Authoritarian Diversity

Free competition in the market place does not necessarily lead to more diversity. The mechanisms of fashion tend to draw the products in a certain direction.

The news media and entertainment industry also oddly gravitate toward conformity when more options are added. Hundreds of television channels may be offered, but they are almost all the same.

Also in the realm of politics the same phenomenon may be observed. As a democracy advances and matures, the parties increasingly compete for the same middle ground, gradually looking more similar. That is the paradox: More options lead to less options.

In the age of globalization, that becomes a worldwide tendency and the only way to counteract it is to limit the influx of those dominant forces. Left to itself the political free market, what is normally called liberalism, will be drawn in whatever direction the political fashions direct, not because people really want it, but because it is perceived as inevitable.

But just like the tendencies of the free market economy can only be stemmed by active state intervention, the political market can also only be changed when the government intervenes and obstructs the liberal flow, that is, when it becomes more authoritarian.

Therefore the only way a country like Russia can establish itself as a real alternative to the West, is by implementing undemocratic measures and restrict civil society. That is unfortunate, no doubt, but it does make the world more diverse than it otherwise would have been and on a global scale at least, it gives an increased perception of choice.