Henry Kissinger asked in his 2014 book World Order how the Westphalian principles of balance of power and national states as smallest unit of the current international order are being challenged. He concluded that there are three main challengers:

1. Islam: Proliferation of a new religious world order and disintegration of the nation state through radical Islam
2. Supranational Organizations: Disintegration of the nation state through pooled sovereignty of international entities like the EU or probably at a later stage ASEAN
3. China: Proliferation of a new cultural world order and corrosion of the existing international world order through a shift in power and the subversion of international mechanisms and institutions through setting up a similarly designed shadow system

 
I would like to add the failure of democracy itself. Last weeks visit to Austria showed that democracy is at a point where citizen participation is reduced to such an extent that democracy turns into bureaucracy: power has been seized from the people by political power structures. It does not make any difference whether right center or left center representatives are elected. The political elite collaborates with the financial and commercial elite at the expense of the society at large. French economist’s, Thomas Piketty,  long term study of wealth accumulation proves that despite an unchanged democratic system since more than 70 years, our economic reality is a carbon copy of wealth distribution before WWI.
 
The result is a radicalization of the electorate. Mainstream parties are shunned, left and right wing movements gain momentum. Oscar winner Charles Ferguson explains these dynamics for the US in this brilliant video. Leftist anarchist groups like Freeman and German nationalist groups like Identitäre show that the political center and democracy itself is eroding. In Austria, one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. Not the followers of such movements are to blamed, but the greedy elites on top of our societies.  
 
Further information in German only:

• Great documentary about the Freeman movement
• Identitäre propaganda video
• Identitäre on wikipedia

 

Douglas Coupland, author of cult-status-book Generation X, writes in the last edition of the FT Weekend: I spent my 24 hours in St. Petersburg wilfully illiterate, able only to read logos and the occasional patch of English. But here’s the thing – and this is a dark truthful confession, and I know it sounds terrible – but illiteracy is actually kind of a nice feeling. You don’t get so stressed out about things. Urban clutter turns into wallpaper. Your brain feels leaner and smoother. I kind of recommend it.
 
I don’t even bother to read the rest of his travel journal. His entrée makes my day and gives me yet another – much undervalued – reason to stay in China. I have always had this feeling that being abroad is conducive to my mental health and even when still back in Austria, I quit reading dailies or watch TV news broadcast, because it felt better that way. I fail to keep up this habit when back on occasional business or holiday trips to my home turf. The consequences are fatal to my peace of mind.
 
There is the incompetence of federal, province and city governments to jointly plan large scale infrastructure projects. The provincial capital, third largest city, within the second largest urban agglomeration of this tiny country, which I hail from, is literally stuck in traffic. Three out of five Danube bridges are under construction, and a forth one is being removed this very summer. If this is not a case of grotesque incompetence in a core responsibility of public governance, which should cause the immediate dismissal of the respective political functionaries on all three levels, what then it is? Ignorance? Negligence? A form of somber hibernation in the midst of tropical summer?
 
The regional daily in my home province titles today that the former mayor of my home town demands reimbursement of legal proceeding expenses, which incurred to him in course of a trial over charges of gross negligence. The city signed a Swiss Franc swap transaction with a US owned bank during his mayorship and lost 610 Million Euros. Not only that he pleaded being not guilty of gross negligence, no the court confirmed his plead. He now demands to be reimbursed for EUR 25k of legal representation expenses. Outrageous. His then municipal finance minister wants to reclaim EUR 255k. EUR 85k have been already approved by the city council. All this is tax money; and the public debt is rising. Our former mayor is an obese culprit who has lost any sense of moral direction. But even worse: his misconduct is tolerated and even supported by our judicial and administrative system. Democracy in a dead end.
 
More than 70 years after the end of WWII the residence of Adolf Hitler in the Austrian-German border town of Braunau will be nationalized. The political discussion whether the building shall be demolished or turned into a museum is ongoing. How is this possible? Not only does this case reveal generally poor efforts of getting to terms with our fascist past, its also yet another case of wasting tax money. The former owner received from the ministry of interior a monthly rent of EUR 4800 for … well, not complying with the building usage demands. EUR 4800 monthly for a desolate building out in the sticks!

As long as you can continue to operate like this, no pity on you, my dear Austria. If you continue to fail, you will eventually fall.  

PS: the only man - apart from Thomas Bernhard - who saw my fellow country man as they really are, cartoonist Manfred Deix, died last week. RIP, you bastard paedophile rapist clergyman politician scumbag. I loved your anthropophobe perspective of our home nation.

Some months ago I wrote a short essay on wechat + good governance = good wechat governance. I happened to combine for that essay older research on Maslow's pyramid of human needs with more recent information on wechat functionalities. The recent acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft makes me recall some of it, in particular the above well done, but not complete visualization of Maslow's pyramid and the corresponding social networks.

Microsoft's hotmail, which I use as my main mail platform since more than 15 years - out of laziness to change to a different provider and frankly spoken some nostalgia - does not really make it into above pyramid; although one could argue that offering a mail service satisfies the need of belonging. I would therefore add the hotmail icon to the belonging stage. But Microsoft definitely failed until recently to offer any product on the esteem and self-realization stage. The recent acquisition of LinkedIn was therefore a smart albeit expensive move up the ladder of an evolving and ever more demanding consumer crowd. The Economist disagrees with me. PC World's Mark Hackman seems to agree with me albeit on slightly different premises: LinkedIn is the social network with serious data.

Whether google+ and facebook solely serve the belonging need is to be disputed. I would argue that they satisfy more of an esteem need than a belonging need and stretch over both stages. With already quite mature products for the satisfaction of belonging and esteem needs on the market, I assume that it was a difficult process for Microsoft to identify an acquisition target. LinkedIn seems to be the perfect match for Microsoft because similar like google+ and facebook cover two needs, LinkedIn covers the needs of esteem and self-realization. Moreover, since Microsoft's products are rather tailored for the "traditional" corporate world, LinkedIn has most likely more member overlap with existing Microsoft consumers than facebook or google+. Hackman shows this brilliantly with the juxtaposition of Microsoft's office graph and LinkedIn's economic graph, both revealing the user information the two companies have access to.

LinkedIn's real draw for Microsoft is in my opinion the satisfaction of the self-realization need. But it can not fully gauge this potential - yet. Following a discussion on a LinkedIn post titled 12 Things Successful People NEVER Reveal About Themselves At Work, I realized that there is still a lot of fear on LinkedIn letting down one's pants. Fair enough! The work environment continues to be a place where we can't freely talk about what we are truly interested in and passionate about. LinkedIn is THE extended work environment, therefore it is set to remain like this for another while.

Microsoft will have to look into short- and midterm alternatives. I therefore assume that Quora or Aeon Ideas will soon be or are already Microsoft's next acquisition target, because Quora and Aeon Ideas truly fulfill man's self realization needs in a social media context. I might proof wrong though if Microsoft is able to develop its digital assistant product Cortana faster than expected as Mark Hackman writes in his PC World article. We would then enter a work environment very similar to what Spike Jonze envisioned in his 2013 movie Her. But then again, would a digital assistant - even if she had Scarlett Johansson's voice - be able to support our search for self-realization. I doubt it. Compassionate and genuine writing and journaling, activities you engage in on Quora and Aeon Ideas and to some extent on LinkedIn, on the other hand do. That's a proven fact; watch e.g. the highly popular TED talk by Shawn Anchor. So my guess is still: Microsoft will acquire Quora.