I think you’re considerably misreading history. It’s not that certain societies were more favourable to certain military styles and were thus selected for, but rather that certain distributions of military power gave particular groups of people the power to create particular social arrangements. So, for example, a republic is not particularly better at having lots of people with guns than a monarchy, but once you have a lot of people with guns they’re more likely to create a republic than a monarchy. A lot of other points sound dubious as well, but I think that primary concern (if correct) invalidates the argument completely =/
I also recently wrote a related post on my blog that I never update (basically arguing that democracy will decline as automated weapons overtake human soldiers if we somehow don’t have a singularity-like thing, and positing a supporting social theory). You may find it interesting.
Your blog post parallels ideas that I’ve been musing about myself. An artist I know turned my thoughts on democracy into a comic, the second one of the set here. And my pet hard-SF setting assumes much of what you describe at the end of your post—remote-controlled infantry allowing the powers-that-be to ignore popular disapproval (including having put down the ‘Blue Revolution’ across most of the planet), leading to an oligarchy in fact if not in name.
I think you’re considerably misreading history. It’s not that certain societies were more favourable to certain military styles and were thus selected for, but rather that certain distributions of military power gave particular groups of people the power to create particular social arrangements. So, for example, a republic is not particularly better at having lots of people with guns than a monarchy, but once you have a lot of people with guns they’re more likely to create a republic than a monarchy. A lot of other points sound dubious as well, but I think that primary concern (if correct) invalidates the argument completely =/
I also recently wrote a related post on my blog that I never update (basically arguing that democracy will decline as automated weapons overtake human soldiers if we somehow don’t have a singularity-like thing, and positing a supporting social theory). You may find it interesting.
Your blog post parallels ideas that I’ve been musing about myself. An artist I know turned my thoughts on democracy into a comic, the second one of the set here. And my pet hard-SF setting assumes much of what you describe at the end of your post—remote-controlled infantry allowing the powers-that-be to ignore popular disapproval (including having put down the ‘Blue Revolution’ across most of the planet), leading to an oligarchy in fact if not in name.