Comment by _nckn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _nckn | Hacker News Reader

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EDIT: For the downvoters, I'd appreciate it if you come with replies. I wrote this reply like this expecting replies (with downvotes of course).

I'm trying to self reflect a lot here. Forgive my provoking thoughts.

Looking at even the US itself crumbles in today's misinformation world. I now have doubts in Democracy like Socrates did. If not for HK, Taiwan, and Uyghur Muslims, I'd consider Xi's dictatorship a good modern day role dictatorship.

What are the alternatives? Democracy has failed us in today's increasingly complex society, with free flow of misinformation everywhere. Education doesn't fix the problem. Critical thinking is hard, thinking is hard. Free education and free information doesn't fix the problem because people believe what they want to believe.

As long as a country has stability and peace and the prosperity of its citizens, then shouldn't it be in that country's best interest to crush any opposition by any means necessary, including committing actions that are provoking UN or violating Geneva Convention left and right. Won't good (from the perspective of its citizens) dictatorship is better than crumbling Democracy?

But power corrupts. Eventually it will. And the dictators will be overthrown, pulling the pendulum in the other direction.

> If not for HK, Taiwan, and Uyghur Muslims, I'd consider Xi's dictatorship a good modern day role dictatorship.

In what way is it good?

It also does things like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa...

and this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa... (on a related note, here's a video of what the Chinese police could do to you if you talk smack about them on WeChat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiMLVYK4hEc)

> What are the alternatives? Democracy has failed us in today's increasingly complex society, with free flow of misinformation everywhere. Education doesn't fix the problem. Critical thinking is hard, thinking is hard. Free education and free information doesn't fix the problem because people believe what they want to believe.

> As long as a country has stability and peace and the prosperity of its citizens, then shouldn't it be in that country's best interest to crush any opposition by any means necessary, including committing actions that are provoking UN or violating Geneva Convention left and right. Won't good (from the perspective of its citizens) dictatorship is better than crumbling Democracy?

If you're curious why you're downvoted, it was probably because of this "argument." You're saying democracy has failed and list some problems. Then, because of those problems, you appear to advocate for a rather nasty dictatorship, where those very same problems you just complained about would be worse.

I was thinking as long as there is peace and prosperity for its citizens, then surveillance state is a smaller price to pay for most people. Xi was praised by majority of mainlanders because he lifted the country out of poverty.

The thing with China is, it is insanely big. How to govern this big country effectively if not dictatorship?

I previously tried to compare Japan and SK to China. But I realized that their culture is drastically different, and SK and Japan is also a much smaller country.

> Xi was praised by majority of mainlanders because he lifted the country out of poverty.

No, CCP is the entity people often attribute China's economic rise to. And even that is not completely correct; Deng opened up the market a bit, and the Chinese people themselves took the opportunity to rebuild the economy from the ruins of central planning.

> How to govern this big country effectively if not dictatorship?

You can say that about groups of any size. It is often said a benevolent dictator is the most efficient and effective way to run a group: see Linux for an example.

But this only works if everyone has shared goals and shared values. What if people have different opinions? Hint: look at how much China spends on "stability maintenance" (维稳) each year: it's bigger than their military budget.

> Xi was praised by majority of mainlanders because he lifted the country out of poverty.

What? Xi took power in 2012, long after the lifting happened.

> The thing with China is, it is insanely big. How to govern this big country effectively if not dictatorship?

If it's too big to govern except through ruthless means, then maybe that means it's just too big, period. There's no moral imperative that says empires have to remain whole through any means necessary.

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