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Re:Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization by jhbadger on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @08:52AM (#32411063)
You can disagree with what Fukuyama wrote in "The End of History" but what he wrote isn't what most people (who haven't read it) think he wrote. The strawman version that most people think he wrote is "Yay! The Cold War is over! Everyone will instantly become democratic and capitalistic!". What he actually wrote is that democracy and capitalism is the eventual end state of human society, even if it may take centuries to get there for everyone. I think history shows that dictatorships and economic systems that deny market forces are ultimately short lived. Yes, right now democracy and capitalism have a lot of detractors, and it may be that these will temporarily fail even in some Western countries. But even if they do, I doubt these new regimes will last long and eventually people will have to go back to what works.
Re:Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization by ren_engineer on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @10:15AM (#32412330)
> I think history shows that dictatorships and economic systems that deny market forces are ultimately short lived

like 99% of history is monarchies and dictatorships, democracy is a blip on the radar

Re:Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization by jhbadger on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @11:24AM (#32413516)
I'm not sure it makes sense counting societies prior to the industrial revolution because most issues in society before then depended just on the control of arable land. The industrial revolution changed the entire dynamic. Dictatorships, whether communistic or fascistic haven't lasted long in this era, and nearly all surviving monarchies turned into meaningless shows of pageantry (and those that survived as actual rulers like some in the Middle East, did so because they were oil states and are unlikely to last long as the world moves away from reliance on fossil fuels).
Re:Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization by shlurpy on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @09:13AM (#32411357)
It's an embarrassingly bad take. "The sociopolitical system that I am benefiting from also happens to be the inevitable final and best one" is something that so many people have claimed over the years, and has failed each time. And that's not to mention the fundamental contradictions between democracy and capitalism, the existential threat capitalism has posed to the entire world via climate change, the fragility of pseudodemocratic institutions past and present, and dozens of other problems. But sure, the system we have had for less then a tenth of the duration of many ancient empires is final and complete, and everyone should just give up on finding solutions to its many problems that might inconvence those currently in power.
Re:Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization by jhbadger on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @09:31AM (#32411596)
When people say things like "the existential threat capitalism has posed to the entire world via climate change" one has to wonder if they know about the horrendous pollution (often far worse than in the West) that existed in the Soviet Union and related countries. The issue isn't about "capitalism" but industrial society in general. If you want to get rid of that, fine, but I don't think you'll find many people willing to go back to an agrarian or hunter-gatherer society.
Re:Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization by shlurpy on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @09:47AM (#32411842)
It's not about pollution, it's about actively spending billions to prevent any solutions once we knew it was a problem.
Re:Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization by pydry on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @09:14AM (#32411373)
He said that now fascism and communism had been "defeated" that there will be no more competition for liberal democracy.

Yet he's arguing both here and elsewhere about how to defeat liberal democracy's new domestic and foreign opponents.