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Snakes and Ladders: Making Ecological Sense of Liberal Democracy

Posted on October 9, 2025 by David

A Multi-dimensional Game of Snakes and Ladders

There is a contradiction at the heart of liberal democracy: while democracy requires social equality, the engine of capitalism creates both wealth and inequality. While direct democracy – the purest form – thrives only in small-scale, face-to-face communities, the interaction of capitalism and technology systematically produces large-scale enterprises and institutions, where people are separated in space and time. Coordination now takes rules and hierarchy, which, together with the accumulation of wealth, leads to the emergence of elites. Over time the interests of these elites will turn to rent-seeking and value extraction at the expense of value creation. Many will strive to retain power by blocking all efforts at its redistribution.

Add to this behavior of the elites the ‘creative destruction’ of technological change and the result is that the relationship between democracy and capitalism changes constantly as technology both creates and destroys, value creation morphs into value extraction and elites accumulate wealth and power. Social inequality grows. The constant dilemma for proponents of liberal democracy is how to harness the productive power of capitalism, while ensuring that its benefits are spread widely enough to maintain a sense of political participation and shared citizenship. It’s a bit like trying to design and manage a multi-dimensional game of snakes and ladders.

Addressing this tension, between democratic responsiveness and institutional stability, was the primary concern of the framers of the U.S. Constitution. They knew, as modern Americans are rediscovering, that when this effort succeeds the result is a resilient society and a robust middle class with a shared narrative of who they are. When the process fails the middle-class fragments and societies become unstable. Oligopolies flourish and elites become entrenched, while many members of the erstwhile middle-class join the ‘invisible class’, losing their stories and their identities: for them the game seems to become all snakes and no ladders. They will then turn to populist politicians and anyone else who promises to restore their lost narratives.

To continue reading this article go to Medium: Snakes and Ladders