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Comment by loyukfai | Hacker News Reader

The damage is done. It will take quite some time for the opinions of the Taiwanese people to change again, if ever.

We’re used to Beijing thinking for the long term. When they rotated leaders, this was largely true. With Xi as leader for life, however, the short-term decision making and incompetent bureaucracies that characterises dictatorships are beginning to emerge.

Hong Kong shouldn’t have been a problem. Most Hong Kongers, until recently, identified as Chinese moreso than Hong Konger. The transition in 2047 would have been uneventful.

Now, Hong Kong pissed off. Taiwan has seen the writing on the wall. China’s multi-decade integration strategy must be rethought because Xi didn’t think he could survive Hong Kongers criticising his leadership (including its corruption).

This is the sort of thing predicted by Hans Hermann Hoppe's "Democracy: The God that Failed", the basic premise of which is that short term leaders as found in democracies will try to get as much as they can in the short time they have, whereas lifetime leaders as in monarchies will treat the country more like a property owner would his own property.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy:_The_God_That_Failed

> short term leaders as found in democracies will try to get as much as they can in the short time they have, whereas lifetime leaders as in monarchies will treat the country more like a property owner would his own property

The evidence shows the opposite. Political leaders (in any system) want to act in the short term. Democracies simply constrain them.

No “lifetime leaders” are guaranteed a life term. They must continuously fight for political survival. (And with that, often, actual survival.) Dictatorships deploy, with limited constraint, their immortal nation’s power on mortal time scales.

(Democracies’ rotation of leaders also allows for fixing mistakes. Dictators are constrained in terms of backing away from bad decisions. They thus have a bad habit of doubling down on stupid decisions.)

> Dictators are constrained in terms of backing away from bad decisions. They thus have a bad habit of doubling down on stupid decisions.

I find this to match the behavior of the dominant parties in my country.

> I find this to match the behavior of the dominant parties in my country

It characterises humans in general. It’s difficult for leaders to admit mistake. Political change generally increments when leaders are removed from power.

The difference is when one party doubles down on unpopular choices they become more likely to be voted out of office. This is direct communication between the populace and rulers.

In single party systems, dictatorships, etc leaders are frequently acting on really bad information or simply don’t feel the need to back down. Thus, such things tend to build up and compound over time.

Unfortunately Capitalism is not Democracy. Capitalism serves a set of dictators instead of one dictator.

> No “lifetime leaders” are guaranteed a life term. They must continuously fight for political survival. (And with that, often, actual survival.) Dictatorships deploy, with limited constraint, their immortal nation’s power on mortal time scales.

A dictator that survives the first two years is more likely than not to die in power. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The Logic of Political Survival. That’s not a guarantee of lifetime tenure but it’s pretty good, and you don’t get to be dictator, or last the first two years without being excellent at the fight for political survival.

Regarding mistakes and bad decisions democracies may be a bit better than dictatorships but it’s not a massive difference. When democracies go to war they mean it. Dictatorships are a lot more likely to realise they made a mistake and back down.

Democracy’s saving grace is in the proportion of the population that has power over politics, nowhere else. Dictators are great at pleasing the people they need to please to stay in power, it’s just that’s less than 10,000 people, sometimes less than 1,000.

We've come full circle. I never thought I would see someone unironically support monarchy in 2019, much less cite Hans Hermann Hope as an actual source. Hacker News! A place for hackers, people who want freedom to explore new technologies, disrupt industries, and evaluate other hackers based on their merit alone. God the Internet has gone downhill. Democracy is messy and complicated, but lifetime leaders are not the right answer and do not align with hacker culture at all.

Isn't it contradictory to consider yourself an arbiter of which opinions hackers should be allowed to have? The idea that the Internet has gone downhill because of increased participation is inherently elitist.

In any case, this forum is hosted on a website whose primary goal is to help tech minded people become rich and attain the top of the neo-liberal hierarchy. So much for the cyberpunk fantasy...

No one person is the "arbiter" of what hackers should think. That's ridiculous. But cultural norms exist. The hacker subculture (which also exists) has norms that trend towards making decisions based on merit and skill, while also emphasizing freedom. I don't think it is controversial to associate these attributes with hackers. And it is not controversial to say that these attributes are incompatible with the rule of an absolute monarch, who by definition rules unilaterally no matter the merit of his/her actions.

What really bothers me is this implication that increased participation always means a better website. I mean come on. This person is proposing a monarchy! What year is this, 1650? It is great to have a diversity of opinions, but no one is obligated to sit on the sidelines and say nothing when someone else gives a hot take straight out of Leviathan. Everyone is free to express their opinion on this site, but we are all free to call out B.S. when we see B.S.

I think your perspective makes sense, and I agree with it for the most part. I just feel that there is an underlying tension at the root of it.

Although hacker culture is mostly as you describe it, I would say that many hackers are also contributing to making the world more monarchical, even if they might not perceive their actions as such. The way tech is changing society and the way tech companies are evolving is pointing the way towards a resurgence of a somewhat feudalistic power structure with capital-owners at the helm supported by a caste of highly educated or skilled professionals, and the remainder of the population in dire economic straits.

That's why the "It's [current year]!" argument rings hollow to me. Most hackers will become either capital owners or part of the higher caste, because they will have skills that make them economically adaptable.[0] The largest part of their work ultimately helps increase inequality since whatever productivity gains are largely captured by the new feudal lords, so to speak. This is hardly an original or profound insight since wages have been stagnating for years and inequality has been skyrocketing. With automation, something identical to absolute monarchy will take place in all but name. A revolution will then be impossible since the Panopticon will have become real, the Third Estate will no longer be needed at all, and means of exchange will eventually become digitized.

You end up with hackers who have the luxury to discuss freedom and the big bad System even as they pauperize most of the population on Earth and contribute to that same system. Not every hacker does of course, but enough do to make it a concern.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/business/economy/producti...

Yeah, I absolutely agree that there is tension in the hacker community and that the aims of many self-proclaimed hackers is basically getting rich. I’ve seen a number of “Ask HN” posts essentially asking, “How can I get money fast using tech?”

At one time, I used to think the tech community was largely egalitarian-minded and that it actually believed in making the world a better place through technology. But it seems that a lot of tech entrepreneurs have basically become run-of-the-mill capitalists (if they weren’t from the beginning) who push for privatization of parts of government and oppose any kind of sane regulations on their companies.

Maybe hacker culture is just the juvenile stage in a tech entrepreneur’s quest to buy a big house on West Egg.

> do not align with hacker culture at all.

ahem Linus .. Guido ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life

I don't support monarchies. Neither does Hoppe, or this book. He proposes only that monarchies are better than democracies, which he also doesn't endorse. I myself don't have a strong opinion on the question. I was referencing, without endorsing, an interesting theoretical explanation for the observation made in the parent comment.

I'd suggest you read https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-f..., especially chapter 2: Are traditional monarchies better places to live?

The most hilarious counterexample is the part about "the dictator of Burma" who was obsessed with the number 'nine'.

The saddest is the time King Leopold was the private owner of Congo.

There's been a stronger identity as being a Hong Konger recently, but my family has always identified as being from Hong Kong. Looks like young people have dramatically shifted in their views. Found this saying the same: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/21/hku-poll-3-1-young-hon...

The last of my wife's family left HK in 1997. They've always strongly identified as being Hongkongers / Cantonese, rather than just Chinese, and will often correct people who don't understand the difference. My wife refers to our twins as half-Cantonese, so do I and the rest of our family. This whole situation is very unfortunate to me, but as my wife's mother said this morning, the writing was on the wall way back in 97.

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