Throughout the twentieth century, much of the public, political, and economic conversation was structured around a dilemma that seemed to define the destiny of nations: should State control or the free market prevail as the driving force of development? This tension was not abstract; it manifested in economic models, ideological conflicts, and geopolitical disputes that shaped the lives of millions. The welfare state, planned economies, industrial capitalism, and the later neoliberal wave all offered different answers to the same question: who should steer the economy, and how should power be distributed?
Major crises, such as the 1929 crash or the 1970s oil shock, repeatedly reinforced the need to take a position along that axis: more regulation or more market freedom. Ultimately, the twentieth century was built upon that dichotomy—more state or more market, more control or more economic freedom.
The new dilemma is no longer merely economic or ideological—it is ontological. The contemporary question is far deeper: will the human being remain at the center of decision-making, or will machines and algorithmic systems determine the essential directions?
What is at stake is autonomy, creativity, privacy, ethics, authority, and human identity itself. Each technological advance reshapes the social space and forces us to rethink everything from work to education, from the economy to democracy itself. The tension is no longer “who manages the economy,” but rather “who manages the future”: human beings, or the machines they created.
This shift—from the state–market dilemma to the human–machine dilemma—reveals how each era formulates questions that reflect the forces shaping it. The twentieth century was the age of economic models and industrial infrastructure; the twenty-first is the age of data, code, automation, and intelligence distributed across global networks. Where once the debate was about market regulation, today it is about the regulation of non-human intelligences.
And yet, some countries remain trapped in the dilemmas of the past. Societies still repeat inherited debates, clinging to discussions that no longer explain the world we inhabit. While the planet faces the rise of artificial intelligences that are transforming work, politics, and culture, some nations continue arguing about whether the State should intervene more or less, as though time had stopped in 1970. This insistence on looking through the rearview mirror generates a dangerous disconnect: the twentieth century is still being debated while the twenty-first moves forward without waiting for anyone.
The paradox is clear: those who remain anchored in the dilemmas of the past may find themselves excluded from the decisions of the future. Because the world has already changed, and the true challenge of our time is not choosing between state or free market, but between humanizing technology or becoming subordinated to it. That is the frontier that will separate the societies that look ahead from those that, without realizing it, continue living in a time that no longer exists.
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