Today our world is increasingly integrated by instantaneous multidirectional communication on the World Wide Web and economic and political assumptions are converging. The crumbling of the Wall and the spreading of the Web accelerated a multi-track process of democratisation which has created attitudes very different from those of the Cold War years. There is the democratisation of finance. As barriers between countries disappear capital flows in ever increasing volume around the world. Individuals in all countries are freer to invest as they choose.
Consumer markets create a democracy of money.
There is the democratisation of technology, a long-term trend that creates technologies that the individual can control. Trains allow us to travel in groups, cars let us drive ourselves. Cinemas select films for us, with television we choose our own viewing. Computers were once expensive machines that only big organisations could afford. Today individuals can own and use them.