Economist Bryan Caplan has written about the worry that “stable totalitarianism” — i.e. a global totalitarian regime that lasts for an extremely long period of time — could arise in the future,1 especially if we move toward a more unified world government or if certain technologies make it possible for totalitarian leaders to rule for longer.
Stable global totalitarianism would be an example of what Toby Ord calls an “enforced unrecoverable dystopia.”2 Ord categorises this as a form of existential risk: although humanity would not be extinct, an unrecoverable dystopia would mean losing out on the possibility of a good future for future generations.3 In this way, a truly perpetual dystopia could be as bad as (or possibly even worse than) outright extinction.
Caplan argues that totalitarian regimes in the past have ended either because of defeat by foreign military powers (in the case of World War II), or because of a problem with succession — where new leaders reduce the degree of totalitarianism after the death (or stepping down) of an authoritarian dictator (e.g. Khrushchev’s programme of de-Stalinisation). In particular, he argues that this reduction in the degree of totalitarianism has occurred in history because of news of disparities with non-totalitarian regimes — increasing both the knowledge of and incentives for other forms of government.