of having teachers to learn to interact with adults who aren't related to you) guarantee a well rounded education?