10. State
10.1 Introduction
With this, we have arrived at the final major futurity presented in this book. One that, in a sense, holds all the others together: governance.
Futurities cannot emerge out of thin air. They are societal systems. Even if a state becomes convinced that it wants to realize a particular futurity, this by no means guarantees that its implementation will be successful. That depends entirely on competent governance and bureaucracy. Just as the gradual improvement or deterioration of current societal systems depends on them. And even more importantly: It also determines whether citizens can self-develop freely, pursue their goals, and participate in the development and decision-making of their state. Or whether they can’t.
How well do existing democracies fare when we apply this standard to them? How good are they at being competently led and managed?
This is a difficult question because it heavily depends on our expectations. Competently led and managed compared to what?
The answer to this question must largely depend on the success of democracies in remaining democratic and on the satisfaction of their citizens. For what good is it if democracies objectively function well but, due to dissatisfaction or attacks, cease to be democracies? Let us therefore examine the current state of the world to assess whether democracy as a form of governance has a problem or not.
For centuries, the world was convinced that the advance of democracy was unstoppable. Of course, dictatorships repeatedly emerged, but on average, the proportion of people living in democracies has steadily increased over the decades and centuries (see Chapter 1.1, illustration “The World as 100 People”).
This was seen as a fundamental characteristic of democratic states—that they tend to spread their culture and ideas (“American Dream”).
However, when I look at the course of history since the turn of the millennium, I do no believe this view to still be true.
In earlier times, it was mostly military coups or conquests that set back the spread of democracy. Today, however, I see many countries following the pattern of the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic: An elected party hollows out the democracy from within to expand and secure its power. This then leads either to a one-party state or to autocracy. In any case, the people lose their say.
Countries currently undergoing this transformation include Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Venezuela. And this list is far from complete.89
Even in the USA, this danger is clearly present. From 2017 to 2021, the country only avoided sliding into autocracy, or alternatively civil war, because Trump was too inexperienced to successfully reshape the state. Whether the USA will be as fortunate now that he has become president for the second time and cannot simply run for re-election four years later remains to be seen. I consider it entirely possible that there will be no regular election or normal transfer of power in 2028.
Why do people vote for parties where such a danger is clearly foreseeable to the objective observer?
Political disillusionment, the desire to really show “those up there” a thing or two, the desire for change, the feeling of powerlessness.
Columnists often take this opportunity to admonish citizens to stand up for their rights, inform themselves before elections, demonstrate, be responsible citizens. Sometimes included is an admonishment to the press to please report objectively and critically.
But what if the press is inherently biased, as seen in the UK and the USA? What if it is hindered by the state from objectively reporting, as in Russia and Turkey?
In Chapter 5, we envisioned better news media using culturepoints. However, obviously this can still be undermined by an autocratic government using laws that restrict freedom of speech and the press.
If the press is unfree or biased, such appeals to the citizens place completely unrealistic expectations on them to still choose the right alternative despite the propaganda—and by a majority at that!
A malicious state also has excellent opportunities to sideline the most popular opposition candidates, as can be well observed in Russia (where critics are poisoned with plutonium even when abroad). Not to mention the various possibilities for election fraud such a state enjoys.
To hope the citizens can fix things by vote is about as sensible as believing that the GDR (German Democratic Republic) could have transformed into a democracy through a parliamentary election. Once a party has seized power to this extent, it will only relinquish it through a coup, the collapse of public order (= mass demonstrations), or civil war. This can happen after 20, 50, or 100 years, depending on how long it takes the country to be driven into poverty.
But as China shows, a party doesn’t have to run its country into the ground economically; it can also lead it to economic strength with a firm hand. And then the people don’t rebel either.
These considerations prevent me from seeing the steady spread of democracy as something that just happens. On the contrary, democracies currently seem to be losing significant ground.
I would therefore answer the initial question with “yes”: democracy as a form of government does have a problem.
I have pondered for many years why democracies are so fragile and inefficient, and what alternatives to them might exist. Long before I began writing this book.
For example, I have thought a lot about various ways in which computer technology could be used to achieve more direct democracy, where citizens vote directly on political decisions, rather than just electing a party. This would eliminate many of the tipping points of representative democracy and, in theory, lead to better decisions as well as less political disillusionment. In Germany, the Pirate Party considered ideas in this direction, but unfortunately, did not pursue them. The party has since faded back into obscurity.
The problem with the approach of direct democracy is the amount of software it requires and the vulnerability this entails. Do we really want to make the user interface of an application (GUI) part of a constitution? Considering how rapidly software evolves year after year? And how exactly do we define decision-making processes without overwhelming citizens with too many votes? After all, they have to live their normal lives alongside politics.
I’m not saying that satisfactory answers to these questions cannot be found. I’ve just realized that finding clean solutions here is a far more difficult problem than it initially appears.
By now, I think I’ve found a completely different approach. One I haven’t read about anywhere else, and which I’d like to present here as a futurity.
The basic idea is this: Evolution leads to efficient, resilient solutions and redundancy in case of problems. Competition ensures that the best solution for achieving a goal prevails. So, what if the state were not a fixed structure, but instead malleable by its very nature, so that evolution and competition would lead to the best solutions prevailing over time?
There are already people proposing something in this direction: the Libertarians. They want companies to replace the state. Each person decides which company they pay to protect their rights. This isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds, but it’s still pretty out there. And it leads to a weak state that represents the rights of companies, not the rights of citizens. That sounds more like a dystopia to me (this isn’t meant to dismiss the idea, but I won’t elaborate further on its advantages and risks here).
However, I find one part of this idea brilliant: allowing every citizen to choose under which rules they live.
One could implement that in a pretty straightforward way:
The country gets divided into many small areas. There are different states, each with its own rules, and each state receives territory proportional to the number of people who want to live in it. Everyone can switch at any time.
Here, voting is done with one’s feet, and theoretically, the states in which people want to live should prevail.
However:
• We no longer have one state in any meaningful way, but several.
• How do you prevent a state from using force to retain its territory if it loses citizens? Or to prevent citizens from leaving in the first place?
• Moving, finding new friends and new jobs is a huge effort. People will only do that once the situation is already pretty dire.
• If parts of the country get taken over by another state due to shifts in population, all citizens living there must move. In other words, frequent population migrations! …
So: nice thought experiment, but not like this.