AI: The article discusses the crisis of democracy and the uncertainty of the future in the modern world.
• White views the future as a political idea that has passed through various historical stages.
• He views rational calculation as a useful case study, but notes its limitations.
• White explains that belief in the stability of people's preferences underestimates the value of the political process to change them.
• It suggests reimagining the future and emphasizes the importance of political imagination.
• White diagnoses Western democracy as a system that has exhausted the political imagination.
• He discusses the cultural factors that have caused the depletion of political imagination.
• The vanishing future is the most important element of the current crisis of democracy, but overcoming it requires not only strengthening democracy, but also asking the right questions.