Open Societies versus Autocratic Experiments or Why the Latter are Parasitic, Cannibalizing and Self-Limiting.

Events over the past decade revealed a new systems clash: Open Societies versus digital autocracies which are competing to provide better solutions to tackle climate change and pandemics, overcome poverty, and offer reasonable jobs. However, which is doing a better job? The text argues that the current autocratic experiments are flourishing based on the preconditions that they cannot generate independently: Price allocation in free competitive markets; a rigorous debate on facts in an interdisciplinary scientific discourse; free public speech and a free, critical, investigative press; a creative, pluralistic cultural scene; and the building of social capital based on interpersonally generated trust and reciprocal tolerance. These conditions all draw on a human- and person-centred approach and are superior to any attempt to regulate society through a collective, non-democratic top-down process. Autocracies depend on Open Societies and must import relevant information generated only in Open Societies, and thus remain self-limiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]