Re: [World Building] Alt-History TL 8 Earth with open RPM
 

I hope you do realise that this is essentially the deal Russians went into with their government? And that unsurprisingly, they ended up losing both after the government changed its mind? Surely a similar thing happened in other authoritarian/dictatorial regimes. It's just another variation of "Sell a bit of liberty for a bit of security/comfort", and you know where that leads.

It is a de facto dictatorship of the mundanes, unless the mages overthrow them. It makes 'people are equal, but some mages are less equal than humans' a fact, covered up in lots of legalese talk, but no amount of talk can completely cover that. It's certainly not preferable to a harmonious equal coexistence that real-world humanity clumsily strives for in most of the civilised world in regards to other groups of people.

Re: [World Building] Alt-History TL 8 Earth with open RPM
 

Hmmm, perhaps. What factor would you say is needed to stabilise the equilibrium and prevent (or at least minimise) any uprisings and oppression, assuming no great disaster rocks the boat and sends the world into free fall panic?

I'm thinking perhaps putting the majority of the magi to live in the outer planes and out of the mundanes' hair? Good fences make good neighbours, and a transdimeansional gateway can be a pretty good fence. Presumably, the power and promenience of magic didn't really become a huge enough "deal" (threat/destabilising element) until the end of the Cold War (perhaps Ritual Adept was very rare or non-existent until the outer planes were discovered?).

Re: [World Building] Alt-History TL 8 Earth with open RPM
 

In general, a society based on mutual respect, acceptance of differences, value of the individual for the individual as opposed to for power, civil rights (and other nice bits of a civil society). Or at least some of these, if all aren't possible. You know, like the civilisation with psychics in La Belle Verte, the future society in The Girl From Tomorrow, the Syreen in the Star Control setting, apparently Star Trek etc.

Re: [World Building] Alt-History TL 8 Earth with open RPM
 

Maybe. The two red flags for me in the OP were the ambiguous bit about Civil Rights groups (id est, just how unsupportive are the governments?), and the mention that mages must 'let the government search their homes without a warrant, and so on,' which is pretty ominous. Unwarranted searches are oppressive by themselves, and then you said 'and so on,' implying other equally bad things, of not worse.

vick_molokh's post above seems a good place to start. In general, remember that denying one group rights that you allow others is a recipe for trouble, especially is the right was practically universal in your nation until recently. This is especially true if you need the work of the group you're abusing, and they are hard to replace. Ergo, you should not abuse them.