The dogma of one path: why alternatives, diversity and linking matter more

This toot sparked off this thinking – A blinded assumption of modern Western liberalism has been that there is an automatic connection between free enterprise, liberal democracy and economic and technological progress. The story was simple that open markets create wealth, wealth creates a middle class, the middle class creates democracy and technology and progress naturally follow the same path. This became more than an economic theory, it became a “common sense” worldview – a belief that history had a direction, and that every successful society would eventually converge on the same path (this nasty mess is 50 years of #deathcult worshipping). The assumption was that countries like China would either fail to catch up, or that if they did catch up economically, they would inevitably become more like the West politically. That assumption has now been challenged in the #mainstreaming thinking, not only by China’s rise, but also by the internal crisis of Western systems themselves. The…