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Govts are typically "large enterprise". In most cases the largest enterprise in a country. In some countries they also have the burden of being legible to outs

Govts are typically "large enterprise". In most cases the largest enterprise in a country. In some countries they also have the burden of being legible to outsiders. Between the shareholders (voters) and journalists etc there's a lot of process that has to be transparent. This transparency is legibility driven to extremes. If an enterprise kills a project (think Windows Phone) its done, and we move on. If a govt kills a project there's a lot of external attention on what went wrong, who's getting fired (or going to jail) and how "our money got wasted". So yes, as things get bigger they matter to more people. The more people involved the more every single thought and action has to be meticulously detailed. Which is party why (democratic) govt is soooo bad at actually getting anything done. Feudal govts, and autocratic businesses, get a lot done - much of it quickly. It might not be good. It might be motivated my enrichment not care, but it gets done fast. A good autocrat moves the needle, and things get a lot better very quickly. A bad autocrat achieves his goals, often at enormous cost to the organization (which may not survive. )

lelandbatey 1y ago
Eh, autocrats get away with looking like they move fast due to their lack of transparency; slow things can be dismissed or not propagandized, fast things will be shouted from the rooftops. Autocrats don't automatically execute faster.
- godelski 1y ago
  Autocrats also had thousands of years and generations to give their citizens freedom of expression, the freedom to innovate, to eat, have access to clean drinking water, to solve child mortality, to extend life expectancy for those who lived through childhood to be past 60, to put a man on the moon. Yet the progress of civilization was far slower before democracy. Similar to what you suggest, many say history is written by the victors. But instead history is written by those who can write and survive. There's not much written from the perspective of a commoner for most of history. But where those writings survive, the situations do not appear pleasant.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    The UK during the first half of the industrial revolution was about as democratic as some of the ancient Greek city states, and even that was an improvement over the reaches of the British Empire. What solved all those things you list was industrialisation and (arguably) capitalism*, but capitalism itself is tens of thousands of village-sized autocratcies** where each has the freedom to try things and fail (though even that varies with time, hence debtors' prison), and back then people were still working out what "workers rights" and "health and safety" meant, hence the radium girls, or children being crushed by the power looms they were paid to clean while they were still running. To illustrate your list with e.g. food, what solved food was the Haber-Bosch process, which is responsible for about half the nitrogen in our bodies today; the British Empire thought famines were nature's way of finding balance. * the argument against capitalism here is the Soviet Union; the counter-argument is that the Soviets could literally just look at and copy what already existed by that point; the counter-counter-argument is that they also invented some stuff of their own; the counter-counter-counter-argument is that vanishingly few of those examples were actually state-of-the-art, and the only ones I can even think of is the first half of the Space Race. ** most corporations are not democracies; the rare ones which are, are "worker co-operatives": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
godelski 1y ago
> Which is party why (democratic) govt is soooo bad at actually getting anything done. I find this and similar claims quite astounding. The last few hundred years seems to have been some of the most productive times for humanity. The great technological leaps forward. In that time we went from an agricultural society where many were malnourished, illiterate, and life expectancy was far lower (not only was the child mortality rate magnitudes higher but expectancy past 60 years old was abysmal) to a society that put a god damn man on the moon and maybe more importantly a toilet in every home. All that happened under democracy. So I call BS to claims that democracy means the government is so bad at getting things done. Perhaps you're pointing the finger at the wrong variable. > A good autocrat moves the needle, and things get a lot better very quickly. A bad autocrat achieves his goals It's true, a benevolent dictator can do a lot of good. It's also true that we don't have the proof for the counterfactual of what I discussed above. But if these autocrats were as good as you suggest then it begs the question of why the Industrial Revolution and many of the great leaps forward didn't happen under them? Or why during the rise of democracy in the west did the remaining monarchies and autocrats not also flourish? Post WW2 why did the top down economies of the USSR and China also not see such success? (China didn't succeed until much later, when it opened up) Those countries across that same time that democracies made such advancements did not win out. You can say that maybe those leaders weren't the best, but we're talking about many generations here. So then what? Benevolent autocrats are rare? That seems like a great flaw. You also forget the old cliché: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. History has shown that there were many kings and rulers who sought to do good and do good by the people, yet in these efforts caused great disaster. You could take the Four Pest Campaign as a relatively recent example. It was definitely implemented with good intentions but ended up being one of, if not the, greatest environmental disasters of all time. Estimates are that between 1% and 10% of the population at the time starved. This is not to say that democracies have not also caused great harm. One needs not believe there is a global optimal solution to such a complex problem, but that does not mean certain solutions aren't strictly better than others. A benefit to democracies is that it is difficult to bury the mistakes. They say history is told by the victors but that's not entirely true. History is written by those who write and the writings that can be preserved. In democracies this is available to far more people. It is unlikely that you have an accurate understanding of the daily lives of those who lived more than a few hundred years ago. No one was recording that. On paper I think the idea of a benevolent autocrat sounds good. But in reality there are so few examples of benevolent autocrats who made their citizens lives better. Sure, many built great monuments but that's not the same thing. It is simply difficult to role effectively over so large of an ecosystem. The world is too complex for one man to make informed decisions. I'm sure if you are honest with yourself you'll find that even far smaller tasks, ones you may be apart of, share this feature. When a single mind cannot handle all the complexities, you must turn to a collective. But a feudal society is not a dictatorship, even if it appears so locally

lelandbatey 1y ago

Eh, autocrats get away with looking like they move fast due to their lack of transparency; slow things can be dismissed or not propagandized, fast things will be shouted from the rooftops. Autocrats don't automatically execute faster.

godelski 1y ago
Autocrats also had thousands of years and generations to give their citizens freedom of expression, the freedom to innovate, to eat, have access to clean drinking water, to solve child mortality, to extend life expectancy for those who lived through childhood to be past 60, to put a man on the moon. Yet the progress of civilization was far slower before democracy. Similar to what you suggest, many say history is written by the victors. But instead history is written by those who can write and survive. There's not much written from the perspective of a commoner for most of history. But where those writings survive, the situations do not appear pleasant.
- ben_w 1y ago
  The UK during the first half of the industrial revolution was about as democratic as some of the ancient Greek city states, and even that was an improvement over the reaches of the British Empire. What solved all those things you list was industrialisation and (arguably) capitalism*, but capitalism itself is tens of thousands of village-sized autocratcies** where each has the freedom to try things and fail (though even that varies with time, hence debtors' prison), and back then people were still working out what "workers rights" and "health and safety" meant, hence the radium girls, or children being crushed by the power looms they were paid to clean while they were still running. To illustrate your list with e.g. food, what solved food was the Haber-Bosch process, which is responsible for about half the nitrogen in our bodies today; the British Empire thought famines were nature's way of finding balance. * the argument against capitalism here is the Soviet Union; the counter-argument is that the Soviets could literally just look at and copy what already existed by that point; the counter-counter-argument is that they also invented some stuff of their own; the counter-counter-counter-argument is that vanishingly few of those examples were actually state-of-the-art, and the only ones I can even think of is the first half of the Space Race. ** most corporations are not democracies; the rare ones which are, are "worker co-operatives": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

godelski 1y ago

> Which is party why (democratic) govt is soooo bad at actually getting anything done. I find this and similar claims quite astounding. The last few hundred years seems to have been some of the most productive times for humanity. The great technological leaps forward. In that time we went from an agricultural society where many were malnourished, illiterate, and life expectancy was far lower (not only was the child mortality rate magnitudes higher but expectancy past 60 years old was abysmal) to a society that put a god damn man on the moon and maybe more importantly a toilet in every home. All that happened under democracy. So I call BS to claims that democracy means the government is so bad at getting things done. Perhaps you're pointing the finger at the wrong variable. > A good autocrat moves the needle, and things get a lot better very quickly. A bad autocrat achieves his goals It's true, a benevolent dictator can do a lot of good. It's also true that we don't have the proof for the counterfactual of what I discussed above. But if these autocrats were as good as you suggest then it begs the question of why the Industrial Revolution and many of the great leaps forward didn't happen under them? Or why during the rise of democracy in the west did the remaining monarchies and autocrats not also flourish? Post WW2 why did the top down economies of the USSR and China also not see such success? (China didn't succeed until much later, when it opened up) Those countries across that same time that democracies made such advancements did not win out. You can say that maybe those leaders weren't the best, but we're talking about many generations here. So then what? Benevolent autocrats are rare? That seems like a great flaw. You also forget the old cliché: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. History has shown that there were many kings and rulers who sought to do good and do good by the people, yet in these efforts caused great disaster. You could take the Four Pest Campaign as a relatively recent example. It was definitely implemented with good intentions but ended up being one of, if not the, greatest environmental disasters of all time. Estimates are that between 1% and 10% of the population at the time starved. This is not to say that democracies have not also caused great harm. One needs not believe there is a global optimal solution to such a complex problem, but that does not mean certain solutions aren't strictly better than others. A benefit to democracies is that it is difficult to bury the mistakes. They say history is told by the victors but that's not entirely true. History is written by those who write and the writings that can be preserved. In democracies this is available to far more people. It is unlikely that you have an accurate understanding of the daily lives of those who lived more than a few hundred years ago. No one was recording that. On paper I think the idea of a benevolent autocrat sounds good. But in reality there are so few examples of benevolent autocrats who made their citizens lives better. Sure, many built great monuments but that's not the same thing. It is simply difficult to role effectively over so large of an ecosystem. The world is too complex for one man to make informed decisions. I'm sure if you are honest with yourself you'll find that even far smaller tasks, ones you may be apart of, share this feature. When a single mind cannot handle all the complexities, you must turn to a collective. But a feudal society is not a dictatorship, even if it appears so locally