Knowing and believing what I see around me now, if I return as a young economist or historian in a future life I would choose this new meta-class for my PhD thesis. Will its members -- unlike the majority -- increase their TFR? Has the nation-state reached its zenith and will now subside to a subsidiary role? Will the specializations of the meta-class continue with their much more lateral form of governance rather than the enormously stretched hierarchies of nation-states? But I would need several lifetimes, because historical changes as significant as these take centuries to become clear. =================
You echo my thoughts. I would like to return in 100 years and see what happened: did we run out of oil? How do we distribute income? Is the fetish of economic growth still dominant? Is there still such a thing as a "job"? what about global warming? And what about population and food and water? Is the nation state still around? What is the shape of cities? Still have cars and suburbs? Etc etc. Arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 3:07 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] The new medta-government Who actually governs advanced countries? In the West, it is politicians, of course, elected by the people. Unlike China, which is not democratic -- and openly admits so -- we pride ourselves on being democratic. However, if that were so, then we might expect that our elected politicians should be earning distinctly more than the civil service executive or the judiciary -- the other two 'arms' of government. After all, this is the normal state of affairs in any other full-time organization whether it's a business, a charity or academe. Usually, authority and earnings are highly correlated. In these latter organizations, everybody accepts that this is a natural consequence of the very powerful instinct for status demarcation. In the UK it is now revealed that there are 171 senior civil servant executives who earn more -- several of them twice as much -- than the Prime Minister, never mind the more humdrum salaries of ordinary elected politicians. There are also well over 100 judges who earn more -- several of them almost twice as much -- than the Prime Minister. The reality puts democratic government into better perspective than is usually projected to the ordinary electorate. True, the more intelligent of the electorate who assiduously watched the BBC TV series, "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" between 1980 and 1988 above all the other half-dozen more popular sitcoms of that period are under no illusions. Prime Ministers may have new ideas and new governments may come in with great new reforms but they seldom achieve anything anywhere near complete fulfilment against the inertia of the civil service in normal times unless a Prime Minister is more than usually forceful (about two per century in the UK!). Much the same almost certainly applies to all the other advanced countries of the West and some others with powerful bureaucracies, such as India. I don't have the time or the wit to enquire widely enough. Certainly four of the most prominent advanced countries -- America, Japan, Germany and France -- seem much the same as the UK. (Even though new American governments select a new swathe of the most senior civil servants each time, it doesn't really alter the ever-growing bureaucratic infrastructure.) In fact, there is scarcely any difference in practice between the 'elected' governments of the West and that of China where politicians are selected and chaperoned through their careers by their bosses in the civil service. If Western politicians went on holiday for a few months -- at least in normal times -- then the public would scarcely notice. In China, Confucianism in the way top politicians are selected was restored after centuries of neglect with Deng Xiaoping's reforms of 1979. These didn't finally didn't work its way through as carefully staged career promotions until the Politburo of 2003. But, paradoxically, this new enoblement of officaldom (as opposed to Communist Party ideological dominance since 1949) also came with the sanctification of the free market ideas of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and other classical economists. The chief architect of the change being Justin Yifu Lin, now the Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank. And, of course, we all know that these economic reforms have given rise to about a 10% GDP growth in most years since 1979 and China will be restored to being the largest economy in the world at around 2030/40 -- as it was in the early-19th century. Despite what critics say, the Chinese bureaucracy is also becoming more responsive to the status aspirations of its ordinary people. Indeed, knowing that urban life gives a far higher standard of living than rural peasantry, the Chinese government is building a brand new city in the interior the size of New York every 9-12 months. In short, the 'democratic' structure of Western nation-states and the 'bureaucratic' structure of China both seem to be converging to a middle way. Also in both, indigenous populations are declining (even though China still has to proceed over a demographic bump in the next decade or so). If it were not for the present vast bulge of over-population in the rest of the world -- itself likely to decline when it gets over its own large demographic hump in the next century -- we could validly assert that the human species is going extinct. At the same time as the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is declining to well below the necessary replenishment rate of 2 per adult female in the advanced and almost-advanced countries, there is a growing international elite composed mainly of a 'meta-class' of bankers, businesses and scientists who seem to have more loyalty to themselves and their own pursuits rather than to their birth countries. They still live and work mainly in the super-cities but they also live and work in many other locations also. It's as though the acme of the industrial revolution as the way of life for all -- cities -- is now found wanting. Knowing and believing what I see around me now, if I return as a young economist or historian in a future life I would choose this new meta-class for my PhD thesis. Will its members -- unlike the majority -- increase their TFR? Has the nation-state reached its zenith and will now subside to a subsidiary role? Will the specializations of the meta-class continue with their much more lateral form of governance rather than the enormously stretched hierarchies of nation-states? But I would need several lifetimes, because historical changes as significant as these take centuries to become clear. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
