Cobb

Excellent post. I've been wondering now for some time what the roll of the state is going to be in the future economic/social transactions between people. Clearly, the state is being undermined from at least two sides, from the underground economy and social structure of gangs on one end, and the rise of multinational corporations that are slowly supplanting the power of nation states on the other.
Black markets thrive, I think, not just because the state refuses to protect those markets, but also perhaps because the black market just gives people a better deal. The analogy that just popped into my head is a hiking trail with a lot of switchbacks, and how hikers will cut corners to avoid the switchbacks, and thus shorten their route. The shortcuts are, in a sense, "illegal" activity, but they make more sense than following the proscribed path, and people instinctively know that. I wonder if governments shouldn't be paying more attention to the way black markets work and even consider adopting some of their mechanisms, if they really make sense? But do you think we are entering a kind of post nation state period? Post nationalism perhaps? surely the role of the Internet is causing a breakdown of state loyalties. Anything that gives people the opportunity to have a more direct exchange, both culturally and economically, with other people would lead to a breakdown of the traditional order. But I just wonder what this trend portends for things like labor and environmental laws that protect us from the sheer greed of others.

I am a proponent of Empire, and I think that a unilateral American empire is as good as any, if we can count on the Europeans and others replicating their squeamishness over Iraq. But I don't mind at all a 'multilateral empire'. It cannot happen under the authority of the UN, but the Security Council does need to step up.

My point is that under this Empire of the future, if it is built properly, there will be little need for state loyalty among the millions of people in the world who will be very much like America's upper middle class today. I think the numbers of those people will increase and I think that they will find more and more ways, in a global economy, to locate themselves where real estate will be ecologically clean and cheap. In a world where the second and third worlds are mostly pacified if very poor, first worlders will find ways to slum at great bargains.

What we are seeing is the outsourcing of several classes of work but it is done rather simplistically at the low end. But there are certain professions that cannot and will not be outsourced and there will be certain professions that can and will be done in ways that 'relocate' but with salary protections. I don't know exactly how all this will occur but I think peer networks will have a lot to do with it. As a software contractor, I understand this implicitly.

So what I am suggesting is that it may not be 'democracy' that enables the kind of stability a relocated class of distributed workers need. There may simply colonies of 'democracy' like Hong Kong. Perhaps in Liberia, Monrovia may become a place suitable for Americans conducting certain businesses. In all these centers of commerce, people will live like Americans, Europeans and other westerners. They will speak English, read the NYT and have broadband.

The question becomes then, what is going to be the entity that provides the kind of 'international diplomatic immunity' equivalent to that which citizens of free Western countries enjoy. Everybody knows that if an American citizen is murdered on a cruise ship (Leon Klinghoffer) then Americans will pursue the crook to the ends of the earth. What are you going to flash when you are living in the 'Western section' of Rio that says some huge entity has got your back?

If you are a member of the Cali Cartel, people know not to mess with you. This is the kind of protection everybody in the world deserves but only the rich and upper middle classes are going to get anytime soon, if they are out of their 'native' nations.

It seems to me that tight international peer networks in the first world are going to carry some of that burden for a time. Right now those peer networks are embedded within the infrastructure of first world industry and organizations, but they will become looser as time progresses and need less sponsored infrastructural support.

The problem with empire, especially unilateral empire, is that it relies solely on the vest interests of that particular emperor. I don't agree that the Europeans were being squeamish over Iraq. I think they were exhibiting a more practical non disrputive view, a viewpoint that posits that war often creates more problems than it solves. For all his talk about bringing Democracy and civilization to Iraq, Bush has ignored the simple fact that civilization cannot exist without order. So, in a perverted sort of way, the Saddam regime, however inhumane it may have been, may still have been civilized.

I'll cede you your knowledge of peer networks, but let me ask you this... will these peer networks be more impervious to terrorist attack than nation states? And if, as you say, "they will become looser as time progresses and need less sponsored infrastructural support" then how do you keep them from fragmenting to the point where they are not even speaking the same "language" or becoming competitors of each other and thus disruptive in their own right? And where does morality and ethics enter the picture? Especially if first worlders, as you say, find great bargains for slumming. What is to prevent an uprising of the disaffected? As Gorbechev once said, there aren't enough resources for everyone in the world to live an American lifestyle. It seems that we are in the process of creating a permanent global underclass where terrorism will forment and thrive.

There is no such thing as a permanent global underclass, that is because the long arc of history bends towards freedom. In other words, disaffected unfree people buy in to societies with happy free people. The only question is that of time. The proper empire takes tyrants out of the way to shorten that time, and then assimilates the former victims. Where and how oppressed live in the meantime, before liberation, determines how well they can grow themselves. Every oppressed group will have their equivalent 'legacy of slavery'.

Terrorism can therefore only thrive where the oppression is brutal and militant, which is not what an American empire is all about, history bears us out on that score. So long as America is a national superpower, our interests, as greedy as they may be, are not brutal and so a proper empire can only be built with American acquiesence. What America has not yet done is dealt with the kind of terror that would change our consumption habits, but it's not as though we couldn't survive it. It would just be uncomfortable and we'd bitch a lot.

Peer networks will be relatively impervious to terror as we know it, primarily because there are few centralized targets to attack. It's like trying to take out the entire Baptist church by bombing them one by one in Birmingham.

Democratic institutions take a very long time to build, and must be supported by cultural values and habits. But people will adopt quickly to economics. The key question is whether or not economic intervention is a proper force of liberty, and if so how? We know that rich countries can be tyrannical - so how do you get money to the people? This is something that Nozick is saying about the welfare state.. liberals and conservatives agree that society is better off when people have jobs.

Which is worse, jobs without freedom or freedom without jobs? The former, clearly. The question is how does a superior power provide freedom to an oppressed people? I think that is the job of the proper empire in 'nation building'.

There is no doubt in my mind that a global underclass exists. I'm just not sure how permanent it is. I agree that the long arc of history bends toward freedom. But with our bent toward self destruction, I'm not sure we have enough time left as a species to let this all play out.

"The question is how does a superior power provide freedom to an oppressed people? I think that is the job of the proper empire in 'nation building'."

Obviously we haven't figured that out in Iraq or Afghanistan. Can you nation build against people's will? Ultimately, is "democracy" as we define it even an inherent right as the Founders of this country believed, or just a quirk of human history?

I take issue with the question of self-destruction. Speaking specifically of African Americans, how can our population grow and yet still be self-destructive in any literal sense of the word? If we were 28 million when I was born and 36 million today, we are clearly not an 'endangered species'. We are also clearly more free than 50 years ago, but we are more of a lot of things not all of them good, but on the whole we are better off. So too is this nation.

As long as people want to migrate to America, then we are doing most things right, relatively speaking. Whatever one can cynically say about our destructive behavior worldwide, we are not intent on self-destruction. I agree with your implications about sustainability, and I strongly believe we will do what is required. Los Angeles has cleaner air now than when I was a child.

A lot of my vision on empire has to do with the material quality of life that we as an industrial nation, within the global economy, can provide. I'm talking about the capacity to fill supermarket shelves, to build new houses, schools and sewage facilities, to electrify rural areas, to combat basic deadly diseases, to provide cops, courts and commons, to build roads, trucks, bridges, telecom networks and compute facilities. I think you can fill cities of that sort with gays, muslims, croats, hutu, inuit and damn near everyone but cannibals. You give people a stake in that kind of stability and quality of life and they will defend it.

If democracy is an accident, so is science. I think not, I think it is the realization, the inevitable evolution of human history. It is the irrevocable next step up.