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Plato said civilizations go through cycles.
Democracy is the second to last stage, and it is marked by a wide diversification of consensus. Everyone starts to believe in a personal reality that has no connection to nature, physics, common sense, etc.
So you get one distinct opinion for every person, and there's no agreement at all except on the need for commerce, so civilization decays into anarchy and then its behind-the-scenes financial oligarchs unite and appoint a tyrant to keep order.
At that point, it has reached third-world status, as both Greece and Rome did after they fell.
That's your future, industrialized West, and all these people spinning you positive futures are just trying to hoard up enough gold to escape.
