Burbles Punctuated by Occasional Screeches

I see what David Brin is trying to do: reform without violence Macauley-fashion. He wants to use institutional ad-hocracy to outflank the decaying New South's GOP but he never questions Wall Street or the Pax Americana. He praises Pericles who is a perversely bad example.

The Delian League was a lot like our Bretton Woods / NATO order, and like Athens the US was the leader of this League, which began ostensibly as a defensive alliance against Persia. Over time, however, Athens converted the league into an empire - moving the treasury to Athens, demanding tribute, and enforcing compliance with the threat of force.

This dead goldfish was democratic at home but imperial abroad. It was dependent on naval supremacy and economic extraction (helped along by the navy). The other allies started to resent this. Other city-states grew alarmed.

The Pax Americana has also hardened into a hegemonic system, especially since the energy crisis and the weakening dollar. Like Athens the US was theatrically democratic at home but increasingly interventionist abroad, dependent on military projection and the positioning of the dollar as the reserve currency. Allies sometimes feel coerced into alignment, especially when American interests override theirs. We're flourishing, all right (Hollywood, tech, and financial titanism) but there are accusations of arrogance.

The reason for the parallelism is the same as always: institutional entropy, or organizations taking on lives of their own and shirking their original purposes to batten and fatten.

Athens → America: Both began as liberators/defenders, then shifted into imperial managers.  Tribute → Dollar System: Athens demanded tribute; America demands compliance through financial, military, and technological systems.  Democracy’s Shadow Play: Both polities celebrate democracy internally while exercising coercion externally.  Resentment: Just as Sparta and Corinth bristled under Athenian dominance, nations today bristle under American primacy.  

Brin’s optimism blinds him to the Athenian analogy: the joy of cultural flourishing and scientific progress masks the coercive structures beneath. My anxious apercu is that Pax Americana, like Periclean Athens, is a polity of radiant creativity paired with imperial extraction.  

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