The Descent of Democracy into a Technocratic Oligarchy

 Thesis: The rise of a Technocracy due to increasing efficacy of robotics and AI (automation in general) will outstrip the economics of democracy* and thus leave the economic elites (who already control most of the political sphere) in total control of the public sphere. Common workers will be slowly phased out and we will ease ourselves down into an Oligarchical Technocratic rule. The mechanisms that will allow this to happen are subtle and can only be found inherently within the structure of economics and leadership itself. 

Providing clarity: a ruler(s) must be able to satisfy several things at once 

1. They must satisfy those people and structures that are keeping them in power (or elected) 
   1. these include: lobbyists, corporations, and the military etc. 
2. Politicians ruler(s) must also be able to satisfy the people that they lord over (get elected by) 
   1. to do this means to take money away from the aforementioned lobbyists etc. and give it back to the people in the forms of infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads etc. 
   2. it can also be rolled into the military complex in order to keep them safe and secure 
      1. this is in itself an enormous topic that requires much more clarity to fully understand due too many of the ruling class (elected politicians) being so involved in the military complex. so in essence much of government military spending is the government giving money to itself 
3. Rulers must balance these two things (1 keys to power ie: lobbyists and corporations, and 2 the people they lord over) 
   1. attaining this balance is not the same as keeping this balance 
   2. its evident through the periodic shutdown of the entire government that has happened twice in the last two presidencies (that’s 2/2) that just attaining this balance is becoming more difficult 
   3. keeping this balance requires a level of transparency and morality that sadly has not been displayed in quite a long time (arguably ever) in our democratic government 

The conclusion to draw from this last point is that rulers are primarily concerned with the movement and production of resources (usually money) in order to keep their power, not the daily lives of the folks who "elected" them in the first place 

So after viewing this list which contains the abstract concepts that rulers generally employ to maintain a level of power you might ask yourself what this has to do with me and what's a technocracy anyways; or, you may even refute my thesis entirely. Please allow me to further explain what I am driving at while you withhold your judgements to the end. 

A technocracy is a style of government where the political power stems from an elite class. The government is controlled by a group of individuals (technocrats) who have both the knowledge of societal technologies and have amassed a level of capital large enough to monopolize portions of the system. Google, Amazon and Apple are a few that spring to mind easily. 

The reason we will use the term technocracy is because after the descent has taken place the government will be taking directions from those few people who remained at the top of the economic flow chart. Due to the level of science and expertise behind the automation and other technologies we call this a technocracy instead of a Plutocracy (although an argument for calling this a plutocracy is not a weak one). This, of course, utilizes point number 1 where the government officials keep their power source happy and in doing so become figureheads themselves. More than several people have posited arguments in favor of this already. 

There are many ways in which this descent can and will take place. First and most obviously is the automation revolution. This includes artificial intelligence, data processing, and metadata sets. As data processing becomes more efficient does it not make logical and economical sense to employ yet more automated systems that can extrapolate that data with the efficiency a human can only dream of? The answer, of course, is yes. Corporations are not beholden to a philosophical and moral compass, their path to success (profit) is by way of efficiency and capital gains. So if given the opportunity to employ an AI that can do the work of several people the initial overhead cost of buying the AI will be far outstripped by the return on investment over the long run. People will slowly be phased out as automation is phased in and you will see a shift away from the middle class job industry to the poles of menial labor and managerial oversight with an automated robotic jungle between. One such person who has decided to tackle this problem head on is Andrew Yang a democratic presidential hopeful in 2020. His Freedom Dividend, commonly referred to as Universal Basic Income (UBI) he claims will be a boon to all those affected by this automation. Whether this (or he) will succeed is a matter of speculation, only time will tell. However, he is one of the few people that takes the AI revolution seriously. 

The second way to automating democracy into a technocracy is imposed by us humans and slightly more complicated to explain than robots taking jobs away from us. Humans inherently have a desire to control, and unlike the vast majority of politicians (rulers) most people generally care about other people. So it is not surprising that when this automation movement is recognized people will be inclined to retaliate. This retaliation will take several forms: universal basic income and $15 minimum wage seem to be the front runners. While at first glance these two options seem to have been proposed with good intentions (insert quip line about the pathway to hell), the implications they hold will most likely have dire consequences. I will not explore the benefits of these two options as it will result in a boring compare and contrast/pro and con and can be found with a quick google search. 

Let us explore the minimum wage argument. out of a desire not to get bogged down in the intricacies of the economics behind such an idea we will focus on the longer reaching political implications. Let us pretend that across all of America that all jobs regardless of how trivial and/or menial will be given a wage of $15. First of all, how will this be enforced? Our government will of course need to assume more power and create an agency responsible to ensure this wage is given. This, of course, serves to increase the surveillance state ethos.  Second, what will be the logical response from corporations and small businesses? Corporations will of course prefer automation to paying a human who requires sick days and occasionally make mistakes. Small businesses will be forced to make difficult decisions and most likely have to shrink the scope of their operations in a similar fashion. However, small business shrinking in size means large corporations will enter the vacuum left in their wake thus ensuring their monopolistic tendencies will come to fruition. 

As this automation increases the gap between managerial oversight and menial labor will widen. The business/corporation officers will find themselves at the head of a labor machine (pun intended) with new found efficiency and capital gains. As this trend continues, and in all likelihood accelerates, these elevated officers will have the ability to pay for politicians and legislation (which is already taking place). 

The descent of democracy into a technocratic oligarchy will be a slow and painfully obvious thing that will cause much frustration to those of us who are paying attention. The disillusioned will cry for more and more benefits that the greedy political machine will pretend to dislike while secretly granting all of them as the very benefits they grant serve to solidify their power. As this power increases the politicians will find themselves at beckon call of the elevated economic officers who through the allocation of capital resources will steer our technocracy into uncharted territory. 

* For context: in the economics of a democracy the principle aim is to provide works, services and opportunity for those you represent. in so doing your people will (hopefully) be virtuous and make money at which point you can tax them for that opportunity that you presented them with and then roll that taxed income back into the infrastructure thus creating more opportunity or also into protecting them outside harms and influence. of course this is a utopian view of a democratic free market system and what actually transpires can be far more sinister.