I love articles like these. That said, I think they miss a core point: there is very little precedent of functional democracies, which have been functional dem

I love articles like these. That said, I think they miss a core point: there is very little precedent of functional democracies, which have been functional democracies for more than a few decades, turning into autocracies [0]. In the grand scheme of things decent democracies are a pretty new idea and we simply lack the data. The author's list of awful fuel-exporting countries has a nice exception in it: Norway. Apart from a WWII hiccup, Norway was pretty much a functional democracy for a long time when they started exporting oil in the sixties. And they did not turn into an autocracy, even though Norway's government does not need its people to stay financed. I feel like this single case undermines the author's entire argument. I'm willing to buy that an autocracy turning to universal basic income won't make it any less autocratic. But a functioning democracy (for a sufficiently great value of "functioning") has no incentive to turn into an autocracy merely because its median citizen increasingly depends on the government. That needs a much stronger argument and I haven't read it in the article. [0] Some people might point to Turkey, Hungary and the US right now, but a) those stories haven't played out yet and b) none of those countries fit the author's bill.