Techno-Stalinism and the death of democracy

A former mentor once explained to me why America would be better off if scientists ran the country. While technocracy isn’t inherently anti-democratic—America could simply elect scientists and engineers—the notion smacks of elitism.

Of course, this country was founded on the idea of elitism. Only property-owning White men could vote. The president was appointed by the electoral college, not elected by popular vote (and still is). State legislatures appointed US Senators. 

Now that the Supreme Court—an elitist body by design—has declared money to be speech, the door is open wider than ever to anti-democratic plutocracy. The leading edge of plutocracy in the third decade of the 21^st century is turning out to be Silicon Valley technocrats who believe that technical, market-based solutions should replace democratic processes. Since markets are more efficient than government in the allocation of resources, their reasoning goes, they should allocate political power as well. That’s basically the “government efficiency” behind Elon Musk’s DOGE: weaponizing technical expertise against democracy.

“The parallel evolution of Zero Hedge and InfoWars revealed two complementary strategies for undermining democracy. Zero Hedge showed how technical expertise could be used to delegitimize democratic institutions from within, while InfoWars demonstrated how raw chaos could make democratic deliberation impossible. But it was Silicon Valley that would combine these insights into something even more dangerous: the argument that democracy's replacement by technical systems wasn't just desirable—it was inevitable.”

What would this new world order look like?

“The true revolution would come through technology itself. In 1999, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg published a book that would become the blueprint for this technological coup: The Sovereign Individual. Published at the height of the dotcom boom, the book read like science fiction to many at the time: it predicted the rise of cryptocurrency, the decline of traditional nation-states, and the emergence of a new digital aristocracy. Taxes will become voluntary. Regulations will disappear. The most successful people will form their own private, self-governing communities, while the rest of the world is left behind.

Libertarianism, when fused with this kind of technological determinism, takes a sharp turn away from classical liberal thought. If you assume that government will inevitably be outcompeted by private networks, decentralized finance, and AI-driven governance, then trying to reform democracy becomes pointless. The more radical conclusion, embraced by the figures at the forefront of this movement, is that government should be actively dismantled and replaced with a more “efficient” form of rule—one modeled on corporate governance rather than democratic participation.

 

“This is precisely where libertarianism morphs into neoreaction. Instead of advocating for a constitutional republic with minimal government, this new strain of thought pushes for a private, post-democratic order, where those with the most resources and technological control dictate the rules. In this vision, power doesn’t rest with the people—it belongs to the most competent “executives” running society like a CEO would run a company.

 

“This is how Curtis Yarvin’s argument that democracy is an outdated, inefficient system became so appealing to Silicon Valley elites. It wasn’t just a philosophical argument; it aligned with the way many in the tech industry already thought about disruption, efficiency, and control. If innovation constantly renders old systems obsolete, then why should governance be any different?”

This is the technocratic authoritarian New World order, where governance is voluntary, privatized, and largely detached from public accountability. How is this connected to Silicon Valley?

“This mindset is deeply ingrained in Silicon Valley, where disruption is seen as not just a business model, but a law of history. Entrepreneurs are taught that old institutions are inefficient relics waiting to be displaced by something better. When applied to government, this logic leads directly to Yarvin’s argument: democracy is outdated “legacy code” that can’t keep up with modern complexity. The future, he and others argue, will belong to those who design and implement a superior system—one that runs more like a corporation, where leaders are chosen based on competence rather than elections.

“This is why neoreactionary ideas have found such a receptive audience among tech elites. If you believe that technology inevitably renders old systems obsolete, then why should democracy be any different? Why bother fixing the government if it’s doomed to be replaced by something more advanced?

“This is where the transition from libertarianism to neoreaction becomes clear. Classical libertarians at least paid lip service to democracy, arguing that markets should exist within a limited but functioning democratic system. But the Silicon Valley version of libertarianism, shaped by The Sovereign Individual and reinforced by the rise of cryptocurrency, started to see democratic governance itself as an obstacle. The question was no longer “How do we make government smaller?” but rather “How do we escape government altogether?”

The rise of Trumpism provided the yellow brick road to the techno-authoritarian land of Oz.

“These ideological frameworks might have remained abstract theorizing if not for a unique convergence of factors that made their implementation suddenly possible. The rise of Trump—a figure simultaneously hostile to democratic institutions and eager to embrace tech oligarchs—presented an unprecedented opportunity. Here was a potential autocrat who didn't just accept Silicon Valley's critique of democracy, but embodied it. His contempt for constitutional constraints, his belief that personal loyalty should override institutional independence, and his view that government should serve private interests aligned perfectly with Silicon Valley's emerging anti-democratic worldview. When combined with unprecedented technological control over information flows, financial systems, and social networks, this created a perfect storm: the ideology that justified dismantling democracy, the political vehicle willing to do it, and the technological capability to make it happen.”

 

The new libertarianism—techno-libertarianism—is just a slippery slope to neo-feudal authoritarianism. The apotheosis of the idea that code should replace democratic institutions, that technical competence should override democratic negotiation, and that private power should supersede public authority is the path to techno-Stalinism, with Trump as Lenin and Musk and his acolytes as the would-be Stalins.

“What’s happening inside the Department of Government Efficiency is the final phase of this plan. The old democratic institutions, weakened by years of deliberate destabilization, are being replaced in real-time by proprietary AI systems controlled not by elected officials, but by the same network of Silicon Valley operatives who engineered the crisis in the first place.

 

“We are not heading toward this future—we are already living in it.

 

“Government functions that once belonged to democratically accountable institutions are already being transferred to proprietary AI systems, optimized not for justice or equality, but for efficiency and control. Already, decisions about financial regulation, law enforcement priorities, and political dissent are being made by algorithms that no citizen can vote against and no court can oversee. Your rights are no longer determined by a legal framework you can appeal—they are dictated by a set of terms of service, changeable at the whim of those who control the network.”

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-plot-against-america