{"id":807,"date":"2009-09-03T18:28:57","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T22:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=807"},"modified":"2009-09-03T16:03:39","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T20:03:39","slug":"was-fukuyama-correct-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/09\/03\/was-fukuyama-correct-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Fukuyama correct after all?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogsandwikis.bentley.edu\/themoneyillusion\/?p=2267\" target=\"_blank\">Scott Sumner<\/a> has an interesting post up about Francis Fukuyama&#8217;s &#8220;end of history&#8221; thoughts of the late 1980s:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>So the obvious choice for most successful prediction is Francis Fukuyama\u2019s 1989 claim that \u201chistory was ending,\u201d that the great ideological battle between democratic capitalism and other isms was essentially over, and that henceforth the world would become gradually more democratic, peaceful, and market-oriented.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>I get very annoyed when I see people say \u201cthe Chinese case proves that economic development doesn\u2019t inevitably lead to political liberalization.\u201d  There are so many problems with this sort of statement that one hardly knows were to begin.  China has seen incredible political liberalization since 1978, indeed even some progress since 1998.  But what about western-style democracy?  To answer that question, consider the list above.  I would argue that China most resembles Thailand.  Both have similar per capita GDPs, both have a huge split between the urban elite and the rural poor.  My hunch is that consciously or subconsciously, the urban residents of China are not thrilled by the idea of a pure democracy that would effectively turn the country over to the rural poor.  But wait a few decades, when China goes from being 60%-70% rural, to 60%-70% urban, and from mostly poor to mostly middle-income, and from mostly undereducated to mostly educated.  Then let\u2019s see how Fukuyama\u2019s thesis holds up.<\/p>\n<p>History is still ending.  Or maybe I should say \u201chis story\u201d is ending, the story of war, revolution and voyages of discovery.  The Illiad and the Odyssey.  And \u201cher story\u201d is beginning.  A world focused on improving education, health care, cuisine, leisure time, the arts, communication, animal rights, the environment, etc.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Sumner has an interesting post up about Francis Fukuyama&#8217;s &#8220;end of history&#8221; thoughts of the late 1980s: So the obvious choice for most successful prediction is Francis Fukuyama\u2019s 1989 claim that \u201chistory was ending,\u201d that the great ideological battle between democratic capitalism and other isms was essentially over, and that henceforth the world would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,25,7],"tags":[236,43],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-economics","category-history","tag-progress","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-d1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions\/808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}