What do you think the future of global society looks like?

[Tober]

We are in era for a while now of what we dutch would call 'Maakbare Samenleving'. It's a bit hard to explain the phrase in English, but it comes down to a sort of social engineering or engineering society. It's based on the idea how much is needed to have an optimal society at a given time at a given place. Then give a certain authority (e.g. government) more or less power to carry out the social engineering by either stick or carrot, represented in rules and laws. Essentially the more or less of it is the traditional way to look at the left/right political spectrum.

Traditionally the ask for more or less of it can be linked to population density. The higher the population density is in a certain region, the more people support a larger authority body (e.g. bigger government) to make sure society keeps functioning. This is why high population areas tend to be political left leaning, where low population areas are right leaning. This can be viewed the world over.

Automation of farming and food processing has let to population growth and population centralization towards high density population areas. The number of mega cities is increasing as are their size. This is leading and will continue to lead to bigger government involvement in the every day lives of people. I say this not as being something positive or negative, it's simply the result. But obviously bigger government needs bigger funding and therefore taxation of income and consumption will increase. Putting pressure on the economic viability of the system.

With growing tensions, because of resource management the world over, governments have always sought to install overarching authorities to manage disputes. From the League of Nations to the United Nations or the creation of the European Union as examples. This is essentially a centralization of power with the aim to solve regional or global problems. And with growing global concerns of resource management, these centralized entities will seek to increase their influence on the population. Essentially increase social engineering or engineer society from a higher authority. Now this is in itself not in bad fate, but comes with a problem.

With rules and laws set increasingly by a higher authority, e.g. Global laws vs. European laws vs. Dutch laws, the distance between the citizen and the law maker increases. The citizens eventually will feel disenfranchised, lose thrust in their governments. Making the system of representative democracy been shaken to its bones.

The big question is how government authorities will respond. If the regional or global challenges are deemed big enough, then centralized authority will not backtrack. It will conclude that a high level of regional and global social engineering is necessary to solve global problems. It's probable that the stick will get more used then the carrot. With dwindling citizen trust in government, government would want to increase control for its programs to work. We already see an example of this in China's Social Credit Scoring system. It's one-child policy it has some years ago is another example. I fully expect something like Social Credit Score will be implemented some time in the future in the 'West' and then globally, one bit at a time.

The outcome in the end will be one of two:
1) Global authoritarian rule will be successful to avoid Global conflicts over limited resources. The prize to pay is we live in 1984.
2) Global/Regional authoritarian rule will not be successful, because rejected by a large enough population mass. This will de-centralize power back to local governments, but make any Global programs fail, Global tensions rise. Eventually, the prize to pay is war and the decimation of 1/2 the population. A big reset.

Pick your poison.

Until that time comes though, I just enjoy my life as good as I can playing great games

Last edited by Tober - on 10 September 2024