A highly astute observation on how the ascent of the so-called nationalist autocracies and the demise of the so-called democracies appears to be inevitable due to the way these democracies heavily bias their policies toward the least-productive members of their societies:
As far as I can tell, the most notable political science results of the 21st century is democracy cannot work well with low fertility rates. All converge on prioritizing retirees over workers and immigrants over citizens escalating social transfers beyond sustainability. I think this means we should try to understand non-democratic regimes better since they will represent the majority of global political power in the future.
It seems to me that the great graying and mass immigration simply are the end of democracies as we understood them. Just as failure to manage an economy and international trade were the end of Soviet Communism as we understood it. Low-fertility autocracies seems to have little trouble with reindustrializing or waging war when needed. These used to be 20th century strengths of high-fertility democracy!
This is simply another way that enfranchising and educating women, and encouraging the 30 percent of young women who historically married and had children to enter the work force, is both logically and observably incompatible with societal survival. It’s a viable path for a limited time, and it may even be considered a highly desirable path by many, but the now-observable fact is that viability comes with a built-in time limit which is remarkably consistent with the recorded lifespans of many historical societies.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see the fundamental flaws in the underlying assumptions of failed past ideologies.
- Communism: the idea that production will take place without a profit incentive.
- Libertarianism: the idea that consent is a valid or viable basis for morality and legality.
- Democracy: the idea that the collective will of the people exists in any meaningful sense or is relevant to the ordering and sustainability of society in any way.
- Representative Democracy: the idea that an elected elite will meaningfully represent the wishes of the people
- Constitutionalism: the idea that words on a piece of paper, interpreted by a political elite, will preserve the intentions of the society’s founders.
- Elefthemporism: the idea that you can replace your native people with foreigners and buy the weapons required by your armed forces from your enemies.
- Neoliberalism: the idea that the various idiosyncracies of the post-WWII order are of immutable significance for future orders.
- Conservatism: the idea that yesterday’s status quo is the high point of human existence and any departure from it in any direction is dangerous and wrong.
Personally, I think the reason the “democracies” are failing is because they are fake, evil, and literally gay, but it is without question true that a societal lack of fertility and the inevitable evils that result from it will eventually render even the ideal Platonic form of liberal, constitutional representative democracy non-functional.