[bilegeek]

I agree, and here's where I have to plug the excellent "Rules for Rulers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Basically - a bit of an oversimplification, watch the video for a full explanation - democracies only stay democracies because giving people a relatively good life happens to coincide with citizen productivity, which increases leader wealth. If a country relies on a source of revenue that itself doesn't rely on the citizenry, then improving the lives of the citizenry is more or less irrelevant to the leaders, as in authoritarian governments.

That's what makes automation so scary. At a certain point, no country will need rely on the majority of the citizenry to produce wealth. Which means we are screwed.