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Can democracy survive the fourth industrial revolution? by LavaBat
This is a very interesting article to me, and not for the reasons you might think.
The idea of democracy not surviving the fourth industrial revolution (aka job automation) is very important to my Chimera Universe setting - in their world, they have already gone through the fourth industrial revolution, and trying to work out where we may end up going in real life helps me to understand how their world works.
Obviously there are factors in their universe that we don't have in real life (slavery being the main one), but it does help.
I am also fascinated by the utopian, and in many ways naive predictions of what the internet would do for democracy, versus what has actually happened in recent years.
As usual with journals like this, I am interested in hearing what you think about this issue.
Can democracy survive the fourth industrial revolution?
Should it?
If it doesn't survive, what is the alternative?
Rule by an educated elite, as envisioned by Socrates? Yeah, like the mob would allow themselves to be completely disenfranchised by their so-called "betters!"
Autocracy and dictatorships? No thanks! But that would be familiar to the people of my Chimera Universe, and many would probably choose to go with the familiar over the unknown. At the very least, strong parties with strong one-Chimera leaders would be popular.
I am sure there are other options, but I can't think of them at the moment.
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With the exception of the 2nd middle ages, that's pretty much what happened in my universe when Lantrei was first settled! The main difference is that the private military companies of the world evolved into mafia like syndicates which then evolved into noble families, who led a 'mostly bloodless coup' against the regulatorium (scientific meritocracy) government that had evolved earlier.
Regarding the real world, I can actually see your scenario happening. Heck, some parts of your scenario have already happened! The US army can't, or at best is unwilling, to go to war without mercenaries/private military companies. I personally don't think it has anything to do with saving money though - the simple fact is PMC deaths are not reported and don't go on the rolls of honour. Which means the media and the voting public don't care about it. Unlike flag draped coffins...
And the super rich are already using their wealth to push their personal agendas on the "ignorant" public.
Out of curiosity - what technologies do you think we could lose?
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The internet will be lost, I'm sure. As will a good portion of fundamentals research. You can see it already - people don't care about particle physics because it isn't showy. We're in the process of losing spaceflight, manned spaceflight seems just about dead now, for example.
Many things that depend on spaceflight, such as meteorology, climatology (climate change seems a sure thing now), and many advanced materials... all lost.
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That, or the internet will become censored and will only have the ruling group(s) propaganda on it. Which would put people off the internet... not that that would help all that much.
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Have you ever read "ShadowRun"?
Link
Irbis
I suspect that the vastly wealthy people of the world today will use the prospect of trickling that wealth out to gather masses of professionals supporting them, eventually also masses of 'security forces' that will function as private armies. Competing with each other, they will establish small feifdoms and we'll slowly fall into a new period of feudalism, where the wealthy fight amongst themselves to establish power over one-another while the climate is wrecked. Slowly, the disasters will cost us several technologies. In 600-800 years, rediscovering the internet and the classical world, the people at the end of the 2nd middle ages will say "Why has humanity twice turned away from progress and become stupid?" as the 2nd Renaissance begins.
I dunno. I just don't think it will go well.