Propaganda, censorship, and surveillance are all attributes of monopoly
I agree with this. And would like to extend it a bit further.<p>In the instances where each of these 3 attributes (Propaganda, censorship &amp; surveillance) -- are also essential part of a business model -- I would call those specific large businesses as Super-Monopolies.<p>If we look at any large and successful business that has the above, plus is in the business of end-user <i>Advertisement</i> (that is in the business of promoting one thing over another .. that&#x27;s advertisement for end consumers).<p>It fits into a &#x27;super-monopoly&#x27; bucket.<p>It must surveil (to understand the target audience), and it must do it covertly.<p>It must censor (remove, downplay, gray-out content that does not fit the business model, or, as we see lately,  the political bias of the org&#x27;s leadership)<p>It has to monopolize the market place, so that every end-user &#x27;walks through a single door&#x27;.<p>It will use propaganda to pacify critical thinkers, and to mislead folks with less developed &#x27;critical thinking&#x27; -- that they are &#x27;not a monopoly by any stretch&#x27;, that they are just and fair, and hard working... As that&#x27;s a necessary function to survive in a system with anti-trust laws.<p>- - -<p>What is, of course, very notable about these 3 attributes -- that they are also a <i></i>must<i></i> for Dictatorships and Monarchy style of government.<p>- - -<p>If the above is an accepted analogy.  There are 2 positions about it  ( a) -- that&#x27;s good, continue on   (b) no, that&#x27;s bad, we need to have constitutional checks that this cannot happen, even if most powerful people try to do it.<p>- - -<p>So what could constitution (assuming that it cannot be changed) could look like to prevent a &#x27;country-wide&#x27; analogy of a monopoly - a Dictatorship?<p>- - -<p>Well, the first thing, is to agree, that no matter how fair-minded, or &#x27;saint&#x27; a person is -- given enough power, he&#x2F;she will get corrupt.<p>That applies for groups of people as well as for individual.<p>- - -<p>Therefore, the first solution -- is power distribution.  Under no circumstances political, economic and military power can be concentrated within the power of the same group of people.<p>That means &#x27;de-centralization&#x27;, and more practically &#x27;de-urbanization&#x27;.   Meaning that having small geographical areas and their elected representative wielding most power is good for Dictatorship.  So a Constitution must prevent that.<p>The nuance there is what is &#x27;economic power&#x27;.  Well that&#x27;s mostly means, control of tax revenue, and control of within country trade.<p>Therefore, a good constitution, to avoid corruption would:<p>- Prohibit same group of people to control tax revenue, to control laws of intra-country trades<p>- Prohibit same group of people (as above) from having control of military force. And prevent military from interfering within the border.<p>- Prohibit same group of from forcing a &#x27;single choice&#x27; of any article of commerce, education, health.<p>- Prohibit same group from enforcing any emigration choices (meaning if the person wants to leave the country, they can).<p>--<p>Other thing that a good Constitution would do, is to enable the voting citizens to be the &#x27;final backstop&#x27;, the final judge to decide if actions of elected officials are constitutional or not,.. the final police police, acting as a threat with force, speaking allegorically.<p>With regard to comment<p>&gt; I am pretty certain, if our society manages to survive the current times, our attitude to centralization and globalization will change<p>I think it may be more nuance.  Or at least, I am trying to come up with the framework that will let me understand if the country will change and how...<p>I am speculating, that has to do with &#x27;critical thinking&#x27; abilities of voting public...<p>I have came to read somewhere, that critical thinking is more like an &#x27;immune system&#x27;.<p>We are not born with it, instead ,it develops over time, by experience. When meeting with bad, malignant information, manipulation and lies.<p>Just like immune system that gets stronger when surviving infections deceases.<p>Critical thinking does not directly correlate to our cognitive gifts, just like immune system may not be a reflection of visible physiological gifts.<p>With that analogy, we can say there always be a portion of voting population (due to 
age, particular environment that they were brought up, fear, etc.) -- that will have somewhat reduced critical thinking (or have in decline) compared to others.<p>That is, those folks have <i></i>reduced<i></i> cognitive immunity to being manipulated.  And that deficiency can change (improve or get worse) over time... (it is not static).<p>Depending on how string &amp; aggressive the malignant manipulation of people is in a particular period -- and depending on the percentage of folks with delayed development of critical thinking at that same period -- we will have different outcomes.<p>It is that ratio of how virulent manipulative malignancy is, divided by percent of voting population with underdeveloped critical thinking, that will decide the outcome for a country in a particular time period.<p>- - -<p>Without claiming an affinity to a particular side in the current US politics, I would say that it appears (at least to me ), that percentage of voting public with underdeveloped critical thinking, is higher now than was say 35 years ago or so.<p>If we can agree on the percentage of underdeveloped critical thinkers in the current voting population.
Then if we can agree on the measure of malignant manipulation (that, underneath reflects stakes)<p>Then if we agree and find these ratios in other consequential historical periods.  We will be able to &#x27;predict&#x27; what will happen, with, hopefully, better certainty.<p>I know this may easily fall into confirmation bias, as we start picking and choosing the percentages, etc. But nevertheless, I hope the above represents a &#x27;framework&#x27; to apply.