5 ms·

This reminds me of what Dan Carlin called "rolling the monarchy dice" in his Hardcore History podcast. If you get a good dictator, things get done with little

by nicbou 4y ago

This reminds me of what Dan Carlin called "rolling the monarchy dice" in his Hardcore History podcast. If you get a good dictator, things get done with little friction, because the power rests on a single person's shoulders. But if you get a bad one, you're stuck with it. Democracy might be slower and less inefficient, but it's reliably slower and less efficient.

machina_ex_deus 4y ago
The key is having an accountable "dictator". There are two interpretations to democracy: you can emphasize "representation", and parliamentary system, or you can emphasize "accountability" and singular leaders. The idea being, if you rolled the dictatorship dice badly, you minimize damage and reroll it. The U.S. was clearly designed with the second interpretation in mind. The revolution was a result of taxation by the British Parliament, and their anger at the British crown was that the king did not stop the parliament. The president / executive branch is a single person, and it represented their view of preferring an accountable monarch over distributed accountability dispersing Parliament. They also designed the house seats with very lower upper bounds on the number of people represented by a single person, and the design of voting districts reflects a view of accountability over representation. However, the prevailing meta game of politics is using the representation interpretation. And the design of the U.S constitution is quite bad when that is the understanding. It's just not designed for it. And the pubic has been trained, in almost pavlovian way, to interpret the "accountability" interpretation as "populism" with negative connotation.
- eru 4y ago
  > The revolution was a result of taxation by the British Parliament, [...] It's a bit more complicated. Colonials paid lower taxes than people back in England, too. See also https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html > His stories about George Washington, none of which I knew, are even more fascinating. Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fighting the Revolutionary War was to protect his substantial, and critically placed, landholdings in the Ohio Valley. I’m not saying that I agree with him, but his story made me realize that a large part of my belief in GW is romantic: because I learned about him so early in life, that romantic view is harder to shake and I’ve been less willing to put GW under the public choice microscope than with any current or recent president. > An excerpt about GW’s wealth: >> His last position, just before becoming President, was President of the Patowmack Canal Company–the Potomac Canal, as we know it, from the Potomac River. What that canal did was bring, make it possible to bring produce from the Shenandoah Valley–which George owned–up to the port in Alexandria, which had been built by Lawrence, by the Ohio Valley Company, in which George had a direct interest, and shipped goods out. So it was a very profitable undertaking–or so he thought it would be, in the long run, for him. And that’s what motivated him. Most people think of Washington as–besides a great hero, which he certainly was–as kind of a gentleman farmer. Economists have estimated the worth in real dollars adjusted for inflation, not appreciated, of George Washington’s estate, in contemporary terms; and it’s about $20 billion dollars. He is by far the wealthiest President. He is the 59th wealthiest person in American history. Three of the American founding fathers are in the list of the top 100 wealthiest Americans in all of history: Hancock, who was wealthier than Washington–made his money smuggling; and Ben Franklin, who was not quite as wealthy, who made his money because he had a monopoly on the printing press. These are the folks who led the Revolution. These were not the downtrodden. These were not the oppressed. These were people who stood to lose huge amounts of wealth because of the King’s policies. And so they fought a Revolution. Which was, by the way, not very popular. Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    This seems like a pretty irrelevant derail of the GPs point, no? Regardless the revolution was about their rights as Englishmen being infringed upon, not the amount of taxes paid.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      Spending the 1770s paying doing business as usual and paying taxes would have made all the big personalities much wealthier than dragging armies across their place of business and having a country to show for it wound up making them.
    - eru 4y ago
      Ostensibly the criminal revolt against the rightful authority of the crown was about rights and stuff. I don't think we should necessarily take traitors at their word. (Especially when they talk a big talk about freedom and mankind, but keep slaves.)
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  The US design was a bit more than that. It was designed, first, so that the entire system had strictly limited power. Second, it was designed so that within the system, there was nobody who had power that someone else could not block. It was very much not a "dictator" design. For example, the President could appoint the cabinet and judges, but the Senate has to approve them. The president could negotiate treaties, but the Senate has to approve them. The president could veto a bill, but Congress can override it. And so on, and so on. That's not a dictator. The president has been moving closer and closer to a dictator, though, because Congress has become more and more useless. They have become so tied up in political trench warfare that they can't actually govern. They often can't even pass a budget, which is their most basic job. So the president rules more and more by executive order, which is very much not the way the system was supposed to work.
  - tastyfreeze 4y ago
    The president has become more of a dictator because Congress has abdicated a majority of their law making authority to the executive by creating administrative agencies. There is no real check on administrative agency rule making. The judiciary can block a rule but often defer to the expertise of the administrative agencies making the rules.
- foolswisdom 4y ago
  I agree the design wasn't about representation, and does seem to have been designed with being able to kick people out being important, rather than representation (think about the fact that per the original constitution, the only federal office voted for by citizens was the House of Representatives). However, describing it as optimizing for concentration of power in comparison to British parliament seems to be incorrect (as others in this thread have pointed out). From my readings of The Federalist Papers, it seems more that they were trying to design a system which forced cooperation between its members instead of individuals with massive power. The executive is an individual, however, because actual execution is always better done with an individual on top. Of course, changes to the constitution and the world in the meantime have massively weakened the original design.
wongarsu 4y ago
Interestingly, in situations where a bad roll of the monarchy dice isn't a big deal because people can just leave, dictatorship tends to become the preferred form of government. See for example open source projects with their BDFL; if you have a bad BDFL the project gets forked with new leadership. Another example are small to medium sized businesses, where customers and employees can just go elsewhere if the CEO turns bad. Notably once a company reaches a critical size it tends to become more like a democracy, with both investors and employees demanding a seat on the table, because "just go somewhere else" becomes less of an option.
- rajamaka 4y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by "people can just leave". Because this isn't really a realistic option for a majority of people.
  - andreareina 4y ago
    When people can just leave (small businesses etc) dictatorship isn't a big deal. No-one's claiming that people can just leave their country.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    It's really annoying that HN has resorted to the same hivemind behaviour as Reddit. You're asking a reasonable question, because you didn't follow, and you're greyed-out from downvotes. If someone has a bad take, downvote them. If someone doesn't understand, but wants to, either upvote or don't vote. It's really that simple.
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      That person should actually read a comment instead of pushing back against a point that was articulated already. /that/ is Reddit hive mind behavior, not downvoting irrelevant or bad comments
    - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
      > If someone has a bad take, downvote them. Ironically, this is the most reddit sentence I’ve ever read. To add more substance and avoid be-redditting this thread even further: I think the crucial difference in a good forum culture is that “bad takes” aren’t reflexively buried - they’re dismantled, disproven, and alternatives are submitted. That way anyone else with similar “bad takes” is guided to a better POV. This is actually productive. Downvotes are for irrelevant material, which isn’t productive.
thejackgoode 4y ago
If you ever played Europa Universalis, you know this. Trying to get the stupid prince killed in battle before his reign is a chore.
enkid 4y ago
What's an example of a good "dictator"? I can think of are individuals who willingly gave up power or set up a democratic system after they left, i.e., George Washington, Ataturk, etc. I can't think of a single historical example where someone actually improved the people's situation in their country, but that could be my bias when I think of someone who is good or my ignorance.
- waswaswas 4y ago
  Lee Kuan Yew comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew
- wayne 4y ago
  I've often heard Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore cited as an example. As usual, there's a Wikipedia article listing some others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship
- lordgrenville 4y ago
  Without meaning to start a flamewar, I'd give a shout to Napoleon. Took over when France was in chaos, and turned it into a wealthy powerhouse, spread Enlightenment values, built incredible cultural treasurehouses. He was a great general and administrator and leader. Yes, some of the family members he appointed to run parts of the empire weren't great, nor were his successors. And yes, invading Russia was a mistake. But still seems a good example of "rolling the dictator dice". (Relevant disclosure: I'm not French.)
treeman79 4y ago
Democracy suffers from tyranny of the masses. Wear a slight majority can vote to take everything from the minority. That’s why the US founders loathed democracy. A Republic was the answer they came up with.

by nicbou 4y ago

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

The key is having an accountable "dictator". There are two interpretations to democracy: you can emphasize "representation", and parliamentary system, or you can emphasize "accountability" and singular leaders. The idea being, if you rolled the dictatorship dice badly, you minimize damage and reroll it. The U.S. was clearly designed with the second interpretation in mind. The revolution was a result of taxation by the British Parliament, and their anger at the British crown was that the king did not stop the parliament. The president / executive branch is a single person, and it represented their view of preferring an accountable monarch over distributed accountability dispersing Parliament. They also designed the house seats with very lower upper bounds on the number of people represented by a single person, and the design of voting districts reflects a view of accountability over representation. However, the prevailing meta game of politics is using the representation interpretation. And the design of the U.S constitution is quite bad when that is the understanding. It's just not designed for it. And the pubic has been trained, in almost pavlovian way, to interpret the "accountability" interpretation as "populism" with negative connotation.

eru 4y ago
> The revolution was a result of taxation by the British Parliament, [...] It's a bit more complicated. Colonials paid lower taxes than people back in England, too. See also https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html > His stories about George Washington, none of which I knew, are even more fascinating. Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fighting the Revolutionary War was to protect his substantial, and critically placed, landholdings in the Ohio Valley. I’m not saying that I agree with him, but his story made me realize that a large part of my belief in GW is romantic: because I learned about him so early in life, that romantic view is harder to shake and I’ve been less willing to put GW under the public choice microscope than with any current or recent president. > An excerpt about GW’s wealth: >> His last position, just before becoming President, was President of the Patowmack Canal Company–the Potomac Canal, as we know it, from the Potomac River. What that canal did was bring, make it possible to bring produce from the Shenandoah Valley–which George owned–up to the port in Alexandria, which had been built by Lawrence, by the Ohio Valley Company, in which George had a direct interest, and shipped goods out. So it was a very profitable undertaking–or so he thought it would be, in the long run, for him. And that’s what motivated him. Most people think of Washington as–besides a great hero, which he certainly was–as kind of a gentleman farmer. Economists have estimated the worth in real dollars adjusted for inflation, not appreciated, of George Washington’s estate, in contemporary terms; and it’s about $20 billion dollars. He is by far the wealthiest President. He is the 59th wealthiest person in American history. Three of the American founding fathers are in the list of the top 100 wealthiest Americans in all of history: Hancock, who was wealthier than Washington–made his money smuggling; and Ben Franklin, who was not quite as wealthy, who made his money because he had a monopoly on the printing press. These are the folks who led the Revolution. These were not the downtrodden. These were not the oppressed. These were people who stood to lose huge amounts of wealth because of the King’s policies. And so they fought a Revolution. Which was, by the way, not very popular. Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  This seems like a pretty irrelevant derail of the GPs point, no? Regardless the revolution was about their rights as Englishmen being infringed upon, not the amount of taxes paid.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Spending the 1770s paying doing business as usual and paying taxes would have made all the big personalities much wealthier than dragging armies across their place of business and having a country to show for it wound up making them.
  - eru 4y ago
    Ostensibly the criminal revolt against the rightful authority of the crown was about rights and stuff. I don't think we should necessarily take traitors at their word. (Especially when they talk a big talk about freedom and mankind, but keep slaves.)
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
The US design was a bit more than that. It was designed, first, so that the entire system had strictly limited power. Second, it was designed so that within the system, there was nobody who had power that someone else could not block. It was very much not a "dictator" design. For example, the President could appoint the cabinet and judges, but the Senate has to approve them. The president could negotiate treaties, but the Senate has to approve them. The president could veto a bill, but Congress can override it. And so on, and so on. That's not a dictator. The president has been moving closer and closer to a dictator, though, because Congress has become more and more useless. They have become so tied up in political trench warfare that they can't actually govern. They often can't even pass a budget, which is their most basic job. So the president rules more and more by executive order, which is very much not the way the system was supposed to work.
- tastyfreeze 4y ago
  The president has become more of a dictator because Congress has abdicated a majority of their law making authority to the executive by creating administrative agencies. There is no real check on administrative agency rule making. The judiciary can block a rule but often defer to the expertise of the administrative agencies making the rules.
foolswisdom 4y ago
I agree the design wasn't about representation, and does seem to have been designed with being able to kick people out being important, rather than representation (think about the fact that per the original constitution, the only federal office voted for by citizens was the House of Representatives). However, describing it as optimizing for concentration of power in comparison to British parliament seems to be incorrect (as others in this thread have pointed out). From my readings of The Federalist Papers, it seems more that they were trying to design a system which forced cooperation between its members instead of individuals with massive power. The executive is an individual, however, because actual execution is always better done with an individual on top. Of course, changes to the constitution and the world in the meantime have massively weakened the original design.

wongarsu 4y ago

Interestingly, in situations where a bad roll of the monarchy dice isn't a big deal because people can just leave, dictatorship tends to become the preferred form of government. See for example open source projects with their BDFL; if you have a bad BDFL the project gets forked with new leadership. Another example are small to medium sized businesses, where customers and employees can just go elsewhere if the CEO turns bad. Notably once a company reaches a critical size it tends to become more like a democracy, with both investors and employees demanding a seat on the table, because "just go somewhere else" becomes less of an option.

rajamaka 4y ago
Could you explain what you mean by "people can just leave". Because this isn't really a realistic option for a majority of people.
- andreareina 4y ago
  When people can just leave (small businesses etc) dictatorship isn't a big deal. No-one's claiming that people can just leave their country.
- seanw444 4y ago
  It's really annoying that HN has resorted to the same hivemind behaviour as Reddit. You're asking a reasonable question, because you didn't follow, and you're greyed-out from downvotes. If someone has a bad take, downvote them. If someone doesn't understand, but wants to, either upvote or don't vote. It's really that simple.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    That person should actually read a comment instead of pushing back against a point that was articulated already. /that/ is Reddit hive mind behavior, not downvoting irrelevant or bad comments
  - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
    > If someone has a bad take, downvote them. Ironically, this is the most reddit sentence I’ve ever read. To add more substance and avoid be-redditting this thread even further: I think the crucial difference in a good forum culture is that “bad takes” aren’t reflexively buried - they’re dismantled, disproven, and alternatives are submitted. That way anyone else with similar “bad takes” is guided to a better POV. This is actually productive. Downvotes are for irrelevant material, which isn’t productive.

thejackgoode 4y ago

If you ever played Europa Universalis, you know this. Trying to get the stupid prince killed in battle before his reign is a chore.

enkid 4y ago

What's an example of a good "dictator"? I can think of are individuals who willingly gave up power or set up a democratic system after they left, i.e., George Washington, Ataturk, etc. I can't think of a single historical example where someone actually improved the people's situation in their country, but that could be my bias when I think of someone who is good or my ignorance.

waswaswas 4y ago
Lee Kuan Yew comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew
wayne 4y ago
I've often heard Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore cited as an example. As usual, there's a Wikipedia article listing some others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship
lordgrenville 4y ago
Without meaning to start a flamewar, I'd give a shout to Napoleon. Took over when France was in chaos, and turned it into a wealthy powerhouse, spread Enlightenment values, built incredible cultural treasurehouses. He was a great general and administrator and leader. Yes, some of the family members he appointed to run parts of the empire weren't great, nor were his successors. And yes, invading Russia was a mistake. But still seems a good example of "rolling the dictator dice". (Relevant disclosure: I'm not French.)

treeman79 4y ago

Democracy suffers from tyranny of the masses. Wear a slight majority can vote to take everything from the minority. That’s why the US founders loathed democracy. A Republic was the answer they came up with.