"As Paul Polman, the former chief executive of Unilever has said, “business cannot succeed in societies that fail.” Western democracies have failed. A decade ago, the world was mired in the global financial crisis. Those responsible walked away. Insurrection today is the child of impunity and inequity. Economies must be made to work for more people. Justice, equal opportunity, education and sustainability should be guiding values. Too many people for far too long have felt invisible, disposable and worthless."Ask about it half of Lithuanian pensioners living in poverty. But there is hope. When it came to competing with the Soviet Union, the Western world improved people's lives in the West and competed seriously. Now a similar competitor has emerged again - China.
"The ideological confrontation between the United States and China has sharpened as President Xi Jinping declares himself ruler for life, fast-forwards the Surveillance State, offers the Chinese model as global paradigm, makes the quest for technological dominance by 2025 explicit and pursues both maritime and territorial expansion, whether overtly military or cloaked in slogans like “Belt and Road.” Mr. Xi’s model is not totalitarianism, which is passé, but “techtarianism,” a surveillance state based on advanced facial recognition technology."It is unlikely that the wealthy in the West would be more willing to be locked up in China's re-education camps than they were willing to be locked up in Stalin's concentration camps. This why we can expect the West to have the same level of discipline in competition with China as we have seen before in competition with the Soviet Union.
