Robert Gordon notes that the newest wave of technology, while dramatically changing how we communicate and get information, has done very little to improve the material conditions of life, particularly in housing and transportation.15
The slowdown of population growth, especially in high-income countries, is another aspect of societal stagnation. In Europe, low birth rates have been common for almost a half century now. Europe’s population is on track to fall from 738 million to roughly 482 million by 2100. Retirees in a shrunken Germany will then outnumber children under the age of fifteen by a ratio of four to one.16
The demographic decline in East Asia has been, if anything, more dramatic. Over the past few decades, fertility has dropped precipitously in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, all with birth rates now well below replacement level.17 Perhaps the most extreme case is Japan, where the decline had started by the 1960s. If the current trend continues, the island nation’s population will drop from 127 million to under 80 million by 2065, according to Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.18
The Chinese population is projected to start declining too. By 2050, China is expected to have 60 million fewer people under age fiteen, a loss approximately the size of Italy’s total population. At the same time, China will have nearly 190 million more people who are age 65 and over, approximately equal to the population of Pakistan, the world’s fourth most populous country. The ratio of retirees to working people in China is expected to have more than tripled by then, which would be one of the most rapid demographic shifts in history.19
The global demographic trend will reshape economies and societies going forward. Today a majority of the world’s people live in countries with fertility rates well below replacement level.20 This number will grow to 75 percent by 2050, according to the United Nations; many societies, including some in the developing world, can expect a rapidly aging population and a precipitous decline in workforce numbers.21 Overall world population growth could all but end by 2040, says Wolfgang Lutz, and be in decline by 2060.22
Shrinking populations in advanced countries will threaten economic growth by limiting the size of the labor force, and will undermine the fiscal viability of the welfare state.23 This is one reason for the receptiveness of Western governments to high levels of immigration from poorer countries, which continue to produce offspring more prodigiously than wealthier countries. Between now and 2050, half of all global population growth is expected to take place in Africa.24 A widening demographic imbalance between the poorer and wealthier countries could cause more disruption in both spheres, and lead to a reprise of the mass migrations that did much to undermine the ancient empires of Europe and Asia.25 Social conflict resulting from high levels of immigration from poorer countries is already a prominent feature of Western politics and seems likely to fester in the coming decades.26
The Technology Gap
Technological advances once fueled growing prosperity for the many. Today, automation and the use of artificial intelligence promise to accelerate social divisions both between and within countries. Although it is not clear that these technologies will result in fewer jobs overall, some sectors are especially threatened, notably manufacturing, transportation, and retail—sectors that historically provided steady blue-collar employment. But jobs in those sectors may be even more threatened by regulatory changes, largely justified on environmental grounds, that restrict growth in tangible industries.27
What is more likely than mass unemployment in the Western world is a continuing decline of the middle class, as many are forced to subsist in the so-called “gig economy.” Between 2005 and 2014, the percentage of families with flat or decreasing real incomes rose to over 60 percent in the twenty-five most advanced economies.28
A technologically driven society tends to show a widening gap between the “elect” who are highly gifted in science and tech, and the many who are not. Today it takes only a small cadre of coders, financial experts, and marketing mavens to build a billion-dollar business, without much required in the way of blue-collar workers or even middle managers. In the long run, we could see something of the stark future depicted in The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. “We are turning into two races,” writes Richard Fernandez: “Eloi who play video games and Morlocks who program them.”29
In the face of these social challenges, the intellectual classes in the higher-income countries—in the universities, the media, and the arts—almost universally seek to deconstruct the values that guided their countries’ ascent and provided the foundation for widespread prosperity. Instead of concerning themselves with addressing the consequences of economic stagnation—more poverty, social immobility, class conflict—many in the clerisy and even the oligarchy promote the ideal of “sustainability” over broad-based economic growth.30 Just as the medieval clergy preached against materialism, leading figures in today’s academia and the media, and even some among the corporate elite, look askance at the very idea of a dynamic economy, a spirit of innovation, and a commitment to improving everyday life. Some even suggest that progress is a myth.31 In this way, the clerisy reinforce the pessimistic notion that upward mobility is a relic of the past, and that our primary tasks now are to redress social grievances and protect the environment, rather than seek ways to spread wealth and opportunity.32
The new feudalism won’t feature intrepid knights in armor or fortified castles, or raise soaring cathedrals filled with liturgical chants. Instead it will boast dazzling new technology, and be wrapped in a creed of globalism and environmental piety. Yet for all its modernity, the coming age looks set to replace liberal dynamism and intellectual pluralism with an orthodoxy that puts a premium on stasis and accepts social hierarchy as the natural order of things.
PART II
The Oligarchs
When there is a general change in conditions, it is as if the entire creation had changed, and the whole world altered.
—Ibn Khaldun (14th century)
CHAPTER 4
High-Tech Feudalism
Technological innovation has long been connected with the growth of capitalist economies. The capitalist revolution of the Early Modern period had far-reaching consequences, disrupting old rhythms of life, as Fernand Braudel explained.1 But capitalism and new technology together laid the basis for a broadly shared improvement in material well-being and for social mobility. By the same token, the recent tech revolution was once widely seen as not only transformative but generally beneficial. Some have envisioned a new civilization with great opportunities for human development and societal improvement. Yet today we see diminishing social mobility and little real material progress for most people, as economic power is increasingly dominated by fewer companies, particularly in the finance and technology sectors.2 Our future is coming to look like the “high-tech middle age” that the Japanese futurist Taichi Sakaiya predicted more than three decades ago.3
The pioneers of the modern tech industry were once celebrated as exemplars of capitalist competition, illustrating what Joseph Schumpeter called the “creative destruction” that breaks up monopolies and allows others to rise from below. But today’s tech leaders increasingly resemble an exclusive ruling class, controlling a few exceptionally powerful companies, and like aristocracies everywhere they are often resistant to any dispersion of their power. As they conquer ever more of the precious digital real estate, they are building a more stratified economic and social order, with widening class divisions, not only in the United States but around the world.4
The Birth of the New Oligarchy