5th grade social studies lesson from 2080: By the 2020’s western state power is no longer exercised through employment of a physical law enforcement corps. The

5th grade social studies lesson from 2080: By the 2020’s western state power is no longer exercised through employment of a physical law enforcement corps. The middle class is sufficiently controlled by a centralized financial structure, but the social protection capacity of the state has become overwhelmed by both the numbers of the underclass and the wealth of the overclass. This is often presented as an intentional political position, but it should be easy to see that this was just a pragmatic alignment with the inevitable reality. A pandemic pushes the state into a position to assert absolute power, and a series of protests arise to test that power, while investors enter a mania for alternative financial systems. The differences in response to the various threats to state power raise the ultimate question of this learning unit: Is there such a thing as a power based on and constrained by the consent of the governed, or is a government only legitimized by its ability to exert and retain power in the form of control over the governed?