Economics and politics are interwoven and for many their separation would be a good thing in the same way that separation of religion and politics was one of the cornerstones of the modern world and its prosperity.
It is not going to happen.
What is happening is that politics and economics are being forever changed by the online environment.
Democracy as we know it is founded on the reality of horseback. The centralization of government is no conspiracy; it’s a function of 17th, 18th and 19th century realities of communications: the terrible roads, the rudimentary postal system, the shear time it took to get anywhere.
The capital cities and government is the way it is because the government elite had to be face to face to do their thing.
In the modern world that necessity is breaking down and with it voters are becoming audience.
In the past a Donald Trump type candidate could not exist, except perhaps as a Hollywood comedy situation. To play the political game you needed to be an elite political operator. With mass media you instead need to be a elite media operator. That is not the same skill set as everyone saw during the Republican debates.
Democracy is shifting in real time, mass media and the internet has finally struck to the heart of the system and we are about to see a big change over the current years.
A prime example of this was the victory of the British conservative party in the UK election of 2015. Absolutely no one predicted a big victory for the Conservatives. Most Conservatives were braced for a big loss, right up to the end, or in their wildest dream an electoral stalemate. It was a one time turn up for the books that they won by a healthy margin, a shock result.
But was it?
The polls got it horribly wrong.
Right now the upcoming Brexit is the next test of the theory that there is a fundamental change in politics, a change old style polls cant capture.
The world is holding its breath that the UK doesn’t vote to separate from the EU. Secession is historically an extremely dangerous maneuver and as far as the bookmakers are concerned the Brexit, the UK leaving the EU, is a dead duck. The gambling odds are such there is no way a Brexit can happen.
Yet the online polls suggest the vote will go to “leave” and that the Brexit could and will happen. According to online pollsters the Brexit is alive and kicking. That “Leave” vote is an internet vote. The phone polls firmly say ‘Stay.’
That is a split between old school and new media, the mobile addicted crew and the newspaper readers.
It is also a split between the young and old, the active and the passive. If you get a call, you say ‘stay,’ if you log on to express your intention, you say “leave.”
That is the developing divide that over time only goes one way. The old guard of newspaper readers, the old style voters are going to disappear and soon enough the online crowd will completely dominate.
It goes from a ‘Bush’ to a ‘Trump,’ a ‘Stay’ becomes a Brexit ‘Leave,’ a dead cert electorial result turns into a bolt out of the blue.
The British Houses of Parliament is due for renovation at a cost of $10 billion, that’s $20 million a representative, let’s call it $1000 a family.
The work is set to begin in 2020.
If the Brexit happens and Donald Trump gets anywhere near the oval office this coming presidential election, by the time Big Ben is safe to strike again in many years time, the politics and economics of the west will be operating on a different governmental platform driven a connected electorate, or to many a mob, not so easily kept in check by old tricks..
Democracy update by technology, in turn updating economics should be a great result, but history doesn’t paint the picture of change as a smooth process.
So June and November are key way points in a process every futurist has been predicting for years and that now might be underway.