Democracy has long been treated as the most "stable release" of political systems which is tested through centuries of trial and error, refined through revolutions, and widely adopted because it worked better than the alternatives. But like any system, its adoption was never purely about ideals. It was, above all, a practical solution to control the problem.
Deprecation warnings: we've all seen them. They're like a little yellow sticky note from the future, telling us that the way we're doing things now will soon be obsolete. Lately, for me, that warning has been popping up a lot when I run my Python code with xarray:
FutureWarning: In a future version of xarray the default value for data_vars will change from data_vars='all' to data_vars=None.`
This got me thinking. It's not just our code that's getting these warnings. It feels like our society is too. With the federal government shutdown that began on October 1st, it's hard not to feel like we're receiving a similar message:
DeprecationWarning: democracy
``democracy`` is deprecated and will be removed in governance 2.0.
In this post, I want to explore this parallel between the deprecation of code and the deprecation of democracy.
Why States Came Up With Democracy
Ruling elites throughout history faced a recurring issue: they could not fully control their populations. Attempts at absolute power were costly, fragile, and prone to violent backlash. Democracies emerged as a workaround and states chose to concede some influence to the people, not out of moral enlightenment, but because compromise reduces chaos, prevents uprisings, and ensures long-term stability. By channeling discontent into elections, parliaments, and courts, democracy turned potential riots into structured, manageable disputes.
Pragmatism Over Ethics
It is interesting to see democracy as an ethical result of political evolution. But in practice, states embraced it because it was in their interest. Sharing power through institutions was cheaper than constant repression. Consent manufactured through ballots proved more sustainable than control enforced by bayonets. Democracy, in this sense, was less about justice and more about efficiency. It is a strategic pact between rulers who wanted stability and citizens who demanded voice.
The Coming Deprecation?
What happens if the original problem, lack of control, fades away? Advances in technology, surveillance, and artificial intelligence are pushing us closer to a reality where states can monitor, predict, and shape behavior so thoroughly that mass uprisings become improbable. If rulers can suppress unrest at low cost, their incentive to compromise weakens. The result may be the slow deprecation of democracy: still present in form, but hollow in function. Elections, rights, and freedoms may remain as a user interface while behind the scenes, control is automated, optimized, and total.
⚠️ DeprecationWarning:
Democracy was introduced as a compatibility layer between rulers and the ruled. With upcoming releases of surveillance and AI governance, its core use case may no longer be required. Users are advised to prepare for simulated democracy, managed participation, or alternative control frameworks.
Early Signs in Economics
The consequences of recent advances may not have fully emerged in democracy yet (I hope), but we can vividly see them in other areas. Consider the tariff wars and the push for "reindustrialization" in the United States during the Trump administration. These moves were not just about nationalism, they reflected the fact that AI and automation are making production less dependent on cheap human labor. The old logic of outsourcing to China for low-cost workers is being disrupted. If machines and algorithms reduce the strategic advantage of abundant labor, then the very foundations of global trade and political compromise are shifting.
I heard somewhere that the AI era is the single biggest point in history for the redistribution of wealth and power. And if we look at the evidence, it's hard to disagree. Just four or five years ago, who would have imagined that a new technology company could emerge and compete with giants like Google, Apple, or Meta? Yet here we are, OpenAI is a striking example of how the AI revolution is redistributing not just wealth, but influence, market share, and even cultural authority. If a revolution in wealth has already begun, a revolution in power seems equally imminent.