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I think quite a bit of this is that if you’re not in the out group, being in an autocracy would feel like it has a lot of benefits with few drawbacks. About a d

I think quite a bit of this is that if you’re not in the out group, being in an autocracy would feel like it has a lot of benefits with few drawbacks. About a decade ago I was speaking to a man in Haiti who lamented the fall of the Duvalier and Aristide regimes. From his perspective (since he nor his family members were targets) it was stable versus what had come since via democracy such as the UN “peacekeeping” forces (and it’s obviously gotten much worse since then). At one point he said “Yes people died but at least they picked up the trash.” None of this is an endorsement on my part. It seems clear to me that democracies are better than autocracies, but there are appealing parts of autocracies if you are willing to turn a blind eye to the atrocities.

einszwei 2y ago
I would look deeper into the coup's in Haiti and if there were any liberal democracies who were involved in those. Haiti's history is full of foreign interference since Christopher Columbus first landed there some 500 years ago.
- TheCleric 2y ago
  Oh I completely agree with that. The fact that they were still paying off their “debt” to France after 150 years for having the nerve to revolt against slavery is itself a crime.
  - light_hue_1 2y ago
    It's not just France. For about 100 years the debt was paid to France and for about 25 years it was paid to the US after the US invaded. What's today Citibank demanded the invasion. The US literally had marines take Haiti's entire gold reserve and cart it to Citibank's basement at 55 Wall Street. The US took advantage of Haiti's revolt against slavery even after France had given up. By the time the US left, the UN said that it had stolen everything and forced Haitians into such horrific conditions they were close to starvation.
xpl 2y ago
Free markets, liberal democracies, and so forth are just ways of distributing decision-making and control — that may be not optimal (e.g., they could be sometimes painfully slow compared to autocracies), but are good enough. It all can be seen as a resilient distributed computer made of humans. The USSR/communism failed not because it is inherently evil and soul-crushing, but mainly because it lacked the all-permeating, high-bandwidth information system that could survey and control all aspects of society in a centralized way (i.e., cyber-totalitarianism). But with all the new 21st-century technology and AI, it possibly could have succeeded... We're living in interesting times.
- candiodari 2y ago
  > The USSR/communism failed not because it is inherently evil and soul-crushing, but mainly because it lacked the all-permeating This seems to be the hope of Marxists today. But if you talk to people who actually lived in the USSR, no, it wasn't lack of information. It was like in the show "Chernobyl". It was protecting decision makers, right up to the point of sending firefighters LITERALLY INTO a fissioning nuclear reactor in hopes of putting it out and blaming it on an electrical malfunction to protect the careers of the plant director and chief scientist.
friend_and_foe 2y ago
I've got 2 anecdotes to counter yours. I knew a guy who served in the Iraqi military after the fall of Saddam. He did not serve under Saddam, he was not pro Saddam. He told me that under Saddam, you could walk down the street at 1AM with ten thousand dollars cash in your hand waving it in the air and nobody would try to take it from you. Religiously motivated attacks simply did not happen. The flip side of that, if you got involved in politics or messed with his business, you disappeared. Another friend of mine, a Zulu man from south Africa, told me he missed apartheid. I was awestruck when he told me this. He said he couldn't go into certain parts of cities without a work permit and couldn't own certain land in certain regions, he had limited freedom, but that the streets were clean and there was much less corruption and crime. (Note: This isn't a one off either, there's actually currently an anti corruption ovement that is mostly black in ZA with elements of pro apartheid sentiment, it's truly bizarre.) These were both very much outgroup people, probably happy with the change in the status quo, only to with hindsight feel like they lost something. I'm with you, I'm opposed to autocracy, authoritarianism, and I'd rather live in a messy society where everyone is free, but often there are tangible benefits in systems like this. Dictators and authoritarians know this, they know that when times are tough people want security, and they use it to great effect, and it works.

einszwei 2y ago

I would look deeper into the coup's in Haiti and if there were any liberal democracies who were involved in those. Haiti's history is full of foreign interference since Christopher Columbus first landed there some 500 years ago.

TheCleric 2y ago
Oh I completely agree with that. The fact that they were still paying off their “debt” to France after 150 years for having the nerve to revolt against slavery is itself a crime.
- light_hue_1 2y ago
  It's not just France. For about 100 years the debt was paid to France and for about 25 years it was paid to the US after the US invaded. What's today Citibank demanded the invasion. The US literally had marines take Haiti's entire gold reserve and cart it to Citibank's basement at 55 Wall Street. The US took advantage of Haiti's revolt against slavery even after France had given up. By the time the US left, the UN said that it had stolen everything and forced Haitians into such horrific conditions they were close to starvation.

xpl 2y ago

Free markets, liberal democracies, and so forth are just ways of distributing decision-making and control — that may be not optimal (e.g., they could be sometimes painfully slow compared to autocracies), but are good enough. It all can be seen as a resilient distributed computer made of humans. The USSR/communism failed not because it is inherently evil and soul-crushing, but mainly because it lacked the all-permeating, high-bandwidth information system that could survey and control all aspects of society in a centralized way (i.e., cyber-totalitarianism). But with all the new 21st-century technology and AI, it possibly could have succeeded... We're living in interesting times.

candiodari 2y ago
> The USSR/communism failed not because it is inherently evil and soul-crushing, but mainly because it lacked the all-permeating This seems to be the hope of Marxists today. But if you talk to people who actually lived in the USSR, no, it wasn't lack of information. It was like in the show "Chernobyl". It was protecting decision makers, right up to the point of sending firefighters LITERALLY INTO a fissioning nuclear reactor in hopes of putting it out and blaming it on an electrical malfunction to protect the careers of the plant director and chief scientist.

friend_and_foe 2y ago

I've got 2 anecdotes to counter yours. I knew a guy who served in the Iraqi military after the fall of Saddam. He did not serve under Saddam, he was not pro Saddam. He told me that under Saddam, you could walk down the street at 1AM with ten thousand dollars cash in your hand waving it in the air and nobody would try to take it from you. Religiously motivated attacks simply did not happen. The flip side of that, if you got involved in politics or messed with his business, you disappeared. Another friend of mine, a Zulu man from south Africa, told me he missed apartheid. I was awestruck when he told me this. He said he couldn't go into certain parts of cities without a work permit and couldn't own certain land in certain regions, he had limited freedom, but that the streets were clean and there was much less corruption and crime. (Note: This isn't a one off either, there's actually currently an anti corruption ovement that is mostly black in ZA with elements of pro apartheid sentiment, it's truly bizarre.) These were both very much outgroup people, probably happy with the change in the status quo, only to with hindsight feel like they lost something. I'm with you, I'm opposed to autocracy, authoritarianism, and I'd rather live in a messy society where everyone is free, but often there are tangible benefits in systems like this. Dictators and authoritarians know this, they know that when times are tough people want security, and they use it to great effect, and it works.