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CGP Grey explains how dictators work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs When the collaboration of the cit

CGP Grey explains how dictators work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs When the collaboration of the citizens is not required to generate wealth, dictators emerge. For Venezuela, it's oil. We are also seeing how technology is generating enough wealth and power to allow tech companies to compete against society. Today, it's tracking people for advertising purposes, tomorrow it could be a mass surveillance at the scale of what is emerging in China.

eloff 8y ago
That's a big stretch to go from advertising related tracking to the great firewall of China.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  No. It's really not. The technical puzzle pieces are all there and well understood. Anyone who can amass the political power could get it done. Done fast or done slowly might require differing amounts of power.
  - eloff 8y ago
    Ad tracking technology is in no way related to wide spread blocking of internet content. Those are completely separate. To filter the internet you don't need to know the browsing or shopping habits of a single individual. I fail to see the connection at all.
    - ForRealsies 8y ago
      To monitor the internet, you do.
    - partycoder 8y ago
      You can effectively achieve something indifferent from censorship just by ranking, either search results, feed items or what have you.
      - lostmsu 8y ago
        Then you also need to block services, that do better ranking.
philwelch 8y ago
This is also part of why there are only two oil-rich liberal democracies, and a contributing factor to the resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse (Norway and Canada.)
- lobster_johnson 8y ago
  Also USA, Brazil, Mexico, the UK, Colombia, Ecuador... there are more, but it depends on what you mean by "oil-rich". Ecuador, for example, produces less oil than Norway, but its oil production is a higher percentage of their GDP.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    I define "oil-rich" in such a way that oil revenue is the dominant part of the economy. This would exclude the US and UK, for instance. (In fact, not even Canada might qualify by this metric.) Of course, this is almost tautological, since any liberal democracy worth its salt ends up with an economy that does a lot more than simple resource extraction. I would have to research the other Western Hemisphere examples you mention, though with the levels of corruption and often outright civil war in many of them, I would question whether they qualify as "liberal democracies" (or perhaps I should add the qualifier, "stable").

eloff 8y ago

That's a big stretch to go from advertising related tracking to the great firewall of China.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
No. It's really not. The technical puzzle pieces are all there and well understood. Anyone who can amass the political power could get it done. Done fast or done slowly might require differing amounts of power.
- eloff 8y ago
  Ad tracking technology is in no way related to wide spread blocking of internet content. Those are completely separate. To filter the internet you don't need to know the browsing or shopping habits of a single individual. I fail to see the connection at all.
  - ForRealsies 8y ago
    To monitor the internet, you do.
  - partycoder 8y ago
    You can effectively achieve something indifferent from censorship just by ranking, either search results, feed items or what have you.
    - lostmsu 8y ago
      Then you also need to block services, that do better ranking.

philwelch 8y ago

This is also part of why there are only two oil-rich liberal democracies, and a contributing factor to the resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse (Norway and Canada.)

lobster_johnson 8y ago
Also USA, Brazil, Mexico, the UK, Colombia, Ecuador... there are more, but it depends on what you mean by "oil-rich". Ecuador, for example, produces less oil than Norway, but its oil production is a higher percentage of their GDP.
- philwelch 8y ago
  I define "oil-rich" in such a way that oil revenue is the dominant part of the economy. This would exclude the US and UK, for instance. (In fact, not even Canada might qualify by this metric.) Of course, this is almost tautological, since any liberal democracy worth its salt ends up with an economy that does a lot more than simple resource extraction. I would have to research the other Western Hemisphere examples you mention, though with the levels of corruption and often outright civil war in many of them, I would question whether they qualify as "liberal democracies" (or perhaps I should add the qualifier, "stable").