by Brian McKay
It’s time to say what the so-called prognosticators either can’t see or are afraid to say.
Never did I think I’d be writing the case for why we need to end democracy as soon as possible. Never. It was an unthinkable thought before Trump. No other system could have even been anywhere on the table. Heck, I would have thought it a true evil. A majority of people will think I’m evil for even suggesting democracy has outlived its usefulness and is taking us to the ultimate destruction of humanity. Being hated is no big deal if our existence as a race is on the line.
Unfortunately, the combination of massive technological advancement and extensive polarization in civilization, specifically the radicalization of conservatives, are now pushing us to the brink of extinction. As we move into an extinction phase, democracy is destined to then fail and be replaced by tyranny. And none of this is very far off in the future.
All of the articles you read lately that decry Trump Republicans are killing democracy are late to the game. It’s dead. We just haven’t reached the tyranny part of the play that comes right before the denouement where all of the strands are drawn together and everyone starts dying. Maybe other analysts and commentators are just afraid to come to that conclusion?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of democracy. My past is filled with study of political theory, study of political systems, and political history, but my passion has always been US political history above everything else.
Starting two decades ago, I would have entertained ideas that the Constitution I considered sacred had run its course and that it was too inefficient and laborious in its processes to take us through a period of exponential change. Maybe it was time to keep it framed in the Smithsonian and write something new and more efficient like the parliamentarian systems we put in place for other nations. While I would have said we should transition to a more efficient democratic system, never would I have proposed abandoning democracy entirely.
Trump, the pandemic, populist movements, the prevalence of conspiratorial thinking, science denial, authoritarians like Putin, Xi, and Orban, and the total crazy train that is now right-wing media, have changed everything. We the people can no longer be trusted with our own societal management. The social contract is no good if people aren’t willing to honor it.
I’m now convinced there is no democracy that allows for the survival of mankind. We change or we die. Now. The delusion of fairness in politics is now killing us while creating massive unfairness in who survives the longest and the best in the future to come. There is no more fairness or capitalism now than there was during the aristocratic periods, just more minds that need to be influenced and tricked into thinking they are free. Just tell people they should celebrate rich people going into space, argue more on social media and buy more shit and they’ll gladly submit to their own destruction.
How did we get to this place?
Most people can’t understand this level of technological advancement, thus they compare things in 2021 to developments from 50 years ago and think the timeline is pretty similar.
In a nutshell, a 50,000-year-old brain wasn’t made to confront or even understand the complex problems and exponential change now prevalent in our interconnected world. Most minds cannot comprehend the reality of numbers in the billions. At the same time, exponential growth, such as we have witnessed with population and processing power, are not fathomable for brains designed to deal with small communities of hunter gatherers. That massive amounts of contingent events have replaced simple causality means the bar for real critical thinking can never be reached by the majority of people. Life will never return to, “The deer came from there so I will go there to find more deer to hunt so I can feed my tribe.”
Now add in success in advanced nations. Lots of success. Too much success.
Access to abundant food, endless entertainment, shopping malls, McMansions, unlimited information (more importantly misinformation), quick transportation, and near total security have created a complacency and lack of purpose that has further degraded our abilities to think while pushing us to the extremes that have the message that most makes us feel important. Society has embraced gaudiness and inelegance in the form of filled storage units. Ego has been able to supplant survival and fuel the worst beliefs of the populace as people seek that which sets them apart while still judging themselves and others on how much they can consume. As survival is mostly unnecessary, purpose has moved to fulfilling the need for importance and consumption. An Instagram star can make $100,000 for a simple post to 40 million fans that want to be like her and own the same shit.
To paraphrase Fight Club, we work jobs we hate, to buy shit we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like. A very unfulfilling life and access to any misinformation we need, has fueled the rise of the conspiratorial mindset as a way to think one is special in knowing that which others don’t and transcend the lack of meaning inherent in a consumerist society.
Extreme and unfounded beliefs have become more and more commonplace. Watching an online video is now called “research”. The very educated are considered evil or dangerous by people that think social media is an adequate source of correct information.
These extremes have created the previously unfathomable effect of a tyranny of the vocal minority. Alexis de Toqueville would be shocked that his vision of a tyrannical majority was actually backwards. Henrik Ibsen would be blown away to see that the minority has become socially psychotic. In the US, religion has become more and more extreme to the point of being used as an excuse to avoid a simple vaccination and hold an entire country hostage. With the anointing of extreme affiliations, has come the loss of virtue and civic responsibility. “Freedom” is now screamed across the world not as a term used to improve the lots of all, but as a term equivalent to “let me get mine first”.
Lack of education is now celebrated and called “common sense” while that same “common sense” is going down the rabbit hole of such things as microchipped vaccines, QAnon, and stolen elections; all things that threaten democracy itself while their believers claim to be defenders of democracy. Defenders to the point of now calling for civil war and raising boys to be prepared to be violent.
In the US, the majority of those claiming to defend the Constitution know little to nothing of their own form of government or US history. One third of Americans cannot name all three branches of government. Twenty five percent do not know that each state has two Senators and cannot name one of their Senators. Right wing evangelical Christians proclaim the US was founded as a Christian nation while not knowing that at least five of the first six US presidents did not believe in the divinity of Christ. Is it any surprise that the ones screaming that those promoting vaccination need to learn civics and study their Constitution yet don’t know that “promote the general welfare” is outlined in the Preamble before liberty? Or that their founders were big fans of Montesquieu, who felt the defining element of republics was their commitment to virtue, which he defined as “a continuous preference of the public interest over one’s own.”
Recently, I was informed by someone that Social Contract Theory was something made up by the Democrats despite John Locke’s “consent of the governed” being much of the basis for the US Constitution.
It’s not just the US. Other democratic nations are also seeing the rise of populism, science denial, demographic separation, and racism, just like the US. Despite the entire nation burning in 2020, Australia has seen tremendous growth in climate denial. QAnon supporters were rabid believers as far away as South Africa. In France, Germany and other western European nations, racism and right-wing populism are on the rise as seen in Bexit, the popularity of Marrine le Pen and burka bans. Hungary, Turkey and Poland have completely moved from democracy to autocratic rule. Right wing Americans now consider Viktor Orban of Hungary a hero as he is celebrated by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Vladimir Putin’s overt, state sanctioned discrimination against the LGBTQ community is celebrated in the United States within the right-wing community and on conservative media. Medical and scientific quacks across the world, make a living no different than the patent medicine charlatans of the early 20th century, and have a massive audience.
The people that would listen to right wing AM talk radio shows targeted at over-the-road truckers or consider Ben Shapiro a genius instead of reading Plato’s The Republic or even bother to study their own civics are killing us and leading us down a path that has been showing signs of plutocracy, kleptocracy, theocracy, and autocracy for decades now. Biblical literalists don’t want the democracy they proclaim to protect, they want the Second Coming and violence in the name of culture wars. Rally people around mythical boogeymen like Critical Race Theory and Sharia Law, and you can do anything policy wise with their consent. They’ll even think policies enacted by those that most ignite their amygdala are good for them.
It is the need for ego and entitlement that causes one to think that she is important enough to oppress or track her travel to McDonald’s with a tiny chip while ignoring that her current society and its billionaire class view her as only good for watching commercials, operating as cheap labor, and making purchases on credit. Victimhood as a replacement for actual rights and social good is the end of humanity. White and evangelical? Someone gladly wants to sell you the narrative that you’re oppresses and society caters to minorities despite you being privileged, as shown in every damn stat.
If it seems that the shit show that is US politics is more similar to the antics of reality tv than the nuances of considered debate and thoughtful policy, you would be correct. WWE stars are more electable to almost half of the country than experts. Even though Governor Greg Abbott of Texas is a first-class moron, that a film star can outpoll him without making a single declaration is somewhat sad. In my state, Idaho, the Lt. Governor manages to create spectacle of the lowest common denominator by hanging with anti-government militias and declaring mask mandates illegal why our governor is in Texas discussing the situation at the border (also moronic). Spectacle wins elections in most parts of the world now.
If a populous can’t understand the rapidly changing world, apparently a massive chunk of them decide they need leaders that are “just like me”. I don’t want leaders like you, ok? An ability to insult four people in 288 characters on Twitter or having a massive campaign war chest isn’t what gives my daughter and her generation a chance. That many of you think a cheat, slob, and compulsive liar with the temperament of a petulant, spoiled child is just “just like me”, says plenty. Give me leaders that are better than me and can actually look in the mirror with enough self-cognition to realize that a Boris Johnson or Donald Trump haircut looks pretty shitty.
And all of this can only get more extreme to the benefit of the very few that can buy off those catering to the cult of personality in order to get elected. The rest of us get stuck wondering if we can afford to start a self-sustaining commune in Alaska to survive a warming planet.
So, what’s ahead of us?
Predictions say that by 2030 or so, forty percent of the population will be unnecessary. Truckers will be replaced by fully autonomous trucks. Robots will be able to fold clothes in retail stores. More intelligent AI will replace most call center employees and you won’t know you’re talking to a machine. Factory jobs will mostly be gone. Eventually, you won’t even have a carbon-based hairdresser. Those most impacted first are the same people already embracing a form of tyranny and will only be further radicalized as they become further marginalized while the educated retain jobs and positions. Their threat will become further elevated.
As my daughter stated about four years ago, “It really didn’t sink in how fast automation is taking over until I saw this.”, as she noticed that self-checkout had replaced almost all check out areas at the local Walmart.
There is nothing that can stop this transformation. Nothing. At least not in a system dominated by capital. As the means to earn an income move to extinction and with them most of individual purpose, radicalism will explode under our current systems.
Additionally, climate change has now reached the point where the world cannot stay below the two-degree Celsius increase limit agreed upon by the UN and scientific communities. We will blow past it. The commitments of advanced, democratic nations to replace fossil fuels are inadequate to the point of being considered premeditated murder. Further inaction will eventually result in total lack of biodiversity and a feedback loop that sees even more rapid and extreme warming as the permafrost melts and releases even more detrimental methane into the atmosphere. Water tables flooded with sea water will make island nations uninhabitable. Humanity will be late to the realization that we can’t eat money as the water wars, predicted by the Pentagon in 2002, escalate and create further tyranny and societal division.
Improper action is dooming our children to a world so hot that vast swaths of it become no longer habitable. With two thirds of the world’s population near coastlines and flood zones, a mass migration will take place that will not be manageable with existing systems of governance. Water will become the world’s most valuable resource, making people wonder why past generations ever thought gold was even a thing.
Corporations and big finance will further consolidate capital to the few while taking advantage of the needs of individual nations needing to feed unemployed populations. They will further rape societies by demanding extreme concessions just to generate some revenue in competing nations. Additionally, those nations will be incentivized not to push specific climate reduction goals in order to retain or attract corporations adversely impacted by those same goals. Nations advancing from poverty, will demand the right to burn carbon as it is their turn to move into advanced nations status unless the rest of the world assists in their transition to renewables.
The competition of nations to attract and retain precious capital in the face of mass unemployment, populism, and antiquated governing systems, will fuel ongoing lack of action and grant further power and resources to the very wealthy. Even wealthy nations will see income disparity that has less than one percent of the country owning ninety five percent of resources. Starvation and oppression will become commonplace fueling a circle of even further radicalization within certain segments.
Technology, power, and resources will be hoarded by fewer people than even 17th century rent seeking royalty could have ever imagined. All while humanity enters its final days.
Fuck you Bezos!
Democracy and the competing interests of sovereign nations no longer work. Radicalization of the populous, lack of critical thought, and competition in a global society that benefits only capital, can no longer exist if we are to survive.
I, personally, do not submit to this and will fight it. If some heads need to be lopped off to escape the rule of rent seekers, we have to do it.
What can we do?
For humankind’s survival, we must immediately transition to a government of the intelligent. The current term used is an epistocracy. Epistocracy is different from Plato’s vision a noocracy, or an aristocracy of the wise, as aristocracy is to not central to my ideal. Power needs to have few perks and be actual civil service. The new leaders are chosen based on specific criteria, have specific terms and must serve, as opposed to being served. This isn’t government so much as management by those capable and willing.
All options and possible results considered, humanity now has to move to world management by a combination of the most brilliant people and an AI component. World government is a necessity to negate the competing interests and greed of sovereign states. Decision making and execution will need to be as efficient and instant as possible while designated to a bureaucracy of equal efficiency. Line must clearly be drawn as to what parts of society are most efficient at given tasks, whether they be private sector or government. Non-elastic markets have to be run or tightly regulated to minimize their power.
The human component of this management will need to be only a few of the most mentally and emotionally intelligent. They are not allowed any significant possessions or wealth and are not allowed any patronage or even appearance of patronage. Voting records cannot be known for specific managers and they will not be permitted commentary, to avoid formation of a cult of personality. In return for their service, they are given access to any and all legal pleasures they wish, the best education for their children and a modest, guaranteed retirement. After the end of his term, a manager is not allowed any further job, income or governing function.
An AI system will handle all general budgeting and appropriations. Additionally, the AI must coordinate general emergency responses and have hard coded into it those things that would constitute a violation of their authority by the human managers. It will be able to suggest removal to a commission of their peers. However, an AI cannot be allowed to determine what is in the best general interest of humanity at any point. It only facilitates the direction humanity takes and acts as a general check on power.
That’s it folks. This is the only way humanity survives and a future exists for our children.
Get over your ego, stop doing your “research”, give up the antiquated documents and systems and let’s get to it unless you want a great filter to win. Humanity is on the line here.
Stay tuned for a breakdown of a new worldwide economic system, guaranteed rights, administrative systems, technological management, and government / management specifics.
