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How We Get Locked into Bad Systems
Bad ideologies and force can lead to authoritarian lock-in.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
I've been thinking a lot about the sci-fi novel The City and the City by China Miéville. The premise of the story is bizarre: Within the same geographic space, two cities exist side by side, with completely different governments and cultures, and a shadowy enforcement agency maintains the divisions.
So, for example, you might be walking down the street, right by someone you know from the "other" city, and you're just supposed to pretend you can't see the person. If you want to visit the "other" city, you have to leave via an official port, then enter the "other" city, even though you're traveling right back down the same street.
The novel follows the investigation of a murder involving the two cities; here I want to focus on the idea that societies can get locked in to certain ways of operation, even bizarre, irrational, and damaging ways. True, the divisions within City are implausible, but the premise points to real-world cases.
Some Important Cases of Lock-In
Consider these cases:
• In the 20th Century, various societies became controlled by Communist and fascist authoritarian regimes, leading to mass oppression domestically, genocides, and international war. During the Cold War era, the free West Berlin existed within Communist East Germany, right beside Communist East Berlin (maybe the closest real-life example to the cities from the novel). Today North Korea, controlled by a vicious cult of personality, remains one of the clearest examples of that sort of societal lock-in.
• You may have seen photos of Iranian women wearing bikinis to the beach back in the '60s '70s. Since 1978, Iran has been dominated by a harsh theocratic regime that severely oppresses women and others. Recently the Iranian regime murdered many thousands of protesters.
• Today we Americans find the idea of a king absurd. Yet the English still have a king, although a figurehead, and the transition from monarchy to constitutional republicanism in much of the world was a long and bloody one. Today hardly anyone reads John Locke's First Treatise on government, which refuted claims of the divine right of kings, because today no one takes divine-right theory seriously.
• In the United States and the prior colonies, African slavery remained the norm for over two centuries, even during the period when black people fought for the American Revolution and its ideal that "all men are created equal." The matter came to a head with the bloody Civil War, and after that war the KKK's reign of terror and a general system of racist laws especially in the South remained dominant for decades.
Causes of Lock-In
Steven Pinker talks about common knowledge and coordination problems, undoubtedly important.
Here I want to talk about what I think are the two main drivers of lock-in: ideology and force. Communism, fascism, and theocratic Islam are, at root, ideological movements. Many people embrace those ideas, fight for them, even die for them.
But, once an ideological authoritarian regime takes hold, it can sustain its power through force even if most people reject the underlying ideology. That's a tough problem to get out of, as decades of Soviet rule and the regimes of North Korea and Iran illustrate. Another example: What we now think of as mainstream Christianity became such partly by various Christians murdering dissenters.
Good Lock-In
We in the United States, and people in much of the rest of the world, fortunately are (somewhat precariously!) locked in to constitutional republicanism, which is rooted in the ideology of liberalism (broadly conceived). The Founders were basically Lockeans.
Precisely because of their democratic nature, liberal societies rely more for their continued existence on widespread embrace of the underlying ideology. Liberal societies also are prone to problems of demagoguery and factions, which seek to harness the force of government for short-sited personal advantage.
We've also gotten locked in to a lot of narrower political structures that I think ultimately are harmful; e.g., government-funded education and Social Security, where, in both cases, means-tested programs surely would be better presuming government must be involved.
Still, I'd much rather face the problems of the United States than the problems of regions lacking liberal political structures. If, as in Miéville's City, much of politics remains absurd, as least we're dealing with a sort of lock-in that often takes seriously things such as individual rights, the federal government's current system of concentration camps notwithstanding. We still can and should work within the system to improve our condition.
In the System Not Of the System
I very much enjoyed City (although I hated it at first, until I bought into the premise). I like the main character and his friends, and the telling of the story is rich in detail.
But there is something very disconcerting about the story (spoiler alert). The protagonist, a likable and generally admirable character, nevertheless in the end joins the independent enforcement agency that polices the cities' "boundaries." Although the agency somehow keeps itself delimited to its mission (impossible in the real world), its mission is a fundamentally repressive one. The novel ultimately is dystopian.
The protagonist doesn't have much of a choice; he can "join or die" (to pervert the American expression). He just sort of accepts that he has to join and make the best of it. Here we can see the effects of ideology—although the protagonist does not buy into the ideology, enough people do to sustain the system— and force, in that the agency captures and even murders transgressors.
A problem with authoritarian capture is that enough people join the regime for self-advantage to sustain it. Of course, it is possible, although extremely dangerous personally, to join a regime with the aim of undermining it. For example, if one of Hitler's underlings had killed Hitler, that might have saved the world enormous grief. It is sometimes possible to be marginally revolutionary; Oskar Schindler was a Nazi who nevertheless protected many Jews.
We in the Unites States remain able to genuinely and explicitly work within the system to reform it and, more important, to champion a pro-human, pro-liberty ideology.
Still, I'm dismayed by the willingness of many people who call themselves Americans to promote and actively participate in obviously fascistic policies. No, the United States government for the most part is not liquidating people, except (as examples) Renée Good, Alex Pretti, and some people unfortunate enough to be operating boats in a way that the government deems suspicious. But the United States government now is operating concentration camps, mostly filled with people who have done nothing morally wrong, including children, including people legally seeking asylum, in brutal conditions. And "we" are letting it happen. To some degree we all live in the City.