So then, is it justifiable to include economic liberalism into the Nesting Dolls of Failure series? Liberalism, economic or otherwise, is a very old and well-established set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that the western world has developed according to for over two centuries now. They have been very successful centuries at that, and to think such a longstanding system could for whatever reason not function, collapse, and disappear from history seems like a stretch to most people, to say the least. But to think about this sort of thing as an either/or proposition precludes a lot of good, ponderous fun and can instead lend itself to a lot of argumentative idiocy.
The phrase "argumentative idiocy" encapsulates very well the political situation in America, and probably others in the West, and serves well as an augury for the kind of collapse scenario I think is likely. As the embodiment of the liberal experiment, American democracy appears very unsteady at the moment. Others happen to be watching. Vladimir Putin, for example, is watching. Alongside the dysfunction of the institutions of democracy is the inability for the U.S. economy to export enough monetary mojo to the rest of the world to keep the America centered global system running. One of the most inconvenient aspects of being a global hegemon in the modern world with a liberty and prosperity focus is that others (people or nations) feel they need to benefit from it. What they, friends, enemies, frenemies, out their in the world see and hear from the mouths of elected, or unelected, officials in the U.S. is very likely both disheartening and heartening, depending on which one you are.
So the twin abstract branches of liberalism, economic and political, are approaching full failure mode as is evident in the sclerotic behavior of its institutions and is a serious factor in the breakdown of global order. A big reason for this sclerosis is the failure of the American imagination to think beyond the number two in determining how many positions it is possible to take. Now, I'm as big a fan of the number two as anyone, but there are many other numbers of equal interest. American politics is beholden to the number two to its detriment, and there's not much that can be done about it at present. But thinking beyond "two" is a good and fruitful adventure and that is where this little essay is going.
Liberalism, as I said in the first paragraph, is a set of values, beliefs, and assumptions. You could add to or tweak that as you like, but the main purpose of repeating that statement involves the number two. This is what navel gazers call "the one and the many" problem. You have a set (one) of beliefs, values, and assumptions (many) that formed, evolved, and developed (many) into our current system (one). This one system has many smaller subsystems that interact with and feed back into the whole system. Some of these systems are very localized and could operate independently of the larger system, or survive the collapse of the larger system. Likewise, in the realm of culture, which is the habituated interior system of values, beliefs, and assumptions which people in the culture accord with, these things, concepts, ideas, can endure long after. At the same time, many things people do in the present won't make sense later if underlying conditions render something untenable or not worthwhile.
A kind of big example which might illustrate this is the fate of the idea and practice of free market capitalism. Free market capitalism is both a beacon of policy as well as constitutes the rules of the road for economic behavior. It is also the foundation for codes of behavior for individuals involving ideas of fairness and the social good imbibed by participants. Across the whole spectrum of business owners is the pull of the logic of business which is in concert with the idea of free market capitalism but is not identical with it. The many small scale business relationships that forms the web of the whole don't necessarily scale up to the grand scale of relationships that forms free market capitalism. A local tire service center operates very differently from Abercrombie and Fitch. It's nature changes somewhat.
Democracy has its own scale issue. Democracy as a set of values and as a practice can scale up fairly well and once upon a time American democracy worked pretty well. And, in a way, it still is working, just that, well, it isn't. The scale issue with democracy I have in mind is the cost. It is expensive to have courts of law, to enact inefficient standards that have little to no monetary return value but improve the quality of life, or that address fairness, or some other moral good that people generally want. Large scale entities are more expensive, you could say, by nature. They tend to be more efficient but they cost more. It's not really news that the cost of the American enterprise has really gone of the rails. In a serious crisis in which it may be urgent to direct resources where they are "needed", or where some powerful entity might appropriate resources and allocate them as that entity sees fit, then some other, weaker entity might have to go without. That the U.S. federal budget deficit has a very large number with a minus sign before it means that eventually difficult choices (many) will have to be made.
The U.S., the West, the rest of the world face a crisis of scale. This is a scale that cannot be maintained and will scale down inexorably. In the broadest sense, then, the one system breaks and many other, smaller systems emerge. The choices people make and can make regarding their circumstances will involve values they possess at the time. A process of weighing what is more, less, or possibly valuable will run in accordance with available resources (many but fewer, or less) and the habits of culture. Americans, Earthlings, will have different notions about how that happens. America (one) may decide to blow cash and resources in a long shot to kick Russia out of Ukraine in classic proxy war fashion. But Americans (many) may wish to see this as a choice with multiple options, each affixed to some harsh realities, yet could at least weigh the costs of trying to save the One Big System at the expense of some better, saner possibility.
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