I don't have any reason to be optimistic. I see the use of the internet right now to be extremely destructive. The media is in total disarray. It's we're going back to the 1790s or so and that's the way America media was. We'll develop maybe regulations, maybe it'll be norms. In the short run though, I don't see this ending well. But there are a lot of ways in which our politics have become distorted by money.
Journalist and author Anne Applebaum talks about her book, Twilight of Democracy, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Applebaum discusses the rise of populist and nationalist movements in Eastern Europe as well as in the West, and the appeal of these movements even when they begin to erode or destroy democracy.