Originally posted by Lazarus
What do you think should be done in the US to elevate the thinking of the masses? What would bring the government back to the people? What sort of institutional changes would you have enacted?
Factors that would lead to this development historically have been gradual and economic (the rise of other economic powerhouses to counter Britain in the late 19th century, for example), or sudden and military (the destruction of Napoleonic France in both Russia and England). I don't see either as being in place at this time. The US' position is, IMO, analogous to that of the early Roman Empire in this respect: it is riding high on the myth of its ideological and cultural superiority. For that myth to be dispelled and real change occur, global economic forces need to be at work for a long time. A couple of possibilities for the future, however, could be:
Super-China. China gets its bureaucratic act together by tightening economic and social controls once more on native citizens, although foreigners are permitted to run industries and commercial businesses within special economic zones. The result is a China whose financial clout counters and overwhelms the US, particularly as the majority of the nation's individual income is taken in the form of taxes and used to support massive infrastructure, cultural and military programs.
Euro-Russia. Leary of a bellicose, hectoring US which slaps ever-higher tarriffs on imported goods while demanding the freedom to export at will, the European Union and Russia eventually amalgamate their economic might into a single free-trade zone. No military union is possible, but the combined economic might of this super trading unit allows it to issue requirements to the US which the latter, outraged, refuses. The US loses valuable overseas contracts, expertise and import duties, then discovers that Asia will not take up the slack.
These are possible futures--in fact, one hundred years from now, some scientist-ideologue at an Asian university may start a political movement asserting that the Asiatic race has "a manifest destiny" and "right to rule" by virtue of its special abilities, not unlike similar views formulated in Britain, Prussia and France in the 15th-through-19th centuries at various points. The shift of global development that once favored Assyria, Rome, Egypt, Greece, England, the Italian States, the Ottoman Empire, Holland, the Soviet and the US, could move to China or Japan, or both..and this will, of course, be seen as inevitable at the time, by people who have a short-sighted sense of history.
Meanwhile, the disastisfaction created by loss of economic world power could potentially cause US citizens to awaken and demand structural changes to their government. Alternatively, it may just lead to dealing with symptoms and "culprit hunting," as one demagogue after another points a finger at different groups, inside or outside the country, who are guilty of stealing everybody's income.
