Four decades of personal experience and study have led me to what I think are general principles of institutional society:
• All governments lie to their people all of the time.
• Government does what it wants, when it wants.
• Advances in technology expand authoritarian control over the lives of individuals.
• Opposition at the grass-roots level may be the only effective counter to authoritarian control.
• However, growth of technology decreases the power of grass-roots opposition.
Fortunately, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are intrinsically unstable. Eventually, they become too complicated, too centralized, leading to their self-destruction. Examples are the dramatic collapse of the former Soviet Union and the periodic destruction of national and global economies due to the relentless cycles of concentrating wealth.