The Great Unravelling: Why Democracy Failed and How to Fix It.

Universal suffrage and progressive governance (social engineering) were promoted as benevolent updates to the Western democratic system, intended to create a fairer, more just, and kinder world.

• Like so many utopian fairytales designed to put an end to abusive systems of the past, these alleged solutions to the shortcomings of older hierarchical democratic systems seemed unquestionably sensible and profoundly moral — at least in theory.
• And yet, wherever this modern updated version of democracy was introduced, including in the West itself, the result has been an unmitigated disaster as the destructive incentives created by these "updates" take their toll.

Why Did These Updates Fail?

• Why did these 20th-century "updates" to Western democracy fail both Western and non-Western societies alike?
• Why did they lead to corrupt and tyrannical strongman rule in so many countries outside of the West?
• And why has this resulted in suffocating bureaucratic stagnation, rampant corruption, and growing resentment that now threatens to tear the West itself apart?

By taking stock of what went wrong, a series of new updates present themselves to fix what was broken.

The Historical Cycle of Republics

• Republics throughout history tend to get replaced by strongmen who promise to sweep aside the tyranny of dysfunctional democracy if the chaos is allowed to go on for too long.
• However, retreating back into the past, where many were denied access to political representation, is also not an acceptable solution.

The key lies in understanding what caused the failure and charting a path forward.