Netflix original titles released per year

The Economist's measure of global democracy quietly slipping. Netflix's commissioning department quietly accelerating. The two trends are not on the same conference call. They are, however, on the same regression line.

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index has trended down for over a decade, with global average scores falling as authoritarian backsliding and democratic recession spread across multiple regions. Netflix originals expanded on a separate track, growing from a few dozen to hundreds of titles per year as the streaming wars demanded volume. The negative correlation is coincidental but not unreadable: the same decade that produced more streaming entertainment also produced more political turbulence, with each line responding to its own pressures. A correlation that prefers not to mean too much.

Two graphs about a decade. One went up because the budget did. One went down because the scoring system did.