Democracy: The Mayfly of Governments
No politics here but events that are unfolding are fascinating from the perspective of the questions such as why democracies are often so short lived through the history, more effective models of governments, life span of superpower monopolies and future economics. 1/n
Critical observation: two sets of people, each ardently believing that they are on the right side and they are the one out to protect the democracy/constitution from the other. Almost no one has direct evidence of truth so each must depend on their adopted chain of trust.
Fascinating thing is that each set has been trending towards being exact half in size and the intensity of their beliefs getting amplifying over time. This is symbiotic to two chains of trust getting segregated (i.e. neutral news media to opinionated news media).
Democracies are fragile because of innate human need for hero worship (ex. stories we tell our kids, movies we watch etc). Eventually a tyrant will show up, hijack chain of trust and suspend democracy. US is experiment for democracy survival when multiple entities divides power.
The problem is candidates still must fight. Over time ideologies must be established to cultivate past. Democracy must push two sets to be equal size to be healthy. This means diminishing margins in elections and thereby increasing pressure on ideologies to bring in every vote.
So what’s the eventual end game? At some point, pressure on each ideology must become great enough to cause civil war and separation. I think US is perhaps 1-10 presidencies away from this fate. Impact on stock market, world economy, tech etc would be enormous to say the least.
I’ve brushed off every time someone mentioned civil war in US but this is becoming exceedingly real. Today quarter of the lawmakers voted to disavow election results despite them in control. This would be unthinkable 20 yrs ago. What does the trajectory look like 20 yrs later?
One possibility is that one set expands more in population size. Then two uneven sets causes vast majority of future elections to be won by one side only. As the realization strikes to other side that it cannot possibly win any longer, ideological warfare will only intensify.
In all, it seems there is no Nash equilibrium in democracy :). This is fascinating at many levels and reveals something about innate human nature.