**The obituary for representative democracy is already written; we’re just pretending not to read it.**

Representative democracy depends on scarcity: limited information, limited reach, limited surveillance.
That world is gone.

Modern states now sit atop AI systems that can model entire populations with a precision no intelligence service in the 20th century could dream of.

Once you can simulate society, you no longer need to represent it. Algorithmic governance becomes the “efficient upgrade,” a technocracy wearing the mask of data-driven objectivity.

Power doesn’t expand by accident; it expands because incentives push it there. Every political structure gravitates toward centralization when the tools allow it, and AI is the ultimate tool: prediction, classification, and real-time behavioral oversight.

The old limit, human capacity, evaporates. What used to cap authoritarianism at 10–20% surveillance becomes 100% visibility by default.

Not out of malice, but out of system logic.
You don’t vote your way out of an algorithm.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: efficiency is the story they’ll tell you. Governance “optimized,” friction eliminated, participation automated.

But efficiency always asks for one more dataset, one more biometric link, one more layer of behavioral telemetry. And people, lulled by convenience, rarely notice when freedom becomes a deprecated feature.

The future isn’t a coup; it’s an upgrade.
And upgrades rarely roll back.