de Touqueville - Letter To My Sister

This letter to my younger sister has the idea that I wanted to enter into my blog so I will just copy and paste it here because it says all I wanted to say.
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ME

De Tocqueville was first term ATL, (American Thought and Language if you have forgotten) at MSU for me and probably for you too.

I know that you were interested in the French Revolution and this analysis is interesting in that regard but also in its application  to the situation in China.  The USA too.

If I could have written this as my ATL blue book exam, (remember blue books?) I could have rested on my laurels in ATL for the next two terms saying anything about anything and it would have been regarded as brilliant even if it was nothing  because I once said something brilliant about de Tocqueville.  Maybe that is the secret to success….??

I found this to be exceptionally interesting:

http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog2.php/2012/11/27/de-tocqueville-in-china?page=3

If something I say is brilliant and nobody hears the tree fall then was it brilliant?  Maybe time will tell.  The speed of sound might not be so fast after all.  Maybe the brilliance of what de Toqueville said is only reaching our ears (or China's ears) now.  The speed of sound crawling through time from then to now.  Really slooooo.....w!

Hey, did you just hear a tree fall in France?  I think I might have heard something like it back in 1961 but I did not know it was a tree.  Didn't know what it was, that is why I only got a C in ATL.  Not knowing was average then.  Anything changed in college since then?

Funny how all three nations, France then, USA and China now all seem to be in the same political/social/economic situation???

Maybe not funny.

Remember the guillotine.

A pertinent or prescient quote from the latter part of the link where it gets down to conclusion applying to today:

"China is proving that wealth can be generated by fostering economic liberty within a politically unfree system, and that social stability can be maintained by retaining government ownership of their macroeconomic control system, their money system.
Meanwhile large swaths of the American and European "people", the politically powerless peasantry, are being evicted from their mortgaged homes and cast into unemployment exacerbated by an official policy of "austerity", all for the sake of trying to salvage the insolvent ruin of their arithmetically impossible privately owned money systems (a for profit money system that issues all its money as loan principal, but charges debt as principal + interest, systematically creates more monetary debt than it creates money to pay that debt; the process culminates in systemic debt default and banking system insolvency as we see today in Europe and America)."

"So it is not clear that these modern Western roadkills of elite-serving political policy enjoy any more real political liberty than did 18^th century French peasants.  Whereas the Chinese government has been taking significant steps towards improving the lot of their peasantry, including job creating economic and fiscal policies, and provision of government health care and pensions.  Who serves the people, is ruled by the people's interests.  Actions and outcomes, not vacuous democratic platitudes or empty political forms, are the true test of "responsible" government."

"As increasing numbers of modern Western middle class citizens fall into the ranks of dispossessed peasants, blithely unrelieved by government policy of bailing out banks rather than bailing out bank debtors, while the ranks of wealthy elites get richer, the conditions are germinated for revolt against unrepresentative government."

"China's Choice
I don't think China is going to choose democracy.  I don't think they should.  The people can see and know who their communist rulers are, who has power to mold the broad outlines, and at the local level impose the narrow confines, of Chinese economic life, to open or close opportunity to them.  They know exactly who to blame for injustices they suffer at the hands of power, and if there is equality before the law, they can get recourse.

Here is my take on the situation:

We think that China is headed for a big cliff because of its debt.  We think that because we apply our rules defining debt in a debt money system.  There is no crash coming for China, they have a different system.

We think China is headed for freedom because it is on a course of capitalism where the people will demand more from a restrictive government system.  Once again I emphasize they have a different system.

We are applying our game, our rules, our thinking to China believing that they must play the same game.  If that premise is true then yes, China will crash.  The premise is false!  They are playing a different money game, different debt rules and a different political game and rules.  

We are in for a big surprise that says:  "Our way is not the best way".

How about that for the contrarian view of American Exceptionalism.  

When will  we hear that tree fall?