There's nothing in the least irrational about their decisions of this nature. They're trying to avoid, for example, a preference cascade that could take them f

There's nothing in the least irrational about their decisions of this nature. They're trying to avoid, for example, a preference cascade that could take them from being at the top of the world to in front of a firing squad in as little as 4 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C8%99escu%27s_final_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C8%99escu%27s_final_speec... Whatever makes you think most of them give a sh*t about "the long term future of the country"? Hitler, strangely enough, actually did ... just very very poorly.... That's actually something he had in common with what I might call some of the "first generation revolutionary dictators", like Lenin (New Economic Policy) and Mao (where country != the people, who he believed to be very expendable in part because there were so many). But the 2nd generation, such as Stalin, or those who didn't actually do the revolution thing, like Ceaușescu ... I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.