Deconstructing government

I've been an "IT Professional" for most of my professional career. From my college days back in the early 80's, I've had the good fortune to witness some incredible advances in hardware and software.

In academia, the mantra is "publish or die"; In IT, you must adapt/innovate or you'll be run over by an organization younger and hungrier.

There are 2 kinds of technical advances, evolutionary and revolutionary. The former is constant; the latter is much less frequent. The former means you get a nice raise. The latter means you're the next Bill Gates.

I've been thinking a lot about the 18th century. Alexander Tyler wrote:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;

2. From spiritual faith to great courage;

3. From courage to liberty;

4. From liberty to abundance;

5. From abundance to complacency;

6. From complacency to apathy;

7. From apathy to dependence;

8. From dependence back into bondage.

Is there an IT-like solution to the fate of American democracy? we've evolved from 1 thru 7 of Tyler's prescient high-level roadmap. Can we insert an iterative construct that gets us back somewhere around 4 or 5?.

Can it be evolutionary?

My fear is that at this point, getting back to #3 would take the governmental equivalent of Bill Gates.

Must it be revolutionary?