In general, I agree with you. I would not use the current US as a stirling example, historically, though the US system has been largely successful. We probably disagree on the level of success though.
I can't speak from the US perspective, but in Canada many people come and they like it here. Not just because of status or money. Because people don't just need or want status or money. They like it here because here we actually work to balance security and opportunity. Not everyone is happy. But they're not unhappy and without rights, they're just unhappy. Liberal democracies have been trying to create [Rawlsian justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Two_Pr...) and some have been more successful than others.
I think the idea that economic success and liberal democratic values coincide has been too quickly conflated. I share your view of West - China trade. The West thought that liberalizing economic markets would naturally cause liberalized societies and democracies. Allowing China to enter the WTO without serious stipulations and controls to ensure democratic transition was a mistake. And now they flaunt their economic "success" as the sign of a successful counter to democracy. Western industries and governments that cozy up to China risk serious moral hazard and we are already seeing the effects of that.
We missed our chance to seriously allow a liberal China to take shape when it would have been best to.
But China still relies on the west for trade. And that is our leverage. Going alone against China is suicide. As a block of democracies, however, we could stand up to them quite easily. We just can't be greedy. That's a hard sell in 2019 apparently.
That is sort of the point. People see the US as an example of democracy because of its prosperity, not because of its democracy. If you want democracy you probably go to Finland instead.
Everything is worse in these authoritarian countries not just the freedom. That is another thing people generally don't understand. There is nothing to catch up to. We just have to make sure to not get worse ourselves. And to actually use the advantages we had. That is why I am saying that it is the West that is defeatist. It is we that are changing our ways, to a large extent from our post war ideals.
If you want the feature of democracy you have actually be democratic. Which many areas of our societies increasingly aren't. It is nice to be able to say whatever you want, but if no one is listening there is no effect. The point is that something should happen, otherwise we are just cargo culting ourselves and being jesters for those in power.
The United States is a constitutional republic.
This results in people _experimenting_ with things, and sometimes they work sometimes they don't. But there is a huge variety of experience and people just trying things out, or doing their own thing-- which increases the culture vibrancy and tapestry of diversity.
That is your opinion. You'll find that many people disagree. Maybe not here, in HN, openly.
You'd think that, but the middle income trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap happens for a reason, and widespread liberal or even democratic values might be required in order to escape it. The thing is that the wealthiest countries in the world, aside from special cases like big natural-resource endowments, have always featured broadly-liberal values and a reasonably-diffuse power base. Starting at least from the Italian and German renaissance, The Netherlands in the early-modern period, etc. And this dynamic has only become more important in a modern service economy where growth is powered by continued entrepreneuship and innovation - it would be huge news if this became suddenly untrue.
Chances are if you look back at those societies it wasn't the liberalism. They were probably horrible by modern standards. It might just have been the trade of information and resources. Today you can do probably do that without the values. Or at least if the West doesn't do it that way, who is the competition?
If everyone in the US is worried about their mortgage, who is going to be more creative than Google to the point where Google can't just buy them? The same probably goes for society. If the West doesn't do democracy very well, who are the Chinese losing to?
Maybe you are right, but I still would trust the future to some idea. That is when you lose. When you think "well this can't happen" and then it does. Because the quote about astrophysics also goes for society, that "the universe has no obligation to make sense to you". Chances are it doesn't have to be certain way at all. Most of history certainly isn't fair.
Of course, that's what you'd expect a deity to say, but American Evangelicalism is chock full of prosperity theology adherents: good people are rich people, rich people are good people, they are closer to god, and rich people closer to god deserve more and better things: Privilege. Bloodlines. Family name. Everything should be a product so that the wealthy can buy anything and as much of it as they want. Everyone else gets less or inferior versions, including public education, health care, environment, and justice. It's foundational in all ideologies, except liberal democracies - which at least in political science we don't actually say the U.S. started out as one. Rather it was designed to be a polyarchy in contrast to a monoarchy, using representative democracy with highly restricted access (you had to be a "better" person to participate, i.e. white, male, landowner) but it is a potential liberal democracy and has tracked that way over time, but does often resist. It is tedious. But that is the system. Churchill said it was the worst form of government except for all the others.
Most of history is not fair, indeed it was also not prosperous. It saw centuries of anemic economic growth, and it was very violent. Genetics show we aren't all that different, we're mainly products of environment, the bloodlines nonsense is just that nonsense. We are best off educating as many as possible, and mostly letting people make their own decisions. In aggregate, I trust most people most of the time make good choices slightly more than 50% of the time. If it's not true, and instead the state of man's nature is so hideously flawed that we need lords, then I saw we are doomed. We never get off the planet. We will destroy it, and ourselves with it.
All rapid technological change brings risk to economic and political stability. I think it's useful to see anti-tech more as a desire to spend time being deliberate and integrate it, rather than as curmudgeon.
I think it is less important that people have 100% trust all the time in their government, than trusting it's possible to change it when it is failing.
When any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason
I am not saying that things shouldn't be fair. I am saying the opposite. Things should be fair and you should make it so. That is sort of my argument here, that you can't expect things to be fair. If you design your system around hierarchies it doesn't necessarily matter if it is capitalist or socialist. Democracy isn't going to win that. China is amazing at being unfair.
Things don't stop at the border. If all your clothes are all made under undemocratic conditions or your real estate is bought by oligarchs, how democratic are you? In a non-scares world what defines you is what you don't do. China also produces things under even worse condition other Asian countries.
My thesis is that democracy doesn't fall with China, it falls with the West. Because we are the ones not finding our way. I mean, to take a capitalist approach we want China to not be able to handle technology. That is the somewhat point, that in democracy you can do more sophisticate things and still live to see it. Now instead we find ourselves at disadvantage because we don't now how to handle things.
Today it doesn't deliver. People go to the US because the status and the money, despite the visa process, the education system, the housing market and the infrastructure. Soon enough they will catch up to the status and the money, and the West will have little to offer.
It is easy the point the finger to everyone else, but it is the West that aren't fighting for it. We want the global markets, the large companies and the Chinese investments. You can't have both. You can't on the one hand have an idea of how things should be, and on the other sell it to highest bidder.
There are probably hundreds of articles about China "stealing" industries from the West. But overall they are just buying them to the delight of the owners, either with money or effort. And then the West somehow thinks that the Chinese should be the ones considering them successful.