Here are a few thoughts; they aren’t meant as critiques of things you say, but simple thoughts triggered by, building on or attempting to complement your analysis.
What plausible outside views are there? How much to rely on which?
Here is another possible outside view one could take. Under this view, the question of how societies govern themselves is subject to evolutionary dynamics. (You allude to this a bit in one of your footnotes, when talking about economic determinism.) Different societies adopt different approaches, and societies with better approaches are more successful and become more dominant. Less successful societies either cease to exist or adopt the better approaches by imitation. Based on this view, we can identify “evolutionary pressures” and know some things about where these pressures are likely to steer us in the future. (Obviously we still don’t know exactly where this development leads us, but the space of possible developments is in fact constrained by these co-evolutionary dynamics.)
What specifically might “fitness” look like here? Taking a perspective as roughly outlined in this paper, we could posit that in order for a species to grow ever larger in scale, it requires (what in the paper is called) information processing capacity. Democracy (or government/the policy making apparatus at large) can be viewed as essentially such an information processing technology, and thus adaptive/fitness enhancing. Given the size and complexity of present day societies, it does look like the largely top-down information processing technology of an authoritative regime would less adaptive.
One can argue that democracy is a “successful adaptation” and thus is likely stick around. Maybe this is true, but I think this argument is way harder to make than what I’ve offered above, and I’m not actually sure it stands. Reasons why this isn’t straightforward include that the evolutionary dynamics described above are not very pure (compared to “proper” Darwinian natural selection), and that the environmental conditions within which the process unfolds are changing drastically, which could for example mean that adaptations that were fitness enhancing in the past won’t be in the future.
The reason I do bring this argument up however is that I think it suggests that we shouldn’t pay much attention to the “regression to the means” type arguments. I agree this is a prior to use, but I think we know enough about the territory that we shouldn’t rely much on it.
(I don’t necessarily think you do (though I don’t know). This is to say, I can see how you might get to the 4 in 5 prediction without invoking a “regression to the means” type argument, but by solely looking at the arguments you have for example layed out in your section on automation.)
I largely agree with your assessment that and how automation puts a lot of pressure on the fate of democracy (although, as you acknowledge, there are ways automation could strengthen democracy, and the way this will cash out sure seems liek it’s subject to strong path dependency.)
When we compare pre-industrial times to post-industrial times, it is not only our economy and our arsenal of technologies that is different. Within these ~200-300 years, humanity has also undergone meaningful intellectual and moral progress. This includes things like coming to think that women and people of colour are full members of society, or spelling out values such as freedom, self-realization, etc. If automatisation will lead to power being concentrated in the hands of a small elite, this also means that the beliefs and values of this elite become more important.
Of course, if their moral ideals are in stark contrast with others, e.g. economic interests, we should expect they will just throw most of these ideals over board or engage in elaborate rationalizations to present they are still holding them up high. But if the conflict of interst remains relatively weak, I do think this migth be a factor that palys a role.
If democracy retreats, what will it be replaced by?
A lot of the time, people assume a natural dichotomy between democracy and authoritative regimes. While this is certainly a useful shorthand when looking at history, I think it is likely to be misleading when thinking about the future.
This “false dichotomy” between democracy and authoritative regimes often contrasts “my values and needs are adequately taken into account” (<> democracy) with “my values and needs basically don’t matter” (<>authoritative regimes). By putting these things into the same bucket, we might overlook ways in which these connections might come apart.
For example, I might not inherently care about whether I will be able to directly or indirectly choose my political leader, but I definitely care about how well my values and needs will be taken into account in this process that steers my society into alternative futures.
Relatedly, discussions about democracy are often just as much about “democratic values″ (e.g. liberty, equality, justice) as they are about “the process of choosing our own leaders”.
I’d be curious whether your prediction about whether democracy will still be around in one thousand years largely overlaps with your prediction about, say, “will an average person in a thousand years from now feel like their values and needs are adequately taken into account by whoever or whatever is making decisions about how their society is being governed?”. (Of course, other operationalizations might be interesting, too).
The latter is much harder to predict, and democracy as you defined it might be the correct way of approaching the latter question. That said, understanding more about how lieky they are to come apart, and if so how seems potentially interesting.
Thanks, I enjoyed reading this.
Here are a few thoughts; they aren’t meant as critiques of things you say, but simple thoughts triggered by, building on or attempting to complement your analysis.
What plausible outside views are there? How much to rely on which?
Here is another possible outside view one could take. Under this view, the question of how societies govern themselves is subject to evolutionary dynamics. (You allude to this a bit in one of your footnotes, when talking about economic determinism.) Different societies adopt different approaches, and societies with better approaches are more successful and become more dominant. Less successful societies either cease to exist or adopt the better approaches by imitation. Based on this view, we can identify “evolutionary pressures” and know some things about where these pressures are likely to steer us in the future. (Obviously we still don’t know exactly where this development leads us, but the space of possible developments is in fact constrained by these co-evolutionary dynamics.)
What specifically might “fitness” look like here? Taking a perspective as roughly outlined in this paper, we could posit that in order for a species to grow ever larger in scale, it requires (what in the paper is called) information processing capacity. Democracy (or government/the policy making apparatus at large) can be viewed as essentially such an information processing technology, and thus adaptive/fitness enhancing. Given the size and complexity of present day societies, it does look like the largely top-down information processing technology of an authoritative regime would less adaptive.
One can argue that democracy is a “successful adaptation” and thus is likely stick around. Maybe this is true, but I think this argument is way harder to make than what I’ve offered above, and I’m not actually sure it stands. Reasons why this isn’t straightforward include that the evolutionary dynamics described above are not very pure (compared to “proper” Darwinian natural selection), and that the environmental conditions within which the process unfolds are changing drastically, which could for example mean that adaptations that were fitness enhancing in the past won’t be in the future.
The reason I do bring this argument up however is that I think it suggests that we shouldn’t pay much attention to the “regression to the means” type arguments. I agree this is a prior to use, but I think we know enough about the territory that we shouldn’t rely much on it.
(I don’t necessarily think you do (though I don’t know). This is to say, I can see how you might get to the 4 in 5 prediction without invoking a “regression to the means” type argument, but by solely looking at the arguments you have for example layed out in your section on automation.)
Moral progress
I largely agree with your assessment that and how automation puts a lot of pressure on the fate of democracy (although, as you acknowledge, there are ways automation could strengthen democracy, and the way this will cash out sure seems liek it’s subject to strong path dependency.)
When we compare pre-industrial times to post-industrial times, it is not only our economy and our arsenal of technologies that is different. Within these ~200-300 years, humanity has also undergone meaningful intellectual and moral progress. This includes things like coming to think that women and people of colour are full members of society, or spelling out values such as freedom, self-realization, etc. If automatisation will lead to power being concentrated in the hands of a small elite, this also means that the beliefs and values of this elite become more important.
Of course, if their moral ideals are in stark contrast with others, e.g. economic interests, we should expect they will just throw most of these ideals over board or engage in elaborate rationalizations to present they are still holding them up high. But if the conflict of interst remains relatively weak, I do think this migth be a factor that palys a role.
If democracy retreats, what will it be replaced by?
A lot of the time, people assume a natural dichotomy between democracy and authoritative regimes. While this is certainly a useful shorthand when looking at history, I think it is likely to be misleading when thinking about the future.
This “false dichotomy” between democracy and authoritative regimes often contrasts “my values and needs are adequately taken into account” (<> democracy) with “my values and needs basically don’t matter” (<>authoritative regimes). By putting these things into the same bucket, we might overlook ways in which these connections might come apart.
For example, I might not inherently care about whether I will be able to directly or indirectly choose my political leader, but I definitely care about how well my values and needs will be taken into account in this process that steers my society into alternative futures.
Relatedly, discussions about democracy are often just as much about “democratic values″ (e.g. liberty, equality, justice) as they are about “the process of choosing our own leaders”.
I’d be curious whether your prediction about whether democracy will still be around in one thousand years largely overlaps with your prediction about, say, “will an average person in a thousand years from now feel like their values and needs are adequately taken into account by whoever or whatever is making decisions about how their society is being governed?”. (Of course, other operationalizations might be interesting, too).
The latter is much harder to predict, and democracy as you defined it might be the correct way of approaching the latter question. That said, understanding more about how lieky they are to come apart, and if so how seems potentially interesting.