Francis Fukayyama is a political scientist famous for his essay the end of history. It was published in 1989 just after the fall of the Berlin wall. And it put forward the argument that contention that with communism would have in decline and collapsing in much of the eastern block, liberal democracies and market economies or the combination of those two no longer faced any ideological competition. In short, he believed market liberalism was
humanity's final form. Um well, that argument has of course long faced criticism. Um, and Fugyama, you know, he sort of realized that, he's recognized that for a while. He's had a change of heart. Um, and he said this specifically about China to Sam Harris a couple of weeks ago.
Francis Fukayyama
I think that the Chinese have created a pretty impressive system. It is authoritarian. Uh, it's quai market-based and they are very successful at marshalling new technology. They're capable of innovating a lot of things we thought they weren't able to do. And conversely, uh, democracy, especially American democracy, looks like it's falling apart. if I were, uh, somebody trying to move from a poor, misgoverned country, somewhere else, I would have chosen the United States without question for most of the last several decades. But, you know, these days, I'm not sure that it's such an attractive model for many people.
I would say if the Chinese keep their development machine going uh you know it may turn out that they have a real uh alternative. I think however that it's a little premature to come to that conclusion because there are a lot of problems in China which are related to the fact that there's no feedback, there's no uh responsiveness to public opinion. Uh and that is going to get them into trouble. I think uh in the long run I think he's actually overstated the case at the end there.
