@amerika @eidolon

> I am skeptical of "self-organizing systems" since they tend toward the lowest common denominator.

There is a nice butcher and there is a Sysco truck and you can go to either. The existence of the Sysco truck does not prevent you from going to the butcher.

> it fell under self-organizing systems,

No, you look at the French Revolution. They're executing chemists. :lavoisier: Evidently, kings can fuck up so badly that peasants don't know what to do with themselves after getting rid of a shitty one.

This is why I keep saying I don't care what Europe did; I don't view "the West" as a monoculture because it is not. I can go read some diatribe about "free Englishman" from three hundred years ago and I can understand the sensibilities of the author and I try to read Voltaire and he reads like someone I'd like to punch in the face, even if he's saying things that I agree with on the balance. You keep making this mistake and ignoring that it is a mistake: the Scandanavians, the Continentals, the Mediterraneans, Eastern Europeans, these are all very different people with very different cultures. There is no unified European culture. Russian and Chinese foreign policy leaders treat the US, UK, Canada, etc., as effectively a unified place. Apparently American newscasters don't understand this and they act like they have no idea what's going on when Putin threatens the "Anglo-Saxons", or Xinhua makes a reference to the Opium Wars when discussing the US.

> anarchy, which has always been a fiction.

The Reddit version of it is. The Reddit version of anything is a fiction, so I will again decline to defend the Reddit version.