The West has shown the way – why can’t the others just follow?

Below is a link to a 28-minute ‘podcast’ by a Canadian Stefan Molyneux about Europe’s slow but accelerating suicide;

http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/3065/what-pisses-me-off-about-the-european-migrant-crisis

(If you want to listen to it, you click on the above link and then on the ‘play podcast’ symbol in the top left of your screen)

Today, I thought it might be worthwhile summarising just a small part of what he says:

A. The West has shown the way – after over 2,000 years of oppression and warfare, the West has developed a political system that has provided better lives for the majority than any political system before it. Of course, Western democracy is not perfect. There is massive inequality; we have ‘crony capitalism’ where our politicians are all multi-millionaires from being glove puppets for bankers and large corporates; and our public sector is corrupt, self-serving and stupendously wasteful. But despite all this, most people in the West have a reasonable standard of living and can look forward to long and healthy lives

B. Copying should be easy – the first person who invented the wheel was a genius. But after that, the wheel was pretty easy to copy. Similarly, the West has developed a political and social system that (in general) works. So this should be easy for other countries to copy

C. The three foundations for success – there are probably just three things that have to be in place for other countries to emulate the success of the West:

– 1. Separation of Church and State – after hundreds of years of war between Protestants and Catholics, the West realised that there was a need to separate political power and the religious establishment. You cannot have any kind of freedom if the ruling party also considers it represents God’s will on Earth and therefore any opposition must by definition be heretical. Having church and state as one is especially dangerous if the religion is actually a rabid, moronic death cult at war with itself (Sunnis vs Shiites) and committed to world domination, Armageddon or both

– 2. Right to private property – no society can develop and create wealth if corrupt officials can arbitrarily confiscate or steal any successful business or property. For example, I know a family in Egypt that runs a cement business. They just keep it ticking over providing a modest income as they know that, were they to expand, their business would be stolen by corrupt government officials and the family might even be imprisoned on some trumped-up charge to justify the theft of their company. The same is true across much of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America

– 3. Rule of Law – the third element for economic and social development is that nobody is above the Law and that people can have a reasonable degree of confidence that their rights will be protected against arbitrary actions by corrupt politicians and government officials.

If you look across the world, you’ll see that those countries which are now developing and creating wealth – Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand – have, to some extent, copied these three elements. Even China, a one-party state, has managed to grow its economy and take 600 million people out of poverty in just 30 years by strengthening the right to owning a business, owning private property and the supremacy of the rule of law.

Similarly, if you look at those states which are failing and which are condemning their people to lives of misery and even violent death – almost all M*sl*m and African countries, much of Latin America and of course North Korea – �you’ll see most, if not all, of these three basic elements lacking.

After 2,000 years of trial and error, the West has shown the way. If other countries are too stupid, religiously obsessed, backward or corrupt to follow, it’s their own fault and not our problem.