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What can I know (if trust in knowledge has been lost)? | 41 dissatisfaction of its own subjects, with the nuisance of environmental activists, with the protests of human rights and peace movements or with the expositions of investigative journalists as long as it is able to securely hold the judiciary and the armed forces. This comes with significant competitive advantages — not for nothing do investors favour authoritarian countries. The cessation of the dominant role of Western democracies can be seen in the restructuring of the international balance of power as well. The majority of newly emerging great and middling powers are characterised by authoritarian rule, which fits their historical traditions better as well. The expansion of openly or veiled — i.e., maintaining a parliamentarian exterior — totalitarian systems is not in itself a sign of a crisis of democracy. It merely shows that in the countries that have not previously undergone the process of the development of the middle classes and the path of social modernisation that the Western style societies did, the adoption of certain elements of modern technology, the market economy and the Western way of life do not necessarily entail the presence of a constitutional democratic state. When evaluating the global phenomena of our age, we need to take account of the incredible proliferation of the researchers, commentators and think tanks studying and interpreting the changes. Further, the pressure to publish, as well as the competition for public attention appreciates, overanalyses and overvalues all novelty. This applies also to the theories which conclude from the phenomena of global integration to the development of some kind of global society. For the moment, it appears that the border-transcending flow of information, money and goods has truly effected such a fundamental change only in the life of the elites and in the way that power is exercised. Though the borders between local societies have indeed thankfully become permeable, the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world still experience the frantic transformation of the physical and cultural environment in one place, in their own way and respond to these challenges as the local conditions allow. The hundreds of millions of immigrants and guest workers actually conserve the social conditions of their countries of origin: they relieve the insupportable internal tension arising from the overpopulation or impoverishment that triggered the migration. Moreover, migration removes exactly the mobile, enterprising people who could be the motor of the rejuvenation of local society. (The effects of this are felt strongly in Hungary, where this migration-induced adverse selection has decimated every generation in the past hundred years.) As regards the host countries — especially the European ones —
