This is a nitpick that doesn’t really affect the overall message of the post (which I upvoted), but:
The Economist’s Democracy Index shows a sharp decline over the last decade:
That chart has a cut y-axis; the decline looks much less sharp in a graph that shows the full range:
This box from Wikipedia also suggests that the overall average going from 5.55 to 5.3 isn’t that significant, as the whole scale is used and everything between 4 and 6 is considered to be within the same category of regime:
I’m a big fan of extrapolating trendlines, and I think the current trendlines are concerning. But when evaluating the likelihood that “most democratic Western countries will become fascist dictatorships”, I’d say these trends point firmly against this being “the most likely overall outcome” in the next 10 years. (While still increasing my worry about this as a tail-risk, a longer-term phenomena, and as a more localized phenomena.)
If we extrapolate the graphs linearly, we get:
If we wait 10 years, we will have 5 fewer “free” countries and 7 more “non-free” countries. (Out of 195 countries being tracked. Or: ~5-10% fewer “free” countries.)
If we wait 10 years, the average democracy index will fall from 5.3 to somewhere around 5.0-5.1.
That’s really bad. But it would be inconsistent with a wide fascist turn in the West, which would cause bigger swings in those metrics.
(As far as I can tell, the third graph is supposed to indiciate the sign of the derivative of something like a democracy index, in each of many countries? Without looking into their criteria more, I don’t know what it’s supposed to say about the absolute size of changes, if anything.)
This also makes me confused about the next section’s framing. If there’s no “National Exceptionalism” where western countries are different from the others, then presumably the same trends should apply. But those suggest that the headline claim is unlikely. (But that we should be concerned about less probable, less widespread, and/or longer-term changes of the same kind.)
In what sense is that a nitpick or something that doesn’t affect the message? It’s a substantial drag on the message, data that only supports the conclusion if you already have a prior that the conclusion is true.
I meant in the sense that there were quite a few different pieces of evidence presented in the post (e.g. this was one index out of three mentioned), so just pointing out that one of them is weaker than implied doesn’t affect the overall conclusion much.
Fwiw I still don’t think it makes sense to call that a nitpick. Seems like a good thing to point out. (I agree it’s not, like, a knockdown argument against the whole thing. But I think of nitpicks as things that aren’t relevant to the central point of the post)
Good point, but also according to Wikipedia “the index includes 167 countries and territories”, so small changes in the average are plausibly meaningful.
This is a nitpick that doesn’t really affect the overall message of the post (which I upvoted), but:
That chart has a cut y-axis; the decline looks much less sharp in a graph that shows the full range:
This box from Wikipedia also suggests that the overall average going from 5.55 to 5.3 isn’t that significant, as the whole scale is used and everything between 4 and 6 is considered to be within the same category of regime:
+1.
I’m a big fan of extrapolating trendlines, and I think the current trendlines are concerning. But when evaluating the likelihood that “most democratic Western countries will become fascist dictatorships”, I’d say these trends point firmly against this being “the most likely overall outcome” in the next 10 years. (While still increasing my worry about this as a tail-risk, a longer-term phenomena, and as a more localized phenomena.)
If we extrapolate the graphs linearly, we get:
If we wait 10 years, we will have 5 fewer “free” countries and 7 more “non-free” countries. (Out of 195 countries being tracked. Or: ~5-10% fewer “free” countries.)
If we wait 10 years, the average democracy index will fall from 5.3 to somewhere around 5.0-5.1.
That’s really bad. But it would be inconsistent with a wide fascist turn in the West, which would cause bigger swings in those metrics.
(As far as I can tell, the third graph is supposed to indiciate the sign of the derivative of something like a democracy index, in each of many countries? Without looking into their criteria more, I don’t know what it’s supposed to say about the absolute size of changes, if anything.)
This also makes me confused about the next section’s framing. If there’s no “National Exceptionalism” where western countries are different from the others, then presumably the same trends should apply. But those suggest that the headline claim is unlikely. (But that we should be concerned about less probable, less widespread, and/or longer-term changes of the same kind.)
In what sense is that a nitpick or something that doesn’t affect the message? It’s a substantial drag on the message, data that only supports the conclusion if you already have a prior that the conclusion is true.
I meant in the sense that there were quite a few different pieces of evidence presented in the post (e.g. this was one index out of three mentioned), so just pointing out that one of them is weaker than implied doesn’t affect the overall conclusion much.
Fwiw I still don’t think it makes sense to call that a nitpick. Seems like a good thing to point out. (I agree it’s not, like, a knockdown argument against the whole thing. But I think of nitpicks as things that aren’t relevant to the central point of the post)
Good point, but also according to Wikipedia “the index includes 167 countries and territories”, so small changes in the average are plausibly meaningful.