As Luce and others have noted, these four phenomena are interrelated. Part of globalization is about trade, but when people as well as goods cross borders, whether as travelers or refugees, then lives are touched and customs challenged. As is clear from both Brexit and Donald Trump's victory, part of the pressure toward populism comes from lower- and middle-income, less educated people who feel their lives and jobs are threatened by immigrants and low-wage workers in other countries. To repeat myself yet again, for the rich, the world is their oyster; for the poor, the world is their competitor. Hillary Clinton may well have lost the election as a result of her use of a single word: deplorables. In England, they call them "the left-behinds," a phrase that figured centrally in a column not about England but about Islam and the post-Colonial legacy in Asia. When the gap between rich and poor yawns wide, when the middle class gets hollowed out, when economic insecurity strains the social contract, then populists call for a strongman to stand up to the corrupt elite, and democracy suffers. Luce quotes American sociologist Barrington Moore: "No bourgeoisie, no democracy." Though Luce doesn't lump them together as I do here, he captures the pace of change over recent decades in three different fivefold increases: "Since 1970, Asia's per-capita incomes have increased fivefold." "The asset value of the world's leading billionaires has risen fivefold since 1988." "Following China's WTO accession in 2001, America's trade deficit with China has leapt almost fivefold." These three fivefold increases are not unrelated. While the four phenomena under this subtitle -- globalization, immigration, populism and inequality -- are tightly interrelated in self-reinforcing feedback loops, there are other factors behind the democratic recession that can be identified more discretely. The Iraq War and Its Legacy Luce doesn't mince words: "It is hard to overstate the damage the Iraq War did to America's global soft power -- and to the credibility of the West's democratic mission." And the damage continues: "[I]n the eyes of the Islamists, Trump has simply dropped the pretense. The West was always at war with Islam. Trump has removed the mask. At a moment when ISIS is on the military retreat in Iraq and Syria, Trump has made their drive for fresh recruits much easier." Democracy, it turns out, is difficult to promote at the end of a gun. China and the Economic Recession These two phenomena are importantly linked precisely to the extent that undemocratic China did not suffer economically nearly as much as the world's democracies. Is there a lesson here for countries in Africa, where none qualify as effectively functioning democracies and many are receiving aid and investment from China? Luce quotes Andrew Nathan, a leading China-watcher: "By demonstrating that advanced modernization can be combined with authoritarian rule, the Chinese regime has given hope to authoritarian rulers everywhere." So, to briefly summarize Luce before taking issue with what he has to say about technology, all of these factors, not just one, have come together to create a kind of perfect storm for democracy: globalization, immigration, populism, inequality, the Iraq War and its legacy, China, and the economic recession. These are some of the reasons for the "bad governance" that Diamond invokes. The Threat of Technological Unemployment Luce is hardly alone in noting that new technologies, particularly robots with artificial intelligence (AI), pose a greater threat to low-skilled workers than do foreigners. "The latter-day effects of globalization have shaken Western solidarity. The future of artificial intelligence poses challenges that are likely to be orders of magnitude greater." Orders of magnitude greater? Granted, the newest wave of automation poses a threat to employment in ways that earlier technological advances did not, but accurately estimating the scale of the threat is important. Why? Because of the connection between (un)employment and populism: "Europe and America's populist right wants to turn the clock back to the days when men were men and the West ruled. It is prepared to sacrifice the gains of globalization -- and risk conflict with China -- to protect jobs that have already vanished. Populists have little to say about automation, though it is a far larger threat to people's jobs than trade." When I say that Luce is not alone in his fear of what artificial intelligence can do to eliminate jobs, I'm thinking not only about figures like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, who have voiced their fears about AI, but also the fascinating and very popular work of Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-seller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and, just recently, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Like Luce, Musk and Hawking, Harari is alarmed at the prospect of technologically caused unemployment. But Harari's rationale is even more radical. Taking the very long view from 70,000 years ago in his first book, in his latest volume he contemplates a not-too-distant future featuring nothing less than the obsolescence of humanity as we know it. The stakes for politics are high: "When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism."
Part of globalization is about trade, but when people as well as goods cross borders then lives are touched and customs challenged As is clear from both Brexit and Donald Trump's victory, part of the pressure toward populism comes from lower- and middle-income, less educated people who feel their lives and jobs are threatened by immigrants When the gap between rich and poor yawns wide, when the middle class gets hollowed out, when economic insecurity strains the social contract, then populists call for a strongman to stand up to the corrupt elite, and democracy suffers. -- globalization, immigration, populism and inequality -- are tightly interrelated in self-reinforcing feedback loops, there are other factors behind the democratic recession that can be identified more discretely. The Iraq War and Its Legacy "It is hard to overstate the damage the Iraq War did to America's global soft power and to the credibility of the West's democratic mission." Trump has simply dropped the pretense. The West was always at war with Islam. Trump has removed the mask. At a moment when ISIS is on the military retreat in Iraq and Syria, Trump has made their drive for fresh recruits much easier." China and the Economic Recession Is there a lesson here for countries in Africa, where none qualify as effectively functioning democracies and many are receiving aid and investment from China By demonstrating that advanced modernization can be combined with authoritarian rule, the Chinese regime has given hope to authoritarian rulers everywhere." , all of these factors, not just one, have come together to create a kind of perfect storm for democracy: globalization, immigration, populism, inequality, the Iraq War and its legacy, China, and the economic recession. The Threat of Technological Unemployment artificial intelligence (AI), pose a greater threat to low-skilled workers than do foreigners. "The latter-day effects of globalization have shaken Western solidarity. The future of artificial intelligence poses challenges that are likely to be orders of magnitude greater." "Europe and America's populist right wants to turn the clock back to the days when men were men and the West ruled. It is prepared to sacrifice the gains of globalization -- and risk conflict with China -- to protect jobs that have already vanished The stakes for politics are high: "When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives