Care to provide some examples beyond your feelings? The South Korean government did pretty well with shipbuilding:
http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=69...
17 billion $~ spent with little to show for it, with much allegations of corruption between President Lee & his ex-employer Hyundai constructions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0ANQBP0Cq8 6 million $ spent on "robo-fish" to detect & observe water conditions, 7/9 units DOA; met 10% of targeted spec (speed/data networking bandwidth capabilities)
I think government sanctioned projects can work if the leader in charge has proper intent and skills & leadership to steer the resources.
This is far from the case with current Korean leadership; as Ms.Park was elected mostly based on her name recognition/ positive sentiments left by her dad. She is widely considered to be one of the most incompetent president ever to be elected into office.
During the summer these days, the state of the riverwater is humorously called "Nokjo (algal bloom) latte". See: https://www.google.com/search?q=%EB%85%B9%EC%A1%B0%EB%9D%BC%...
I'm actually happy that Park Geun-Hye is babbling about AI's. At least I can't think of any way that could do a long-lasting harm, other than burning taxypayers' $$$, but they're gonna do that anyway, so what's the difference?
Hopefully, in the next election we could find someone who could utter more than one coherent sentence at a time.
It is normal for politicians to be stupid. Don't you want your country to be normal?
In the others, the reality is that the dictatorship is even more corrupt but because there is no freedom of the press, nobody reports it and the dictator publishes their propaganda about how clean they are and how they are jailing people for corruption, when really they are jailing their opponents (like President Xi in China today). Who would have dared to report about corruption by the original President Park, or to defend his opponents?
Democracy produces the least corrupt governments in the world. One big reason is that people are free to report it, the leader can hose their job in the next election, and an indepedent judiciary can convict the leaders friends (and protect their enemies). The corruption is there in any government or human institution; if we aren't reading about it, that's when we have a problem.
Democracies also produce the most economically and technologically advanced economies and societies - look at any list; democracies dominate it. The 'strong leadership' approach, for all its appeal to some, doesn't deliver the goods. For all the chaos, giving input to millions rather than to just one person produces much better results.
Every once in a while, people luck out and get a competent dictator with proper leadership & economic understanding to direct resources to appropriate areas for economic growth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung-hee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew
Both brutal dictators; but widely considered to have done a fine job steering economies.
One does not balance the other. Stalin industrialized Russia; Hitler rebuilt the German economy.
[citation needed]
...Or was that a rhetorical device, meaning if people were caught accepting bribes, then of course they were already out of political favor, so they were heavily punished?
In the late years Park's servants would "recruit" women to serve him. In fact there was a young girl in the last night when he was shot by his own aide while drinking. So I find it very hard to believe Park would have minded his minions doing creating accounting.
Some people say Park wasn't corrupt because he did not amass personal wealth, but that argument misses the fact that he had no intention to retire. The country was his, and would remain his. Moving money to his own bank account would have been like moving money from the left pocket to the right pocket. Why bother?