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With those caveats, I do consider waxing unemployment precipitated in part by automation an extremely likely near-term future scenario.

In rough strokes, the story of machines displacing and immiserating skilled workers reiterates the very genesis of capitalist modernity.

In contrast with the Neo-Luddites of today, the nineteenth-century Luddites expressed no desire to terminate civilization but instead fiercely defended their economic interests against capitalist competition that would reduce them dependent wage labor.

Despite the lack of even basic computers – much less artificial intelligence – some radicals in the nineteenth century already proposed that necessary labor could be reduced to a few hours per day.

The later Technocracy movement made automation the core of their analysis, argued it would cause mass unemployment, and promoted a society of equally distributed abundance managed by technical experts.

As concise distillation of the desires described above, the following passage for Oscar Wilde's “The Soul of Man under Socialism” poetically proclaims a techno-utopian position years before the dawn of twentieth century

Even manufacturing still requires vast human labor at the moment. Living and working conditions for many twenty-first-century factory workers aren't meaningfully better than over a hundred years ago. State-socialist attempts at rationally planned industrial development have had dubious material benefits while inflicting intense environmental damage and human suffering.

Our current circumstances suggest automation of at least basic physical tasks will keep advancing; lights-out factories already exist. The prospect of robots replacing humans at the majority of present-day jobs appears genuinely plausible if far from certain.

I favor the latter.

Social relations would become profoundly altered if – consistent with Wilde's utopian vision – each individual had independent access to basic necessities and comforts without having to toil.

When it comes to post-scarcity, the differences between libertarians and anarchists like myself blur.

Barring nanotech genies who grant unlimited wishes, I assess community control of the means of production as my desired arrangement. With proper political mobilization, robotization may allow for prosperous self-sufficient or largely self-sufficient communities.

Although the life of any single worker means little or nothing to them, they cannot annihilate the working class without doing the same to their own privilege. Robots change this. Human obsolescence could spell doom for the masses. If structural dynamics drive behavior, a powerful enough group of elites might simply liquidate the unruly hordes of no-longer-need labors.

I want to give automated utopia an honest try, but I also desire fertile landbases for my primitivist comrades. As personally enamored as I am with the transhumanist path, I encourage and endeavor to practice a revolutionary pluralism that respects meaningful diversity.

Columbia University's Kenneth Waltz, arguably America's pre-eminent realist, says that the opposite of "anarchy" is not stability, but "hierarchy."

Hierarchy eviscerates equality; hierarchy implies that some are frankly "more equal" than others, and it is this formal inequality -- where someone, or some state or group, has more authority and power than others -- that prevents chaos. For it is inequality itself that often creates the conditions for peace.

It is a government that monopolizes the use of violence in a given geographical space, thereby preventing anarchy. To quote Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher, only where it is possible to punish the wicked can right and wrong have any practical meaning, and that requires "some coercive power."

Whereas primacy, as Kang explains, is about preponderance purely through military or economic power, hegemony "involves legitimation and consensus."

When a hegemon does not lead, it is acting irresponsibly.

But that is only because journalists are confused about the terminology, even as they sanctimoniously judge previous historical eras by the strict standards of their own. In fact, for most of human history, periods of relative peace have been the product of hegemony of one sort or another. And for many periods, the reigning hegemonic or imperial power was the most liberal, according to the standards of the age.

There are exceptions, of course, like Hapsburg Spain, with its combination of inquisition and conquest. But the point is that hegemony does not require tyrannical or absolutist rule.

there are few things messier in geopolitics than the demise of an empire.

Therefore, I am saying only in a general sense is order preferable to disorder.

That is, by some rough measure of international consent, it is America that has the responsibility to lead. America formed NATO in Europe, even as its Navy and Air Force exercise preponderant power in the Pacific Basin. And whenever there is a humanitarian catastrophe somewhere in the developing world, it is the United States that has been expected to organize the response.

But that hegemony, in some aspects, seems to be on the wane. That is what makes this juncture in history unique.

When it comes to the Greater Middle East, Americans seem to want protection on the cheap, and Obama is giving them that. 

Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were noted for American leadership and an effective, sometimes ruthless foreign policy.

Nevertheless, in the case of the Middle East, do not conflate chaos with democracy. Democracy itself implies an unequal, hierarchal order, albeit one determined by voters. What we have in the Middle East cannot be democracy because almost nowhere is there a new and sufficiently formalized hierarchy. No, what we have in many places in the Middle East is the weakening of central authority with no new hierarchy to adequately replace it.

Americans are deeply proud of their armed forces, even during wars that have become quagmires. For the most part, that is not the case in Western Europe, where the soldiers' profession is quietly looked down upon. (The United Kingdom, France and Denmark are among the exceptions.) Europeans tend to see their own armed forces members as civil servants in funny uniforms. The idea that it is the military that defends their democratic freedoms is something many Europeans find laughable.

Of course, during the Cold War NATO had a core purpose, which it lacks today: defending Central Europe against Soviet divisions. The disappearance of that core purpose immeasurably weakens NATO. And the withdrawal of two of the four U.S. Army brigade combat teams from Europe by 2014 will weaken it further, even with the missile deployments in Eastern Europe. But that doesn't mean the alliance has no uses.

Geography still rules.

Moreover, the more that Europe reels from its debt crisis, the greater the possibility of geopolitical inroads made by Russia, and thus the more relevant NATO becomes.

Analytically, it is a mistake to assume that just because a political-military organization is less useful now than it was a quarter-century ago it is useless altogether.

NATO, like the United Nations on occasion, still provides diplomatic cover of varying degrees for American actions. NATO is American hegemony on the cheap. Imagine how much less of a fiasco the Iraq War would have been were it a full-fledged NATO operation, rather than a largely unilateral one. Without organizations like NATO and the United Nations, American power is more lonely in an anarchic world.

land engagements are especially problematic for militaries in pacifist-trending societies. NATO might be ideally suited for air and naval rescue missions in Africa and points beyond. But NATO will be kept alive so that it can continue to serve as a vehicle for European political coherence.

A more dynamic Russia, a more chaotic North Africa and continued unrest and underdevelopment in the Balkans might all pose challenges to Europe. If they do, NATO will provide a handy confidence-building mechanism.

The Kosovo Liberation Army may have been a nasty bunch by some accounts, with criminal elements. But it was not a threat to the United States like the transnational jihadists currently operating in Syria.

Kosovo did not have a complex of chemical weapons facilities scattered throughout its territory

The Kosovo war campaign did not have to countenance a strong and feisty Russia, which at the time was reeling from Boris Yeltsin's incompetent, anarchic rule.

The Kosovo war did not engage Iran as this war must. For all of the missiles that America can fire, it does not have operatives on the ground like Iran has.

The Kosovo war inflicted significant pain on Serbian civilians through airstrikes, but the Syrian population has already been pummeled by a brutal war for two years now

The goal in Kosovo was to limit Serbia's geographic influence and to ignite a chain of events that would lead to Milosevic's ouster.

If he chooses limited military strikes to send a message against the use of chemical weapons, he risks looking weak, especially following the powerful rhetoric employed by his secretary of state, John Kerry.

If he chooses regime change -- while not calling it that -- he threatens to unleash a jihadi nightmare.

Keep another thing in mind about Kosovo. At that time, the United States had not been in a ground war for a quarter-century and thus the American people were not weary of war.

Obama now faces a defining event that will test his commitment to keep America out of regional quicksand while being able to wield considerable power in the region at the same time.

Objectivists benefit from the social bonds in the society around them, many of which they regard as irrational (such as the bonds defined by common law, family “duty,” social “obligations,” etc.). But if (per impossible) Objectivism became dominant in a society, many of those bonds would be dissolved. The result would be a social order in which most people (including, perhaps, many Objectivists) would not wish to live. It would be a society dominated by intellectual bullies who would use their aggressiveness and their ability to rationalize their (unconscious and unacknowledged) need for respect and status to manipulate and stomp over their weaker brethren.

Within the social world of Objectivism, the belief that the “rational interests of men do not clash” renders it nearly impossible for Objectivsts to settle differences amicably.

precisely because Objectivists tend to regard all disputes as arising out of contradictory fundamental premises, personal disputes are framed as philosophical disputes involving metaphysical, epistemological, and moral arcana.

Fortunately for Plasil, the Objectivist community is only a small sliver of society: there was a larger non-Objectivist community that she could appeal to for justice and support. But where would she have turned in a society dominated by Objectivists, where Objectivists ran the courts and administered justice?

Indeed, in such a society, everyone would be on their own and those who could not fend for themselves would be regarded with contempt, as Plasil is among Objectivists to this day. Who would want to live in such a world?

GURGAON, India

In Gurgaon, economic growth is often the product of a private sector improvising to overcome the inadequacies of the government. To compensate for electricity blackouts, Gurgaon’s companies and real estate developers operate massive diesel generators capable of powering small towns. No water? Drill private borewells. No public transportation? Companies employ hundreds of private buses and taxis. Worried about crime? Gurgaon has almost four times as many private security guards as police officers.

Gurgaon was widely regarded as an economic wasteland. In 1979, the state of Haryana created Gurgaon by dividing a longstanding political district on the outskirts of New Delhi. One half would revolve around the city of Faridabad, which had an active municipal government, direct rail access to the capital, fertile farmland and a strong industrial base. The other half, Gurgaon, had rocky soil, no local government, no railway link and almost no industrial base. As an economic competition, it seemed an unfair fight. And it has been: Gurgaon has won, easily. Faridabad has struggled to catch India’s modernization wave, while Gurgaon’s disadvantages turned out to be advantages, none more important, initially, than the absence of a districtwide government, which meant less red tape capable of choking development. By 1979, Mr. Singh had taken control of his father-in-law’s real estate company, now known as DLF, at a moment when urban development in India was largely overseen by government agencies. In most states, private developers had little space to operate, but Haryana was an exception. Slowly, Mr. Singh began accumulating 3,500 acres in Gurgaon that he divided into plots and began selling to people unable to afford prices in New Delhi.

Mr. Singh had become the company’s India representative after befriending Jack Welch, then the G.E. chairman. When Mr. Welch decided to outsource some business operations to India, he eventually opened a G.E. office inside a corporate park in Gurgaon in 1997. “When G.E. came in,” Mr. Singh said, “others followed.”

Ordinarily, such a wild building boom would have had to hew to a local government master plan. But Gurgaon did not yet have such a plan, nor did it yet have a districtwide municipal government. Instead, Gurgaon was mostly under state control. Developers built the infrastructure inside their projects, while a state agency, the Haryana Urban Development Authority, or HUDA, was supposed to build the infrastructure binding together the city.

From computerized control rooms, Genpact employees manage 350 private drivers, who travel roughly 60,000 miles every day transporting 10,000 employees.

The city’s residential compounds, especially the luxury developments along golf courses, exist as similarly self-contained entities.

“We pretty much carry the entire weight of what you would expect many states to do,” said Pramod Bhasin, who this spring stepped down as Genpact’s chief executive. “The problem — a very big problem — is our public services are always lagging a few years behind, but sometimes a decade behind. Our planning processes sometimes exist only on paper.”

Not all of the city’s islands are affluent, either. Gurgaon has an estimated 200,000 migrant workers, the so-called floating population, who work on construction sites or as domestic help.

Meanwhile, with Gurgaon’s understaffed police force outmatched by such a rapidly growing population, some law-and-order responsibilities have been delegated to the private sector. Nearly 12,000 private security guards work in Gurgaon, and many are pressed into directing traffic on major streets.

Sudhir Rajpal, the wiry, mustachioed commissioner of the new Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon, has a long to-do list: fix the roads, the sewers, the electrical grid, the drainage, the lack of public buses, the lack of water and the lack of planning. The Municipal Corporation was formed in 2008, and Mr. Rajpal, having assumed the city’s top administrative position a few months ago, has been conducting a listening tour to convince people that government can solve their problems. It is not an easy sell.

“The drains are broken and accidents are happening,” shouted one man. “Yet no one is answerable! There are problems and problems. Whatever water we get is dirty, but we have nowhere to complain.”

“Every day some agitation is taking place,” he said, shouting above the din of traffic. “People are not satisfied.” If people should be satisfied anywhere in India, Gurgaon should be the place. Average incomes rank among the highest in the country. Property values have jumped sharply since the 1990s. Gurgaon’s malls offer many of the country’s best shops and restaurants, while the city’s most exclusive housing enclaves are among the finest in India. Yet the economic power that growth has delivered to Gurgaon has not been matched by political power. The celebrated middle class created by India’s boom has far less clout at the ballot box than the hundreds of millions of rural peasants struggling to live on $2 a day, given the far larger rural vote, and thus are courted far less by Indian politicians.