2024: The end of the End of History

A review of major trends as we stumble toward 2025

Thirty-five years ago, as communism was collapsing, US scholar Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed the "end of history." His argument, later expanded in an iconic 1992 book, was that the ideological battles of the 20th century had concluded with the triumph of liberal democracy (and free-market capitalism). With the Cold War over, humanity had supposedly reached its final form of governance — liberal democracy was the “endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution.”

It didn’t take very long, though, for history to reappear. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and its accompanying horrors, the rise of nationalist authoritarianism in post-Soviet Russia, 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror, and the increasing traction of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis—all this dismantled the notion that the world was converging toward a harmonious democratic order. Fukuyama’s grand vision was, by the mid-2000s, a cautionary tale about the dangers of pat certitudes in ivory towers

I spoke to Fukuyama about a decade ago. By then, he was noticeably sheepish about his original thesis – while at the same time clear-eyed and intellectually engaging at a far higher altitude than most figures I’ve spoken to; his view appeared to be that sometimes you take risks and they might backfire — nothing ventured, nothing gained. He conceded his thesis had been overoptimistic but maintained it still held as a long-term vision.

I tended to agree. Even as authoritarianism and nationalism spread in many parts of the world, and as jihadism destabilized huge parts of the Middle East and spread terrorism in cities of the West, at least the true democracies were immune. Within Western societies, perhaps, the end of history still held true.

Sadly this too started falling apart, and 2024 was the year when we can move on to a different thesis. Western democracies—particularly the United States—revealed themselves to far be more wobbly than we thought. Hyper-polarization, rampant disinformation, the erosion of shared realities, and the indifference to liberal democracy's basic ideas are defining features of the era.

Part of the reason is the digital revolution and social media in particular. These eliminated the gatekeepers of mainstream media which essentially had ensured the public discourse was largely confined within certain guardrails of civility and shared narrative. Now everyone, including the most radical agitators, is a publisher. And it turns out that human beings, if given the chance, are attracted to agitation and highly susceptible to lies.

There is even an intellectual foundation for this in the “post-modern” thought of the middle and late 20^th century, which rejected universal truths and “metanarratives” — implying all ideas are somehow valid.

Liberal democracy, basically, is thus just one more idea. It is also a profoundly beautiful vision that holds that every individual is inherently equal and possesses inalienable rights, and that the best way to govern is through institutions that protect these rights, balance power, and allow for the free and open expression of ideas, ensuring that decisions are made with the consent of the governed (or as many of them as possible). It was poetically manifested in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which alleges that all “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights (including) Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

There is an irony at work here: liberal democracy may not be so democratic by the definition many people around the world use. Go almost anywhere and ask a random sample what “democracy” is, and you will generally hear about fair elections and majority rule. You will hear a lot less about freedoms and protections, and almost never about checks and balances.

The Founding Fathers of the United States understood this, which is why they baked into the Constitution as many freedoms as they could, made it exceedingly difficult to amend, and set up a system that is inhospitable to direct democracy, where a majority of the people can run amok with crazy schemes. They were, after all, the experts and the elite.

The most dangerous assault on all of this comes from the ascendence of illiberal right-wing forces like the US cult of Donald Trump – who has now been reelected to a non-consecutive term even though his first four calamitous years made his intentions crystal clear. We can safely say that Trump has no fidelity to the principles of liberal democracy, is a nationalist and would-be authoritarian, and hates the U.S. system. The Department of Government Efficiency – through which Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will try to put middle income people out of work – well reflects the hatred.

Versions of this are visible all over the democratic world. Some once-aspiring democracies are now dictatorships by choice of an electorate – the most egregious case being Russia, and to a lesser degree in Hungary and Turkey.

Romania, too, is now teetering on the brink. Vladimir Putin staged a TikTok attack in the days before its November 24 first round of the presidential election. The winner by plurality, which Putin illegally schemed to boost, hates the EU and NATO and wants to reorient the country toward Russia – and away from liberal democracy. A week after that, a third of Romanians voted for parties that support that worldview. The presidential election has been annulled and many Romanians are in shock. Putin’s campaign was illegal, yes – but the people who voted accordingly actually did vote.

Some true democracies are teetering because of brilliant would-be authoritarians tapping into humanity’s worst instincts, like Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. France could well be headed in the same direction soon.

All over the world parties that want to burn down the house of liberal democracy, like Trump’s MAGA movement does, are competitive.

Some will find some solace in the seemingly rational reasons for this trend. In places like Germany, where the far-right, neo-Nazi-tainted AfD party is ascendent, the support for the nativist right attaches to the ill-fated decisions of post-war governments to import masses of immigrants who are themselves illiberal and often remain that way – an irony.

In America, part of the Trump phenomenon is a rejection of the excesses of wokeness, itself an illiberal thought police. Indeed, the public turning on wokeness can be viewed as a sub-trend. This will be considered by many as a good thing, for political correctness did go off the rails. But the new illiberal tsunami is itself an overreaction; as part of it, for example, Musk thinks its OK to endorse the AfD. Basically, anything now goes. Civility is for suckers.

I’ve lived long enough to know that what’s really happening is a rejection of liberal democracy by large numbers in many societies. They actually want authoritarianism — law and order, a monarchy perhaps – and don’t care much about constraints on the majority (until it’ll come, in turn, for them).

Fukuyama’s vision, while inspiring, underestimated humanity’s penchant for conflict and chaos. He believed too much in reason’s triumph over base instincts, in democracy’s resilience against demagoguery, and also in capitalism’s ability to deliver broad-based prosperity.

He now seems to get it. In a recent article for the Financial Times, Fukuyama asserted that Trump’s 2024 victory signals a "decisive rejection" of liberalism by US voters. This time he got it right. The events of 2024 — the culmination of decades of systemic erosion — reflect a dispiriting: The supposed end of history, the good karma of 1989, was nothing more than a pause in the storm.

So huge is this, that Ask Questions Later chooses it for “Trend of the Year.”

And here are the runners-up:

The collapse of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”

Hamas’s surprise invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, appeared calculated to galvanize Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which for years had sown chaos throughout the Middle East, into a united front against Israel (and the West). Intsead, the proxies that Tehran cultivated—stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, via Syria, Iraq and the Palestinian areas—are are in disarray.

Hamas and Hezbollah are devastated, and the dictatorial Syrian regime that Iran (and Russia) propped up has fallen (by be replaced by something rather unclear – former jihadists now pretending to be nice). Iran’s currency and economy are in collapse and it is now rationing power to citizens; the regime is widely hated and it can only rule through ruthless and cruel repression.

Iran’s war against Israel is now mostly being waged by the fanatical Houthi militia, which over the past decade has taken over much of Yemen and caused the deaths of almost a half million people (whose annual per capita GDP of around $600 is just over 1% of Israel’s). Instead of trying to diminish starvation and cholera in Yemen they are focused on attacking vessels headed up to the Suez Canal and firing long-range Iranian-supplied missiles at Israel in the middle of the night. This has badly hobbled global maritime trade (one third of global container traffic uses this route and the option is circumnavigating Africa) and cost Egypt many billions it can ill afford. I would expect the Trump administration to end the bizarre tolerating of this.

Ultimately, Hamas’s gamble has inadvertently hastened the unraveling of Iran’s benighted axis. Amid the ruination and misery that bedevils the Middle East, this qualifies as a good thing. If there is any justice, in 2025 the Islamic Republic will collapse, and the excellent people of Iran will be free at last.

The AI revolution

The rapid advancement of AI technologies reshaped industries in 2024, making headlines for breakthroughs in generative AI, robotics, and autonomous systems. OpenAI’s GPT-5, Google’s Gemini, and Nvidia’s AI computing platforms dominated markets and accelerated productivity across sectors like healthcare, finance, and logistics.

Measnwhile, the market size for generative AI is projected to reach $36.06 billion in 2024, with an annual growth rate of 46.47%, resulting in a market volume of $356.10 billion by 2030. The majority of users engaging with generative AI were young adults aged 18 to 24, meaning the usage will continue to grow. In organizations, the primary focus of off-the-shelf generative AI solutions was on productivity applications, accounting for over 70%; data clearly shows that AI makes individuals more productive, so expect companies to encourage and start demanding it.

In 2024, AI-driven stocks became a dominant force in the equity markets, with companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Alphabet reaping the benefits of increased demand for AI solutions. Nvidia, a leader in AI hardware, has seen its stock price soar, driven by its dominance in providing AI chips to industries from cloud computing to autonomous vehicles. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, everyone’s involved and the equity markets are ballooning.

Meanwhile, the more people use these tools, the more data the models have, and they are getting smarter all the time. ChatGPT is vastly superior now to late 2022 when it was released – in part due to the public “teaching” it, largely inadvertently. Publicly available chatbots, in paid versions that cost monthly the same as a McDonald’s meal for two, can produce complex business plans, summaries of Nietzsche’s philosophy and caricatures like the one at the top of this article. What’s a consultant, professor or graphic artist to do??

A survey by FlexJobs showed a third of workers believing AI will eliminate jobs and a tenth believing theirs will be gone in five years. 9% believing their current job will become obsolete within the next five years. Interestingly, Gen Z, which uses AI more, is more worried still. The threat to workers in manufacturing, customer service, and even creative industries has sparked calls for regulatory intervention, and governments as considering early-stage AI legislation addressing issues like transparency, algorithmic bias, and the ethical use of AI in sensitive sectors.

We think this will become an ethical issue for businesses: Harness AI to augment human potential or pursue cost-cutting measures like workforce downsizing? The question of how to balance everything – so that this becomes a huge boon for humanity rather than the accelerator to societal breakdown – is hugely complex. Perhaps more than ever, we need thoughtful, intelligent, decent leadership. Instead we have …. The Ask Questions Later “Trend of the Year.”

The bell tolls for the legacy media

In 2024, the news media landscape underwent a dramatic shift that cemented a trend that had been brewing for over a decade: legacy news brands are in serious decline, while independent platforms and individual creators are flourishing (but still having trouble making money). The rise of decentralized media and waning influence of legacy outlets have reshaped how news is produced, consumed, and trusted, and it’s not necessarily for the good: The professional gatekeeper is gone and new world is full of sharks and sheysters.

In 2024, the decline of local newspapers in the United States accelerated, with 127 newspapers shutting down in the past 12 months as of September 2024. This trend has been ongoing since 2005, during which more than one-third of U.S. newspapers—approximately 3,300 outlets—have ceased operations. We have crossed a threshold: Local news is drowning. The closures have led to the expansion of "news deserts," areas lacking locally based sources of news, affecting nearly 55 million Americans.

I have a personal window into this. Traditional media's struggles were epitomized by the Associated Press, where I toiled for about a quarter century, which announced an 8% downsizing in 2024; I know where it was when I left about six years ago, and this is cutting the bone. AP is one of a few organizations that are the heart of the global media ecosystem, and its fortunes reflect the industry’s: dwindling readerships, falling ad revenues, and an inability to adapt to a rapidly changing digital landscape.

In contrast, independent platforms like Substack, which you are reading now, have emerged as powerful disruptors, offering writers, journalists, and thought leaders the ability to connect directly with their audiences — if they can find each other. While traditional outlets flounder, platforms like Substack have seen meteoric growth. Writers on such platforms are building thriving, direct-to-reader relationships, offering unfiltered, personalized content that speaks directly to niche audiences. This shift was particularly evident during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, where grassroots voices and independent writers on Substack had more sway than the mainstream media. The future of news seems to be a decentralized, creator-driven ecosystem that prioritizes authenticity and direct engagement over corporate interests. The numbers tell the story. Substack’s growth has been exponential, with over 35,000 paid newsletters operating in 2024, and the platform’s estimated value surpassing $1.7 billion. A single Joe Rogan podcast featuring Trump reached 33M viewers—equivalent to multiple prime-time cable news appearances combined.

Legacy media may still have a seat at the table, but it will probably be at the extremes of the high end (The Economist, The New York Times) and the low end (you know who you are. The era of the independent, creator-driven media ecosystem has arrived, and it’s reshaping the future of news.