Are the pillars of the state falling?

[sc94597]

Mr Khan said:

sc94597 said:
It will for quite a bit, but authoritarianism vs. libertarianism runs in cycles. Just like the industrial revolution led to freedom and liberty, but reverted back to statism when governments caught up, so will the information age have state involvement sometime down the line. The best we can do is mitigate and regulate the power of the state through pressure.

It's not cyclical so much as predicated upon a nation's primary mode of production. The information age will lead to a broadening decentralization in some respects because more people will be able to participate in ways that they've never been able to participate before. Where anti-democratic backlash hits in is at the peak of inequality spurred by rapid economic change, whether it's put-upon peasants or industrial laborers seeking justice against the fast-moving rapacious forces of capitalism, the noveaux riche fearing such a peasant revolt and making sure that only the right people get a say in how things are run, or the old middle class looking askance at how the once-great land has become rapidly deformed and seeking a forcible return to national purity.

The creeping authoritarianism of the welfare state in the developed world was due to a different factor, the fact that modern systems have become too complicated for anyone to manage fairly and need regulation. The information age allows transparency to catch up to that, so while we won't see government's role diminished per se, we will see the ability of the bureaucracy and special interests to draft and run their own policies diminish to naught.

How long could our newly found freedom of information last though? Eventually there will be a loop-hole for these special interests groups. Nevertheless a fully/almost-fully audited system with transparency is one I think all Americans will agree is a good thing, regardless of left-right paradigm ideology and the partisan politics involved.