SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. Human beings will soon be confronting a number of issues ranging from global warming to overpopulation, to name just a few. While we will undoubtedly benefit from new energy and digital technologies, we will also have to contend with the disruption caused by these emerging technologies and the system changes they will bring about. Looking forward, the potential to reinvent society has really never been greater. But whose vision of society will prevail? Clearly, there are many more innovations in the pipeline, and the pace of change will likely only accelerate. As we exit the Holocene and leap into the Anthropocene, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the numerous system changes currently underway and how these inexorable trends might impact the future of democracy in the United States and around the world. As we transform our technologies, will we find the means to transform our political systems and to make them more democratic? Peter Leiden came to San Francisco in the 1990s to work with the founders of Wired magazine. He sharpened his forecasting skills while working with the Global Business Network and the legendary Stuart Brand. Considered a thought leader on future technologies and megatrends, Peter is the author of The Long Boom, The Coming Age of Prosperity, and co-author of What's Next? Exploring the New Terrain for Business. He has recently published an online series called The Great Progression on BigThink.com. Peter is the founder of ReInvent Futures, where he shares his foresight with leaders from numerous organizations around the world. He served on Barack Obama's Technology and Media Advisory Committee during his groundbreaking presidential campaign of 2008 and has given keynote talks for the last 25 years on roughly a monthly basis as a futurist and tech expert working through Kepler speakers. Peter is also one of the most optimistic and engaging people I've ever spoken with, and he is here today to talk with us about system change and the future of democracy. Peter, I've been looking forward to this conversation for weeks now. Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. It's great to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Well, I'm very happy to be here and looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

I've watched a lot of your presentations. The Long Boom. I want to get into your list of inexorables, the Long Now Foundation, the reinvent futures, the transformation, you know, the great progression.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

You've Oh my gosh, you've you've you've been following it.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah, and how all of that relates to the future of democracy.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Before we get into all those details, I want to talk about the big picture and what you see coming. And again, why are you so optimistic when so many people are full of doom and gloom?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

What what what are the big things that you see coming that you want people to know about?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Okay. Gosh, where how should we start the lens on this one? Here's one of the things is most of your listeners, you know, um, or basically everybody, for the last 40 years, you could say the world has had a kind of a relatively stable, believe it or not, system, uh, meta system that was made up of all these subsystems. So, you know, we had our energy was carbon-based, our cars were, you know, internal combustion, our politics was kind of, you know, the culture was dominated by the baby boom. The culture, you know, the politics was relatively conservative. Um, you know, we had a free market, we kind of unleashed the capitalism kind of uh economics and shareholder kind of capitalism. But anyhow, you can kind of go around the whole loop. Foreign policy was in the Middle East. Why to keep the oil going to kind of keep the whole flywheel going? So, anyhow, there was a whole kind of a system of systems uh that we got used to that you know, media covered and understood how to talk about it, and the politicians had solutions for that and all this stuff. I'm saying that that system is is is rapidly falling apart and reaching its end, and and we're watching that fade. And so, one of the reasons that so many people are kind of very uh gloom and doom right now and kind of very look at the future as very dystopian, is because they kind of see that world going away and they don't really see what's happening. But what's interesting is if you take every one of those categories I kind of touched on there, there's a new kind of a system. Uh these subsystems are emerging. So instead of carbon, as that's kind of all screwing up the climate and and and and running into problems in the Middle East, all that kind of stuff in Russia, it's like, well, we've got clean energy taking off, gangbusters. And you know, like instead of the internal combustion car clogging everything, blah, blah, blah, we got, you know, electric cars taken off. And then you know, the culture is now dominated more by the millennial generation, and our politics, I would argue, is getting is becoming more progressive. Anyhow, there's a whole way that the whole system is regelling in a more sustainable, digital, global kind of way, I would say, ultimately. But what's confusing and difficult for most people is we're in the decade or the interregnum between these two clear different eras. So if you're caught in the old thing, you kind of tend to see things as kind of falling apart. But if you're in the new thing, and that new thing is often defined by fundamentally new technologies that are enabling new things we can do, and all kinds of stuff. If you're in that world of which I am and have been for the last 25, 30 years here, uh rooted here in the Bay Area of San Francisco at all, um, you get really excited by the potential because you say, Oh my God, I can see how this is working. Oh, I understand how the whole electric car thing is gonna work. Oh, I can see how we could solve climate through scaling up so you know all the renewable energy, all that kind of stuff. So, anyhow, it's a kind of a that's the main way I would say, or one way in that I think a lot of people understand. I spend a lot of time talking to senior leaders and boards and C-suites and doing talks all over the country and occasionally outside the country. That's one way that people kind of kind of helps them see. I kind of get it better. And so I spent a lot of my time helping people understand those new systems, how that's all merging into a kind of meta system, and you know, where we're gonna go in the next 10 to 25 years. And that's kind of what I do through my company, and and that's how I do through my talks and my writing that you've kind of mentioned. So that's kind of one way to think about it.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

People love stability, right? So you're talking about we've been in this zone for a long time now, but now everything is shifting and changing.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Now we're into another era altogether, right? Yeah, the anthroprocene. Yes, that's gonna be a heavy lift. Yeah, the technologies you described change things so much. On the other hand, I pick up my phone and call Verizon, no one's picking up the phone. In the long boom, you did put a list of spoilers in there, things that could possibly go wrong. One of them was a pandemic.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Well, just so the listeners who don't know this, it's the quick the quick version was in the mid-90s, I basically wrote a famous cover story in Warrior magazine, later went into a book, went into multiple languages called The Long Boom. And basically it was a largely positive story from my point of view of how the digital economy would roll out, the digital revolution take place, the digital economy would roll out, and also globalization would stitch the world together, and all kinds of stuff would happen, like China would rise to be a superpower, a bunch of stuff that from the mid 90s, frankly, was a stretch. And people were like, oh, I don't know, what's some Amazon? And how is that ever going to be a big company? And um, and yeah, a lot of this stuff turned out. But I also wrote 10, what you right, I call them scenario spoilers that could happen and come uh come about that would slow things down. And frankly, all 10 of them literally happened, including, as you mentioned, I said from the mid-90s said, you know, at some point we're probably gonna get another global pandemic. And I said it's gonna be close to what happened in the the 1918 kind of you know, Spanish flu thing, which killed 50 million people, anyhow. And in terms of we got it by 2020. So it there's a but all 10 of them came through. But here's the extraordinary thing I will say to you about it. It didn't actually slow down much the actually overarching story I was talking about, which is oh, these little startups are going to be trillion-dollar companies. Oh, you know, uh, anyhow, you can kind of go through the whole thing. And um, so anyhow, it's it's an interesting thing. But yes, I would say there's negative things out there, but I would also just largely say to that to you, you know, for all our hand-wringing about social media and the issues that it brings, people are quick to forget how many good things it brings. Like for every kind of election fraudster on Facebook, there's you know, millions of families who are sharing their kids' photos and the grandparents with the kind of the extended families, and you're connected to your old high school and high grade school friends. It's like who? I mean, you couldn't even done that. It wasn't even remotely possible, like 20 years ago. So, I mean, there is there there is a side thing that I kind of just want to remind people there that it isn't how it'll all been boom or doom, uh, when you really think about other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

All the discussion we have about system change and transformations and progressions. I hear very little conversation about the political system. When you talk about a generational shift, broadly speaking, a more progressive politic going on, but the political system itself is still an outdated 18th century political system.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

There's a bunch of ways to go at it, but I I would say there's two ways I think of it in a big picture way to think about it is and I we could go either direction or both at some point, but the there is a hopeful evolution of where how America worked within the its kind of constraints of this 18th century kind of model. It has over time gotten to these junctures periodically where it has transformed itself, uh, but still working within the constraints of the general constitution and things like that. And it has gotten us to move forward. And I would say there's a way I talk about the evolution of politics in that context, meaning how, without even fundamental constitutional reform, how you could actually imagine a much better future. I would argue that a lot of that innovation is coming out of California now and it's showing a new way forward that for the next 40 years, just like I said, the last 40 are kind of falling apart. I think the next 40 are gonna are getting roughed out now of how it's gonna work. So there's one way that's kind of more practical way of thinking about how politics works today and how it might work in the next um few decades. But I would say where you were going, which I actually also share, is even a bigger picture way of thinking about it, which is basically our uh system of politics, you know, built in the you know, 1780s, and it was essentially a creature of the Enlightenment. And there was essentially so many fundamental kind of systems that our modern world is still kind of trapped in or will off that were essentially invented, wholescale invented in the in in in the uh the enlightenment. I mean, you can go down to like mechanical engines were invented, industrial production was invented, uh financial capitalism was invented. I mean, literally, there was nothing before, and then all of a sudden, boom, we figured it out. And then, um, but also stuff like the nation state and democracies and liberal democracies. Now, these are like, you know, world historical developments that were really unprecedented. I mean, there was some echo of, oh, you know, ancient Greece or something we kind of knew a little bit around, smattering of democracy. But in general, those were world historical thresholds that humans kind of crossed for the first time, and it essentially has defined the world for the last 250 years. And and then and for and in many respects, been very positive in many of those things and spreads prosperity and growth and all kinds of stuff were great. It's also run us into a ton of problems, inequality, climate change, and all kinds of stuff, right? So um I would just argue from that framework, we are well overdue. I totally share with you, well, well, well overdue for a fundamental upgrade. So, for example, just thinking how the founders in the you know, in 1870, they didn't even know what electricity was. I mean, you had, you know, Ben Franklin out there with a kite trying to figure out, okay, what is electricity coming from lightning, let alone electronics. You know, I mean, so if the fun, the founding fathers, and they're all our guys, as we know, um, if they were today and they looked around and said, damn, these digital computers and everyone's connected with high bandwidth connections, it's like what they'd be saying, why wouldn't we be doing let's work with that stuff? You know, that's a lot better. To my mind, the world is on the threshold of another level of civilizational change, as you could say. The last time we saw a civilization be born was essentially the Enlightenment. And it was born in East, you know, basically Western Europe. It was really rooted, the ground zero was in London. I mean, but it also was through Europe. It we had a little smattering of it here with the you know innovation around politics and democracy. But in general, that was a you know, about a hundred years of crazy innovation uh that we're still kind of in now. But so, but I feel, and I think there's a case to be made that we're entering another period that is analogous to that, where I think we're going to go through such fundamental system changes that the only way to objectively think about it would be essentially a uh civilizational change. Meaning, for example, if you are gonna build an all-digital kind of society that has intelligent machines and AI kind of you know, energizing all our human systems, that's a different animal than what they were tinking around with in 1780. And it's just and it requires a completely different way of thinking about stuff. And then the same thing is if you're gonna work on a planetary scale to solve climate change, you you can't be trapped in the nation state thing that they did in 1870s too or the seven 1770s, uh 1780s. And so the question to me is there are people like you and me talking like that in terms of the big picture, but what's also happening is this just like I talked about the drag between the two 40-year eras, you can think about this as the drag between two fundamental historical eras, like the Enlightenment era and now this I would call it a 21st century kind of era. But that mind shift takes such a crazy amount of open-mindedness and and adaptability that you know it's it's really hard. And so this is why you're seeing literally, I will explain. I mean, why is the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which is essentially the Republican Party now, why are they so obsessed with what they call originalist thinking, or you know, go back to the exact interpretation uh of the original constitution? It's because they're desperately hanging on to this thing because they know if they let go of that thing, it's gonna be so different going forward that it's just gonna be unrecognizable. So I think that's where we are. And I think in our, I don't know, I'm my lifetime, it could happen um in terms of the fundamental rebirth of a very different constitution and all kinds of different ways to think about. But it's also possible it might take more, a few more, a couple more decades or a few, but but at some point it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen in this century.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

I brought it up to my friends and family years ago, and they would all say, Well, not very likely. Last couple of years, I'll bring it up with strangers, and they say, Oh, oh, yeah, we need a new constitution. Like, I don't have to convince anybody that the political system is broken. Yeah, it's so obvious to everybody, especially the younger generation, like you talk about the millennials and Gen Z. Yeah, these guys are going like, Oh, yeah, or a new political system, you kidding me? Of course, we need a new political system. Yeah, that's true. We could have a parliamentarian system that would be way more democratic than what we have now. Structural changes to the political system, abolishing the Senate, the electoral college, introducing proportional representation. Proportional representation would create a multi-party system and it would end gerrymandering. So who's against that? I mean, uh there's an argument that multi-party systems aren't as good as a two-party system. I get that, but most modern and effective democracies are multi-party systems. Aaron Liparty wrote a book called Patterns of Democracy. He studied 36 different democracies around the world and compared them. He had a list of 10 things that we could do to create a more democratic and more effective government in the United States, which he supports.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

But I wouldn't even go further just just for the sake of stirring the pot here. It's like you're still, I mean, parliamentary systems are also still rooted in Enlightenment thinking. I mean, it it's it's all kind of, you know, it's an evolution from Britain's system that we evolved from. Anyhow, it's all still like that. And French, you know, democracies and stuff. So um, I think it's probable, maybe not you and me might not see this, but I do think that this century, which by the way, all the millennials are gonna live to see the end of the century and the gen's ears for sure, you know, barring some crazy catastrophe that's you know, whatever that is truly dystopia. But let's just assume the world is gonna roll, you know, in a way that those kids will have a normal life, uh, relatively normal lives. That if in that period, I would go so far as to say to conjecture that we will go into a fundamentally different way of thinking of democracy. And uh to me, it has to be rooted it to my mind in digital technologies, computer technologies. And I would say weirdly, even because because people this is freaking people out right now, it almost certainly will be leveraging the power of AI, and not to make AI control us or you know, be ours, that crazy thing is not happening, but it I think what's happening now, and people are it's just dawning on people. And I'm you know, here in San Francisco, it's gone berserk the last six months here on generative AI and stuff. And I think at least my perspective on this, which is more positive and optimistic about the future, is it is giving us, I think, a superpower here that, you know, for now is just freaking people out and you know, kind of shaking the, you know, everybody out. But I think in this century, it's going to allow us to essentially do what the goal of democracy is, is like, how do you get reasonably the will of the people, the actual will of the people, the majority of people protecting you know minority rights? I get that. But you basically, how do we effectively figure out what the majority wants and then efficiently and effectively carry out that will in kind of effective government? Now, you know, that was the idea 250 years ago, and it's the idea still, but the point is the way to carry that out in the 21st century, you'd be basically insane not to take advantage of the tools we have at our in our powers now and just say, oh no, we're just gonna do the same thing we did, you know, two centuries ago. And because, well, that's the way we do it. I just think that's not gonna hold. And I think it's not gonna hold, particularly in the world that we're heading into, which is gotta be kind of thought about on a planetary scale in a kind of global systems, because there's only so many ways 10 billion people are gonna be able to sustain on this planet, and it ain't gonna be, you know, some minority of farmers in Wyoming are gonna hold up the whole damn thing because, well, that's the way we did it, you know, in 1870, you know, or whatever it is, you know. So it's like that traditional thing just ain't gonna happen. In the same way that you said, um, and this isn't crazy, Doc. Isn't like you say, I mean, Nazi Germany collapsed, they started over, you know, kind of fascist, you know, kind of uh Japan collapsed, they started over. I mean, it's it's not like we can't figure out how to do this, it's in our lifetimes or my dad's lifetime. We've seen that, right? So it's like gonna something's gonna happen, I think, in a big profound way, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

I hope so. I mean, I call it a peaceful political revolution. I I don't know. I mean, you're talking about technology revolution, purpose revolutions, all kinds of revolutions. I don't hear any political revolution happening. I think that's a real cornerstone of the next new civilization, right? You to me, it's designed around a political system. You mentioned foundation. Do you have to know what kind of government that was uh in the science fiction stories? In the science fiction story. Did they have did they have a government?

SPEAKER_01 21:12

They well, there's two there's two systems that that book. So for your readers, just to understand what's going on, one of the great sci-fi writers of all time was uh Isaac Asmo. He was writing at the beginning of mainstream computers in in basically the 18 in the 1950s. So computers were just starting, and also the information age was just starting. And anyhow, he he created a three-part, three kind of it's like a trilogy, basically rooted ultimately it had more more um books, but let's just call it the initially it was a trilogy in which they he had a character that because of all the this is a thousand years in the future, where there's so we we know so much about everything, information, and we have uh powerful tools, i.e., computers and AI, that can help you essentially predict the future with precision. Like you could know, like. Future of your history and what's gonna happen, and what he does in this book series is he predicts the downfall of the of the empire of that time, which is an intergalactic empire going across galaxies and all kinds of stuff. Um, you know, typical sci-fi on that level. But what so there's two systems in that thing there was the old empire system that fell apart, essentially, was the core of the story, and then there was a more democratic foundation of scientists and technologically uh kind of more selfless people, essentially, who weren't as corrupt and you know into power as the empire, and they essentially hold out while the entire empire collapses so they can rebuild civilization and humanity after it. So that's the basic way to think of it.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

So it was a democracy that they had.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

The one that survives is ultimately democracy, but the one that collapses, which is the bulk of the story, is the collapse of the empire, which is you know more like a proto-fascist kind of government or something.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, yes. It it was run by one guy who's an emperor and the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Uh-huh. So, like Avatar, you have this nation state that's depleting the resources and robbing everybody from what they want.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

It's interesting to me because that's kind of a vague description. Okay, you have a democratic this uprising of people that how do they make all that happen? You're talking about a digital political system of some sort, a digital democracy. Is that what they had? Is that what they used in foundation, or was it something other than that? I mean, what was the system? Because we're talking about political systems and how they work. I could I could specifically say proportional representation, uh, get rid of the Senate altogether, just abolish it, have one legislature, not a bicameral one. There are specific things that I see that would enhance the democratic nature of our government.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

How would digital well, first of all, let yeah. So so let me just remember when I started the conversation from my side, I was saying there's two ways to think about the the future of politics. One is relatively rooted in evolving and reforming the existing structures, expanding them. Um, and and I think the way you're talking, when you say, well, we get rid of the you know bicameral kind of you know, Senate and that kind of thing, but that's still relatively in the in in sync with you know what we've known as democracy, right? Oh, so now it's just a majority House of Representatives or something that runs, which is a totally definitely a positive thing and probably a much more probable thing in the near term, is something like that will happen. Like we'll expand that. I would say in the next 10 to 20 years, I would say it's potentially as early as the next 10 years, particularly with the pressure of climate change and everything else is starting. I think you can see several reforms that are gonna basically happen. I think one is you're gonna expand the Supreme Court, I think that is going to happen. Um, I think you're gonna basically see either an expansion of the number of states by adding them to just kind of balance out the Wyomings and places that don't even have a million people, but are voting red. Um, so you'll either see that or you'll see some kind, and you will basically abolish the Electoral College for presidential votes. I mean, anyhow, there will be some things that are within the system we already have. You could actually see a way forward that would still allow that system to work a lot better and and and and more democratic and and more operational and not paralyzed all the time. So that that thing I think is very possible. And there's a whole way to talk about that and why there's generational change coming. There's all kinds of stuff happening that that I think is uh is could we could play that scenario out, and I think it's happening. I have a whole series called, which you might have read, the uh California is your future. I mean, but essentially what happened in California, I would argue this is a kind of a way that go in that direction, is to say California used to be a red state. Then California, which is back Ronald Reagan and all that, we innovated the whole, yeah. I'm sitting here now, but I wasn't there now then. But essentially, uh, you know, that was a red state. I mean, we invented modern conservativism was out of California. Then there was a 50-50 state where nothing got done. That was from about the night through the 90s and the early 2000s, was essentially nothing got done in California because we were in a 50-50 thing and nobody could get the upper hand. That is essentially uh, and then we eventually shifted to a total blue state supermajorities coming out with the Dems. But it's not like when you look at California, you say, oh, they're always been blue or there are always just people. No, it's not true. This is an evolution of the political culture of California to deal with the immigration, which kind of changed the face of California, climate change, all kinds of technological changes, all these economic changes, these things. So California's adapted, and now they are a supermajority blue state. I would argue that is essentially a precursor of what the country's gone through. In other words, we've kind of had a 40-year run of the more conservative kind of government, which you could argue good or bad, that's happened. The last 10 years or more have been 20 years, even you could say have been this crazy ass, you know, paralysis, 50-50 kind of thing. Maybe the last 10 years, think of it as. And now we're entering a shift because people are getting so frustrated, we got to move it, and there's a lot of pressures, and there's a lot of demographic changes. Same things that changed California, demographic changes, climate pressures, economic changes, digitization, global interconnection to the world, blah, blah, blah. All the stuff that happened in California is now happening all through the country. So I would argue, just on the default of the existing system, you're gonna see essentially Blue America win this decade, basically, and that you will essentially create a United States of America under kind of like a California model, think of it as, just like we saw a California model with Reggae did that whole tax revolt and everything else go, it'll be a similar thing like that. And I think that's a reasonable way the country could go and could survive and you know evolve in this climate change thing. That's one scenario. And and just to hold this thought for a second, which we can continue to talk about. The bigger idea is that maybe it's gonna take longer than the next 10, 20 years, but it's possible that even that that those constraints of that model of hey, this is how it works, you got to get elected to this, and the broken, you know, senates and the you know, representatives and all that stuff, that it could even go another leap up. And I think that's actually, but that's a longer lens. But I would say, for example, you know, polling, think of it as just like polling is a crude way to do this. But if now that we have AIs, and you know, we're just starting AI, so let's say 10 years into AI, we're gonna have maybe tools that'll make super precise what you know the 60% majority of the want. And you know what? You know, then the millennials are running things, and the jet ziers are running things, and the climate is like crushing the country, and you're like, okay, we're not gonna listen to this knucklehead crew in South Dakota who's holding up the whole damn thing, right? Uh, and so they'll just say we're gonna do it differently in a fundamental way. And I I think it's possible that that could happen. That I'm less confident about that, but I am very confident that the politics of California are coming to the rest of the country, it's already happening.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Harvey J.K. and and Alan Minsky from the Progressive Democrats said that he wants to he's floating an idea for a new economic bill of rights like like FDR, right? Had during the 40s. And you talked about FDR in one of your presentations. And I know you're aware of how things changed under his administration, which was what six sixteen years? After that, it took 60 years, they undid everything. Now we're in the middle of the second gilded age. This political system, because of the way it was designed to protect the minority of the opulent, that's you know, that's a good point. You know, that's the way it was designed. How do you get around that design so that in the long term it works consistently for the majority and represents the will of the people of the United States?

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Well, I would say, yeah, I like where you're going there, and that's a very smart analysis, and uh I largely agree with it. So so I guess the way I would say is there's a there's one way you can think of American history is it's a basically a pendulum swing between conservative eras and progressive eras, and that there's a a kind of a I think of it as roughly a 40-year cycle, and it's weird if you go back through all of American history, uh it's roughly does hit this about every and so there's some kind of logic to it at some level, which is you get one kind of, let's say a conservative era has a certain kind of pro-business and more elite status and inequalities, but it's also kind of uh unleashes some entrepreneurial energies and a bunch of stuff that's you know you could also argue is is maybe a good thing once in a while. Um, but anyhow, those periods get to this point where you know, then it gets, you know, starts breaking down, it gets corrupt, it's you know, it's not working even even by what it is, and then the pedalum swing kind of swings the other way, and then you get a progressive era, which is which is more innovative, more forward motion, more looking out for everybody, you know, more kind of egalitarian, you know, more, you know, there's a often tuned into the environment, things like that a little bit more that swings into that world. And those world, and that works for a while, and but then those two also get corrupt, it doesn't work. It's like after a while, just stay out. We're kind of tired of it, it doesn't work. So it swings back. So I it's not it's weird, but you could actually look through an American history and it roughly hits this. Now, you pointed out, and we've brought up already the two two of the junctures where the Reagan uh so so the FDR juncture was that was the last time you could say America well, last time of many times already been through this cycle. It was the last time in recent memory where we opened up a progressive era that was the post-war boom, it all the GI Bill, it all the Great Society, it all the stuff that we know, right? That thing was highly successful, but by the 70s, it was like, you know, it was not working, and everything was kind of getting stale and corrupt, and it wasn't working. And then you watch this thing go to the conservative side, which kind of cleaned up and whacked back the bureaucracy and unregulated stuff and got things moving again. You could argue, again, I'm just trying to be somewhat neutral between these errors, like then there's some positive things, but there's also negative stuff, which he unleashed all this gilded age and inequality and stuff like that. So I would just argue by 2020, Trump was the last gasp of that praising on holding on to that conservative era, and it is gone. It's you know, and you know, Trump is trying again, and he'll never, in my opinion, he'll never win again. Uh, and so it's gonna, it's it's gonna take the Republicans a while to get off that crazy ass course. And but so we're opening up, I would argue strongly, we're arguing we're moving into an a more consolidated era of essentially blue America dominance, in which the furthest reaches of how advanced it is is close, it's California, for better or worse. I mean, it's not not everything California is awesome, but it's kind of what America is gonna be in the next 10, 20 years, I would say, if you look at it that way. But then there's this other track, which is interesting about this conversation, which is even that is not gonna necessarily solve this structural bias to the system to eventually re-up itself and reorient itself back to that ludocratic kind of dominant thing, that oligarchic thing. And so we got to solve that. Now that takes constitutional convention or that takes really fundamental reforms.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if we don't have a true democracy, a full democracy, what what's gonna prevent a third gilded age? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Well, you know, a couple couple thoughts here. Um before we get to the long now, which which we should go back to because it's a different that's another perspective on things. There's a Long Now Foundation is is a foundation here uh based in San Francisco, but it's a kind of a global organization which was founded by Stuart Brand and a bunch of kind of early people of his era to kind of think long-term to make uh long-term thinking kind of a constant and regular kind of way of thinking about things. Well, they say long-term, they'd be really long-term. So, like they're kind of thinking like the they're building a clock, which is almost done now, by the way. Uh, which is a clock that would literally will last for 10,000 years without human intervention. It's it's underground in a mountain in uh Texas right now, and it's gonna become a shrine for you know 10,000 years. Like, so if we nuke ourselves to death, you know, the the whatever the animals will crawl over it and stuff. But um, but anyhow, that's the point was just why are they doing that? Because they just think, you know, hey, we've had civilization for 10,000 years. Well, we should be thinking forward 10,000 years. So, anyhow, there's a bigger picture thing. I've been involved with these guys for a long time. I've been um, I've actually literally worked some for them. I've basically been in and out of that world for the whole 25 years. There is a refreshing way to think about it, but I would say what's interesting about them, which I think you this is why I brought it up, is they aren't political. And weirdly, I think there's this there's this interesting thing. I'm a very political guy and I think about politics all the time, and and and think you gotta talk about politics because, like you, it sounds like politics, if you don't talk politics, you're not really serious about how society is gonna evolve and things happen because you need essentially the um the weight of essentially governments and the and the kind of um mass kind of will behind things to make long-term historical changes, but they don't go there, and one of the reasons they don't go there is what's happened in this country, certainly in recent decades, but it's uh kind of always a problem, is is um when you talk politics, you it often alienates people. It also could, it could, you know, it's a light, it's it's a it's a third world in a way, so you'll piss off the people who you know think one way and another way, and so pretty soon you get this crazy toxic space. And so a lot of people just say, Well, fuck it, I'm not gonna, you know, then even touch it.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

I was down at Stanford to listen to Russ Feingold talk about his book, The Constitution in Jeopardy. I wanted to go hear Russ talk about it, and then after the program, I was out in the courtyard with the head of the Constitutional Law Center. I asked him, I said, Why aren't people talking about creating a more democratic constitution? Because obviously the one we have is very limited in terms of its democratic features. It's kind of stifles democracy in a lot of ways. And he said, Oh, that would be the worst thing. I wouldn't want to see that happen. There are people out there who don't want a more democratic society.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Oh, yeah, no, there's a lot of people defending it. And there's a lot of people that won't let COVID. Here's one thing though I want to say, which would shift a little bit of the what you're saying there. I just want to remind you and basically the the listeners for that matter. For all our worries and moaning and and kind of um hand-wringing about the state of democracy in America, or for that matter, Western Europe, even, um it's kind of compared to what? Because the other way to think about it is like China, the other superpower of the world, which you pretty much everyone seems to agree on, is you know, is China. Well, if you're in China and you're not, if you're not Xi, the the guy, the supreme commander, who just by the way, broke the system of their era where every 10 years you turn over the leadership and he just extended it for essentially another potentially ever, he could stay in there forever. If you're not him, you know, you don't want to necessarily be in China talking politics or doing anything around politics because and I know actually I have a lot of friends because I used to be a foreign correspondent in Asia, by the way. I in fact have covered uh China. I was in China after Jinbit Square, I've been in the Chinese jail, weirdly, uh, after that. I mean, there's a lot of stories I can go there, but also I had a lot of general journalist friends in um Hong Kong and Hong Kong, they've just destroyed Hong Kong in the last five years, and it's just the guy who's supreme guy just says, No, we're doing it this way, and you know, that's the way you go. And and then he goes, Oh, the tech world is too kind of powerful, kind of uh, they their version, and then I'm just gonna lop the heads off and they're going to jail.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

In comparison, you're you got a point there, but look at the inequality in the United States right now, it's at record levels. Look at the inequality in Brazil, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

But in China, weirdly, in China, it China has the same, it's I think it's it's and these numbers are pretty close because I I've used these numbers before. It's roughly about a third of the wealth of if of both the United States and of China is in the hands of I think the top five percent of the of the of the uh country, or maybe it's even the top one percent. Anyhow, it's huge inequalities, but it's also in China. But what's interesting is the Chinese let it go for a while while they're doing their capitalist version, but then they just lop the heads off these guys. Now, what I guess what I'm just gonna say is to finish the story of this is in the long run, in these junctures of transformation, with oh, the arrival of climate change and oh, the arrival of you know AI and these things, as messy as our country is and as kind of crazy and kind of chaotic as it can be at times, you'd rather have a pluralistic democratic society or democratic in name society now, so that you and I can be arguing like this, and there's the right wiggers arguing like this on the same thing. I mean, and and because if you can't do this in China, I mean if you if we were to do this in China, they you'd be the guys be knocking on your door.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

I'm gonna argue that that's a pretty low bar. I mean we are a free society. Okay, I get that, and we're really glad for that. Bloomberg said the 50 richest Americans now hold as much wealth as half of the US. That's from Bloomberg.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Well, Bloomberg, that's a pretty reliable source. No, I'm not promoting it. I'm just saying that said is boy, what Pluton or or G, or like where do we go? I mean, it's like what's a better system?

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Yeah, David Attenborough has a new movie out called Breaking Boundaries, where he discusses the uh various thresholds that were breaking through where these uh systems collapse. There's like nine of them. He said we're breaking two or three of them now, or we're scheduled to break through three or four more very soon. So, in other words, the urgency I think couldn't be much greater. I would love to think that Biden's climate initiative was enough. It's not, clearly it's not enough. I I don't know if I don't think Trump's gonna get elected either. But let's say Biden comes back in and we have the mag the MAGA crowd still in Congress. We're we're running out of time, is all I'm saying. And I think that this conversation about how we could create a more effective democracy in the United States is urgent to get out.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

So here's here's what I'll say, just building off what you're saying, is I'm not saying Biden is the transformational character, but um, but I do think uh in the current situation where we're at, um, I think he did lay some foundational pieces like the IRA and you know, moving 360 billion dollars and plus into the climate economy, all kinds of stuff. There's a lot a lot of things that you'd much rather, it's a lot better having him there. Um, but I would say I think the story. So if I had to make a prediction, which is rare, I shouldn't, you know, I should be cautious about this one. Yeah, but my short-term thing is that Biden will win this election. Um, Trump will drag down the Republicans into an era of soul searching and rebuilding, and you know, kind of like Reagan did to um, you know, basically the Dems. I mean, the Dems just kept trying to put back the same liberal, you know, candidates, uh, Mondale, and you know, then it was Dukakis. And anyhow, we just kept serving them up and they'd get flattened every time, right? Um, anyhow, that's gonna be kind of a MAGA Trump thing for a while if they don't get their shit together pretty soon. Now, eventually they will probably reform and there'll be some new Ronald Reagan that'll come out the other end somehow. But anyhow, um, I guess what I'm trying to say is the scenario I think is gonna happen is this the transformation isn't gonna come with the Biden administration or this election, but it's gonna at least hold the piece, the fingers in the dike enough to kind of make the system hang, at least in not go backwards, and probably lay the groundwork for even bigger stuff to come. But I would say the next election after that, I would say someone like um, I would say Gavin Newsom, or I would say a younger generation, a more transformative candidate, a more savvy kind of you know, arguer who can really take on the red state kind of bugaboos and you know, and just really build a 60-40 coalition that just rolls in the same way you flip Texas or you flip, you know, some of these red states that are just getting young millennials moving there and buying the houses, and pretty soon there's like, you know, damn, it's flips. If you start to get those kind of flips going on, and and that then you could build essentially uh the majorities that we had in the post war uh kind of era, where you can literally just get through giant infrastructure projects. You can really change educational systems, you can, you know, do go to the moon, you can do a bunch of stuff, right? You go, you go kind of nutty on. Uh ambitious things. I think that's where I would say I'd be looking for. And then by the way, you can expand the Supreme Court or threaten the Supreme to do it like the way FDR did. I mean, FDR just threatened to expand it and they kind of got over themselves and shifted. And so I think there's a way you can kind of navigate this without, you know, having to rebuild the entire constitution. But with time, I could imagine after you roll with that for a decade or two of, you know, kind of a kind of a similar to what happened in the 50s and 60s or something, that you'd get to a place where you might have a constitutional convention that people say, you know, this is just insane. We can't keep working within these constraints. And that you, you know, you maybe you would have something more fundamentally different. And that, you know, in the lifetime of our kids or our grandkids, it'll just be taken as the normal way it goes. And then it's just gonna be, oh yeah, sure, we did that, and you know, it'll be it'll be 2040 or 2050 or something. We had the Constitutional Convention, and you know what? Well, they fundamentally revised it. And by the way, to live with climate change and to live with whatever planetary kind of uh challenges of, you know, you know, every five years we got another global pandemic or something. I mean, this will be something that'll make us have to do some, you know, and so I think it's it's I think that's pro I you know, without being crazy talk, there's something along those lines is in our future, I think.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

I want you to say it's one of the inexorables.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

Well, the inexorables are a little different animals, and those are like gonna happen under any scenario. That one I just said is a little bit more hopeful, but in my own wishes.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

I kind of think it is, though, because there doesn't seem to be a better system than democracy for organizing countries. Maybe I'm an anarchist deep down inside. I'd like to get to that point where we don't need a government. That'd be great. Okay, if we're society is functioning that well, and people understand what equality means on that level, we probably wouldn't need a government. That's great, but that's probably a couple hundred years away. There was a study done about what impact the average American has on policy in the United States. Zero. Zero. We do not have any impact on policy. So my point is only that yes, if all these things are gonna help and we're gonna move, and generational shifts are gonna happen. That's great. I'm really looking forward to seeing that happen. But wouldn't it be wonderful if you could say I was a part of that generation that established a fully functional democracy in the United States for the first time, and actually the majority have has the tools now to express what they want and to achieve the goals that they're after. That's we don't have that. The majority are not going to be able to do that until they have the tools to do that. The digital revolution will empower them to a degree. But the political system itself has so many blocks and vetoes and ways of preventing progress in that sense that it's not likely to be a massive change like we need. And if you want to create a new society where the majority are actually in control, all I'm saying is we better start having a conversation about what that's gonna require. I happen to know what it is. I've talked to 14 or 15 different constitutional scholars, and pretty much they all agree. Uh it's like the answers are pretty well known, which is stunning to me. And one of them has a proposal for creating a national convention coordinating committee, and uh you know that would get the whole process started. I think I think it's brilliant. I think it needs to happen. I'm I would constantly look for funding and partners for that uh initiative because I think that's fundamentally what we need to work on.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

So that's a book called Making a New American Constitution.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

Making a New American Constitution by uh George Van Cleeb, a great guy, and Aaron Liphard Patterns of Democracy. Basically, if you put those two guys in the room together, you'd have a country that would be fully democratic in a couple of a couple of days, you know. And it would function function like a modern democracy should, not like an oligarchy, which we will continue to be going forward. And what scares me about your predictions is that if this is going to be a boom on steroids, where's the wealth of the society gonna go under this system? It's going to go to the top.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

Well, maybe. I mean, because we've had past booms. Uh, for example, we had a huge boom coming off World War II. In fact, you could argue the biggest uh economic boom in American history was coming off of World War II. And it was also a technological boom. We we built out, you know, interstate highways and cars and suburbs and you know, rebuilt cities and skyscrapers and you you name it. And but it was a very democratic system. And but you know, the the rates of, you know, uh, I think the the the the essentially tax rate for the upper one percent was like something like 90% or something. I mean, it was a nominal, so not a lot of people paid the 90, but they paid incredibly more than the 35% now. I mean, so you can rework the system if it's a true democracy or even close to a democracy, you can just say, well, screw it. We're gonna basically, you know, not let that kind of inequality get out of control. And after the World War II and the 30s and all the collapse of the economy and everything else, people said, damn, we're just not going there, folks. And we built that society. Now, then Reagan came back after, you know, in the 80s and you know, he came back as a you know, kind of a counterweight and was like, you know, yeah, but we need to kind of revitalize the economy and oh yeah. You know, but but I mean, you know, the point being is it's not like we haven't tried, you know, had lived through boom, tech booms, and economic booms that are essentially spread the wealth and prosperity pretty, you know, lovely through society.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Uh it didn't work out that way in the last boom, though.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

The tech boom?

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Yeah, because we ended up in the second gilded age. I mean, so there was no not yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Well, that was a conservative error, like you say. Yeah, that in that context, you cut taxes, cut regulations, uh, and then you ended up having shareholder capitalism engorging the top. But that was a system change. That wasn't necessarily a function of, oh, it's a new technology, so that automatically happens. It's like, oh, you can introduce a new technology in an economic and social system that doesn't necessarily engorge the rich. It takes political will and it takes, you know, organization and all that stuff. What I guess what I'm saying is it's not inevitable that the next and it's not just AI boom. Okay, there's there's three booms that are gonna happen here, and this could be a whole other conversation because I do a lot of talks, but it's not just AI as the next wave of the digital revolution, but there's the whole clean tech energy, eventually fusion energy kind of boom that's happening, and then there's uh the biotech, synthetic biology, biological engineering boom. And it is true that there are companies that are gonna make a lot of money in that space, but it's also true that there's uh there's no um reason objectively that you could refashion the context of making wealth in those contexts to say, hey, nobody can beat make a billion dollars, you know, or you know what, we're gonna tax anyone over, you know, 20 million bucks or something, you're gonna end up having to be taxed at 75% of your wealth. Or we're gonna basically, anyhow, a million ways you can do it, and we've done it. I mean, people have done this in the past, it and includes it's including in Europe. So, I mean, I'm just trying to say is the political, the tech the anti-tech, I'm not saying you're anti-tech, but a lot of people get anti-tech thinking that it follows that if you pour in a new technology, it's gonna create these super elites. It's not really true. Um uh, and I'll give you a good example. I mean, you know, think of it as in the post-war world, essentially the technology, the boom of that time was automobiles, right? In in Detroit and the whole kind of thing. And, you know, by the way, Ford, who is known as a kind of a, you know, uh, a kind of uh uh, you know, Gilded Age Ford, that was 1906, you know, that was like 1906. He started the model tea and that stuff. So that was still in the kind of 20s, tens, and twenties, where it was more free market and let those guys get engorged. But after the war, those people running those GM and all that kind of stuff, they were a managerial class. You don't have those great, you know, oh, this guy made an insane amount of money. There weren't no Elon Musk, George, you know, B Bezos characters in the in the post-world war. But they but they had incredible, but you know what happened in the post-world world? The different system said, hey, we're gonna cut a deal. There's literally a thing called the uh Treaty of Detroit where they basically cut a deal with the unions at the time. They said, look, we're gonna give you first-time paid vacation, we're gonna give you health care, we're gonna give you, you know, um the cost of living raises. We're gonna they spread the wealth of that boom into the kind of working crew and created an entire middle class. Now, that was a political decision, and it was essentially an economic system decision, but the point is it didn't, it's not a function of the technology boom of that time created extreme inequality. It's the political system that time spread the world, and everybody loved it.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

Well, that's very true. I can't argue with that, Peter. Um, you know, and there have been moments in American history when inequality has been confronted head on, but as Alan Minsky and uh Harvey J.K. pointed out on the podcast, these games, you know, the Great Society, the New Deal, uh, they've been under attack for almost a century. So uh it swings back and forth, is all I'm saying. And I guess you're saying the same thing. Generationally, I agree. I think it looks to me like we are moving into a more progressive era. Uh, and the system itself is, in my view, though, just not designed to protect the interest of the majority. So, why would any of us want to keep it? Is my question. Anyway, Peter, I gotta wrap it up. You gotta go. How can people stay in touch with you and where are they gonna find you if they're looking for you?

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Well, first of all, anyone who wants to find out about me can always go to my website, which is peterleiden.com, which is my name, Peter OneWord Peter Leiden, L-E-Y-D-E-N.com. That ties together all my social media, where I'm at, who I am, bios, the whole thing, and my speaking, all the things I do. The second thing is I run a company, I founded and run a company called Reinvent Futures, which is at reInvent.net, which is another kind of company that you could say, which is a strategic foresight company that I do. I do a lot of advisory work, but also I run this event series here um in San Francisco called The Great Progression. And the third place you might go is just on Substack. I've been I'm writing now a monthly kind of column, you could say, an essay, which is uh The Great Progression under my name in Substack. Many places to see, uh, but a bunch of ways to catch me, and uh I would love to stay connected.

SPEAKER_00 55:37

I'd love that too, and I'll definitely make it a point to follow up soon. Thanks again, Peter. Peter makes a lot of great points, which has me thinking in a whole new way about the future. I'll admit I have been pretty pessimistic about it lately. But when I hear about all the different technologies we will develop in the coming century, who knows? Maybe it will be an amazing future. I also remain a little skeptical about a new progressive era dominated by millennials and Gen Zers. On one hand, our political parties don't appear to be capable of addressing the threats we faced, including inequality, climate change, and overpopulation. And on the other, a lot of unique things came together to create the New Deal, including FDR's historic four terms in office. Certainly, a new set of circumstances will converge this century, which may enable Americans to address the various threats we face. But will technological transformation and generational shifts be enough to facilitate the dawn of an entirely new civilization? I don't know. Peter seems to agree constitutional change in America is inevitable in the 21st century. However, my question remains: why would we wait if we know the one we have is at best problematic and in some way significantly undemocratic? At some point, we will have to ask ourselves if we want to be a fully democratic nation or not. If so, we will have to confront things like the malapportionate in the Senate. We may want to adopt a more representative electoral system. We certainly might choose to reform our courts. If the current systems we use for energy, transportation, and food are all being transformed, why would we not also consider transforming our political system? After all, democracy is the process, the grand bargain between the living citizens to be improved upon whenever the people as a whole agree it is necessary. If we are going to create a new civilization in the 21st century, maybe we should use all the tools modernity has to offer. These are among the findings of the Democracy Report 2022, released by the VDEM Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Dictatorships are on the rise. They now harbor 70% of the world population or nearly 5.4 billion people. Liberal democracies peaked in 2012 with 42 countries, while there were only 34 left standing by 2021. Maybe we should all be more concerned about the health and viability of democracy. I thought it would be a good time to talk to Alexander Eckind about his book, Russia Against Modernity. What's happening in Russia these days and what is the future of democracy in Eastern Europe? Tune in next time for another look at the future of democracy. This time from the point of view of the Russian people. I think it'll be a great conversation. Until then, stay safe out there.