Thoughts on New Years, 2023.
Can America continue to be a world leader in thought, industry, science, lifestyle, diplomacy, and, generally, power?
There are headwinds.
The US system allows those who oppose change, either for social or economic reasons, to aggregate power. Sorting concentrates better educated persons, including those in leading technical sectors, geographically. People who feel left behind by demographic, technological, and other changes are distributed more broadly, in terms of geography. This magnifies their electoral influence, as one of the national legislature’s arms, the Senate, is based on geography, not population. Each state contributes all its votes for the Presidency on a winner-take-all basis, which is then apportioned according to the state’s legislative representatives. Since each state has the same number of Senators regardless of population, less populated states have more influence in electing the President. People who are opposed to social change are associated with less populated areas.
Legacy industries, and others with high profit margins, also have a lot of influence in the US system. This is due the limited regulation of lobbying and campaign financing, which allows large industries to exercize political muscle. In some sectors, such as energy, newer industries lack equivalent wealth and power. In others, such as pharmaceuticals, very great profit margins block socially optimal, or even socially acceptable, policy. This may be a condition facing many advanced industrial societies, but is exacerbated in the US because of weak national regulation. This laxity is historical and geographic, and somewhat complex.
All ‘new world’ nations lack thousand-year institutional histories, which might influence populations to subsume personal needs for group ones. The majority of their populations are third, fourth, or fifth generation immigrants. They have polyglot ethnic compositions which makes empathy more difficult. All were colonized, with colonial legacies of slavery and removals of indigenous populations. Assets primarily transmit intergenerationally within families. This transmits unequal financial recource control, which continues to discriminate against those whose ancestors were slaves or indigenous persons.
These are some of the forces that impede the future influence of the US. Young Americans, however, are free to think and choose, in ways that youth in some other powerful countries are not. They have the capacity to integrate the US’s historical strengths, which includes democratic constitutionalism and economic innovation, with electoral system changes, significant industry regulation, and more intergenerational equity. That should lead to policies that preserve health, the environment, and offer widespread opportunity. Education is a particular problem, whose solution requires older generations to embrace the unfamiliar, a task they’ve always found difficult.
All countries face dilemmas and entrenched interests. History shows how some rise and others fall, then those fallen may rise, and those risen may fall. Nations in which the public is swayed by passions about past defeats or losses can spiral dangerously. Let’s hope earth’s future avoids these, and each generation grows wiser.
Happy New Year
