What the governments of the west do really well is creating these microdosed dystopias. For most people most of the time, they don't give you trouble. Then you do something or say something and with still low probability, you get into total shit, courts, fines, jailtime, frozen wealth, cancellation, ...

No one is immune, not even people who are politically aligned with them. This has the effect of silent censorship, background fear and preemptive compliance with even unwritten rules. If you can get two years jailtime for criticizing politicians using the wrong phrase, you'll just tone it down. Of course, it has side effects. One of them is that if you want to break the rules, it is often better to break them big and in a safer way.

Another example: people think that SEPA or other bank payments just work. Most people never experienced account or transaction freezing. Yet the banks have reporting and freezing quotas, so sometimes an account is frozen when you send 250€ to a family member. And it can easily take weeks until you can use your bank account again. Most people never experienced it, so they think it just works. But then you start hearing about it and change your behavior. With CBDCs we'll get much more of it. The banks at least try to be pro customer, but with CBDCs, you can get in some catch 22 loop, unable to function in the society. Again, most people won't experience it, but when they do, it can literally mean losing your home, etc.

I can continue - people think healthcare works, we have good doctors (yes, we do!), but they are unavailable for months. Solving this is easy - get in international insurance and fly to wherever healthcare works. But you need to get it before you need it. But as most people believe healthcare works until they really need it, most won't.

So we're stuck with low probability high negative impact events. The problem is that both the probability and downside impact is getting worse. And when many low probability events can happen, the probability of one of them happening is very high.

I don't have a solution for the whole society, but individually you can rely on state captured "services" as little as possible. The parallel services might cause small constant friction, but high impact events are usually handled much better.

As for the society, the vector is clear. This is how I know western world is declining. As opposed to many who have identified the pattern, my prediction is not some brutal crash that will reset everything, but decades of enshitification.

Enjoy the decline!