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A funny pattern: quite often, "capitalists" welcome authoritarian rulers, expecting them to be "good for business", because they "make the trains run on time" a
by diego_moita 6y ago
A funny pattern: quite often, "capitalists" welcome authoritarian rulers, expecting them to be "good for business", because they "make the trains run on time" and keep unions and environmentalists in check.
However, in the long run, these rulers end up having their own agenda that turns out to be bad to businesses.
Examples?
* Brazil's Bolsonaro crashing the country's confidence and branding by shunning trade deals with EU, being hostile to trade partners (China, Arab countries) or interfering (Hugo Chavez-like) with the state oil company.
* Trump and his disastrous handling of the pandemic.
* Xi-Jiping and the CCP interference in AliPay and other conglomerates.
* Erdogan's disastrous handling of Turkey's currency.
Moral of the story: everyone loves their dictator until the moment the dictator is no longer "their". Frankenstein's monsters have this unpleasant side effect of turning against their creators.
- riffraff 6y agoI agree with what you're saying, but Erdogan has been prime minister for almost 20 years, and that can be properly considered "the long run". I don't think the same applies to Bolsonaro and Trump, who've only had one term, and while horrible leaders, have not (yet) managed to change the institutions which elected them (Erdogan headed 3 constitutional changes).
- donovanian 6y ago> "capitalists" welcome authoritarian rulers North Korea, Venezuela, China, Russia, Cuba, to a certain extent Mexico... I'm not sure you could find examples of more authoritarian societies that have a proliferation of mandates "for the greater good." Conformism is king!