Great blog as always, Janice.

I am now reading “Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World” by the great Serbian economist Branko Milanović. In it Milanović distinguishes between what he calls Liberal meritocratic capitalism, which he argues has prevailed in the US and Western Europe in the early 21st century and what he calls political capitalism, of which the People’s Republic of China is the best example, but would also include such diverse countries as Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Algeria and Tanzania. His book was published in September 2019, so it was a little surprising that even at that time he makes not a single reference to DEI, and can use the word “meritocratic” to describe North American capitalism in the 21st century without snickering. The political capitalist regimes he contrasts the US with all tend to be more corrupt than the United States and less democratic, but I suspect none of them have been contaminated by DEI in the same way or to the same extent as the US. This is perhaps part of the reason that they have, with the exception of Algeria, shown impressive growth rates in average GDP per capita between 1990/1991 and 2016, Of course, most people probably wouldn’t prefer to move to any of these countries rather than live in the US or Canada, although even this is now a matter for debate. Brock Eldon’s novella “Ground Zero in the Culture War” describes his frustration completing a Master’s degree in literature at a major Canadian university, and how he found happiness in Vietnam, a political capitalist country where DEI has not contaminated the society. Good luck to him, his lovely Vietnamese wife and their young daughter.