There was a time when the certainty of the connection between Democracy and economic well-being was almost immutable.

America was the land of the free, the brave and the rich; but this certainty is now very much frayed at the edges; what has changed to bring this about, and if Democracy is no longer the universal panacea to both economic and moral well-being, what is?

To answer that we firstly need to look back at the rise of Democracy over the past two hundred years that has totally changed our World.

Britain led the charge in the nineteenth century both blazing the way with the Industrial Revolution, but also bringing in its wake the abolition of slavery, the extension by increments the right to vote to encompass all males over eighteen, and by the early 20^th century, likewise all women, as well as Trade Unions, and the plethora of legislation protecting the perceived weak sectors of society from the ravages of poverty, illness and the perceived rapacious demands of big business.

America largely took up the cudgel in the 20^th century as the First Great World War propelled that country to global economic leadership, leading the world culturally through Hollywood, financially through Wall Street and what came to be known as “The American Dream” inspired the World that their definition of a consumer-driven suburban nirvana was what we all aspired to.

It is not just the global hiatus that has brought this about, though this and the coming even deeper second bite of the double recession, that many informed pundits now see more clearly, are certainly major contributors.

It is equally not just that the World can see that the American military might can no longer bully and cajole with the same sense of moral certainty, as the World can look into American society and see that the previous aura of self-belief no longer binds all its citizenry into the red white and blue of what it is to be American.

The American business model, the seeming ability of American ingenuity  to rise to all challenges, that John Wayne swagger are likewise all looking tired, clichéd and irrelevant for today’s pluralistic, complex World.

Likewise in Europe; Democracy has allowed Silvio Burlusconi to run Italy as his personal fiefdom and plaything with just as much impunity as the personal renaissance families of earlier, non-democratic centuries, and the recent Murdoch shenanigans in Britain likewise challenge the assumptions of democracy that real power resides with politicians elected by the people as it seems the media more and more call the shots and set the moral tone.

And if democracy really is the key, why are so many European economies now on the knees with a begging bowl held out in supplication asking the rest of the World to bail them out?

All of this challenges the cosy assumptions and moral certainties that previously held sway.

Is China an answer? Should we roll back the advances of individual liberty and democracy and all embrace a communal approach? China is certainly no longer communist as any recent visitors there can attest; in many ways it is more capitalist than anywhere else on our planet, but certainly economic planning is driven from the centre, and decisions taken and predicated upon a national master-plan.

It certainly has pulled China up by its bootstraps from the Mao Zedong truly Communist days where intellectuals were slaughtered, free thought trampled and the country was as grey, bland and dirt-poor as anywhere on our planet, but can it be the answer to taking the broader, pluralist world of today to greater heights?

Do we need an all-powerful Global government that runs a similar global master-plan, allocating economic resources to those areas and peoples who can most efficiently, and cheaply manufacture, produce or make those things, products and foods that the World needs?

Can well-being be simplified down to pure economics, or are there broader, feel-good components that need to be factored into any equation?

We are seeing a major global crisis unfolding in East Africa and up into the Horn of Africa. There a major famine is threatening the 167 million peoples living there with a famine pestilence of Biblical proportions; yet little more than a generation previously the population was only a quarter of that of today, and even then we had the Ethiopian famines that gave birth to Live Aid and Bob Geldorf. Clearly the World needs to act, but in truth are not contraceptives more needed than corn?

What would we be “saving” these peoples for if the outcome of saving them would be to propel that region’s population to a billion by 2050 which will be the case unless patterns of behaviour are not changed?

These are all hard, and very much inter-locked questions we need to answer if our World, individual freedoms, democracy and global economic well-being are to flourish.

Unquestionably we are running into real resource ceilings; there is only so much land, water, resources, air et al that we can draw upon, unless we really can take and make the quantum leap of science fiction and colonise another benign planet, and the present inexorable rise in the price of foodstuffs, threatening to price many staple commodities beyond the economic reach of many underscores this.

Can democratic societies, under pressure from demographics increasing the median age of such societies with all the cost implications that extended lives into old age bring, and with the pressures of economic austerity arising from their profligacy of expenditure over the previous two decades, really both pull their horns in, spend less, deliver more to their aging and compete with the low-cost, none welfare state economies of the East?

I certainly wouldn’t bet on it and the entire West, including America are heading that way, if not there already. How long will China sit patiently by whilst America, and almost all the West, deep in debt, still fail to rein in expenditure, still pile on further layers of debt rather than giving their “bankers” – China and the oil-exporting countries of the Middle East – the rate of return their high-risk exposures should be demanding?

Our World is on a collision path on many fronts; history informs us that war is a likely outcome, though should a war break out between two modern, highly sophisticated and weaponised countries then these two or more elephants will do more than just trample the grass; the impact would devastate us all and leave a legacy of toxicity that could imperil us all. Let us hope it does not come to this, but grounds for hope are running out and our leaders are as yet not even beginning to talk and come to terms with these global realities.

Rather Democracy, the supposed Nirvana to which we all seemingly aspire assures that in each and every country the relatively short term aim of being elected, re-elected or hanging onto power hold sway.

We need the think globally, act globally and at times recognise that individual, or country pain is necessary in order for progress to continue and for the greater good of all.

The West is vastly over-consuming and this must stop; allow others to have their fairer share.

Can Democracy, the bedrock of Western civilisation really deliver that?

Tags: #america, #American Dream, #Britain, #democracy, #First Great World War