Part 3- How to Identify Failing Nation States

In the previous part of this series, I wrote about two more characteristics of failing or failed nation sates- namely, an inability to build and maintain new infrastructure and whether the ruling class in those places identifies with and is beholden to some other nation/ organization. It should not be surprising that Latin American countries are, once again, failed states- by either criteria. However in 2024 it is hard to ignore that more than a few western countries are also leaning in that direction. It is no secret that significant parts of supposedly first-world countries such as UK, France, Italy, USA etc have decaying and poorly maintained infrastructure outside their showpiece urban areas. While the degree of decay and blight varies from country to country and region to region, a noticeable percentage of these developed countries increasingly resemble developing countries or worse. While there are many reasons for this unfortunate trend, it is not possible to ignore it any longer.

Furthermore, a significant part of the “elected” political leadership of alleged western democracies no longer identifies with the people who elected them. Instead, they are focused on satisfying the demands and whims of their financial backers- such as the very rich, international financial capital, transnational institutions- often of a financial nature and generally anyone who has the money to make them dance to their tune. In other, the leadership in western “democracies” no longer pretend to run those nations for the benefit of the majority who voted them into power. At this point, elections in western “democracies” are largely pointless rituals where most people go through the motions without actually believing in them. Oddly enough, nations which are single-party systems such as China, Japan etc still seem to be doing quite well and actually deliver a much better deal for their citizens than alleged western democracies.

With that out of the way, let us talk about two more features of failing or failed nation states. As you will see, western countries nowadays display both features to varying degrees- which is a significant change from how things were even three decades ago.

4] The government, bureaucracy and institutions exist to make life worse for average citizen- even if they work properly. Once again, this feature is more obvious in some countries than others. For example- almost nobody from Latin American countries believes that government, bureaucracies and institutions exist to improve the lives of average people. In fact, making such a statement to people from those countries will be seen as borderline retarded- and for good reason. In these countries, governments exist to exert power over and abuse their citizens. Bureaucracy exists to reward to reward sycophants with parasitic jobs which let them steal from and abuse their citizens and institutions exist to justify the thievery, incompetence and abuse heaped by previous groups on the majority. The same is true in countries such as India, Pakistan etc. I would go so far as to say that the generally poor quality of life in many countries has to do with this mixture of greed, incompetence and abusiveness.

However this is not the case for many east-Asian countries. Even in countries that are not China, Japan or South Korea, the government often does a pretty decent job of doing what a government is supposed to do. To be clear, nobody is pretending that the government in any of these countries is perfect- but it is obvious that governments in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam etc do a decent job of addressing the needs and wants of their citizens. This takes the form of everything from making sure that housing, medical care and education are of reasonable quality and affordable to making sure infrastructure is built, maintained and expanded. More importantly, they keep getting better at their jobs with each passing year- something we will revisit later. Similarly the public and private bureaucracies in these countries generally tend to work with acceptable levels of corruption. The institutions in these countries are also relatively apolitical and seldom stick their noses where it does not belong.

So how does this compare to western “democracies”? Well.. for the first few decades after WW2, things worked quite well in these countries. Governments, for example, did try to balance the interests of corporations and citizens. They generally did a good job at keeping housing, healthcare, education etc affordable and had policies which encouraged social mobility. Most people had decent pay, working hours, job security, nice pensions etc. This started changing after the 1980 when almost all governments went away from such populist policies to facilitating the exploitations of their own citizens by corporations and the government. To summarize, the government of pretty much every single country in West has no interest in maintaining, let alone improving, the quality of life for majority of its citizens- and it shows. Whether this manifests itself in decaying infrastructure, cities and towns in many parts of USA and UK or the inability to build infrastructure projects without severe delays in Germany- it is basically impossible to ignore the accelerating and increasingly terminal decline.

There is also no real job security or decent pensions for younger generations in combination with shredding of social safety net, ridiculous increases in cost of housing and general immiseration of population. In USA, the equally ridiculous increases in cost of healthcare and education are an extra burden. It should be noted that every single one of these adverse changes is the end result of deliberate and consistent government policy. Which brings us the equally deleterious effects of bureaucracy and institutions in failing nations. While bureaucracy in successful nation such as China, Japan etc is competent and provides a large net benefit to the people, the same is not true of western bureaucracy- in both the governmental and private sector. This has been especially true in West since late 1980s and the level of sclerosis due to bureaucracy has reached dangerous and unsustainable levels. This expansion of an ineffective and malicious administrative state has however created tons of parasitic jobs for people who would be otherwise unfit for any real job.

As far as institutional decay is concerned, just have a loot at the FDA, CDC, NASA and pretty much any governmental agency in USA. They now exist mainly to pretend that they are necessary and employ fast-talking credentialed charlatans- rather than do the tasks they were created to fulfill. The extent of decay in western institutions over past three decades is a subject too large to properly address in this post.

5] The general negative direction of performance or even expectations about it is another characteristics of failing nation states. As a counterexample to failing states, let me use some African nations which have gotten much better over past three decades. While it might not be well known in West, countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia have gotten noticeably better and less dysfunctional over this timespan. The same is true for India (with regional variations), Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. In other words, even though they may still be far from good places for the average person- they are consistently getting better. Latin America is a mixed situation, where some countries such as Mexico (especially some parts) have gotten much better while others such as Brazil, Argentina and Colombia have stagnated or regressed. Most countries in East Asia or even SE Asia have done very well, with the success of China being especially obvious. Russia has also done quite well since 2001.

Now compare this to the general trajectory of western “democracies”, which have suffered a multi-decade stagnation or regression in technological progress, living standards and most importantly of all- future expectations. While there are some systemic factors driving this stagnation/regression including such as demographical changes, it hard to deny that not a single western country is going in a direction of less dysfunction and more realistic hope. Sure.. some factors driving this general trend such as believing in environmental BS, excessive and counterproductive rules and regulations, financialization of economy, deindustrialization etc are self-inflicted. But ask yourself- how did these societies get into such self-destructive patterns when things were much better previously and more importantly why are they digging a deeper hole? Some of my previous posts have speculated on the many interacting reasons for this trend, but it comes down to creating social systems which are not human friendly and capable of inspiring social cohesion. At this moment, the West is running on inertia from a prosperous past and the last fumes of what it once had- but neither is going to last for more than a decade.

What do you think? Comments?