[the_lonely_road]

The world changed in a very significant way over the last 70 years. Even more so over the last 20 years. It may very well end up that the Information Age has tipped the scales and our large meandering decentralized democracies are no longer the superior model they were back when it took 4 weeks to get a letter from New York City to Washington DC. Now it’s a synchronous call with satellite footage of every inch of the earth. It may very be that centralized planned economies are now the superior model and only the test of time will unveil which is true.

I’ve lost a bit of sleep wondering about this over the years.

[refurb]

I wouldn’t lose sleep.

Central planning hasn’t been “hard to implement” its been a absolute disaster not just due to information scarcity, but for the same reason massive organizations in free markets rot from within.

[DenisM]

Monoculture kills its host, nothing to do with communication speed.

[throw0101a]

> It may very well end up that the Information Age has tipped the scales and our large meandering decentralized democracies are no longer the superior model they were back when it took 4 weeks to get a letter from New York City to Washington DC.

There are more and less (de)centralized democracies. The US (and others) are formed from federated regional governments:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism

But there are unitary states (France, Spain) as well:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_state

As for democracies: one problem with non-democracies is negative feedback can be difficult. If things are headed in a bad direction, it can be hard to get that message through to those in charge if they lean autocratic and become isolated from reality. Folks are afraid to bear bad news because messenger get shot (proverbially or literally).

[JumpCrisscross]

> the Information Age has tipped the scales and our large meandering decentralized democracies are no longer the superior model they were back when it took 4 weeks to get a letter from New York City to Washington DC

Telegraphs were used in the 1840s [1]. They went transatlantic in the 1850s [2]. The game change is not in modern autocracies being better at planning. It's in surveillance. What took the KGB and Stasi armies of informants filling cabinets of index cards can now be run out of a single data centre by a small team of loyalists.

The common failure mode of centralized systems, peaceful transitions of power and/or long-run economic power, is thus not addressed. (Founders have a decent record, at least in their early years [3]. But with each subsequent generation, the gap between the stability of monarchies and eccentricity of dictatorships widens. Putin is a first-generation autocrat. Xi is a bit more complicated, though I'd argue the CCP hasn't had power so concentrated since Mao, and China barely limped through that transition.

Maybe the efficiency gains in surveillance and repression will turn what would have been a revolutionary failure into a slow-burn diminishment. Whereas previously a resistance could have festered and grown, today it can be nipped in the bud, preventing the internal power competition that rejuvenates the system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable

[3] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/54717/1/670514403.pd...

[khuey]

The CCP had a power transition model mostly worked out that Xi tore apart. Interesting times ahead there.

[singularity2001]

On the other hand, the Information Age might for the first time in history enable true democracy, where every political decision can instantaneously be made by the voting populous. (not that farce of a democracy where a highspeed jet is allegedly steered by the binary input of "left" or "right" every four years)

[heavenlyblue]

You can technically vote on any little detail but it doesn’t mean you have time to analyse every one of those little details.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the Information Age might for the first time in history enable true democracy

We’ve had true democracy. It doesn’t work. It careens into majoritarianism while hyperpartisanship tears it apart. The American system balances democracy against oligarchic and monarchic stabilisers. One could argue that our present situation results from forgetting the need for that balance.