Post
Region: Right to Life
I'm not sure, I bet there's something somewhere. It'd be a pretty interesting statistic, but in the world of extremely multinational corporations I think it might not be all that descriptive.
It definitely feels like something like that will happen at some point, though a big part of the problem is that most debt is not between countries, for the U.S., most of the money is owed to people who hold Treasury bonds, and if the U.S. decides to shuffle up its debt, they get screwed, which could mean anything from a major political swing to the U.S. strangling its own fiscal policy as no one trusts enough to buy the stuff anymore.
The endless question of rhetorical politics is "Who are the 'ordinary people'?" And conversely, then, who are the unordinary people who ought not be heard? It's easy enough to be vague and say that the non-ordinary people are the 'elite', do an Occupy Wall Street-style 1% vs 99%, but how is that determined? Income or wealth is simple enough, but plenty of politicians with Harvard degrees and 'only' a few hundred grand in net worth are more ivory tower-y than, say, a hardworking baseball player who spends the off-season on his family farm. Elite status is even more vague-is a lawyer ordinary, or not? What about a public defender? What if the lawyer is working for a group like ADF to defend religious liberty? A national anchor may not be ordinary, but is a local one? How big is a newspaper before its writers lose that status?
The stereotypical 'ordinary American' is the blue-collar manufacturing worker or farmer, but that's a rather small group of people at this point. What exactly does determine that status? Lower income leads to the problems above, and skilled plumbers make more than some people with doctorates. Physical work seems an arbitrary category, and especially in limiting the fields suddenly gives a slant in gender representation, clashing with the other 'ordinary American' stereotype of the soccer mom, do they get in? Defining it by ideology, meanwhile, obviously just opens things up for a free-for-all, not many people would say that their political beliefs are anti-ordinary, certainly not anyone laying out a platform for office.
That goes double when you specify the 'needs' of ordinary people, rather than the wants. If it was just the wants, you could have a better distinction somewhat along the lines noted earlier, between the idealogue with a theory of governance and the populist with public-support based policy, but when it comes down to needs, just about everyone again thinks that what they're lobbying for is best for those needs. If a perceived need is economic growth and job creation, the free trader who looks at economic data and theory and concludes that a policy of low tariffs is best to bring that about is acting, as they see it, for the needs of ordinary people. Now, you can obviously disagree on the effectiveness of that policy and say that a higher tariff policy is better, but the point of it is that both you and that fellow are coming at it with the same intention towards the needs of ordinary people. (Alternatively, you both could come at it selfishly, he might want free trade so he multinational corp will win big, you might want protectionism so your domestic steel corp can run without competition).
Something like the minimum wage debate is a great example. Politico #1 says that they are standing for the needs of ordinary people and demands a $20 minimum wage. Politico #2 says that that will put ordinary people out of work and opposes a wage increase. Who's the populist? Both, by that definition, though the one who would more likely be called 'elitist' is the one that likely better fits the bill of the needs of ordinary people.
(On a side note, if the Ryan comment you're referencing is the one I'm thinking of, that's rather an exaggeration, saying that one ought to consider the perspectives of others is hardly saying foreigners' needs>natives' needs)
Not that it really matters one way or another, but I can at least confirm that he has. My parents live in southern Wisconsin in Ryan's district, and they know a few people who have met him, generally positive response. Nothing I'd ever draw a conclusion on, but an anecdote at least enough to poke a hole in an exaggeration. I get that Ryan is a favored target of yours, but I think you're getting a little into the irrational territory in putting him up as the Chief Magistrate of the Soulless Corporatists who never met a normal person without scoffing at them, it's kinda 'Orange Man Bad' reminiscent.
A question on that point, then. Who of two persons is more "I know better than thee", the one who thinks that you should be able to purchase the products you prefer of your own free choice, or the one who taxes choices out of your price range so you're sure to make the good and right one?
Not the way a populist would frame protectionism, but an accurate one nonetheless, and that's just for tariffs, imagine a politician so elitist that they would ban the ordinary person from choosing to spend their money on a certain seller entirely. It certainly sounds like they think they know better, does it not?
I'm sure plenty of working-class people, in their heart of hearts, don't think they need a 'liberalized trade regime', if put in intentionally uppity language. But I'd imagine there's a good few who, in seeing the prices of goods they need for their everyday life or their work be driven up artificially by the government, decide that, in their heart of hearts, they may not be the biggest fans of a bureaucratic import tax system. Maybe the former outweigh the latter, unfortunately, a lack of heart-of-hearts scanning equipment makes it hard to tell-but polling does seem to imply that, at least in what they choose to actually tell the world, most tend to be fans of that 'liberalized trade regime.' (Unless those majority of persons are conveniently non-ordinary).
Can't claim to be an expert on Confucius in any way, but that certainly sounds about right. There's been plenty of thought on 'he who controls the past controls the future' and the power of the one in charge of the history book, but there's as much if not more power in the hands of the one who runs the dictionary.
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Foreign Affairs
That the intervention was timely does not ramp up the scale beyond what it was. The rebellion was ultimately quelled by direct application of a rather small military force that pales, even or especially adjusting for era, next to something like what the unipolar U.S. mustered for the Gulf War or even Iraqi Freedom. Having a greater number of nations involved certainly helped, with the rare example of their spats being manageable, but the actual effort was nothing well beyond the means of Russia or Japan alone.
And that's what makes it a bad system. In the bipolar system, general peace would be maintained as long as the two big dogs did not try to launch into an existential conflict. In the unipolar system, general peace is maintained except in the rare case that someone works up the guts to try to challenge the hegemon. In the tri/multipolar system, you have additional failure points, and as you describe here, it comes apart.
I agree on the Cold War bit-similar to the Napoleonic Wars, it gives the continent a bit of a breather before something springs up again. The wars you note, though, are, by the scale of history, pretty darn close to peace. The Middle East and Africa have always had their conflicts, and the Balkan Wars being the biggest in Europe for that half of the century makes it a remarkably good half-century for them. As you cited earlier, the Taiping Rebellion killed tens of millions in a far less populous world during the multipolar golden age, dwarfing anything under the unipolar or bipolar systems.
The unipolar system's success is not in one state snuffing out conflict globally, but in the power of that state quelling the largest of conflicts, those between great powers, and the system has succeeded on that point.
British air production was pretty exponential, some three thousand in 1938, more than doubling to eight thousand in 1939 (over a thousand in December alone) and then fifteen grand by 1940, while Germany was mostly running steady from 36 on.
