The American Paradox: Democracy, Power, and Decline (HEN Editorial 340)

The U.S. has long balan­ced demo­cracy and power. Now, with rising aut­ho­ri­ta­ria­nism and decli­ning open­ness, is it dis­mant­ling its own strengths?

While I gene­rally like peo­ple from the US, as most peo­ple from the US I met have been kind and ami­ca­ble, I always had an ambi­va­lent impres­sion of the US as a lea­ding glo­bal power. This ambi­va­lence is roo­ted in the con­tra­dic­tory his­to­ri­cal roles played by the US. Some examp­les are

(1) Being the world’s oldest demo­cracy vs. being some­what of a self-ser­ving empire.
(2) Saving Europe from its­elf by means of a régime change some deca­des ago (thanks for that!) vs. having a long history of their own geo­po­li­ti­cal ambi­ti­ons being expres­sed through régime change operations.
(3) Embra­cing cul­tu­ral open­ness, non-dis­cri­mi­na­tion and affir­ma­tive action in many ins­tances and con­texts, while being coined by strong racial dis­pa­ri­ties and affir­ma­tion of tra­di­tio­nal gen­der roles in others.
(4) Being gra­ciously and poli­tely invi­ted to visit inspi­ring col­le­agues vs. being yel­led at by the bor­der pat­rol, because of the pat­rol­ling guy’s dif­fi­cul­ties in deci­phe­ring my passport.

So, now it seems that the US is going to get rid of this ambi­va­lence by down­si­zing those things I che­rish about it, like, say, demo­cracy and asso­cia­ted sepa­ra­tion of powers, while reaf­fir­ming issues I am skep­ti­cal about, like, say, the con­vic­tion of Ame­ri­can supre­macy. Dri­ven by an intrin­sic desire for irony to con­front dark­ness, one could playfully con­clude that the KGB has now finally won the Cold War by repla­cing Ame­ri­can demo­cracy with a (quasi-?)authoritarian régime aiming to dis­mantle the US from within by the unfil­te­red appli­ca­tion of core prin­ci­ples of Aus­trian economics* ;-)

In a more serious vein it looks like we are wit­nessing a coup from within (as suc­cinctly sum­ma­ri­zed in this viral video) by some liber­ta­rian-cum-aut­ho­ri­ta­rian pro­ject that is try­ing to or going to dis­mantle essen­tial parts of Ame­ri­can demo­cracy. In my hum­ble opi­nion the ideo­logy under­ly­ing this pro­ject is plagued by inher­ent con­tra­dic­tions as it is see­mingly based on the idea that streng­thening one’s empire is best done by dis­mant­ling one’s coll­ec­tive resour­ces. That is not very intui­tive to me.

More plau­si­bly, these moves will damage the capa­bi­li­ties of the US in the medium- and long-run as much of its suc­cess relies on fac­tors actively require an open society**, espe­ci­ally, but not only, in the con­text of sci­ence and tech­no­logy. Many of you will have noti­ced the move towards cen­so­ring sci­en­ti­fic rese­arch (see here and here) and the rela­ted cuts and free­zes on rese­arch grants by NSF and NIH, which is a gla­ring exam­ple of how this new admi­nis­tra­tion employs a vacous con­cep­tion ‚free speech‘ that is tail­o­red to fight a cul­ture war in 1984-style. In my hum­ble view such moves will under­mine what maybe really is ‚great‘ about the US, namely its open­ness, its diver­sity and the ability of its peo­ple to learn from as well as teach to others. Howe­ver, as there see­mingly is some co-move­ment bet­ween Trumps daily mood and his poli­ti­cal con­vic­tions and stra­te­gies, we have to expect non-linear adap­ti­ons of this path at any minute, but, still, this is what it looks like at the moment.

While in some past edi­to­rial I poin­ted towards the eco­no­mic trends under­ly­ing Trump’s suc­cess in the recent elec­tion, I must admit that I repea­tedly find mys­elf unde­re­sti­mat­ing the impact of social media in this regard. For ins­tance, just recently I was baf­f­led while having a con­ver­sa­tion on US poli­tics with my two older sons, both at the verge of ado­le­s­cence. While their argu­ments on cur­rent deve­lo­p­ments were intellec­tually nuan­ced in a way that made me very proud as a dad, I was irri­ta­ted by the repea­ted dis­clai­mer „but I have to admit I do not know for sure that is true“, which they repea­tedly added after report­ing simple empi­ri­cal facts. As they receive their infor­ma­tion pri­ma­rily via social media, they find them­sel­ves in a situa­tion, where they see­mingly can­not form a defi­ni­tive opi­nion – not because, they lack the capa­city to ana­lyze, but, rather, they lack a relia­ble empi­ri­cal foun­da­tion. This lack of relia­ble empi­rics is what obviously can be easily exploi­ted by ver­sa­tile dem­ago­gues, elo­quent bot-accounts and fake-pic­tures & videos.

In such envi­ron­ments truth see­mingly beco­mes a mat­ter of algo­rith­mic orchestra­tion, ins­tead of prin­ci­pled argu­men­ta­tion. This is why Socra­tes pro­ba­bly would not have liked the inter­net.***

None­thel­ess, all the best,

* The obvious excep­tion here is trade policy, which is see­mingly stron­gly embedded in geo­po­li­ti­cal con­side­ra­ti­ons rela­ted to deindus­tria­liza­tion and rela­ted pro­duc­tion capa­ci­ties, but also to the power asso­cia­ted with inter­na­tio­nal debt. Lis­ten here for an inte­res­t­ing con­ver­sa­tion bet­ween main­stream econs and a Trump trade policy advo­cate at the recent ASSA con­fe­rence. If you pre­fer thin­king about what hete­ro­dox eco­no­mists could do in this situa­tion ins­tead you could try che­cking out this paper.

** In the tra­di­tio­nal sense fol­lo­wing Pop­per, not in the shrewd sense con­veyed by what calls its­elf „dark enligh­ten­ment“.

*** Dra­wing on the Greeks, an obvious inter­pre­ta­tion of cur­rent events could lean on Aristotle’s the­sis that demo­cracy is always end­an­ge­red to endo­ge­nously dege­ne­rate into olig­ar­chy. Dra­wing on radi­cal eco­no­mics ins­tead, it would pro­ba­bly be apt to say that we are about to wit­ness an hitherto unseen stage of impe­ria­lism as a „final stage of capi­ta­lism“ (see sec­tion three in this fasci­na­ting book).