"[The security for civil rights] consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects."
--James Madison, The Federalist No. 51
I had an idea today in class. We were watching a film about the impoverishment of Jamaica through manipulative economic techniques by America, and the former Prime Minister of Jamaica said that if American government had tried to do the same things to its own economy, it would have been voted out of office in short order. He's right.
Although American revolutionists cited taxation without representation as a principle cause of revolution, the American colonies had the second lowest taxes of any colonies in the world when they declared independence. In fact, the new taxes that ostensibly prompted the violent revolution had been imposed because Great Britain was actually losing money to the colonies. The extent of America's economic control of other nations essentially amounts to taxation without representation, except it is worse. Other nations are marginalized and impoverished because of manipulative "aid" loans.
We should give citizens of other countries some form of vote for the American government, as they feel its effects profoundly and in ways that the American voter can't. Indeed, I suspect that the desparation that drives rational individuals to terrorism will dissolve when violence is not the only possible course of action. Moreover, socio-cultural boundaries will be more easily transcended. At the moment, only White Christians (and usually Straight Males as well) have a chance of making any sort of serious run for a powerful office. Making our government directly accountable to foreign peoples and cultures will be invaluable.
This is also the natural extension of the political philosophy of checks and balances not only in the government set-up but also in the electorate that has underlied America since its inception.
Details remain to be considered.
Am I completely crazy? Do not consider practicalities of actually convincing people to go along with this. And before you answer negatively, consider carefully whether your reaction is based on "patriotism," also called nationalist bigotry and prejudice.
-=-raptur-=-
1 Comments:
Alright, I'm finally responding to this. Your first claim that "we would all even out somewhere around Mexico or South Vietnam" has a lot of validity to it. It is true that we probably would not enjoy as high a standard of living in core nations if the wealth were spread out.
But that is a descriptive assessment. I do not see how it is a prescriptive justification for keeping some nations in the periphery.
Moreover, it seems to me that holding core nation's industries accountable to peripheral populations would force greater productive efficiency. It might seem strange to make such an assertion, but capitalism is not actually very efficient all things considered. Swidden agriculture is a subsistence strategy that has been practiced by hunter-gatherers for thousands of years in forested areas. It basically involves clearing a plot of land in the forest, cultivating a variety of crops in that plot for a few years, then moving somewhere else to let the forest move back in to restore the soil, prevent erosion, and establish successional communities of plant life that are utilized but not intensively managed. Comparing this to modern mechanized agriculture is pretty surprising. For every calorie of manual labor put into swidden agriculture you get 5-15 calories out of it. For every calorie of manual labor put into modern mechanized agriculture you get 3000-5000 calories out of it, which is pretty good. However, after you take into account all of the energy invested in the techniques, such as the energy to make tools and especially the energy in the oil powering the agricultural machines, the efficiency of swidden agriculture does not noticeably change, whereas modern mechanized agriculture ends up giving you about 3 calories for every calorie invested.
One of the reasons that swidden agriculture is so efficient is that it takes advantage of numerous microhabitats inherent to the local system. When clearing the land, swidden agriculturalists will leave useful fruit trees standing and plant varied crops that grow well together and provide a full diet. Modern mechanized agriculture, however, seeks to eliminate all microhabitats in the interest of maintaining a uniform growing environment. This essentially is done in the interest of reliability and predictability; however, the output of swidden agriculture is unpredictable only if you are unfamiliar with the land. I just read an article about sugar cane swidden agriculturalists who were able to fine-tune reliably their management techniques to get them specific ratios of sugar cane to firewood.
I am not suggesting that we should all become swidden agriculturalists. Rather, what this shows is that far greater efficiency is possible when production techniques are managed with a great deal of familiarity with the locale than is possible when the locale is bulldozed. At the moment, we have primarily western techniques being imposed on regions that they are non-native to. Making the institutions imposing those techniques sensitive to an enormous number of locales will necessarily force those institutions to grant them more autonomy in exploiting their land more efficiently.
Actually, as an interesting aside, it seems to me that we have not domesticated corn and wheat so much as they have domesticated us. While it certainly has been a process of coevolution on both parts, corn and wheat has us indiscriminately killing all other species of flora and fauna to plant more corn and wheat.
A situation of local control of production along with access to the resources of the global polity is the best shot we have at achieving and maintaining an acceptable (increase in) standard of living because the standard of living will be based on a highly diversified portfolio of natural resources. Right now we are absurdly dependent on oil, and our current system of uniform agriculture ensures that if we get over dependence on oil, it will be only by developing a similar dependence on some other substance. Eventually the system will fall through. At that point adopting the system I have outlined might be inevitable, but I would like to avoid that.
On to your last point about terrorism: terrorism is _not_ about differences in doctrine. Doctrine shows up in these cases for two reasons: 1) it is a common source of justification for systemic control of groups and 2) dominant and subordinate groups are often significantly socioculturally disparate which in turn increases the likelihood of them being doctrinally disparate on some identifiable level. I posit that you will never find a case of terrorism or systemic violent conflict that was due to doctrinal differences alone. I certainly have not. I can go on about this more if you like by presenting an analysis of the sorts of religious beliefs that are observed in traditional societies, but I have realized that I will keep on typing forever if I don't stop myself. ;)
-=-raptur-=-
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