America at some distance

I have to say that America looks rather ill. The evidence from afar? A war that seems to lead to lies by the government and disgust by its opposition...always a bleak sign. More importantly, the stock market is sucking wind even while a declining dollar is inducing inflation. Indeed, the dollar is increasingly an embarrassment...even the Caymans are embarrassed by it. Being locked to US tourists for the time being...there is only some thought...I should say minimal talk...of moving away from the dollar, but Europe is far and, weirdly, Cayman's future is tied to the U.S. even though there are few long-term Americans or their dollars here. But Europe is far indeed.

Some New eyes are looking to the oil wealth south of here (Trinidad and Venezuela) and its banking center...in Panama. But that world requires Spanish...a big cultural gap. Still, Panama is probably the most rapidly growing economy in the New World. Clearly though, West Indians in general, and Caymanians in particular, appear concerned that the U.S. is in a very long-term slide with no end in site.

The common and often bitterly expressed perception is that the US has bankrupt itself on war and healthcare...and has lost its innovation edge...failing to educate itself and its young and plundering all its institutions for short-term gains by a few. Caymanians don't like this trend (as they see it) nor do they like any of the candidates offered to fix it...probably Hillary least--immoral and clumsy. John McCain...second least, irrelevant and not too bright. But at least he is a Republican even if of a sort no one here seems to understand--they like religion, friendly and libertarian economics types (i.e. Reagan)...Huckabee is very very popular here. West Indians think US security concerns are "absurd"...merely thinly veiled 19th century imperialism done badly. The believe the US wastes huge amounts of money on defense...and are laughably incompetent at it besides. I can't believe how often I have found myself angrily defending the U.S. military. Frustrating.

I have some pretty far out theories (as usual) of things related. One anthropological one is that languages derive from patois employed by disadvantaged people to hide their meaning from power elites...which is somewhat unrelated to the above...but in a more related sense...here's a thought on globalization and economic evolution.

England has never made quality products. Never. Think about it. Their ships stunk. Their cars stink. They make ugly lousy clothes and food...they have little in the way of interesting culture. To West Indians, England has always survived by power and exploitation. Their strategy was almost uniformly unsuccessful in the long term for themselves (as it was for Spain a few centuries before)...Niall Ferguson not withstanding.

This contrasts sharply with the former Viking countries...Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway...to a degree, Holland. The countries globalized early...hundreds of years ago and had their colonial periods hundreds of years before that. Consequently they seemed to have learned to homogenize their populations, avoid wars, and to open their trade to aggressive interactions even while socializing their economies. Asia appears to be now following suit...particularly Japan, Korea and Indonesia but also China and, much less, India.

The New World has little like this...Quebec is closest. The new Argentina is also a bit like this...

My big idea about all this is as follows...globalization through aggressive trade capitalism ends, inevitably, not in state socialism of Cuba and Russia, but in the social democracy of Nordic states...open, homogenous, rich, and low risk societies with great emphasis on equality and political liberty rather than economic liberty.

I see it starting to happen in the Caribbean...perhaps first in Cayman...very preliminarily. People get beat up by markets and then turn to nationalism to slow down the frustration of continual waves of cheaper, smarter people. This leads to economic declines. To balance, you get a form of social democracy.

Indeed...equality comes from the need to see each other as equivalent...usually by blood, race, etc. and this is often contrast with some other group not quite up to snuff. Niall Ferguson was right on that...independence and equality in the US founding was fundamentally linked to slavery. So too was it in Europe...to have equality and nationalism...you have to be superior to someone. Otherwise you simply develop classes based on economics or birth (or both.)

I think the irony of all this is that libertarianism leads (rapidly) to social democracy. One wouldn't expect it, but in a globalization context, it makes complete sense. Conservatism only leads to colonialism...and bankruptcy. It's playing out now globally. Political liberalism is a naive attempt to short-cut the path to nationalistic socialism with political liberty and little state aggression.