When you travel from a less orderly country (which is practically every country in the world save Singapore and Norway) to Switzerland you notice all the usual things associated with Switzerland: order, cleanliness, pervasiveness of rules, trains that run on time etc. This is so well known—and has been known for at least three centuries—that is not worth pointing out. (Even Asterix has a couple of comic books about it.)
The most likely explanation is that those countries are rich. The homo sapiens is an apex predator, and apex predators kill themselves if not given enough territory and resources. When everybody has their due, they tend to stop going at each other's throats.
If you want the more scientific explanation for that, we have Gramsci, who noticed every government has to rule through a mix of force and consensus. The more consensus a government has, the less force it has to use, therefore the more peaceful it is, and vice versa.
From a historical point of view, we have the fact that, since capitalism was born in Western Europe, it emerged organically with the Western European culture and traditions. Therefore, there wasn't any shock of colonization, that forced the local system and culture to suddenly adapt to capitalism in Western Europe. The same logic applies to USA and Canada and to the isolated cases where capitalism, albeit imported, melded smoothly with the local culture and institutions (e.g. Japan). Putting things simply, capitalism is part of the Western European (and American, the European civilization in exile after the WWs) culture, while, for the rest of the world, it was imposed through brute force.
We also have the question of scale: although violence and misery in those prosperous countries the author mentioned is little, it does exist, and it is growing. Capitalism's tendency to generate misery as a byproduct of wealth is still in place -- it just hasn't reached its critical mass yet. But it will happen. And those countries are, in the greater scheme of things, insignificant: they are micro-nations, very small. China has a lot of pockets of First World prosperity (e.g. Shanghai) that, in population terms, are bigger than many of these countries, so it may just be a matter of artificial barriers generating fallacious data.
Indeed. As Lysander Spooner famously observed, vices are not crimes, and the two should not be confused with one another. We ignore his advice at our peril.
Japan also falls within this category I think, with societal taboo on much vices but regulated and flourishing adult/pachingo(gambling) industries limited to certain time/places.
I’m not sure about China.Few countries have more explicitly controlling governments.Having exceeded western universities in STEM subjects, using western criteria of success (citations) Xi’s plans to produce the best ‘liberal arts’ universities in the world (as outlined in Vols 1-3 of his speeches)are firmly floated on a Socratic pedagogy launched on a Confucian sea.The conceptualisation of inseparable personal virtue ,wisdom & governmental efficacy don’t seem to gel with this piece.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau était genevois : rien n’est hasard en définitive. Et la société suisse est quadri linguistique et sans accès maritime, sinon par le Rhône…
I remember talking to someone a while ago about something in the same vein, how there is "visible and invisible crime." Those guys sitting in lawn chairs collecting checks near the construction site? That's invisible. A gang war, that's obviously visible as day.
Point being, a successful government of open vice would would most likely govern a society of mostly invisible crime.
"Governments of virtue consider human nature as malleable and fundamentally (given sufficient “massage”) virtuous. They try to impose that virtuous behavior on its citizens, but since they misread human nature, they end up by producing an enormous generalized hypocrisy where everyone claims to behave according to the virtuous principles but in reality does the reverse. This happened to the.. Cultural Revolution in China.."
Twaddle.
All Chinese governments save Chiang Kai Shek's and his Mongol predecessors were governments of virtue. All aspired to lead by setting a moral example and largely succeeded – as the chronicles of contemporary visitors over centuries attest.
Including the Cultural Revolution with examples of Western hypocrisy is not even wrong. It's stupid. The CR taught 400,000,000 illiterate men and women to read, write, and vote – an achievement they still celebrate at annual get togethers.
If you want to use China to illustrate your points, study it first and avoid Fox News.
The most likely explanation is that those countries are rich. The homo sapiens is an apex predator, and apex predators kill themselves if not given enough territory and resources. When everybody has their due, they tend to stop going at each other's throats.
If you want the more scientific explanation for that, we have Gramsci, who noticed every government has to rule through a mix of force and consensus. The more consensus a government has, the less force it has to use, therefore the more peaceful it is, and vice versa.
From a historical point of view, we have the fact that, since capitalism was born in Western Europe, it emerged organically with the Western European culture and traditions. Therefore, there wasn't any shock of colonization, that forced the local system and culture to suddenly adapt to capitalism in Western Europe. The same logic applies to USA and Canada and to the isolated cases where capitalism, albeit imported, melded smoothly with the local culture and institutions (e.g. Japan). Putting things simply, capitalism is part of the Western European (and American, the European civilization in exile after the WWs) culture, while, for the rest of the world, it was imposed through brute force.
We also have the question of scale: although violence and misery in those prosperous countries the author mentioned is little, it does exist, and it is growing. Capitalism's tendency to generate misery as a byproduct of wealth is still in place -- it just hasn't reached its critical mass yet. But it will happen. And those countries are, in the greater scheme of things, insignificant: they are micro-nations, very small. China has a lot of pockets of First World prosperity (e.g. Shanghai) that, in population terms, are bigger than many of these countries, so it may just be a matter of artificial barriers generating fallacious data.
Indeed. As Lysander Spooner famously observed, vices are not crimes, and the two should not be confused with one another. We ignore his advice at our peril.
asterix taught me invaluable lessons about western europe.
it reminded me of albert hirschmann's "the passions and the interest" book.
Mandeville...🐝
Japan also falls within this category I think, with societal taboo on much vices but regulated and flourishing adult/pachingo(gambling) industries limited to certain time/places.
I’m not sure about China.Few countries have more explicitly controlling governments.Having exceeded western universities in STEM subjects, using western criteria of success (citations) Xi’s plans to produce the best ‘liberal arts’ universities in the world (as outlined in Vols 1-3 of his speeches)are firmly floated on a Socratic pedagogy launched on a Confucian sea.The conceptualisation of inseparable personal virtue ,wisdom & governmental efficacy don’t seem to gel with this piece.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau était genevois : rien n’est hasard en définitive. Et la société suisse est quadri linguistique et sans accès maritime, sinon par le Rhône…
I remember talking to someone a while ago about something in the same vein, how there is "visible and invisible crime." Those guys sitting in lawn chairs collecting checks near the construction site? That's invisible. A gang war, that's obviously visible as day.
Point being, a successful government of open vice would would most likely govern a society of mostly invisible crime.
"Governments of virtue consider human nature as malleable and fundamentally (given sufficient “massage”) virtuous. They try to impose that virtuous behavior on its citizens, but since they misread human nature, they end up by producing an enormous generalized hypocrisy where everyone claims to behave according to the virtuous principles but in reality does the reverse. This happened to the.. Cultural Revolution in China.."
Twaddle.
All Chinese governments save Chiang Kai Shek's and his Mongol predecessors were governments of virtue. All aspired to lead by setting a moral example and largely succeeded – as the chronicles of contemporary visitors over centuries attest.
Including the Cultural Revolution with examples of Western hypocrisy is not even wrong. It's stupid. The CR taught 400,000,000 illiterate men and women to read, write, and vote – an achievement they still celebrate at annual get togethers.
If you want to use China to illustrate your points, study it first and avoid Fox News.