As far as a critique of the actual paper, it seems to be predicated on the idea that democracy and freedom are synonymous when in fact they're orthogonal concepts. You can have tyrannical democratic structures, in fact that's what the founding fathers sought to combat in the original system they laid out which was less democratic than it is now (e.g. only land owners, people who have skin in the game, can vote).
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." – Benjamin Franklin
Democracy does not guarantee freedom but it greatly increases the chances and distributes it more equally. Your chance of being "tyrannized" by the majority is less than 50%. A ruling class you aren't part of will tyrannize you.
They are subject to repair.
Our nation's brightest political theorists such as Lawrence Lessig have put forth simple solutions to their credit. Theres the majority vote interstate compact which has been ratified by many states already. Simple vornoi redistricting would solve the gerrymandering problem.
Ideologies and philosophies don't build civilizations. They distract otherwise capable people. Practical circumstances shape civilizations. That's really the major lesson of the classics if you read them.
Sure they could participate in the global economies and reap rewards from the globalization but they're also a smaller player w/ less power on the world stage.
American neoliberalism has been a bad idea not just for us, but maybe for the whole world. It's all gonna come to a head though if they really do evict 40 million people this year.
