Potential Effects of Authoritarian Creep on a Blue Suburb
Context
The residents of Montclair, NJ under a gradual, national shift to an authoratarian government over the next six to ten years.
Miro Board
Montclair, NJ
Signal Scanning
Personas
Drivers of Change Analysis
Drivers of Change
Based on achuri_signals.csv
Economic
- Drastically reduced funding for education
- Policy changes increase the desirability of relocation
- Increased incentive to move to private schooling
- AI “friends” modify consumer behavior
- Increase in jobs and tax base that accompanies an increase in local industrial activity
- Decreased spending on social programs
- Shifting and opposed state and federal policies affect investment decisions
- Decreased spending public schools
- Decrease in tax base for less affluent population as funding shifts to private schools
- Decrease in tax base for liberal areas as professionals choose to leave
- Reduced funding for cultural and educational institutions
- Brain drain
- Decrease in middle/upper-middle class population
- Increase in use of untraceable currency
- Capital shift towards those that can afford to use AI
- Economic pressure on blue states as a result of the federal policies
Political
- Extreme adversity between state and national governments
- Economic pressure on high property value areas
- Real estate development that runs counter to local interests (Pottersville)
- Citizens concerned about their own financial position entering local politics
- Centralized authority running counter to local desires
Social
- Incentive to leave area or country
- Local divisions caused by different views of the value of liberal policies in school
- Forced choice between school funding and values
- Increased class divide in response to distribution of natural resources
- An economic incentive to modify one’s behavior
- Decrease in exposure to diversity
- Increase in class divide
- Decrease in education level of less affluent population
- Increase social gender divide. Possibly exacerbated by male passivity to policy changes that are detrimental to women.
- Increase in left/right divide as gender definitions are either further blurred or further solidified
- Increased use and perception of use of AI in all communications. The feeling that all culture and communication is inauthentic.
- The perception of omnipresent surveillance (panopticon)
- Self-censorship of progressive views
- Conflation of artificial personalities with human interaction
- Policy and environmental changes require lifestyle changes
Environmental
- The increased reach of technology into our daily lives triggers an anti-technology reaction
- Changes in zoning, economic pressure, and environmental policy increases the divide but more and less affluent geographic areas
- Local industrial output that is or is perceived as being dangerous
- Increase in local green energy initiatives as regulatory barriers are decreased
- Decrease in local green energy initiatives as result of federal disincentives
- Federal funding and policy enabling a switch to EVs and climate change adaption would likely continue to decrease under a right leaning federal government.
- State and local level environmental initiatives would be limited due to economic pressure and may even draw disincentives from the federal government
Technological
- An economic incentive to expose personal data
- The belief that one is continuously under surveillance
- AI normalization of personalities (behavior modifiers) into objects
- Increased cost and capability of AI
- Corporate/federal data sharing
- Biometric and national identity infrastructure allows tracking and targeting of individuals
- The use of AI for policy enforcement allows for far-reaching effects of any policy change
- The use of AI for policy enforcement allows for far-reaching policy changes with a minimum number of humans involved. A decrease in oversight and transparency
- The combination of AI and urban surveillance allows for predictive policing
- The combination of AI and urban surveillance street crime
Drivers of drivers of change
- Centralization of data
- The results of surveillance
- AI targeting for transaction surveillance
- AI targeting for asset surveillance
- Social media surveillance
- Private surveillance
Analysis
Key Themes:
Economic Pressure - Systematic defunding of blue state priorities - Tax base erosion through professional flight - Property value impacts in high-cost areas
Surveillance & Technology - AI-enabled monitoring and enforcement - Biometric tracking infrastructure - Social media and private surveillance expansion
Educational & Cultural - School funding weaponization - Cultural institution defunding - Brain drain from liberal areas
Social Fragmentation - Class divide acceleration - Political polarization deepening - Community cohesion breakdown
Environmental & Infrastructure - Local green energy policy conflicts - Industrial development pressures - Zoning authority challenges
Cascade Patterns:
Multiple reinforcing feedback loops where economic pressure leads to demographic sorting, which weakens political resistance, enabling further authoritarian pressure - particularly targeting the educated professional classes that define blue suburban communities.
Future Wheel
Speculative Artifact
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