This to say: I'm not sure Italians will ever turn it around, still I sometimes think it would be nice to come back and try to change things, but it is incredibly hard given that most of the young people there either leave, they accept shitty jobs or have the same mentality of their parents.
Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him:
"Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city; in ten years the railroad will have taken
the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and
improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any
higher?" He will tell you, "No!" "Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you,
"No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?" "Rent, the
value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." And if, under such circumstances, you
take his advice, you need do nothing more. You may sit down and smoke your pipe; you may lie around like
the lazzaroni of Naples or the leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a balloon or down a hole in the ground;
and without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community, in ten years you
will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but among its public buildings will be
an almshouse.
[0] Not like that story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electron....
Top-down:
- U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction
- U.S. Civil Rights Act, enforced by National Guard troops
Bottom-up:
- women's suffrage protest movements of early 20th century
- educational reformist movements e.g. U.S. 19th century
- religious heresies -- Lutheranism
The weakness of "top-down" is that the dysfunction re-emerges when the top-down force is relieved -- if the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction had fully succeeded, the National Guard would have had no need to walk the streets of Alabama with rifles in hand.
The weakness of "bottom-up" is that lasting, visible improvement takes years, and is therefore uninteresting to politicians chiefly looking to get re-elected, say, next month.
It's all about stuffing your pockets and those of your family. Because nobody can be trusted. You don't build for the future. You don't care about that now.
It seems that there is a fundamental lack of trust amongst Italians. And if there's no trust, you can't build on each other and focus on the long-term. Because you have to spend tons of time watching your back and taking care of yourself.
How will you fucking turn around such a culture?