So the richest and most technologically advanced societies in the world, consisting of the most educated and most productive free people in the world, people who through democratic institutions can shape their societies as they see fit, are converging to the same basic model, and you want me to believe that this isn't a ringing endorsement of that model?
> ...the most educated and most productive free people in the world, people who through democratic institutions can shape their societies as they see fit...
I don't accept this premise. Voting is only a small input into the colossal self-propelling machinery of bureaucracy (and the government-to-corporations-and-back chain of what could be called pay-offs or bribes... ie campaign donations, to profit-increasing changes in government policy, and back again).
True in the small stuff, but it's pretty ridiculous to say that the modern welfare state is the product of bureaucracy rather than democratic will. Look at polls of what voters say they actually care about.
I'm with you on paper voting being a small input, but (arguably) a more important part of the "freedom" part of our "free societies" is the ability to vote with my time, dollar, and feet - decide where I spend my time, my money, and where I live.
So howsabout this rephrasing:
> people who through [their free actions] can shape their societies as they see fit...
1) I don't necessarily agree with your claim "through democratic institutions can shape their societies as they see it" - democracies are quite a bit messier than that.
2) I wouldn't use the word "converging" - I would probably say becoming stuck in similar states of sub-optimal social organisation.
And to touch on your other suggestions, I would say that, while these are certainly the richest and most educated people in the world, I don't believe that they are as a whole either: a) particularly self-aware of their own desires and values b) particularly conscious of how they might achieve said desires and values or c) particularly cognisant of how contemporary norm of policies and political strategies actually affect and shape society.
My argument would be that if people satisfied a, b, and c, we would see very different policy arrangements in Western societies. Speaking crudely, people would accept that even if it were possible to coerce market outcomes, it would not be desirable. Politics would become extremely boring, because it would no longer hold pretensions about its capacity to "manage" or "shape" the market.
I would assert that these are the policies that an enlightened society would recognise as most contributing and enabling the greatest good to the greatest number, and would therefore pursue.
Fundamentally, I don't think modern societies are as enlightened as you would like to portray them. That's really not meant to be a critique, I don't think it would be fair to expect much more at this stage of history.
The rules of economics do not dictate outcomes. Government intervention can move economies to different equilibriums. It's just how the rules of physics don't necessitate that people give up on the idea of flying. They dictate what one has to do to fly--not what one's end-goal should be.
I find it odd that you seem to find my outlook pessimistic. Quite the opposite: I would argue fervently that I absolutely believe in a world of flight. It is a world underpinned, a world that must be underpinned, at heart, by one utterly simple principle:
Let us defend the right of one another to the freedom to act as we each see fit, as long as we do not cause each other harm.
Note that this is still a world in which many people can and most certainly will make poor decisions and fall behind in life. But there is nothing stopping a true libertarian from feeling that some of their time and resources can be best spent helping those people improve their economic decision-making.
Yet a true libertarian would also honour the decision of another not to care (though they might not respect it.)
