Hu is due to remain in power until 2012. Given the economy s solid performance and the docility of China s population, there seems little doubt that Hu s twenty first century market dictatorship will preserve the Party s mandate to continue ruling for now.

The comparative docility of infectious diseases like smallpox has contributed to a degree of complacency about the magnitude of the risks of refusing vaccination. When an epidemic actually begins, people quickly change their minds, and demand the rapid production and distribution of vaccines.

Despite being a largely secular generation, they are using the narrative of jihad (the knife is a conspicuous Islamic State symbol) to defy their parents docility, challenge an incompetent Palestinian leadership, and, most of all, to resist the Israeli occupiers. That is why they have made Islam s holy shrines on Jerusalem s Temple Mount (Haram al Sharif to Muslims) into icons of their rebellion.

But the relative docility of rank and file workers on trade issues must ultimately be attributed to something else altogether the safety nets erected by the welfare state. Modern industrial societies now have a wide array of social protections unemployment compensation, adjustment assistance, and other labor market tools, as well as health insurance and family support that mitigate demand for cruder forms of protection.