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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| cf4d6bd | Some of the gardeners, Nanao said, worked according to the precepts of Muso Soseki, others according to other Japanese Zen masters; others still to Fu Hsi, the legendary inventor of the Chinese system of geomancy called feng shui; others to Persian gardening gurus, including Omar Khayyam; or to Leopold or Jackson, or other early American ecologists, like the nearly forgotten biologist Oskar Schnelling; and so on. These | Kim Stanley Robinson | ||
| 66b8c6d | In the succeeding two centuries, however, some countries evolved in a very different direction. Prussia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain, and other European countries followed France in the development of centralized bureaucracies organized along Weberian lines. The French Revolution had, moreover, unleashed not just demands for popular political participation but also a new form of identity by which a shared language and culture would be.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 33c6553 | Interstate wars in Latin America have been so infrequent and politically unimportant that many major surveys of Latin American history barely cover them. Compared to Europe and ancient China, or indeed North America, war had a marginal effect on state building. Charles Tilly's aphorism "war made the state, and the state made war" remains true, but begs the question of why wars are more prevalent in some regions than in others." | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 2126ca5 | Should we then regret the fact that Latin America has not seen more violence over the past two centuries, either in the form of massive interstate wars or social revolutions? It goes without saying that the social revolutions that occurred in Europe and Asia were purchased at enormous cost: tens of millions of people killed in purges, executions, and military conflict, and hundreds of millions more displaced, incarcerated, starved to death,.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 20af096 | With justice and moderation the people will produce more, tax revenues will increase, and the state will grow rich and powerful. Justice is the foundation of a powerful state. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 380e2f5 | Democracy in the developed world became secure and stable as industrialization produced middle-class societies, that is, societies in which a significant majority of the population thought of themselves as middle class. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 10ec7ef | Nonetheless, the lower intensity of interstate war in Latin America did lead to some familiar outcomes. There was much less competitive pressure to consolidate strong national bureaucracies along French-Prussian lines prior to the arrival of mass political participation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This meant that when the franchise was opened up in the early twentieth century, there was no "absolutist coalition" in.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| b142976 | We might label this the Hobbesean fallacy: the idea that human beings were primordially individualistic and that they entered into society at a later stage in their development only as a result of a rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends. This premise of primordial individualism underpins the understanding of rights contained in the American Declaration of Independence and thu.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 716e2c4 | China was the first world civilization to create a modern state. But it created a modern state that was not restrained by a rule of law or by institutions of accountability to limit the power of the sovereign. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 576bf49 | The opinion that the survival of Islam itself depended on the use of military slavery was shared by the great Arab historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who lived in North Africa in the fourteenth century, contemporaneously with the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| dd005c8 | the concept of "amoral familism," whose code he describes as "Maximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise." Cooperation" -- | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 0bf79af | So. Our little pearl of warmth, our spinning orrery of lives, our island, our beloved solar system, our hearth and home, tight and burnished in the warmth of the sun--and then--these starships we are making out of Nix. We will send them to the stars, they will be like dandelion seeds, floating away on a breeze. Very beautiful. We will never see them again. | powerful science-fiction space space-exploration | Kim Stanley Robinson | |
| 5d98b9c | T]he best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same cat. | Norbert Wiener | ||
| 1228927 | Indeed, the kinds of minimal or no-government societies envisioned by dreamers of the Left and Right are not fantasies; they actually exist in the contemporary developing world. Many parts of sub-Saharan Africa are a libertarian's paradise. The region as a whole is a low-tax utopia, with governments often unable to collect more than about 10 percent of GDP in taxes, compared to more than 30 percent in the United States and 50 percent in par.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| a26915f | A free market, a vigorous civil society, the spontaneous "wisdom of crowds" are all important components of a working democracy, but none can ultimately replace the functions of a strong, hierarchical government. There has been a broad recognition among economists in recent years that "institutions matter": poor countries are poor not because they lack resources, but because they lack effective political institutions. We need therefore to b.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 638668a | We might label this the Hobbesean fallacy: the idea that human beings were primordially individualistic and that they entered into society at a later stage in their development only as a result of a rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends. This premise of primordial individualism underpins the understanding of rights contained in the American Declaration of Independence and thu.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| f279e98 | Economists agree that all taxes potentially detract from the ability of markets to allocate resources efficiently, and the least inefficient types of taxation are those that are simple, uniform, and predictable, which allow businesses to plan and invest around them. The U.S. tax code is exactly the opposite. While nominal corporate tax rates in the United States are much higher than in other developed countries, very few American corporatio.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| c7eff27 | Francis Fukuyama sformulowal teze, podjeta przez wielu myslicieli i powszechnie dzis podzielana, ze oprocz kapitalu finansowego, kapitalu pracy i kapitalu wiedzy, czwartym, zasadniczym czynnikiem cywilizacyjnego rozwoju jest kapital spolecznego zaufania. Nie moze sie szybko i dobrze rozwijac spoleczenstwo podzielone, w ktorym rzadzeni przyjmuja z biernym oporem albo wrecz sabotuja wszystkie zarzadzenia wladzy, a i na siebie nawzajem patrza .. | Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz | ||
| 375c79f | The greatest pleasure ... is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 8b7d583 | The concern over the origin of institutions dovetailed with a second preoccupation, which was the real-world problems of weak and failed states. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| e88b842 | In all postconflict reconstruction, the ultimate goal is to create a minimally capable state in four key areas: (1) security; (2) governance and participation; (3) social and economic well-being; and (4) justice and reconciliation. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 62cc56b | It was only Frederick's enormous skill as a military commander and outright luck (the accession of Peter III to the Russian throne) that saved the state and allowed it to remain a major European player. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 839dea5 | The resulting Rechtsstaat has been described as a liberal autocracy. It provided strong protections of the rights of its citizens in an impersonal manner, even though these citizens did not have the political right to hold their rulers accountable through elections. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| d742a4a | Germany, in other words, developed both a strong state and rule of law early on, well before it developed accountable government. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 9e3071e | Unrepresentative interest groups are not simply creatures of corporate America and the Right. Some of the most powerful organizations in democratic countries have been trade unions, followed by environmental groups, women's organizations, advocates of gay rights, the aged, the disabled, indigenous peoples, and virtually every other sector of society. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 7cce34b | The fact that La Follette had to use machine tactics to beat the machine suggests that machines themselves are in some way intrinsic to politics--that is, all political leaders must assemble coalitions whose members do not always share the same goals, and must often be brought along with bribery, inducements, threats, and argument. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| ffdc46c | Welcome, in other words, to the Land of Plenty. To the good life, where almost everyone is rich, safe, and healthy. Where there's only one thing we lack: a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Because, after all, you can't really improve on paradise. Back in 1989, the American philosopher Francis Fukuyama already noted that we had arrived in an era where life has been reduced to "economic calculation, the endless solving of technical pr.. | Rutger Bregman | ||
| 93c9c5d | It is only with the development of political institutions like the modern state that humans begin to organize themselves and learn to cooperate in a manner that transcends friends and family. When such institutions break down, we revert to patronage and nepotism as a default form of sociability. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 60494ea | highly corrupt governments usually have big problems in delivering services, enforcing laws, and representing the public interest. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 9ed28d8 | In societies where most politicians are corrupt, singling one out for punishment is often not a sign of reform but of a power grab. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 8a41676 | Mental models and rules are intimately intertwined, since the models often suggest clear rules for societies to follow. Religions are more than theories; they are prescriptive moral codes that seek to enforce rules on their followers. They, like the rules they enjoin, are invested with considerable emotional meaning and therefore are believed for intrinsic reasons and not simply because they are accurate or useful. While religious beliefs c.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 02af795 | The failure to find adequate funds to finance deficits caused the Spanish Crown to declare bankruptcy in 1557, 1560, 1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647, 1652, 1660, and 1662.14 These bankruptcies were not full debt repudiations, but more like what today would be called debt reschedulings or workouts. The Crown would declare a moratorium on the payment of interest on short-term and floating debt on the grounds that it was usurious and then enter i.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 73cd77b | Chinese family businesses instinctively thought of ways of hiding income from the tax collector. The situation is quite different in Japan, where the family is weaker and individuals are pulled in different directions by the various vertical authority structures standing above them. The entire Japanese nation, with the emperor at the top, is, in a sense, the ie of all ies, and calls forth a degree of moral obligation and emotional attachmen.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 0f6c872 | The vast majority of workers had no such representation; in countries where benefits like pensions were tied to regular jobs, they entered the informal sector. Such individuals had few legally defined rights and often did not possess legal title to the land or houses they occupied. Throughout Latin America and many other parts of the developing world, the informal sector constitutes perhaps 60 to 70 percent of the entire labor force. Unlike.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 57318e5 | But the late seventeenth century does provide an important model of how patrimonialism can be reversed that has some relevance to present-day anticorruption efforts. All of the elements that came together to produce the late Stuart reforms are still critical: an external environment that puts fiscal pressure on the government to improve its performance; a chief executive who, if not personally leading the reform effort, is at least not bloc.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 67c65b6 | The repeated demand for "justice," incorporated into the names of many Islamist parties, reflects not so much a demand for social equality as a demand for equal treatment under the law." | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| c95f564 | And indeed today as it struggles with its financial crisis, the central issue in Greek politics remains resentment of the influence of Brussels, Germany, the International Monetary Fund, and other external actors, which are seen as pulling strings behind the back of a weak Greek government. Although there is considerable distrust of government in American political culture, by contrast, the basic legitimacy of democratic institutions runs v.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 13e6cee | The first pan-European peace organization was established in Geneva in 1830, but | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 01f5b18 | We are taking the time to consider the Hungarian case for a simple reason: to show that constitutional limits on a central government's power do not by themselves necessarily produce political accountability. The "freedom" sought by the Hungarian noble class was the freedom to exploit their own peasants more thoroughly, and the absence of a strong central state allowed them to do just that. Everyone understands the Chinese form of tyranny, .. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 277a2bf | Slavery and serfdom, while not unknown in tribal societies, expand enormously under the aegis of states. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| a71f240 | How the new Chinese middle class behaves in the coming years will be the most important test of the universality of liberal democracy. If it continues to grow in absolute and relative size, and yet remains content to live under the benevolent tutelage of a single-party dictatorship, one would have to say that China is culturally different from other societies around the world in its support for authoritarian government. If, however, it gene.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| 463ecc3 | In my view, Greek distrust is rooted in politics, particularly in the absence of a strong, impartial state, but over the years it has perpetuated itself as a cultural habit. Distrust has been pervasive in both traditional rural Greek society and in the bitter political struggles of the twentieth century. Greeks have been divided by family, kinship, region, class, and ideology, despite the fact that Greece is one of the world's most ethnical.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| be3eebf | In the period immediately following ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the national public service at its upper levels has been described as a "Government by Gentlemen" and it did not look too different in certain respects from the one that existed in early-nineteenth-century Britain.8 One might also label it government by the friends of George Washington, since the republic's first president chose men like himself who he felt had go.. | Francis Fukuyama | ||
| a9eb002 | Given the novelty of this organization, lines of authority were confused. Although Bremer nominally worked for and reported to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, he increasingly dealt directly with the White House staff and bypassed the Pentagon bureaucracy. Relationships with the local U.S. military command were reportedly both strained and confused. The massive U.S. military presence and its role in providing law and order were regarded as incre.. | Francis Fukuyama |