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Comment by mamon | Hacker News Reader

I've written this multiple times on HN: democracy is a weird and temporary quirk, the natural state of mankind is totalitarism.

For the short period of time (1.5 century) we were in this state where masses were educated well enough to demand political rights for themselves, and elittes didn't have the means to fully control them, so the compromise called "democracy" was made.

Nowadays, with technical advances in many areas, like online banking, smartphones, social media, AI it again becomes possible for elittes to excercise total control over average citizen, therefore mankind will soon revert to it's natural, totalitarian state.

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I've got a theory that democracy develops in step with military technology and how "equal" an individual soldier is on the battlefield.

Ancient Greece: Phalanx, requires groups of equal men to stand and fight in formation without breaking. Equipment and training was relatively even. The rich could afford better armor, but that wouldn't turn them into a super soldier.

Medieval: Mounted cavalry or mounted archers. Expensive to maintain a war horse and equipment, years of training required. But a mounted knight was extremely difficult to kill for groups of peasant infantry and the nobility could dominate the battlefield.

Industrial: Once again, large numbers of men wielding cheap firearms with much less training required than horseback combat. America being founded as a democracy probably had a lot to do with recruiting as many militiamen as possible rather than focusing on the interests of a highly trained military elite. One soldier, one vote reflects how much an individual soldier contributes on the battlefield during a time that spanned from musket lines to WW2.

Today: Highly specialized militaries, numbers aren't as important as technology. Based on how democracy has advanced or retreated with the importance of an individual on the battlefield regardless of his wealth or experience, as the scale tips back towards a highly trained military class using expensive weaponry, expect democracy to retreat as the few wield military power over the many.

I had heard that theory before as well. I think possibly from a Yuval Noah Harari book. His overall thesis is that the structure of society follows technology. E.g. hunter gatherer societies tend to have very common religious beliefs which are different than agricultural societies which have other beliefs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-n...

China isn't totalitarian. I'm a little tired of the impoverished discourse around non-democratic governments. China is an autocratic country, which is to say it's a completely depoliticised society, whereas the defining feature of totalitarian societies is mass mobilisation. China aims to be like Singapore, as Gibson called it "Disneyland with the death penalty", rather than a totalitarian state.

In contrast to historical elite government or totalitarian states the party in China is very much accountable to the population and its well-being. The justification for their continued existence is rising the standards of living and successfully managing society, which renders comparisons to pre-democratic times moot.

> justification for their continued existence is rising the standards of living

It is a "justification" but since failing to do it does not come with any penalties there is no actual accountability. Mao starved 50 million of his comrades by mismanaging society and outright killed a few million more being paranoid -- and they didn't kick him and his cronies to the curb, instead they venerate him like a god and give his friends' grandchildren sinecures.

The fact that China lagging decades behind South Korea or Taiwan for 50 years didn't get the CCP ousted tells you how thin the veneer of "accountability for rising living standards" is, and how much the party actually rules with an iron fist.

This is too myopic and one-sided. The cultural revolution created carnage but China also saw unification, the biggest increase in life expectancy and literacy in modern history, and essentially the development of what is now modern China.

And yes, the CCP is effectively unoustable but the CCP is the government, not just a Western style party, it's a complex governing body. For factions and individuals within the party there absolutely is an incentive to perform, and the party had countless of purges due to unrest.

Don't forget that Xi himself was sent to the countryside under the program of the same name after his father was thrown into prison. The party isn't going to go away, but the authorities in it absolutely are subject to scrutiny. Also Taiwan of course was subject to one party rule until the 90s and not a democratic nation either, and neither was South Korea under Park Chung Hee. Economic development in all three countries did not take place under democratic government.

Mao is a popular leader, his decisions overrides other memebrs of the party, that's the natural prize the population awards to those who won wars for their rights, the same way Washington has that kind of power, only that Mao used that reward without due consideration and in attempt to achieve socialism starved million. It shouldn't be written as if he is a dictator slaughtering people for his own pleasure, because ultimately Mao's problem is his disconnection of reality and lack of understanding of the popular mind which leads to the creation of disastrous policies with aims too high not his disregard of human lives.

Re: China aims to be..."Disneyland with the death penalty", rather than a totalitarian state.

So the death-chamber is well-decorated. A step up.

Appealing to mankind's "natural" state is lazy thinking.

Societies are massive, complex, ephemeral things. You may as well appeal that anarchism is mankind's natural state and that soon all governments will cease to exist.

I think its easy to get into this way of thinking. I have gone down that rabbit hole and it may well be that is the historical evidence but at the end of the day humans have agency and collectively countries and nations have agency.

My prediction is that in the near term western countries especially the U.S. evolve (devolve?) into corporate fiefdoms, the pretense of democracy will still be alive but they will just be lobbyists for massive conglomerates like in cyberpunk novels (are we already there?).

I think we will eventually as a whole of humanity go to a better system of governance but none of us will be around for it, first we human beings need to have some global catastrophes to humble us into some collective wisdom.

Totalitarianism of an individual is one thing, the future will be far more anonymous, you'll hear the name of a state, law, or corporation than an actual, particular individual

Do you have any links to further reading I could do on this? This concept fascinates me and I'd be curious to learn more.

“Escape from Freedom” by Erich Fromm is a thoughtful historical take, written in the 1930s.

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