We've written before here about the challenge of defining democracy and the problems that can arise when it means different things to different people. Now Yevgeny Bendersky has published a sobering review of how imposed democracies have fared for better or worse in various places over the past few decades. "When the Imposition of Western Democracy Causes a Backlash" is an acutely written and reasonably balanced report, well worth reading.
This topic is of interest to CRN as we try to forecast the global political climate in the next 10-15 years, the time when it's likely that exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing will arrive with transformative and probably disruptive impacts. The results -- galloping abundance and drastically improved standards of living for all, or economic chaos and devastating wars, or something in between -- may depend on where it is developed, who owns or controls the technology, how widely it is distributed, and what safeguards, if any, are implemented.
Geopolitical instability and unrest increase the risk that something will go terribly wrong.
Mike Treder
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