Neuroscientist and fiction author Erik Hoel wrote the following about geopolitics in the year 2050 in a blog post published August 25, 2021
The vision of Fukayama and other proponents of the neoliberal order was that it was only a matter of time until Russia, China, and indeed the rest of the world joined the world at history’s end in the form of a free market democracy. The opposite appears to be happening, and recently the US has made clear it is comfortable being more like China and Russia. The truth is that social media has concentrated speech in the hands of a small number of major corporations, which will work hand-in-hand with Western governments to control discourse in a manner the government likes, just as a small number of corporations control the Chinese internet at their government’s bidding. Quite simply, it has become too technologically easy to steer the ship of the culture with the rudder of social media, and putting a hand on the rudder is irresistible for political parties. So there is nowhere to go but toward China, toward stricter speech laws and codes, toward state observation and censorship and policing of debate and ideas. Western political parties are like two people in a fight who have both seen a gun lying on the floor and are in the process of leaping to wrestle for it. There is now no chance it does not go off.
The Freedom in the World report is published annually by Freedom House which tracks civil and political freedoms around the world, ranking 210 nations in 2021. The index has been published since 1973 and gave the US a score of 83/100 (where 100 is maximally free, and 0 is oppressed). Some other figures from the 2021 ranking:
- China recieved a score of 9/100
- Russia recieved a score of 20/100
- The average score was 56.2/100
- The median score was 60.5/100
What will be the US' score in the Freedom in the World Report for 2050?
This question will resolve as the US' overall score out of 100 according to the 2050 Freedom in the World Report by Freedom House. If the Human Freedom Index is no longer being published by Freedom House or a successor organization, this question will resolve ambiguously.
If a significant methodology change occurs such that comparisons between years are no longer meaningful, Metaculus Admins may resolve ambiguously at their discretion. If Freedom House no longer uses a scoring out of 100, scores can be re-scaled to a 0-100 scale if this is in line with eg. the methodology of 2021, where component scores are summed to a 100-point scale.