Fireside Chat, Interview, Panel, Conference Presentation
The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State
- The next Milken Institute forum is scheduled for June 12th, with sessions lasting approximately 35 minutes followed by electronic Q&A, and supplementary materials available at globalconference.org.
- Western voters in upcoming European and US midterm elections are predicted to exhibit significant apathy and anger regarding government performance, while politicians are expected to claim reform knowledge but avoid implementation due to electoral fears.
- A revolution in Western government is anticipated within the next 20 years, driven by the inability of ever-expanding state spending to continue indefinitely against the backdrop of a baby boomer retirement entitlement crisis.
- Without technological management improvements, the state is expected to become increasingly dysfunctional and inefficient, though the public sector may benefit from service productivity gains via the Information Revolution.
- Government spending is projected to transition from a crisis response to a perpetual condition of life, leading to a "fourth revolution" where the state attempts to reinvent itself to compete with China's model of statecraft.
- China is expected to remaster governance by studying successful global models from Singapore, Chile, and Iceland to compete ideologically with the West, which faces a risk of losing the contest to Chinese authoritarian top-down modernization if it fails to renovate democracy.
- Economic constraints, including aging populations and fiscal realities, will eventually halt the growth of the state, rendering the "Washington Consensus" a "half-revolution" as the state is predicted to stop growing only when a fiscal reckoning arrives.
- Technological advancements are expected to transform public services, making education more efficient through internet platforms, improving healthcare via telemedicine, and enhancing safety through data-driven crime prevention.
- Sweden is cited as a model for reducing public spending from 67% to 49% of GDP and raising the retirement age, while shrinking the state is viewed as a means to strengthen democracy and protect liberty from over-regulation.
- Political leaders such as Angela Merkel are expected to drive significant reforms in Europe, while Barack Obama is predicted to view the failure to pass the Simpson-Bowles Commission as his biggest domestic mistake, and Hillary Clinton is expected to face pressure to center campaign strategies on inequality.
- Democracies are expected to repeatedly fail before correcting course after a shock, with a long-term solution involving technocratic commissions to protect future generations from short-termism and a transfer of power to the lowest levels of subsidiarity.
- Despite the expectation that the state will stop growing, it is predicted to continue expanding regulations in areas like beauty licensing and security monitoring due to pressure from both the left and right, creating dependency and a sense of disillusionment.
- The state is described as having become a "leviathan" intruding into private lives, distorted by corporate crony capitalism and tax loopholes favoring the rich, while the "nanny state" is seen as an overreach of the "night watchman" concept.
- Emerging markets are expected to increasingly favor China's state capitalism due to perceived Western paralysis, whereas South Korea and Taiwan are predicted to follow the Western path toward democracy upon reaching specific GDP per head levels.
- The "American school year" structure is identified as an obsolete agricultural mentality, and the "Great Society" ideas are expected to lose political support, with data and performance tables anticipated to catalyze a bottom-up revolution in government efficiency.