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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> 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.)

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> 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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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

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