http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a4bfb89a-0885-11e6-a623-b84d06a39ec2.html#axzz46mLrK6ie
In many respects, the disruptions and dislocations precipitated by globalization, the computer revolution, the communication revolution, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc. are part of a continuum that began with the development of basic tools and technology by primitive homo sapiens. Individuals within societies who did not promptly begin to utilize tools and technologies that their peers had begun to adopt were out competed and marginalized by their early adopter peers. On a larger scale, social groups that were slow to utilize tools and technologies that their neighbors had begun to utilize were often out competed by their neighboring social groups.
Approximately five hundred years ago, Western Europeans traveled to the Western Hemisphere and used their superior tools and technology to enslave the Native Americans, loot the wealth of the Native Americans and ultimately displace the Native Americans with Western European immigrants to the Western Hemisphere.
As European countries experienced population growth in the past five hundred years, and as European agriculture became more efficient and required less manpower in the past five hundred years, the surplus population in European countries often emigrated from Europe to the Western Hemisphere, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Most Americans, except for Native Americans, have family histories that are a reflection of the mass migration from Europe to the United States in the past five hundred years.
Fast forward to the early 21st Century. Both Western European democracies and the American democracy are experiencing populist revolt against the consequences of rapid globalization and rapid technological change. The elites in Western Europe and in the United States are increasingly taking defensive measures to protect themselves and to perpetuate their oligarchic control of the political-economic power institutions in their societies. Almost sixty years ago, Ayn Rand wrote “Atlas Shrugged” as a 1,200 page long expression of her disdain for the attempts of the less capable and less productive “masses” to usurp the political-economic powers of the talented and productive elites through the pervasive “democraticization” (‘power to the people”) of their societies.
The attempts of the Republican Party oligarchy and the attempts of the Democratic Party oligarchy to overrule the results of the popular vote in their respective party primaries are creating an epiphany for many Republicans and many Democrats, i.e. the role of the average American voter is to support the major decisions that have already been made by the political party elites, not to make their own independent decisions.
The elites in “Atlas Shrugged” moved to their own separate communities to escape the “totalitarianism of the masses”. The elites in the United States are increasingly living in their own secure enclaves, physically and socially separate from the common people in their communities. Even my retired working professional parents (father was Electrical Engineer with an MBA, mother was a K-12 school teacher) moved to a secure gated community in northern Ohio nine years ago, as a result of their concerns for their safety and for the security of their home. The last two apartments that my son (BA in Physiology, working as an EMT) has rented in the greater Sacramento area have been within secure gated apartment complexes that have their own on site security guards, in addition to their impenetrable perimeter security fences and gates.
My prognosis : If the US remains a liberal constitutional democracy, there will be more candidates who will promote democratic socialism (a la Bernie) and there will be more candidates who promote populist authoritarianism (a la Donald). Of course there is also the risk that the US oligarchy will fabricate a national security crisis to justify a Neo Fascist Military-Intelligence Coup d’ Etat in order to install their own authoritarian regime. Don’t smirk and laugh. The Lyndon Baines Johnson – CIA – Mafia assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the subsequent Coup d’ Etat was essentially a Neo Fascist Coup d’ Etat that the US oligarchy justified based upon the threat of Soviet Union expansionism during the Cold War. For further indisputable confirmation that the CIA assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was part of a larger US WASP oligarchy Coup d’ Etat, see my blog post below.
http://jrbatchelder.com/?m=201512