…and all this time I thought the end of history happened in 31 BC with the Battle of Actium. Although this battle was won ostensibly by Octavian, that ideological war was decisively won by Cleopatra and her ideal of divinely sanctioned imperial rule.
wretchard:
What if the institutions of liberal democracy could actually inhibit scientific inquiry? In this bizarro universe, real science would atrophy due to a lack of popularity, new technologies would get blocked by special interests, and “free speech” would be used to promote a new “bonfire of the vanities” against unpopular ideas.
Meanwhile, an enlightened dictatorship would subsidize scientific inquiry and fiercely protect the academic freedom to study unpopular subjects. This dictatorship would make it a condition of doing business that it would reverse engineer every piece of foreign technology. The “enlightened dictatorship” would protect all inventions and make it a felony to patent any innovation that had actually been invented by somebody else, thus discouraging technological monopolies created by ruinous litigation (such as the Hughes fortune).
Imagine if a modern-day Lysenko could stifle scientific inquiry by leveraging his political clout to promote his own crackpot theories. He would create movies to promote his worldview while dissenters would face budget cuts due to the unpopularity of their ideas. The models of Prussia, Singapore, and the Ptolemaic Empire would be juxtaposed against stagnant democracy.
In the early twentieth century, many American academics admired Germany because its military muscle, planned economy, superior universities, and technological prowess were impressive. For many progressives, the German model showed the way of the future. According to a “Ptolemaic” view of history, Germany erred in becoming too democratic, with the effect that a bunch of low-class bums ran the government and banished Europe’s best researchers to America. Without democracy in Germany, it is easy to imagine that Europe’s best minds would have invented the atomic bomb in Europe instead of inventing it in the United States.
Suffice it to say that the United States itself would likely have been a failure were it not for the fortuitous accident of the du Pont family coming to the United States and establishing their munitions factory here. Given how Alexander Hamilton’s idea of a federal arsenal was blocked by Congress, and given how explosives manufacture requires at least some technological expertise, it is far from certain that a munitions industry would have been established in the United States were it not for the du Pont family.
So yes, if an autocratic meritocracy can create a legacy of wealth and technological achievement, it would effectively challenge the primacy of liberal democracy in the marketplace of ideas.
