The increasing tendency to "unify" European countries under a central hyper-state, the European Union, and, in general, the pre-eminence of the central state in the West since the end of the 19th century, including the manifolded manifestations of unconstitutional empowerment of the federal government in the USA, run counter to what made contemporary Western civilization possible, thus really representing a pattern of continuous regression.
One of the biggest challenges for mankind in recent history is being posed by a politico-economic cycle of ascendancy and decline, whereby increases in privately generated wealth are usurped to make the state stronger, while in the medium to long-run it turns out that the stronger the state the less wealth (creating capacity) there is.
Robert Higgs offers a brief survey of what transformed the West into the first persistently wealth-enhancing civilization:
As late as the 14th century, the Chinese probably enjoyed the highest level of living of any large population. Recall the amazement with which Europeans greeted Marco Polo's account of China in the latter part of the 13th century, even though, as Polo declared on his deathbed, he had not described the half of what he had seen.[1]
[... However,]
In contrast to the merchants of Europe (and later the United States), who could play one government against another in a quest for secure private-property rights, the businessmen of China suffered an inescapable clampdown by their all-embracing imperial government. "By 1500 the Government had made it a capital offense to build a boat with more than two masts, and in 1525 the Government ordered the destruction of all oceangoing ships." Thus, China, whose foreign commerce had been vast and far-reaching for centuries, "set a course for itself that would lead to poverty, defeat and decline."[6] Among many other adverse actions, the Mandarin-dominated government "stopped the development of clocks and water-driven industrial machinery throughout China."[7]
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