TECHNOLOGY IS MAKING THE WORLD MORE UNEQUAL

                               

Here’s the bad news: technology –specifically, surveillance technology – makes it easier to police disaffected populations, and that gives badly run, corrupt states enough stability to get themselves into real trouble.

Here’s the good news: technology specifically, networked technology – makes it easier for opposition movements to form and mobilise, even under conditions of surveillance, and to topple badly run, corrupt states.Inequality creates instability, and not just because of the resentments
the increasingly poor majority harbours against the increasingly rich minority.

Everyone has a mix of good ideas and
terrible ones, but for most of us, the harm from our terrible ideas is capped by our lack of political power and the checks that others – including the state – impose on us.As rich people get richer, however, their wealth translates into political influence, and their ideas – especially their terrible ideas – take on outsized importance.But this inequality-instability contains the seeds
of its own downfall.

Letting small elites enforce their cherished, foolish ideas as iron-clad law eventually produces a state so badly run that it collapses, either through revolution or massive reforms.

Smart unequal societies prevent collapse by convincing their elites to hand over some of their earnings to the rest of the country, producing broadly shared prosperity and a sense of national solidarity that transcends class resentments  for example,Sweden.

Technology is not preordained to save us from inequality, but without a free, fair and open network with which to rally and marshall the forces of justice, the battle is lost before it’s even joined.Futures like mine aren’t predictions, they’re landmarks on the far horizon. By keeping our eyes on them as we cross the difficult, unmappable terrain ahead of us, we might reach them – or find something just as good along the way.