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is4junk comments on [POLITICS] Jihadism and a new kind of existential threat - Less Wrong Discussion
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I wish I could pin it down. Some Big Think or similar forum talk. They discussed exactly the issue you bring up - the large differential birth rates between the very religious and the secular.
EDIT: Ha! Found it. "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?", byt Eric Kaufman
See http://www.amazon.com/Shall-Religious-Inherit-Earth-Twenty-First/dp/1846681448
and youtube talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYEyv5a_3LM
I think you're basically correct that in democracies, and even quasi democracies, it doesn't take long for differential birth rates to transform a society, but you are in fact underestimating the effect. The shit will hit the fan long before 2100.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/361804/russias-demographic-revolution-daniel-pipes
Russia is already approximately 15% muslim, with huge differential birth rates between christians and muslims. And that 15% understates the real issue for violence and control - who has the most young men. I've seen numbers that by 2020 (!) half the Russian army will be muslim, and that majority will only grow from there.
EDIT: Speaking of the shit hitting the fan, there's an article about the potential for Putin to lose power, and what could replace him.
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/5/7482441/how-putin-lose-power
Putin has been stoking the fires of "the international world is holding us down" for a long time. We are Great and Imperial, but we have been Betrayed. Add the demographic threat to christian ethnic Russians, and they can really get that party started.
Doesn't this analysis depend on army technology not changing? 100 years ago this would be spot on but if in the next decade we continue to see smaller armies of people being more and more effective you could have a Russia with an even smaller army without muslim leadership.
The same is true for the civilian side. Even with large numbers of disaffected young males - near term technological surveillance could prevent them from organizing in any meaningful way.
But since Russia is a democracy, any majority group can simply vote themselves into power. Realistically, people are not going to bar Muslims from entering the army.
???
Well, its my understanding that Russia is generally described as 'partially democratic' meaning something along the line of there are elections, but state control of parts of the media and other factors mean that the ruling party hasn't lost any elections. But, state control of the media only goes so far. Japan's ruling party didn't lose any elections for over 50 years, and then following the financial crash of 2008 they did.
I don't think Russia is really democratic in any meaningful sense we understand in the West. Putin et al just find it useful to maintain this as a polite fiction. In particular, my prediction is that changing demographics will have no effect whatsoever on the distribution of political power in Russia without other drastic changes (e.g. a coup d'etat)
Do you think Russia was democratic at any recent point? Mid-1990s, maybe?
Interestingly, The LOR -see 1 and 2 democratically elect their own officers. It's almost like extreme authoritarian salafism of the ISIL brings out extreme democratic libertarian fighters out of the woodwork (nb. many of them are actually marxist, but at least they can get along for the time being).