5 ms·

People complain about dictatorships, but the absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests

by magduf 7y ago

People complain about dictatorships, but the absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people. Of course, this means it has to be a "benevolent dictatorship". The problem with dictatorships is either your dictator isn't benevolent, or you have a great dictator but then he dies and his son takes over and he's terrible. There's lots of examples in history of excellent dictators/authoritarians: Marcus Aurelius of Rome, and Elizabeth I of England, for example. Of course, with Marcus Aurelius, there was a movie made about what happened there (Gladiator, 2000) when he crappy son took over.

jariel 7y ago
No, your first premise is false - even a 'benevolent dictatorship' is not 'the best thing' for the people in most situations. In certain times of crises, maybe, but otherwise, no.
- curiousmindz 7y ago
  GP gave some good points about benevolent dictatorship. Can you elaborate on why it wouldn't be "the best thing" in general? And ideally weight that against all the other scenarios where it is.
  - jariel 7y ago
    The premise of 'benevolent dictatorship' is absurd to begin with because it's a living contradiction. Politics, power, and hubris are inseparable. Powers exist to benefit and protect themselves, even agencies with the 'best intent' fall into traps of self-delusion and aggrandizement. We saw 100 revolutions in the last century, most of them 'in the name of the people' - and almost all of them failed and did mostly the opposite of that even if there were a 'few wins' here and there. Literacy and some kinds of healthcare increased dramatically in Cuba ... and yet ... we still have Castro Inc.'s totalitarian fist 50 years later. The very authoritarianism of any regime which gives it the power to do something possibly good in the short term is exactly the thing that prevents it from adapting in the long term. Also, authoritarianism tends to limit the scope of influence and authority to a smaller groups, which is not good for many things that require a lot of voices. Creative fields, research, even market economies have lots of actors. If Hungary were willing to give 'temporary powers' to some person who was not Orban, for say 6 months, well then maybe they'd have something, but otherwise, this looks like a power grab Putin style.
    - curiousmindz 7y ago
      My take away is this: In an ideal world, a benevolent dictatorship would be (overall) better than a democracy. In that ideal world, the dictator would be the perfect leader: Smart/wise, selfless, open minded... Of course, we don't live in an ideal world. Funny example: Heaven (the Christian version) will be an ideal dictatorship (for Christians) :)
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    One other thing that makes dictatorships inferior and democracy preferable over all other systems of governance is transition of power. In democracies, it's encoded in the system in such a way that everyone seeking power wants to play ball. In dictatorship, if someone wants the power, they usually take it by force, leaving a lot of bodies behind - and the very threat of that is already a force making dictators increasingly paranoid. That said, I think every western country could use a temporary (say, 6 months) switch to dictatorship, because I worry we won't deal with this effectively otherwise. I have no idea how to ensure such a dictatorship would be temporary, though.
    - jariel 7y ago
      No - we do not need dictatorships in these crises. The notion of handing Donald Trump the ability to rule by fiat, let alone other national leaders, is beyond rhetoric, it's not even contemplatable. We need coordinated, responsible leadership. Most governments have all of the constitutional powers they need at this time.
      - magduf 7y ago
        What we "need" isn't important. Coordinated, responsible leadership sounds great, but that's up to the voters to decide. If the voters don't want that, then why should it be forced on them? Who are you to tell the voters otherwise? The people elected Trump, so why not give him a dictatorship for 6 months? After all, it's within the President's power to declare martial law for times of emergency. It's the job of the voters to make sure they don't elect someone who can't be trusted with the awesome power available to that position. The same goes for any democratic country.
        jariel 7y ago
        One of the more scary things I've ever read :) The powers of the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary exist to balance one another out especially in times of crises when some dictator could come along and declare himself ruler. The people didn't vote for a Dictator, they voted for a President with very limited constitutional powers.
- zapttt 7y ago
  i thought like you, until Linus :)
  - jariel 7y ago
    Yes but software projects are not countries. Also, anyone can fork, so really he's not a dictator of everything, just a specific flavor.
close04 7y ago
Democracy can be called dictatorship of the majority. Problem is even communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Nothing you'd find in any real scenario. You can't guarantee you get the benevolent dictator more than you can guarantee the fulfillment of the majority's wishes. They both rely on "hoping" that the person in power actually does the right thing regardless of how they got there and what powers they have. And more importantly, you can hope that you are on the right side of that "right thing". One thing democracy gets better than dictatorship is that it guarantees that it has to keep at least a consistent slice of the population happy, not just one dictator and their apparatus. What dictatorship gets better is that a single person's will and vision is easier to plan and achieve, instead of the many voices and wills of the "majority".
- magduf 7y ago
  >Problem is even communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Strawman argument. Can you point to any real-life communist governments (and I don't mean "communist" governments either, like China's, I mean true Marxist ones) that actually worked out great? Of course not. That's not like dictatorships, where I can point to a bunch that worked out fine, historically. >You can't guarantee you get the benevolent dictator more than you can guarantee the fulfillment of the majority's wishes. You can't guarantee anything with any kind of government, period. You can't guarantee a democratic government will work well for the people. You can't guarantee a democratic government won't turn into a dictatorship (see: Nazi GermanY). There's absolutely nothing that can be guaranteed; this isn't a computer. >One thing democracy gets better than dictatorship is that it guarantees that it has to keep at least a consistent slice of the population happy, not just one dictator and their apparatus. A dictatorship also has to keep a consistent slice of the population happy. How do you think the dictator keeps his power? If everyone hated him, he'd be instantly ousted. Can you point to any dictator at any time in history that didn't keep a consistent slice of the population happy?
  - close04 7y ago
    The points you make are basically rehashing what I said (or missing the mark) and making it look like we have a debate. We aren't and you didn't bring any new ideas. The fact that some dictators had passable results doesn't mean dictatorship is a good system. It just had more "attempts" at success because dictatorship (absolute monarchs) are more in line with human nature. Democracy has achieved better which would suggest it's overall a better system. > Can you point to any real-life communist governments that actually worked out great? If only I would have written that: >> communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Nothing you'd find in any real scenario. > You can't guarantee anything Yes, which is why I said you can't guarantee anything. > A dictatorship also has to keep a consistent slice of the population happy. For a carefully chosen definition of "consistent". At a minimum a dictator has to keep a small slice happy, themselves and their apparatus. This is very far from being "consistent" relative to the population and a far cry from what a democratically elected leader is expected to keep happy. On the other hand a democracy may see a candidate lose even when having the support of the majority of the population (see the electoral college system in the US). Both dictatorship and democracy have advantages and disadvantages, some theoretical, some practical. But in real life the chances of a dictatorship going wrong are so high it makes the system a no-go. It's fishing with nitroglycerin.
ardy42 7y ago
> People complain about dictatorships, but the absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people. Of course, this means it has to be a "benevolent dictatorship". I would quibble quite strongly with the characterization that dictatorships are "absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people." They theoretically can be, but their fatal weakness is they have no effective mechanism to ensure the leader actually looks out for the people or that there's a smooth succession. Having effective mechanisms to do that are very, very important to have a "good form of government."
- TomMckenny 7y ago
  A dictator has the reverse mechanism. He must spend all his effort and distribute resources to stay in power which means not benefiting the people. If he did not then he would not be the one to rise to or stay dictator. A democratic leader must please the public which could mean lying to them or being a moron __but__ will also mean working to help them (the more educated the public, the less the lies work) So your chances are always better with democracy.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >He must spend all his effort and distribute resources to stay in power which means not benefiting the people. Do you have any proof for your claim? I can point to multiple dictators in history under whose reign their people had (by the standards of the time) very good lives and government. Elizabeth I's rule was considered a golden age for England. Finally, how is this different from democratic governments? Congresspeople here in the US spend all their effort getting "campaign donations" so they can be re-elected, and the distribute resources to stay in power (called "pork barrel politics"). The latter ends up benefiting small groups of people at the expense of the nation.
    - TomMckenny 7y ago
      Beyond campaign financing, the US also has gerrymandering, voter suppression and disproportionate voting like the electoral college. And fixing those things will make the nation better serve it's people by making it more democratic. Comparing these dictatorships to each other is not meaningful, we would need to compare dictatorship to democracy. Tudor England was better off than medieval England: not a very high bar. For one thing religious executions still happened and there are certainly no written troves of commoners praising the new age. Elizabethan England was certainly inferior to the Italian renaissance republics of the period. And its people worse of than the latter democratic UK. It is less of a leap forward than 5th century Athens or even 19th century UK. The nearest semi-democracy in time and space would be recently independent Holland which had more freedom and growth: it is even where the American Pilgrims initially fled to. Even among dictatorships, Elizabeth I is not that great: equally despotic Spain had more power, technology and culture, Arab and Asian nations had longer life spans, more sanitation and higher literacy. To compare democracy vs dictatorship you'd need to countries similar in culture and era. Like North and South Korea.
yters 7y ago
otoh when dictator sends mass portions of your population to the gulags, and a 100 million die, just to fight the corona, the cure might be worse than the disease
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
michaelbrave 7y ago
There is this idea about dictatorships being more efficient, but it's been shown that is mostly a carryover from their propaganda. A good example was the saying about "the trains running on time" the truth was they didn't, but the propaganda really painted that picture.
thu2111 7y ago
Dictatorship isn't efficient at all. Dictatorships all experience gross levels of corruption and resource misallocation, often to levels that result in their entire economy collapsing. Meanwhile capitalist free market democracies surge ahead with huge GDP gains and cutting edge technology.
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They just lead to predictable discussion, usually flamewar. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22665112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22665112.

by magduf 7y ago

jariel 7y ago

No, your first premise is false - even a 'benevolent dictatorship' is not 'the best thing' for the people in most situations. In certain times of crises, maybe, but otherwise, no.

curiousmindz 7y ago
GP gave some good points about benevolent dictatorship. Can you elaborate on why it wouldn't be "the best thing" in general? And ideally weight that against all the other scenarios where it is.
- jariel 7y ago
  The premise of 'benevolent dictatorship' is absurd to begin with because it's a living contradiction. Politics, power, and hubris are inseparable. Powers exist to benefit and protect themselves, even agencies with the 'best intent' fall into traps of self-delusion and aggrandizement. We saw 100 revolutions in the last century, most of them 'in the name of the people' - and almost all of them failed and did mostly the opposite of that even if there were a 'few wins' here and there. Literacy and some kinds of healthcare increased dramatically in Cuba ... and yet ... we still have Castro Inc.'s totalitarian fist 50 years later. The very authoritarianism of any regime which gives it the power to do something possibly good in the short term is exactly the thing that prevents it from adapting in the long term. Also, authoritarianism tends to limit the scope of influence and authority to a smaller groups, which is not good for many things that require a lot of voices. Creative fields, research, even market economies have lots of actors. If Hungary were willing to give 'temporary powers' to some person who was not Orban, for say 6 months, well then maybe they'd have something, but otherwise, this looks like a power grab Putin style.
  - curiousmindz 7y ago
    My take away is this: In an ideal world, a benevolent dictatorship would be (overall) better than a democracy. In that ideal world, the dictator would be the perfect leader: Smart/wise, selfless, open minded... Of course, we don't live in an ideal world. Funny example: Heaven (the Christian version) will be an ideal dictatorship (for Christians) :)
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  One other thing that makes dictatorships inferior and democracy preferable over all other systems of governance is transition of power. In democracies, it's encoded in the system in such a way that everyone seeking power wants to play ball. In dictatorship, if someone wants the power, they usually take it by force, leaving a lot of bodies behind - and the very threat of that is already a force making dictators increasingly paranoid. That said, I think every western country could use a temporary (say, 6 months) switch to dictatorship, because I worry we won't deal with this effectively otherwise. I have no idea how to ensure such a dictatorship would be temporary, though.
  - jariel 7y ago
    No - we do not need dictatorships in these crises. The notion of handing Donald Trump the ability to rule by fiat, let alone other national leaders, is beyond rhetoric, it's not even contemplatable. We need coordinated, responsible leadership. Most governments have all of the constitutional powers they need at this time.
    - magduf 7y ago
      What we "need" isn't important. Coordinated, responsible leadership sounds great, but that's up to the voters to decide. If the voters don't want that, then why should it be forced on them? Who are you to tell the voters otherwise? The people elected Trump, so why not give him a dictatorship for 6 months? After all, it's within the President's power to declare martial law for times of emergency. It's the job of the voters to make sure they don't elect someone who can't be trusted with the awesome power available to that position. The same goes for any democratic country.
      - jariel 7y ago
        One of the more scary things I've ever read :) The powers of the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary exist to balance one another out especially in times of crises when some dictator could come along and declare himself ruler. The people didn't vote for a Dictator, they voted for a President with very limited constitutional powers.
zapttt 7y ago
i thought like you, until Linus :)
- jariel 7y ago
  Yes but software projects are not countries. Also, anyone can fork, so really he's not a dictator of everything, just a specific flavor.

close04 7y ago

Democracy can be called dictatorship of the majority. Problem is even communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Nothing you'd find in any real scenario. You can't guarantee you get the benevolent dictator more than you can guarantee the fulfillment of the majority's wishes. They both rely on "hoping" that the person in power actually does the right thing regardless of how they got there and what powers they have. And more importantly, you can hope that you are on the right side of that "right thing". One thing democracy gets better than dictatorship is that it guarantees that it has to keep at least a consistent slice of the population happy, not just one dictator and their apparatus. What dictatorship gets better is that a single person's will and vision is easier to plan and achieve, instead of the many voices and wills of the "majority".

magduf 7y ago
>Problem is even communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Strawman argument. Can you point to any real-life communist governments (and I don't mean "communist" governments either, like China's, I mean true Marxist ones) that actually worked out great? Of course not. That's not like dictatorships, where I can point to a bunch that worked out fine, historically. >You can't guarantee you get the benevolent dictator more than you can guarantee the fulfillment of the majority's wishes. You can't guarantee anything with any kind of government, period. You can't guarantee a democratic government will work well for the people. You can't guarantee a democratic government won't turn into a dictatorship (see: Nazi GermanY). There's absolutely nothing that can be guaranteed; this isn't a computer. >One thing democracy gets better than dictatorship is that it guarantees that it has to keep at least a consistent slice of the population happy, not just one dictator and their apparatus. A dictatorship also has to keep a consistent slice of the population happy. How do you think the dictator keeps his power? If everyone hated him, he'd be instantly ousted. Can you point to any dictator at any time in history that didn't keep a consistent slice of the population happy?
- close04 7y ago
  The points you make are basically rehashing what I said (or missing the mark) and making it look like we have a debate. We aren't and you didn't bring any new ideas. The fact that some dictators had passable results doesn't mean dictatorship is a good system. It just had more "attempts" at success because dictatorship (absolute monarchs) are more in line with human nature. Democracy has achieved better which would suggest it's overall a better system. > Can you point to any real-life communist governments that actually worked out great? If only I would have written that: >> communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Nothing you'd find in any real scenario. > You can't guarantee anything Yes, which is why I said you can't guarantee anything. > A dictatorship also has to keep a consistent slice of the population happy. For a carefully chosen definition of "consistent". At a minimum a dictator has to keep a small slice happy, themselves and their apparatus. This is very far from being "consistent" relative to the population and a far cry from what a democratically elected leader is expected to keep happy. On the other hand a democracy may see a candidate lose even when having the support of the majority of the population (see the electoral college system in the US). Both dictatorship and democracy have advantages and disadvantages, some theoretical, some practical. But in real life the chances of a dictatorship going wrong are so high it makes the system a no-go. It's fishing with nitroglycerin.

ardy42 7y ago

> People complain about dictatorships, but the absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people. Of course, this means it has to be a "benevolent dictatorship". I would quibble quite strongly with the characterization that dictatorships are "absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people." They theoretically can be, but their fatal weakness is they have no effective mechanism to ensure the leader actually looks out for the people or that there's a smooth succession. Having effective mechanisms to do that are very, very important to have a "good form of government."

TomMckenny 7y ago
A dictator has the reverse mechanism. He must spend all his effort and distribute resources to stay in power which means not benefiting the people. If he did not then he would not be the one to rise to or stay dictator. A democratic leader must please the public which could mean lying to them or being a moron __but__ will also mean working to help them (the more educated the public, the less the lies work) So your chances are always better with democracy.
- magduf 7y ago
  >He must spend all his effort and distribute resources to stay in power which means not benefiting the people. Do you have any proof for your claim? I can point to multiple dictators in history under whose reign their people had (by the standards of the time) very good lives and government. Elizabeth I's rule was considered a golden age for England. Finally, how is this different from democratic governments? Congresspeople here in the US spend all their effort getting "campaign donations" so they can be re-elected, and the distribute resources to stay in power (called "pork barrel politics"). The latter ends up benefiting small groups of people at the expense of the nation.
  - TomMckenny 7y ago
    Beyond campaign financing, the US also has gerrymandering, voter suppression and disproportionate voting like the electoral college. And fixing those things will make the nation better serve it's people by making it more democratic. Comparing these dictatorships to each other is not meaningful, we would need to compare dictatorship to democracy. Tudor England was better off than medieval England: not a very high bar. For one thing religious executions still happened and there are certainly no written troves of commoners praising the new age. Elizabethan England was certainly inferior to the Italian renaissance republics of the period. And its people worse of than the latter democratic UK. It is less of a leap forward than 5th century Athens or even 19th century UK. The nearest semi-democracy in time and space would be recently independent Holland which had more freedom and growth: it is even where the American Pilgrims initially fled to. Even among dictatorships, Elizabeth I is not that great: equally despotic Spain had more power, technology and culture, Arab and Asian nations had longer life spans, more sanitation and higher literacy. To compare democracy vs dictatorship you'd need to countries similar in culture and era. Like North and South Korea.

yters 7y ago

otoh when dictator sends mass portions of your population to the gulags, and a 100 million die, just to fight the corona, the cure might be worse than the disease

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

michaelbrave 7y ago

There is this idea about dictatorships being more efficient, but it's been shown that is mostly a carryover from their propaganda. A good example was the saying about "the trains running on time" the truth was they didn't, but the propaganda really painted that picture.

thu2111 7y ago

Dictatorship isn't efficient at all. Dictatorships all experience gross levels of corruption and resource misallocation, often to levels that result in their entire economy collapsing. Meanwhile capitalist free market democracies surge ahead with huge GDP gains and cutting edge technology.

dang 7y ago

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They just lead to predictable discussion, usually flamewar. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22665112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22665112.