The End of Democracy?

The latest projections by our best and brightest have just been published in Global Trends 2025, a vision of the future by the National Intelligence Council. While it doesn't tell us what the "in" crowd will be wearing or what film will likely win the Oscar, they do know enough to predict Russia being overrun by organized crime (as compared to Bush & Cheney?). Other interesting tidbits include the projections that global warming will help us get more oil from northern Canada and Russia and will lengthen growing seasons in the northern latitudes.

Interesting (KidSafe) Science Fact: Did you know that pumpkins grown in Alaska can weigh over half a ton?

So now we have been promised a mafia-run enemy state, more oil, and bigger food, Team America is doing pretty good, right? Plus, they argue that if Indonesia, Iran and Turkey can figure out how to make their countries safe for American Democracy(TM), they will be allowed into Spring Training with a legitimate shot at getting a seat on the Board.

See, as the population keeps growing, these smart prophets foresee that "the world's population will compete for declining and shifting food, water and energy resources." (Could that be a coded signal for their team members to buy Monsanto, Vivendi, and Halliburton?)

What else do these seers of rationality and policy objectives see as our future plateau in 2025? The probable need to limit democratic control over policies concerning health, environment, education, commerce, and possibly security. Democracy will still be important in selecting national and local leaders, and as a means to express frustration over an increasingly complicated tax code. And we can use the public spaces to debate whether our children is learning or not. But they implicitly recommend that we prepare now, mentally, to accept further controls on direct, two-way participation in policy. This is actually a good thing because with 1.5 billion more people on the planet, competition for paychecks will become, well, more time consuming and stressful -- and we will all be too tired at the end of the day to effectivly choose between democracy and liesure. (Although it is isn't stated in the report, the quality of antidepressants should improve to the point we can call the daily pills "uppers". Hopefully they can fix the side effects of reduced sexual desire.)

Well, I for one am damn glad that we have such smart people preparing such a hopeful, laissez-faire document that can be used by a whole bunch of government agencies, both domestic and foreign, as a backstop for hedging policies. Because when people have faith in the words, the words become flesh. And gosh darn it America, this is a future I want to live in! Don't you???!!




BTW, I love science and academia. But my only criticism of these studies are that are projections based upon models of economic, political, and demographic trends projected with a methodology of a rational belief that people will do the same as they have always done (on average anyway). In the spirit of Leibniz, these models are Panglossian at best. This is how far we have come: we have to return to a period of neo-enlightenment, where Voltaire's dictum "We Must Cultivate Our Garden" has the same influence on our generation as it did on Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin's.