Democracies are ridiculous racing horses

I just finished listening to the podcast “Videnskab fra vilde hjerner” ep. 7, 14. October 2022, called “Casino-kneb holder dig fast på sociale medier, ikke fri vilje” with researcher Vincent F. Hendricks. It’s a good podcast, and he is an interesting guy.

It made me think. Democracies are crazy places. It is the only kind of place where everybody can say what they want - you can’t have liberalism without democracy (that’s a bold statement, and I’ll get back to that some other day). At least there’s a connection between free speech and liberalism, and democracies.

Being able to speak freely causes a lot of chaotic growth. And this is a gigantic benefit of a democracy, but also a huge danger. Suddenly, someone invents something that can be used to control a ton of people - and the democracy breaks down.

I think it might be that democracies are where most growth happens - they invented the nuclear bomb, the internet, capitalism. All things that could cause the democracy itself to collapse. So democracies are a like crazy racing horses, where you try to stay on for as long as you can. If you can keep the democracy going, the growth is going to continue.

Maybe it is impossible to keep going. Maybe it is unavoidable with long, stabilizing periods between democracies. Boring periods where less happens, but where we take all the output of the democracy and try to make sense of it and realize what we can use it for.