What’s Wrong with the Western World?
On just about every economic and social metric the western world as a whole is slipping in performance as far as its citizens are concerned.
This is designed as a “rant” with the points being made supported in more detail by my other articles and my book.
On just about every economic and social metric the western world as a whole is slipping in performance as far as its citizens are concerned.
In most western nations there is a real reduction in prosperity and in some nations its coupled with total social unrest and distaste for what their governments are doing to support citizens rights and well being, with young citizens now experiencing a quality of life far worse than their parents and even their grand parent’s
So here is a quick list in rough chronological order of what we in the west did wrong, starting after the 2nd world war onwards…
Economic mistakes
Post war decolonialization … the west correctly offered to give up its control of other nations via their national independence, but did not setup the correct systems so that the western nations got compensated for the funding and effort previously invested in mainly mineral and industrial installations and other supply chains. The best example is how the Arab states enjoyed undeserving wealth from these mineral wealth installations and then held the west to ransom later.
The growth in multilateralism added power to the UNs mandate for more global equality; but that mistake began to unfairly destroy the sovereignty of western nations, and created western national policies not always in the best interest of their citizens, as it enabled untenable wealth transfer from the west to the rest.
Playing global police force without pay is how the west got tagged by the UN with the next 80 years causing great expense to western citizens in terms of economics and lives lost on wars and international conflicts.
The space race was a useful mechanism to create an industrial complex that allowed mostly western governments to foster spin off technologies for later industrial growth, but these technological advantage’s that were paid for by mostly western citizens has benefited all the nations on the globe, but the significant investment was not repaid by all those that benefited.
The growth in Global Free trade through low trade barriers and foolish and naive western governments embracing a global free trade ideology without national controls allowed the free flow of corporate capital and the offshoring of industrial capacity. This has resulted in emerging market labor arbitrage and massive job loss in the western nations, and huge wealth transfer from the west to the rest.
This journey has caused the near destruction of the western industrial base, and the end of most western nations industrial and resource sovereignty. It will take a significant effort to reverse existing globalized supply chains to correct the issue.
Also uncontrolled global financialization created unentitled wealth transfer from the west to the rest.
Socialist style state welfare systems have bloated the public sectors in most western nations. This has added costs to taxation with little true value to most citizens but has had the overall effect of lowering national productivity. It has further hindered economic investment due to the growth in business constraining bureaucratic rules, regulations and legislations.
Geo-political mistakes
The under-managed and under entitled ending of the cold war between Russia and the rest has created long term and ongoing tensions resulting in recent border conflicts between Russia and the rest.
Allowing the nefarious religion of Islam to control and dominate certain regional politics across the globe has created instability, conflicts and wars. A further and huge mistake was the west allowing this alien cultural ideology to infiltrate its own borders, economic interests and core culture. This mistake and its magnitude will become a defining crisis as the century unfolds.
Dysfunctional Democracy
Dysfunctional Democratic processes, and in most cases a lack of political leadership, has enabled most of the mistakes and errors made by the west. And even when the problem or goals were identified, the democratic process got in the way of getting the right things done.
Attempts to step above the Dysfunctional Democratic processes can be characterized by the Trump presidency, but although his policies correctly identify and face head on the tough issues to solve, his execution processes leave a lot to be desired.
Most of the other western nations are mired in these Dysfunctional Democratic processes with no end in sight for many of them.
The over-legalization of democracy
To add to the Dysfunction many democracies have allowed their legal system to become bloated and have authorised the judiciary to second guess political leadership adding constraints that makes any act of decisive political leadership and decision making difficult, complex, and in some cases, almost impossible.
Confusing minority rights with the needs of the democratic majority
Some western nations continue to badly manage the correct balance of indigenous and minority entitlement. The result is minorities who are getting far too accustomed to the free lunch and have assumed authority and powers they should not be entitled too with a detriment to the majority of citizens.
Western Cultural suicide
Uncontrolled and excessive Immigration, Migration and Refugeeism has been mis-managed by many western nations, with significant impact on the stability of their economies and their ability to house, care and support the bloated population. This problem has been further amplified by the mistake of multiculturalism that has damaged the integrity of the national spirt, and this mistake is now being demonstrated with social unrest in many western nations.
This multiculturalism being adopted by the west was a huge mistake…It has allowed these massive amounts of new immigrants to maintain their own language and customs and in some cases laws in contradiction to those already enforced by the host nation. It has prevented adoption and assimilation into the historical western core culture. The result is the slide of many western nations toward a post nation state with the local history and culture going into freefall destroying a cohesive core identity necessary to propagate shared values. It means the destruction of the national spirit, and the value of citizenship. This means that a National citizen Passport becomes an entitlement ticket for the perks of national membership, not a documented responsibility to be a member and defender of what that nation represents.
Environmental Extremism
The rise of Environmental Extremism has become almost a religion by mainly the left leaning segment of western society. It has been propelled by the UN’s adoption of climate alarmism that blames humankind for its liberation of CO2 via the burning of fossil fuels and maintains that this will become a global crisis. They maintain that this will require the adoption of NetZero that is calling for the complete mitigation of fossil fuels use.
The UN has orchestrated an international policy for NetZero that most western nations had signed up to follow as national economic goals, with disastrous impacts on western prosperity for no real environmental advantage, while the “rest” get on with building economies without any such constraints to provide prosperity for their own citizens.
So far none of the climate impact metrics have shown any adverse conditions that require more than focused and localized adaption.
Its clear to many of us that such a NetZero Climate change policy will be an impediment to ongoing prosperity for no good reason.
So many western nations are now reassessing NetZero which is proving to be unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.
The environmental extremists had also forced a huge mistake of halting the development and implementation of nuclear power due to false fears of safe operation. This mistake is now being corrected in many western nations, but the mistake has delayed the needed growth in reliable, abundant and affordable energy to support future national flourishing in the west.
The Woke West
The Western world has lost its mind with the implementation of DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion)
which is a construct of Marxist thinking that is alien and destructive to the concept of democratic capitalism and meritocracy that has made the west a success story…. until recently.
This huge mistake has allowed unentitled minorities to significantly and unreasonably overwhelm the needs of the majority which breaks down the foundation of a democratic society.
This problem has been amplified by professional media that due to changes in that industry feel pressured to report sensationalism to sell services, and reporters who are far too inclined to follow this Marxist thinking.
Significant problems exist with out of touch learning institutions that are far too aligned with this left learning and globalist ideology. The conclusion is an educated and communicative “group think” that does not foster a much-needed national viewpoint.
This woke movement has generated wild and weird anti-west ideologies such as identity, race and queer based politics and associated anti west social constructs. It has fostered a culture of cancelation and intolerance to free speech and has facilitated the suppression and modification of western history, cultural and social norms. It has fabricated an image of western society that should consider itself shamed and blamed and guilty for its past and present existence.
All of this nonsense is being downloaded to our children via the woke ridden learning organizations that have also lost the authority and control to both teach and prepare our children to become productive and fulfilled citizens.
Our citizen youth are suffering.
Our young citizens are suffering due to all of the above and are now experiencing a quality of life far worse than their parents and even their grand parent’s.
They are facing under employment, and in many cases have been allowed to become over-educated and under-trained and have very limited ability to gain early career experience to effectively replace an increasingly aging population.
It’s true that all forms of future automation will require far less human power to support economic output, but it will require a highly trained and capable key workforce that we cannot continue to import. So, its essential we mobilize our existing citizen youth if we want a productive and prosperous economy.
Its going to require we stop the mistakes of the past education process and have our population be able to join an integrated learning environment that will much more efficiently prepare them for productive careers so they can pay their taxes, pay their rent or afford a house, and most important, enable them to start a family, and become productive citizens to support a flourishing western economy into the future.
The “Simple” Fix……….
A strong National leadership that understands these mistakes and will work to create a critical mass of support at government and citizen level to fix them.
As citizens of a nation, we need to say….although we wish the best for the well being of the global population … we are citizens of a nation…. and we come first!
More about this position at …
Take Back Manufacturing | Nigel Southway | Substack
Take Back Manufacturing - Take Back Manufacturing - Home page
www.nigelsouthway.org
………………………………………….
Well written essay! I agree with your diagnosis, but I've come to believe there is an analytical need to engage in structural analysis of decision making processes and there is great practical risks for any big policy change if that hasnt been done. And respectfully, your analysis here may have ran into that risk, because your essay is that it treats these problems as failures of will, culture, or national priority rather than the deeper malign effects of changes to the deeper architecture of decision making itself. The Western nations you didnt decline because democracy “got in the way", that simply cannot be the case because we intensely de-democratized decades ago as over the course of the post WW2 decades our systems had replaced their formerly pluralistic, locally semi-sovereign, economically diversified, etc civic systems with highly centralized, hierarchical, continental-scale command structures, structures that cannot be repaired by simply changing policy direction or installing “strong national leadership”. Without rebuilding the underlying analytical, deliberative, and decision-making processes, regional financial organs, local economic discretion, publicly accessible civic channels, federated governance, etc., any proposed fix merely runs the same centralized machine with a different ideological script. Unless the institutional architecture changes, the outcomes will not.