this World History series we're going to return to some of our favorite themes, like the rise

of the state; maybe the idea of "The West"; and also we're going to speculate a little bit about the future.

Mr. Green! Mr. Green! No, no, no...I-I thought you were from the future.

Nope! I'm from your future, Me From the Past, so I know that NSYNC doesn't stay together,

but I'm from my present. Although, now I'm from my past. No, present again. That's the

problem with the future, me from the past. It keeps briefly becoming present and then becoming past.

And then of course people watching the videos will be watching them in their present, which

will be my ever more distant past. And they could be watching them in ten years, the things

that I have predicted will have come true or not come true, and I will look like a genius

or an idiot. Ahhh I'm freakin' out Stan! Just roll the intro.

Man, I'm glad that intro pulled me out of that logic loop. I could have been stuck in

there forever, which reminds me that forever itself is a very weird concept. I think the

only thing we can say about forever is that the future is forever.

So Americans are pretty proud of their democratic government and its history, but in world historical

terms, democracy has not been the norm. Like the 20th century was the high tide for democracy

worldwide with the number of democratic governments increasing dramatically, but the 2000's so

far have seen something of a anti-democratic renaissance with the number of democracies

that shouldn't actually be called democracies, doubling between 2006 and 2009. Like the People's

Democratic Republic of Korea, despite having democratic in the name, not particularly democratic...

I'm sorry for saying that Kim Jong-un, but it's true... He's behind me, isn't he Stan?

You'll be gone in 20 years, that's my first prediction.

Also, while democracy can sound great, no countries have ever actually practiced pure

democracy. Unless you count Ancient Athens which a) was not a country, it was a city

state and b) it excluded women and slaves from the political process so it wasn't really

a pure democracy. Because you know, like, most people didn't get to participate in the government.

What we call democracies today are actually the result of a number of revolutions in political

thought that happened mostly in the west between the 17th and 20th centuries. Like, we've talked

a lot about the first of these revolutions in political thought which happened in the

17th century with the creation of the centralized nation state in Europe. And then there was

the political breakthrough put forth by John Stuart Mill, who envisioned a night watchmen

state that was like too small to infringe on individuals' freedoms but efficient enough

to be functional and useful as a government.

Then in the late 19th and early 20th century, the west developed the idea of the modern

welfare state, enshrining the belief that the state should provide things like education,

health and unemployment insurance to enable citizens to lead fulfilling lives. The welfare

state relies on government planning and bureaucrats who get their jobs not based on high birth

but on merits and also data-driven answers to problems. And so we saw the rise of technocrats

and intellectuals influencing government policy. To quote the book called "The Fourth Revolution,"

there were two things new about this welfare state. "The taxation of the entire population

to provide benefits for the unfortunate and the removal of the 'poor law' stigma from

social welfare. The poor were now victims, not layabouts."

So, in contemporary Europe and the United States, everyone pays taxes, right. Whether

it's consumption taxes or property taxes or income taxes or whatever. And we don't view

poverty merely as personal failing but as a problem that needs to be addressed. And

although imperialism certainly made it problematic for these ideas to spread completely throughout

the world, the ideas did prove very powerful, like India adopted a heavily top down welfare

state based on British principles once it became independent. And even when the liberal

democratic state came under ideological attack from fascists and communists, it was able

to triumph by mustering the resources to win World War II and meet the Soviet Challenge

during the Cold War. And for most of the 20th century, western democracies have been on

the whole, pretty successful in providing peace and stability and prosperity to their own citizens.

And yet, many parts of the world are turning away from these ideas now. Why? Well, one

of the reasons democracy may be falling out of favor is that many of the most successful

countries in the world, at least in terms of economic growth are not democratic. There

are democracies experiencing tremendous economic growth like Brazil and India. But then of

course there's China. And China along with countries like Singapore have looked to the

west for guidance on how to create capitalism but they've been much less interested in adopting

Western models of governance.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

So Singapore might only have 5.2 million inhabitants but it has very effective government. The

architect of its success, Lee Kuan Yew, has argued that cultural values are the explanation

and that Asians are quote, "More focused on the family, more devoted to education and

saving; and more willing to put faith in a Mandarin elite than the West." But it's probably

more due to Singapore's being more authoritarian, more interventionist, and more bossy in following

Lee's Hobbesian view that, "Human beings, regrettable though it may be, are inherently

vicious and have to be restrained from their viciousness."

Although Singapore isn't technically a one party state it's also very far from a traditional

democracy. Like in 2011 Lee's People's Action Party won 60% of the vote and 93% of the seats

in Congress. That may sound terrible but it has an upside. Knowing that their party will

win elections allows Singapore's politicians to focus on something else. Namely long-term

planning. If any of the particularly "Asian" traditions cited by Lee have fueled Singapore's

success it's that Mandarin ideal of choosing and promoting skilled bureaucrats based on

merit. The most interesting thing about Singapore's government is that, at least by Western standards,

it's remarkably small, with like, for instance a world class education system that consumes

only 3.3% of Gross Domestic Product. They also have a required retirement fund in which

Singaporeans contribute 20% of their paycheck and their employers kick in another 15.5%.

AND as you'll already know if you watch our show Healthcare Triage, Singapore has one

of the most efficient and fascinating health care systems in the world. Thanks Thought Bubble.

And then there's China with its gleaming skyscrapers, enormous number of billionaires, and what

is now the second largest economy in the world. Now, of course, there's also the air pollution,

the growing income disparity, the terrible working conditions, but hundreds of millions

of people in China have emerged from poverty in the last 50 years. And this was all accomplished

by a very repressive state, so repressive, in fact, that they can't see this video. The

Chinese model of governance has often been called authoritarian capitalism and its architect

was Deng Xiaoping. He was very impressed by Singapore and sought to copy them, and in

many ways, the Chinese Communist party has been very successful at that. Despite some

official corruption, the Chinese state is very efficient and has presided over an incredible

economic and social transformation in the past 30 years. So we expect, like, rigid central

planning from Communist parties, right? But in China, rather than setting goals for every

facet of the economy, the party makes sure that it's represented in most big companies,

private and state-owned.

And the biggest companies owned by the government dominate strategic industries like energy

and transportation and telecommunications. The Communist Party’s Organization Department

appoints all senior corporate figures in China. And in general they‘ve done a good job of

promoting good managers that help the companies to grow.

And China certainly wants this model to go global, since its state owwned companies have

funded 80% of China’s direct foreign investment in the last 30 years, which allows commerce

to advance Chinese diplomacy, extending the nation’s so-called “soft power.”

So who knows if this will actually work, but when Chinese state companies are able to build

the new African Union headquarters in Ethiopia, for instance, it sends a powerful signal to

African nations that this is a system where people can get things done.

Meanwhile, in the United States and much of Europe... a little bit of a struggle to get

things done. So Chinese state capitalism may sound like the wave of the future, or at least

the wave of the present. But maybe not. It has some serious drawbacks. First, the close

ties between business and politics opens the system up to massive corruption.

Fortunately, here in the United States, we don’t have any ties between business and

politics, so you won’t see any corruption here!

But there are also other drawbacks to authoritarian capitalism, like state-run industries tend

not to be responsive to investors, which limits private investment. And in the long-term,

that may limit the money available to them to keep growing.

Also, with a lot of these state-owned industries, it’s not actually clear that they’re productive

or profitable because they rely so heavily on government subsidies.

And finally state-owned industries don’t to a great job of encouraging the freedom

of expression that fuels a lot of, like, cultural and intellectual industries like, for instance

Hollywood. Which is more cultural than intellectual.

The Fourth Revolution quotes one Chinese commenter as saying: “We have [kung-fu] and we have

pandas, but we could not make a film like Kung-fu Panda.”

Also, this kind of state-run industrial policy is very effective sometimes, but it’s not

clear that it’s going to be effective all the time. Like it may work better for building

roads and cell towers than for creating software, for instance.

So it seems to work for less developed nations that need to build infrastructure and industry;

it’s much less clear that it will be effective when they need to move over to being service economies.

And what I find fascinating is that China has created this new path to economic growth

in part by looking to its ancient past to revitalize its government. Because they've

created a new education-based meritocracy, which is a modern version of the Han examination system.

It’s sort of like a state run version of Plato’s Republic, and polls indicate that

most Chinese people are pretty comfortable with it. I mean, things ARE getting better in China.

Like philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen argues that "Chinese-style meritocracy is good at

focusing on long-term problems and bringing in independent experts."

That said, China’s government isn’t always as meritocratic and effective as some might

want to believe. I mean, the Chinese version of twitter is a litany of complaints about

poor schools and dirty hospitals and inept local officials.

And in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake, when many children died because of poorly

built schools, there was widespread outrage over the government's inability to like, get things built well.

All that noted, it’s important to be aware that China embodies a challenge to the idea

that the West has all the answers in terms of economics and government.

Particularly after the 2008 financial crisis, the Chinese were the ones lecturing about

government and fiscal policy and claiming that the American political system was rewarding

mediocrity over talent. And lots of Americans would agree with these Chinese critics. I

mean, we can’t even get a long-term highway bill passed, let alone like, long-term planning

for the overall economy.

In a representative democracy, the best way to get elected is to make promises, usually

for lower taxes or for more or bigger benefits. Or my favorite -- for both. Also, democratic

governments are very susceptible to interest groups extracting benefits for themselves.

Just as autocratic governments are very susceptible to, you know, autocrats extracting benefits for themselves.

And the problems of democracy can be a bit of a vicious cycle. Like in the United States

at least, we're incredibly dissatisfied with our government, especially Congress, and this

is partly because we’ve come to expect so much from government that they constantly let us down.

Also, for the last 35 years or so, because people are so dissatisfied with government,

one of the main strategies for winning political office is to talk bad about the government

and to say that government is the problem.

But of course, if we have too much government, that’s a problem that can only be fixed…

by the government. So where does this leave us? Well, maybe we

have reached the end of “the rise of the west?” that began with the nation state.

But it’s really hard to predict the future! Like when I was in high school I wouldn’t

have predicted that so many people would be learning about history and