Formal pragmatics, lifeworld, domains of social action – all these – lean toward both positivist and pragmatic approaches to economic integration.

Indeed, perhaps we should wish FV gears towards critical rationality in the best tradition of Habbermas.

The reason is simple. Our economic evolution is inverted. Cities were created by outsiders as trading enclaves and the process of arbitrating the integration the major portions of the islands will become a tedious, difficult and uncertain process. It will take a massive shift in attitudes that will lead to a most primal form of creative destruction……But it has to happen…

I have always considered blogging as “communicative action” in the Habbermasian formulation. And I agree that FV should get its acts together in terms of the attainment of that paradigm.

I also have no problem with a “democracy of the educated” although to attain it, a nation like the Philippines attempting to modernize must first create economic surplus. This surplus will be long in coming if we follow benigO’s formula of “culture change” first.

My route is economic take off first, then use the economic surplus created to promote and develop quality education, the ultimate telos being “democracy of the educated” to dispense with the need for “moral and intellectual aristocracy.”

I don’t see economic take off happening with “Juan Tama” or “Ako mismo” routes, because to me these are all diversion – much like the perpetual blaming of the government, the politicians, and the supposedly culturally damaged Juan Tamad – away from holding accountable those with the wherewithal to create wealth by vigorous entrepreneurship and a great sense of country.

Firstly, the American Founding Fathers set up a democracy for the wellborn because, to borrow bO’s lingo, of an ocho-ocho phenomenon, – the Shays’ rebellion.

I can agree that for a system of governance to be democratic, the people must retain the “finay say” and choosing their representatives must be by the process of one man one vote.

Now, why some nations have fared better than others in developing the institutions of capitalism, the late American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (who likewise once thought that the “excess of democracy” during the Vietnam Era was some sort of ocho-ocho movement) has pointed, among other things, to the “lack of national unity and the failure of dominant immigrant minorities (e.g., the Chinese Diaspora in the Philippines) to assimilate” and in the absence of such unity and assimilation, “there generally is no development of a legally, economically and politically empowered civil society concerned with the welfare of the entire nation and all its people.”

Citing liberal economist Jeffrey Sachs, Huntington also referred to “obstructive elites” whose interests are “vested in traditional conditions,” and “resist institutionalization of rule of law legal systems, norms of social mobility, and capitalist markets – all of which threaten their elite status.”

These insights are interesting if juxtaposed with benignO’s lavish adulation of the market dominant Filipino-Chinese community which he seems to characterize, quite naively, as homogeneous.

Here’s what Clinton Palanca, an Oxford postgraduate tsinoy, wrote on this score:

“The ideal of the ethnic Chinese who is integrated and thinks of himself or herself as Filipino while retaining Chinese cultural identity does exist, but so does the bigot who sees Filipinos as inferior and adopts a ‘sojourner’ mentality and an instrumental attitude toward the Philippine economy. These two figures form the endpoints of a spectrum along which the Chinese in the Philippines are ranged.”

Palanca however excluded the First Filipinos from his “range” (Rizal, Aguinaldo, Mabini, Bonifacio, etc who were of Chinese ancestry and the next generation, such as Osmena, Lopez, Roxas, Laurel and even Marcos not to speak of Cojuangco, Puyat, Ongpin, and the still monosyllabic Lims and Tans). The Villafuertes and Robredos of Bicol in the regional scene are descendants of more recent Chinese Diaspora but also outside of Palanca’s range.

The “Chinese” economic elites in the Philippines who own about sixty percent of market capitalization, in particular those rentier taipans with sojourner mentalities, are ultimately recipes for a lackluster national economic progress.

In another post I also pointed out that the “Chinese” in the Philippines were Hispanicized during the Friar regime and then Anglo-Americanized during Uncle Sam’s rule.

Now this again from Palanca about the chameleonic aspect of Chinese identity triggered this time by the awakened dragon or the “emergence of China as a dominant force in the Asian economy”:

“The descendants of the older Chinese mestizo classes, who had previously downplayed their Chinese ethnicity, are now suddenly rediscovering the Chinese aspect of their ethnicity. The generation of Chinese-Filipinos who had emigrated in the first half of the century in the years leading up to the communist takeover of China and their descendants are now held in higher regard. But what has the potential to become respect can easily swing the other way to distrust if the power of the Chinese-Filipinos is seen to be too dominant — or, more to the point, if they are seen not as Filipinos, but as an ethnic minority group who has gained an incommensurate degree of influence.”

Blogs like FV ought to be training grounds for the Aristorcracy of the Mind.

The Philippines is still mainly a disintegrated society that is based on family based culture. (feudal)Loyalty is based on family ties. Familist cultures and the class relationships amongst families define how communities operate.

The primary example of the primitive, backward and still corrupt nature of family based culture is Mar Roxas. He comes from the most reactionary group still struggling to maintain their dominance in the country. He stands as a symbol of the landlordism class of this country that must be relegated to the dustbin of history for the country to prosper.

Hence trying to maintain this perverted system of democratic process under the framework of this feudal culture through the capture of the modern means of money creation (state power)you do not have to use armed force any longer.

The ideal is there but reality is far more complex… Even the establishment of the constitutional republic that is the U.S.A. was very far from the ideals of “We the people……

Today the world is no longer engaged in the silly contradictions of left versus right but is trying to rationalize the issues based on economic patriotism or economic nationalism.

We are in many ways back in the 19th century prior to the emergence of the Cold War. Stalin’s Russia was able to leap frog while most of the West was mired in the First World Depression. That division of the world lasted till the late 80′s. Now the world is watching on whether China will in turn be able to advance faster while the West including the U.S. will be struggling to maintain their economic standard…China will have to extend and deepen their sphere of influence and replace Japan and the U.S. in most of Asia. That will necessary include Central Asia.

The next generation of pinoys will have to learn Mandarin….