Why not say a few words to explain the answer to the question below at the end of the prior post on this topic:
What do you think universal equality might mean?
RE TOCQUEVILLE CONCLUSION DK QUOTE BOOKENDS MY QUOTE FROM A de T INTRODUCTION
RE THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION TOCQUEVILLE ETC
"Let's just reiterate here a few topics I have harped on in the past, decline of the West, etc.
How about over population, resource depletion, environmental degradation, negative sum game, etc.
Now let's turn to Tocqueville's theme of equality in the Introduction I quoted. He sees a gradual and inexorable trend, ancient in origin, toward universal economic equality.
That has been the Democratic mantra in the West since 1760. He cites Aristotle, and obviously one can take it back say to Jesus, for example, and the earlier Hebrew prophets, too, railing against rich men.
Let's take a quick look at what that universal equality might mean, in the world of the near future, a world nearer than Westerners think.
What do you think it might mean?"
I have discussed what it might mean in a number of posts here, over a period of years, really.
It has to do with my criticisms, and those of some few others, of globalism and of economists, and of a liberal international economic order that appears to the average person in the West to partially promote universal equality while it still preserves Western prosperity, but with only Piketty's recent inequality caveats.
Piketty is a pundit economist who thinks the big big problem for global politico economic issues is income inequality. That is really where he stops. In its way, it is a reiteration of Tocqueville, with criticisms against continuing inequality, and of Aristotle long ago re revolutions within ancient Greece caused by inequality.
What I have referred to is something very different, and incomparably more enormous, in its implications: global average, or median, income convergence.
Here is just a recent example of an economist who understands what I am talking about. As he says, we here in the US are ' the top 1% ', and I would add that the income for the great majority of us, even the upper middle class here, so to speak, has been falling rapidly, in relative terms, as others rise up against us economically, in recent decades:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You-need-34k-income-global-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html
Some estimate world median income at $1,700, which, even that small amount, I have to think, is exaggerated, perhaps greatly.
There are a lot of other implications, equally enormous, that are glossed over by Tocqueville's, and much later, by Piketty's account.
We are seeing them unfold along with the average income convergence.
Huntington addressed some of them in The Clash.
Bobbitt and others have assured us that the modern state can no longer assure basic security against WMD. This has been obvious since at least 1950 or so.
We find that the modern state refuses, or fails, depending on your view, to competently address even moderate natural disasters, like Katrina.
Why, then, you may ask, further centralize political power, while having decentralized wealth, civilizational identities, and security, the weaker centralized power has become?
