“The End of History” Grand Finale

Olegs Carkovs, Dr. oec, IT-master Prof.

Membre actifs de l'Académie Internationale CONCORDE

Professor Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama declared civilization transition to the phase of "liberal democracy"[1] ?and the establishment of a unipolar world order in his established work[2] back in 1992. The United States has acted as the only globally recognized guarantor for exactly thirty years until now. Currently, civilization faces new challenges due to internal conflicts of the "liberal democratic system". It is necessary to understand how the formation of the managerial elite took place during this time to find out causes, which led to today’s situation. Based on the management theory, any elite can be split in three groups: meritocracy, plutocracy, and bureaucracy. The ratio between them depends on the level of socio-economic, scientific, and technical development of the society. Two main approaches are used to form and expand the elite class – democratic, which is based on “merits” (social services) system, and aristocratic, i.e., inherited, or co-opted.

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?The United States transition to the global leader influenced a significant portion of global population through American consumption specifics, including the monetisation of human consciousness. Especially, an introduction of a post-industrial society[3] concept: a "society of professionals", where the main class is the "class of intellectuals", and the power belongs to the meritocracy - the intellectual elite[4]. The theoretical framework of this concept is very convincing; however, it does not consider the psychological state of individuals like in Marxist theory.

?"The Tyranny of Experts"[5], written by Professor William Russell Easterly, describes false assertion of Daniel Bell and his followers. The key finding in this work is that successful development requires bottom-up approach, whereas nowadays top-down method is used for the next stage of globalization.

This process concerns the unification of all life and activity areas: they are integrated into each other or are dissolved in the history. The society perceives globalization as an objective process and which has a significant impact on all life spheres, including education, outlook, ethics, and morality.

?In 1970, Lawrence Peter and Raymond Hahl formulated the "Peter’s Principle"[6]: any individual in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence". Some critics argued that this principle should not be taken seriously, however author himself wrote it without any hint of humor and considered it as a valid theory. He turned out to be right. Peter’s theory is proved by the entire chain of decision-making processes carried by “highly qualified professionals”, which led World to events started from 24th of February 2022. We are currently dealing with Hanlon's razor[7], not a malice, but it does not change the core of the problem.

?What did lead to such a big mistake? In his "History", Herodotus cites a parable about Thrasybulus of Miletus and Periander, where allegorically describes the method of retention of power: "You just need to cut off all of the best and tallest ears of wheat."[8] The message behind is that managers fear to lose authority, therefore they prefer an easily managed and controlled individual rather than a determined professional with a critical thinking ability. Eventually, this candidate will replace his manager and will adopt same principles. The lack of competence incentivizes to hire additional staff, split, and limit their tasks and responsibilities, which, consequently, fosters the growth in the management structure. According to the generalized Parkinson's Law: “The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource”. Thus, the responsibility for decision-making process disappears in the "depths of the bureaucracy", which focuses on the “bike-shed effect” rather than solving existing problems[9].

?The accelerating bureaucratization of the modern society is compounded by two aspects. An increase in the tax burden and irresponsibility of the political superstructure, which tends to blame third parties for own mistakes or to refer to " unforeseen circumstances” led to the impoverishment of the "middle class", which is the basis that defeated socialism. The most recent example is COVID-19 pandemic and the “helicopter money”[10] associated with it. This has led to a progressive inflation. If unprecedent intervention in banking regulation corrected the 2008 crisis, in case of pandemic, government bears a direct responsibility, since it failed to ensure citizens’ health safety and affected socio-economic situation.

?Special attention should be paid to the education level of the decision-makers. Since the notion of "creative class" has become popular among managers, the principles of monetization have affected the level of higher education, which has been greatly devalued: the level of a master's degree today is not comparable to the level of a bachelor's degree earned thirty years ago. This “pseudo-formation” created many semi-speculative branches of science, which appears to be duplicates and usually “rediscover” the results of previous studies[11]. This phenomenon was foreseen and described by Jean Baudrillard. He introduced the concepts of hyperreality and simulacrum. There are three types: copies, functional analogues, and simulacrum, which works on the principle of symbolic exchange. These include such modern phenomena as public opinion and fashion. The modern era of hyperreality is characterized by the loss of reality - the superstructure determines the basis, labor does not produce, but socializes, and representative authorities no more represent anyone. Considering all these circumstances, the only unaffected matter is death, what power and economy are based on[12]. Modern society has reached the edge on 24th of February 2022. Snobbery (hidden by a friendly mask), xenophobia (with external tolerance) and conviction in own infallibility (more reminiscent of stubbornness) do not allow the one to take the opponent's position and seek a compromise. These three factors characterize the modern political elite and led France to four revolutions throughout one century.

?The multifactorial and multivariate nature of modern socio-economic processes[13] do not allow incompetent political elite to find an algorithm that optimizes a smooth exit from the current crisis. This implies to revise the entire attitude, behavior, and values structures. All attempts to ignore modern socio-economic challenges lead to a reduction in the opportunities for self-development, which is very critical as civilization approaches a bifurcation (branching point), where attractors (development trajectories) will change[14].

?Only individuals who grew up and lived in the old system will be able to overcome the upcoming crisis and integrate into the new world order, if that happens. The response to current system instability must keep equilibrium conditions unchanged. Even small fluctuations can start processes, which can collapse the entire socio-economic system and lead to unpredictable consequences. In order not to avoid its complete destruction, it is essential to precisely define the intervention limit for transformation process. It must be done through the dialogue, which helps to smooth negative trends arising from the unpredictability of the external environment. Only in that case when the control of the socio-economic system will transform into a self-learning process, it will drift to a new state of equilibrium and to a new stage of civilization development.

?Apparently, the world order in the middle of XXI century will become another movement "from the general to the particular" and will lead to the "clustering" of the nations. The main principle of their formation will be "development paradigms" based on moral and ethical standards and scientific and technological achievements of a particular community. Several of their variants are already being seen: Anglo-Saxon, Eurasian (former Russian), Chinese, Indo-Buddhist, Arab-Muslim and "Euro-Continental". The emergence of Latin American, Pan-Turkic, Iranian-Shiite and Japanese-Korean clusters is quite likely. The boundaries between them will constantly change, as the "micro nations" of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe will try to cling to one of them in order to obtain additional preferences.

??Regarding the formation of the European cluster, one can predict a return to a “civil society” built on the ideals of the French Revolution: “Egalite, Fraternité, Liberté”. The transition to it will not be easy, since it will be necessary to seriously reduce the bureaucracy on all levels that has flooded not only state and municipal structures, but also the corporate sector of the economy. Naturally, the "creative elite" will resist, defending their privileges and referring to the rules, laws and restrictions they have invented. However, following the letter and spirit of the Russo’s "Du contrat social; ou Principes du droit politique"[15]: "society has the legal right to regain its lost freedoms". Its means, that bureaucracy must to cede his overpower and became "the servant of the people" again. This will probably require constitutionally limiting number, income[16] and the political rights of state officers, both military and civilian, forbidding them to participate in the political life of society. Another important factor in stabilizing the economy should be a return to surplus budgets at all levels of government: it will reduce inflation and restore the economic stability of the "middle class", which is likely to be different compared a hundred years earlier.

??Now, the “creative class” of European countries is distracted by the fight against “windmills” and does not notice that the earth is burning under their feet: due to changes in energy prices, industry and transport are stopped, and the majority of the population is impoverished. If this continues further, then the hour is not far off when the collapse of the system of nation-states, primarily Spain, Britain, and Belgium, will begin. The process of disintegration will be accompanied by an increase in popularity and the coming to power of European politicians of a new formation, such as éric Zemmour, Viktor Orbán, Alexis Tsipras (Αλ?ξη? Τσ?πρα?), Sebastian Kurz, etc. This means that the principles underlying the European Union will undergo a very serious revision and, possibly, revision. I would like to hope that the transition to a new united Europe will be less bloody than the Great French Revolution.?

Riga

March 12-15, 2022

[1] De Tocqueville, Alexis (Alexis-Henri-Charles Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville) De la démocratie en Amérique, Paris, C. Gosselin, 1835.

[2] Fukuyama, Francis (1992).?The End of History and the Last Man.

[3] ?The concept of a post-industrial society ... involves the emergence of an intellectual class, whose representatives at the political level act as consultants, experts, or technocrats?

[4] Bell, Daniel. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1974.

[5] Easterly, William (March 4, 2014).?The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor.?Basic Books, ISBN 078-0-465-03125-2

[6] Peter, Laurence J. and Hull, Raymond. 1969.?The Peter Principle. William Morrow & Co Inc. (Pan Books ed., 1970).

[7] Do not explain by malice what can be explained by stupidity

[8] Herodotus (Геродот). История, Л.: Наука,?1972, V, 92

[9] Parkinson, Cyril Northcote (1957),?Parkinson's Law, or The Pursuit of Progress, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986

[10] Friedman M.?The Optimum Quantity of Money.?— Routledge, 2017.?

[11] For example, many of the “theorems” of the Risk Theory of the 90s are a repetition of the results of the Reliability Theory of the 60s.

[12] La mort est peut-être la seule chose qui n'a pas de valeur d'usage. Death is perhaps the only thing that has no use value

[13] Von Hayek, Friedrich. “Individualism and Economic Order”. Chicago, Henry Regnery Company, c. 1948.

[14] Poston, Tim and Stewart, Ian. Catastrophe Theory and Its Applications. London, San Francisco, Melbourne: Pitman, 1978

[15] Jean-Jaques Russo, ‘Du contrat social; ou Principes du droit politique’, Amsterdam, 1762

[16] since according to Parkinson's second law, "the demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource”