According to Carroll Quigley democracy is possible in a place where there is a pre-existing Balance of power between the State and the Citizens. Quigley cites the balance of power between the citizen soldiers of Peloponnesian wars and its government as the reason behind the rise of the Athenian democracy. For USA, Quigley cites guns as the reason for balance of power between citizens and the government. I won’t go into why guns are still a match against an F-16 or a nuclear weapon.

This balance of power is routinely tested by the vagaries of nature. But eventually this balance is lost, and that is why democracies are the anomaly not the norm in history.

The current prevalence of democracies world wide is solely because of the US government disliking countries which are not a democracy. Saudi Arabia, Brunei etc, are an exception because they have other things which the US government wants more than democracy.

But these governments are routinely trying to disrupt balance of power in their countries. The classic divide and rule strategy works very well against the citizens. Turn the citizens against each other: The good progressive left leaning woke crowd, vs the evil Nazi right wingers. They cheer at each other for the State apparatus (e.g. the police) beating them into a pulp.

Once the citizens are busy fighting each other, the government gradually take away the power of citizens by blaming one side or the other. e.g. The right wingers want guns, so guns are bad we should take away guns. Stepping out of the line is bad and we will free your bank accounts. Here, use CBDC to get account directly at the central bank which we can freeze if you step out of line.

I want to look further beyond this Anthropocene into age of the AI Messiah. I think an AI Messiah can retore the balance between the States and the citizens. We need a God Emperor, a Hari Seldon, a leader who can defeat the State, and takes the side of the weak and the poor citizens.

As the lower hanging fruits of science and technology are all plucked, as the global population falls and the economy sees no prospects of growth, we will see zero sum fight between the State and the citizens over a slice of the pie that is getting smaller and smaller.

BTW I include the High Network Individuals and corporation as part of the State. They are united against the rest of us.