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"Is democracy a fad?" Ben Garfinkel’s sobering forecast for democracy in the automation age.
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- Title
- Is Democracy a Fad?
- Authors
- View all posts by Ben
- Published
- Feb 26 2021
- Word count
- 5014 words
Note: While not correct I'm going to use authoritarian as a catch all for governments that don't really have easy transitions of power. Monarchy, dictatorship, oligopoly, etc, even though i'll be talking about versions of those kinds of regimes that would be arguably NOT authoritarian.
This is something i've been chatting about for years, and even without the advent of AI, there's no certainty that democracy, or even the standards of living we have now, persist.
Even ignoring some nuclear war/asteroid strike cataclysm, one of the main reasons democracy has stuck is mostly because it's out competing the alternatives, so basically political darwinism. The inherent upside of not having to literally kill people to affect change when things are stale is huge in keeping nations roughly on the right track. You still mostly have to wait for the old guard to die, but then the new generation steps in and in theory pushes in new ideas, as opposed to their kids just taking over and trying to stick with the status quo.
Obviously political entropy tends towards consolidation of power, and there's not a lot of great solutions for that (just least awful ones), but I do wonder if it'll find a sort of natural equilibrium?
Much like the whole wolves/deer/grass example (too many deer, wolves go up, grass goes down, suddenly deer start starving/aren't enough deer, wolves go down, grass goes up, repeat), I do wonder if society as a whole will go through a similar cycle with democracies turning into less flexible forms of government, only to fracture/fall apart/be replaced down the line by new democracies. You could argue we've already seen the cycle once with Greek/Roman empires, but again it's all pretty speculative.
It's also very possible that some form of other government, authoritarian or not, becomes the norm. China's obvious but Singapore is a fascinating example that I don't think is researched enough by would be governmental critics. There might be a regression to some sort of dictatorship style regime but with better standards of living. Often the main reason people get violent is because they're literally starving or someone else is greedy and able to use their frustration. If you can keep them "happy enough" then it's not worth risking your friends and family for.
Another interesting point in this is the role of capitalism as an economic filter/balance. People throw that word around way to much when they likely mean consumerism, but the simple idea that most industry is private and for profit sort of kind of self regulates (again in a ,least awful, sort of way) might mean that the future is just going to be capitalistic authoritarians (again, singapore/china to some extent).
We've had authoritarianism for far longer than we had democracy, and the response during the 1848 revolutions by contemporary reactionaries was nothing but vehemently hostile towards anything resembling citizen's rights.
We call it backsliding when authoritarianism rears its head, but it has been the status quo for centuries and there's no indication democracy in its current form is here to stay. Nor the current forms of authoritarianism.
I think you hit the nail on the head twice. We don't know what new form of government will show up, and history has seen the rise and fall of both democracies and demagoguery.
However, I think we can be fairly confident at this point that democracies are far more accepting of the rights of man. That alone deserves defending.
I think this is a good, succinct discussion, thank you. Sort of following up on your last paragraph, I find it interesting that "capitalism" (or whatever you want to call what we have in the US) seems to push toward authoritarianism as the winners (the uber wealthy) attempt to make their status permanent. However, authoritarian governments, as you mentioned, tend to be rigid and, even more importantly, somewhat corrupt. I think this is why authoritarian governments tend to have lower living standards: an inflexible, corrupt government will eventually become an incompetent government. So, in a way, capitalism, again, in a US sense, seems kind of unstable.
Capitalism is something of a natural state for people doing trade. I have A, you have B, it's between you and me to figure out what the ratio of exchange is.
We've decided that obviously there are some really really bad things to allow that for (utilities, health care, fire fighting, etc), but the main reason you don't have the government just say "here's the price of everything" is because, well, that ALSO is super authroitarian and tends to get you into the "failed dictatorship" state faster than "capitalism".
And to be extra clear, since capitalism is more an economic policy than a political one, it's also got it's fair share of differences and nuance. There are very few people who know jack all about economics who sincerely believe in fully free markets. Very smart people who are major proponents of capitalism would also agree that having these massive corporate monopolies are very much against the ideal market principles that help self regulate.
The main argument i've seen for a "true free market" that make any sense goes back to my wolves/deer/grass analogy really, in that just like in that example, it'll eventually self correct, but just after mass starvation/death, and the whole goal is to avoid that, just like politically the whole goal is to avoid violent revolution.
Not just because people die (which obviously is fucking horrible), but from a darwinism level, so the state can continue to exist. States that aren't able to protect themselves (militarily, economically, cyber, etc) tend to wind up not really having agency over their decisions, and in worst cases can fail, and in milder cases fall behind and thus have to adapt to things they might not want to.
Having tons of people die in violent revolution tends to completely hobble a state, and even if it's a less violent failure (fall of the USSR) it can take forever to recover from and have massive repercussions down the line (like...well basically most of russian history).
The point being, this all brings us back to, what staves that off the longest? So far it seems to be some form of capitalism (as we have many countries who have had stable regimes who are capitalist), with some level of government involvement (from low level utilities to more socialist style things like the Nordics or China). Democracy is also a common factor, but then you get into the fun game of how democratic are they, and what about the sorta kinda democratic, and again the outright not really democratic.
This brings you to "What are the alternatives" and of course one of the common ones is "well communism" which is odd because it's basically both a political and economic system, unlike democracy and capitalism which are only one or the other. Unfortunately, the track record of communist countries is poor, and while you might point out that "well if only blah hadn't happened" the answer is it did, and it does for all countries. Again it's very Darwinian in that your system not only needs to work for its citizens, but needs to not be easily manipulated from the outside (again not just military threats). I feel communism fails pretty heavily on both points there, or at least has so far. It's more an "we should work towards this state" sort of ideal, but I don't think you can violent revolution your way there without just falling apart shortly(historically speaking) after.
Good points. The above is why I specified US-style capitalism specifically. The Nordics, for example, seem to have a stabler mixture of markets with government there to cushion market failures. I think it's not an accident that they have fewer extremely wealthy people, since those people tend to push against both free markets and democracy. China also seems to have found a more stable combination, basically by consolidating power in a single bureaucracy that isn't answerable to anyone in particular (rich or poor). Of course it has drawbacks, and if the state is ever "captured" by any particular group they will have a very bad time.
Ironically, I came across this in Dario Amodei's big utopian essay on what AI is doing to do for us.
Democracy has only been common for the last 200 years—a blink in the 5,000-year history of states. In this post, AI policy researcher Ben Garfinkel explores why that might not last, especially as automation reshapes the social contract.
When I imagine a potential doomsday scenario of automation, this is pretty close to what I'm thinking of. Less Skynet and more robotic-powered authoritarianism.
There are a few democracies that are significantly older than the US.
Rome devolved into authoritarian government, but Rome is not the only model for how a Republic will develop.
I wonder whether there will be enough electricity over the long term to allow for ubiquitous automation of all tasks.
Edit one of the goals behind the US constitution and bill of rights was to prevent authoritarian government from emerging and taking over.
Even if we accept the idea that the Roman Republic was a democracy (don't let the "Senate" fool you, it wasn't—the property-holding qualifications for even the lowest magistracies in the Roman Republic were steep), the Roman style of government still wasn't "common" in the ancient world. Democracy as we know it really is a very late-18th and a 19th century phenomenon. As the article observes...
Point is, democracies are historically unusual. Hopefully not an aberration, but I think the author makes a persuasive case for why it might be.
I think we're seeing right now how weak those systems can be. The raison d'etre of the Electoral College was to prevent men unsuitable for the Presidency from attaining that office. That's not a very democratic institution, but it's supposed to be one that's anti-authoritarian. And clearly it doesn't work. Likewise, Congress's impeachment powers are supposed to be a check on the executive branch, but they fail if the legislature doesn't have any interest in upsetting the executive's supporters. All of the societal trends driving these are part of the author's overall argument of a trend towards authoritarianism. We humans don't naturally share power. And even when power is shared with us, some of us don't really want it. Apparently.
I would add San Marino, Switzerland, the Republic of Venice etc.