In a July 26, 2026 Marginal Revolution post, the economics blog founded by George Mason University professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok highlighted a Washington Post opinion essay by Fareed Zakaria, the foreign affairs columnist and CNN host, describing it as “one of the best Op-Eds you will read this year.” The post said the essay “deliberately deemphasizes the personal (no one is attacked)” in a way that may draw less attention, adding: “Better to write the truth!”

The excerpt quoted by Marginal Revolution asks why voter discontent has spread even as several democratic economies have performed relatively well. Zakaria wrote that “some of it is economic,” citing expensive housing, stagnant incomes and widening inequality as sources of public anger. But he argued that economics explains only part of the phenomenon.

According to the excerpt, the United States has recorded stronger growth than most other advanced economies. It also notes that France under President Emmanuel Macron has lowered unemployment and, according to an Ernst & Young analysis, has attracted more foreign investment projects than any country in Europe for seven straight years. Zakaria further described South Korea as an economic success story and said Japan had been experiencing a comeback. Even so, he wrote, “democratic governments almost everywhere are unpopular.”

Zakaria’s broader explanation, as quoted in the post, is that societies are “living through one of history’s great technological revolutions,” and that such transformations “always produce deep anxiety and fear.” The argument echoes a recurring theme in political science literature: that rapid technological disruption can destabilize democratic institutions even when aggregate economic indicators improve, because the benefits and costs of change are distributed unevenly across communities and occupations.

The excerpt compares the current period with the technological transformation that occurred roughly between 1880 and 1920. Electricity, the telephone, railroads, the automobile and movies changed entire industries and ways of life. Millions of people left farms for cities, global trade disrupted local economies, new fortunes appeared quickly and older occupations disappeared.

In that turmoil, Zakaria wrote, frustration and anger found political channels: “The left turned to communism, the right to fascism.” What followed, according to the excerpt, were “new mass movements, cultural upheavals and world war.” The historical parallel underscores why scholars and policymakers have been monitoring whether today’s wave of automation and artificial intelligence adoption could produce comparable political fracturing, even in the absence of an outright economic recession.

Marginal Revolution closed by urging readers to read the full essay and framed the issue as a matter of individual response to broad historical forces: “You can be a victim of these processes, or keep your wits about you. The choice is yours.”