| Disclaimer: I am not an historian nor a sociologist nor a political scientist. It is pure intuition, so please correct me if you find me wrong. This kind of article recalling the war declared between Apple and Google by strong characters (reaching almost royal admiration) like Steve Jobs and showing their alliance now forced by economical benefits, brings to my head an observation I make for some years now. It feels like the world is more and more returning to a, though different, late Middle Age state where kingdoms, merchants/bankers and religion were in control. It feels like we are close to the end of the powerful democratic state. Yes, these forces has always existed and played a major role in political affairs, but during thr XXth century, we managed to keep it marginal, at least in the West. Now there is an inversion, Kingdoms are coming back. There is a lot of example: formation of alliances over sole benefits of oligarchs, growth of organisations never seen from a long time, customer attachment to a company like it was a dogma, tax and regulation ducking by companies, companies wars often more important than wars between states, states bending to organisations wishes, etc. Maybe to return to this state is a human reflex. Like were unable to create a stable democratic state. I don't know what to think about it atm, but I'm pretty sure we are on the edge of a great schism with the modern era. |
I believe equality is an unstable equilibrium.
Throw a bunch of people on an island where everyone starts out equal. Soon, some will have marginally more power than others. Maybe they happen to be stronger, or washed ashore at a point with a few more coconuts and fish, maybe they just get lucky.
What do you use that extra power for? The obvious answer is to use it to force others to give you more power. Let that cycle run for a long time and you get the wildly unequal despotic power structures witnessed through almost all of human history.
The reason democracy "wins" is because bringing the least-powerful people up is a net benefit to everyone, including the most powerful, even if it requires bringing some of the most powerful down. It's a more efficient system -- extracts the most value from the most people -- so the total volume under the equality curve goes up at the expense of the top end going down a little.
For that to work, though, everyone has to buy into the system, even the most powerful. You need a populace that will willingly sacrifice personal power for the betterment of the whole. That requires intense, constant cultural education and community building.
When that breaks down, it's incredibly easy for a society to fall back to the default state of "everyone in it for themselves".
The horrors of WWII were enough to scare people shitless about unchecked power concentrated in the hands of a few. But those horrors are passing out of living memory right now, so it's little surprise that we're going back to authoritarianism and rapacious power hunger.
I'm generally an optimist about the human condition, but the news scares the shit out of me right now. It feels like we're forgetting everything about democracy and won't relearn it until we plunge headlong into WWIII.