From: miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman )
Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.china,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.sri-lanka,soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Re: Indhist Prelude 2: The problem of the destitute East
Keywords: Civilizations, History, Metaphysics.
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:51:29 GMT
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California

A.Raman@massey.ac.nz (Anand V Raman) writes:

>   A democracy cannot exist as  a permanent  form of government.  It
>   can  only  exist until  the voters  discover   that they can vote
>   themselves money from the  Public Treasury.  From that moment on,
>   the majority  always votes  for the candidates promising the most
>   benefits from the Public Treasury with a  result that a democracy
>   always  collapses  over loose fiscal   policy always followed  by
>   dictatorship. [10]

	With all the differnet countries in the world experimenting
	with different economic and political forms, I would say that
	the lessons of Argentina, Sweden, and many other countries
	(including India, somewhat) is that a democratic capitalism
	with safeguards is being seen as the least bad of the options.
	The wonderful lesson seems to be that things can get bad enough
	without collapsing that a general consensus develops that 
	the people are asking for more services than the society as 
	a whole can provide, and a working majority willingly
	supports cuts in their own "take" from the treasury.  It
	really does seem that if there is a courageous enough
	leader willing to truly explain things to people, that they
	can eventually can vote for responsible policies.

	"You can fool all the people some of the time, some of the
	people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people
	all the time."  - Abraham Lincoln
	
>To quote Tytler again:

>   The average  age of the  world's greatest  civilizations has been
>   200 years. These nations have  progressed through  the  following
>   sequence:

>   From bondage  to spiritual faith;  from  spiritual faith to great
>   courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from
>   abundance to selfishness; from  selfishness to  complacency; from
>   complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency
>   back into bondage. [12]

	This is probably true for regimes like Imperial China
	but representative democracy on a large scale is relatively
	new, and I think the failure of dynastic regimes to maintain
	their early vigor does not apply when people can vote in new
	"dynasties" every 4-5 years.


>I can only think of Professor Toynbee's
>penetrating observation that is so appropriate here:

>   Our lives continue  to  be painful  because  the worst   pains and
>   difficulties of human life are spiritual, not physical.   Surgery,
>   anaesthetics,   plumbing, and  central   heating cannot   diminish
>   spiritual suffering. [14]

	True, but most of humanity has been fighting off disease,
	malnutrition, and oppression for so long, they haven't
	had a chance to savor the upper-middle class angst that
	Toynbee talks of.  This spiritual suffering is often
	seen as the result of boredom, or lack of a good love
	life once a tooth-ache puts things into perspective.
	The average life of even the relatively prosperous
	American of 1900 was still short and hard compared to
	today.  Few would go back.  To me this implies progress.

	- Michael Goldman

-- 
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban
	Disclaimer:  All views are solely my own & not the views of Acuson.
	<sun!sono!miklg>  or  [miklg@acuson.com]
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