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The obvious question is, "What does the transition from democracy to dictatorship look like?" I mean if the rich guys own everything anyway. Do they ramp up a

The obvious question is, "What does the transition from democracy to dictatorship look like?" I mean if the rich guys own everything anyway. Do they ramp up authoritarian reasonings to justify policies? Do they just stop trying to justify?

politician 5y ago
It seems to look like tacit control of the press giving way to overt public directives to the press.
- swayvil 5y ago
  Well that sounds familiar. Some emails were posted here just a few days ago. Fed and facebook discussing propaganda strategy.
ModernMech 5y ago
Autocracy revolves around the ego of the autocrat. Usually the autocrat’s message is something along the lines of “I alone can solve all your problems, and your problems are because of those people”, where “those people” are usually some minority ehtnic, national, or religious group. Obviously not all of the problems in the world are due to these people. Therefore autocracies are heavily invested in obfuscating the truth, gaslighting populations with propaganda, takeovers of national media, and jailing or execution of dissidents. After all, you can’t have people going around saying the autocrat is not the solution to everything and “those” people aren’t the one and only problem. People might start to get ideas. Thus the downward spiral begins. This is why autocracies are unstable. They require an ever shifting narrative about why things are so bad. The real reason things go to shit under autocracies is because no one in charge is invested in solving real problems. The problems that autocracies aim to solve are made up to incite people and to appease egos. They aren’t evidence based because following the evidence would reveal shockingly that the autocrat doesn’t have all the solutions.
marcodiego 5y ago
In Brazil, dictatorship created problems by lack of planning with fast urbanization for 21 years. During the rule, they kidnapped and killed dissenters. When social and economic problems were about to explode, they handed the government and the country entered a democratic period. To this day there are people who blame democracy for the problems that exploded after the dictatorship ended and spread lies about the dictatorship being a better time. Elections of 2018 was partly a result of this thought. My best counter argument is: "Are there more democracies among developed or underdeveloped countries? Are there more dictatorships among poor or rich countries? We can see that dictatorships are more related to empoverishment and democracies are more related to development." I think something similar happens in Chile.

politician 5y ago

It seems to look like tacit control of the press giving way to overt public directives to the press.

swayvil 5y ago
Well that sounds familiar. Some emails were posted here just a few days ago. Fed and facebook discussing propaganda strategy.

ModernMech 5y ago

Autocracy revolves around the ego of the autocrat. Usually the autocrat’s message is something along the lines of “I alone can solve all your problems, and your problems are because of those people”, where “those people” are usually some minority ehtnic, national, or religious group. Obviously not all of the problems in the world are due to these people. Therefore autocracies are heavily invested in obfuscating the truth, gaslighting populations with propaganda, takeovers of national media, and jailing or execution of dissidents. After all, you can’t have people going around saying the autocrat is not the solution to everything and “those” people aren’t the one and only problem. People might start to get ideas. Thus the downward spiral begins. This is why autocracies are unstable. They require an ever shifting narrative about why things are so bad. The real reason things go to shit under autocracies is because no one in charge is invested in solving real problems. The problems that autocracies aim to solve are made up to incite people and to appease egos. They aren’t evidence based because following the evidence would reveal shockingly that the autocrat doesn’t have all the solutions.

marcodiego 5y ago

In Brazil, dictatorship created problems by lack of planning with fast urbanization for 21 years. During the rule, they kidnapped and killed dissenters. When social and economic problems were about to explode, they handed the government and the country entered a democratic period. To this day there are people who blame democracy for the problems that exploded after the dictatorship ended and spread lies about the dictatorship being a better time. Elections of 2018 was partly a result of this thought. My best counter argument is: "Are there more democracies among developed or underdeveloped countries? Are there more dictatorships among poor or rich countries? We can see that dictatorships are more related to empoverishment and democracies are more related to development." I think something similar happens in Chile.