It's the End of Democracy As We Know It (And I feel fine)

 I know I said I was done with posts about Trump, but this is actually a post about people's reaction to Trump. 

Yes, you can see the paralells between his appointments of loyalists and the chilling of speech from his executive orders, and how those paralells match historical examples of dictators overthrowing governments. 

But how likely is that to happen?

The best way to answer that question is to not just rely on my judgement or on the thoughful articulation of some writer who already agrees with all of my opinons. That's right, baby. Time for some prediction markets!

First off: we need something specific and measurable to know if change has occurred. The global democracy index seems well suited for this. The Economist recently ran an article about this. They have the U.S. listed as a "flawed democracy" with a score of 7.85. (Full report here.) A hybrid regime would be less than 5 and an authoritarian regime would be less than 4.

Kalshi, which is real people betting real money, asks "How much will US democracy weaken under Trump?" They give an 86% chance of being below 7.80, so it's unlikely to go up, and a 31% chance of going below 7. There aren't any markets below that, so the people with skin in the game seem to be betting that it is unlikely we are anything below a flawed democracy. 

Next up, Metaculus. Not money being exchanged, just superforecasters chasing after bragging rights. However, they have shown to have the most calibrated and accurate forecasts of all the prediction markets.  When I search on their site I can find the question "Will the United States drop below a 7 on the democracy index by 2040?" but when I click on it I get an error message. Now, that's a long time line and there are only 37 forecasters (but given their historical accuracy, I don't ding them too many points for that sample size) but the consensus is 40%. Higher than I am comfortable with but still seems unlikely for us to fall into an authortarian regime. 

Finally, Manifold. Like Metaculus, no actual money. But unlike them, anyone can throw up a precition market. This gives us lots of questions to explore but spreads out the sample size a bit. 

First up, with 191 traders: "If Trump is elected, will the US still be a liberal democracy at the end of his term?" At the time of the election this was 80%. It has now dropped to 58%.

With 39 traders: "Will the democracy score for the United States significantly decrease by the end of 2025?". On Feb. 4, this was 28%. It is now 76%. This uses a different ranking, which has the U.S. at 0.892 and defines a decrease as sliding down in score by 0.1.

With just 11 traders we are using another index that has the U.S. at 83/100. "If Trump wins, what will the Democracy Index be for the US at the end of his presidency?" Only 25% of traders think it will be below 78, but even a score of 68 would still put us in their highest category of "consolidated democracies".

Trading at a sample size of 21, "If Trump wins, will the US electoral democracy index fall below 0.80 by 2025?" They reference Our World in Data, which uses the V-DEM index and has us at 0.85. They give it a 91% chance. I don't know how to put that number in context, but they note "0.80 is the lowest central estimate for the US since 1975."

Lastly, with 277 traders, "Will Trump 2.0 be the end of Democracy as we know it?" They define this as "Will there be a major change with Trump's election such that the U.S. does not live in a traditional US Democracy anymore? Such conditions would include things like: Trump running for a 3rd term, declaration of Martial Law at any point, removing Supreme Court Justices or ignoring a material order from SCOTUS, Executive Branch overturning a certified election result, refusing a transition of power, etc."

Finally, a bold stance! Anyway, the traders have converged on a 33% of this happening.

The Upshot: first, we should put more stock in what these markets tells us than what your wacky aunt posts on Facebook or your favorite cable news host rants about every evening. Second, it seems that our democracy ranking is likely to decrease but not at a level that we should be worrying about, like our country being overthrown by MAGA heads. 

But things can change. I look back to revisiting this post and these markets over the next four years to know how much I should be updating my priors. 

My Final Trump Post

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rickfoster/8760051427

I recently watched Mr. McMahon, the Netflix documentary on WWE titan Vince McMahon. It was entertaining on several levels but the one part that stuck was the section on Donald Trump. Vince kinda sorta took credit for Trump’s ascendency to the White House. Not through any sort of cross promotion or campaign donation or election strategy. Vince’s claim, which I believe, is that Trump learned from WWE wrestlers how to be a performer and then appropriated that to his public image.

It is something that now feels blindingly obvious in retrospect. The boasting, the narcissism, feeding off both the audience’s adulation and the scorn of one’s enemies—these are all traits that Vince and Triple H and Steve Austin have been honing for decades. 

Wrestling legends like Ric Flair built their characters around ostentatious displays of wealth, unrelenting self-promotion, and a refusal to show humility. Trump employed the same persona in his campaign, boasting about his wealth, intelligence, and business success, much like Flair’s infamous catchphrase: “To be the man, you gotta beat the man.”

Pay attention to their blatant rule-breaking. In wrestling, heels cheat openly—whether through eye pokes, low blows, or interference from an ally—only to then revel in their lack of consequences.

Heels thrive on eliciting a reaction. Whether being showered with boos or ironically cheered, they control the crowd by feeding off their emotions. Trump’s campaign rallies functioned much like WWE events, complete with entrance music, taunting slogans (“Lock her up!” “Fake news!”), and call-and-response interactions with the audience.

I recently read a quote from a swing voter who had decided to support Trump, saying “At least he’s an honest liar.” Out of context, that sentence makes no sense. And yet, I know exactly what he means.

I found professional wrestling to be more entertaining once I learned it was all fake. You become more focused on the personalities and how they perform for the crowd. With Trump, most of his supporters know he is lying when he gets up on stage and makes outrageous claims. But they know this is part of the act, and they find it entertaining enough to put up with all the corruptiony stuff that gets reported on in The New York Times.

Yes, the WWE heel is not a good person and all of the fans know that. You know who else isn’t good? The arena’s security guards who keep pulling fans out of the stands for holding up offensive homemade signs, escorting them out of the building, and putting them in cuffs. Only they are not a part of the show. And when the heel, in full character, promises to demolish those security guards, whose side will the fans be on?

This is where Trump feels authentic to his voters. All his lies appear to be on the surface, so they let their guard down. The so-called "honest liar" allows them to feel vulnerable in comparison to the traditional politician who appears to be lying with a straight face, and the median voter feels unable to get a read on them.

When I think of all of the presidents of my lifetime, I can surmise a reason that compelled them to run for the executive office. Some feel overregulation has harmed small businesses, others feel inequality has made it near impossible for people to succeed without a robust welfare system. But for the life of me, I cannot think of a consequentialist reason that Trump wants to be president, what he gets out of it. I think he simply likes being president, all the pomp and circumstance and attention.

So here is my goal for the next 4 years: I am not going to give him the thing he wants, my attention. If Ezra Klein does a 3 hour podcast episode about what to expect from Trump's first term I will gladly skip over that and wait for him to interview someone about AI. If The Atlantic runs a column about how broad tariffs or DEI crackdowns are terrible, I’m not going to read those.

Inevitably, I will hear about some policies he has passed and what they have done. But I don’t care and don’t want to know about the latest outrageous thing he says. He is not worthy of my attention or frustration. The paraphrase Adam Serwer, the attention is the point. Stop giving him what he wants.