Hacker News Reader

Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

One of the things that surprised me in high school history was just how recent many democracies are.

Within the lifetime of my parents, Portugal, Greece, Spain were dictatorships. Apparently South Korea is one of these as well.

View on HN

Also Taiwan

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

Brazil

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

Argentina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Argentine_coup_d%27%C3%A9...

Chile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Paraguay

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

Well, I guess I'm just missing about 40 others...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship#Former_c...

Mexico was not a dictatorship, but it was a non-democratic one-party state until the late 20th century.

Ironically you just loosely described a dictatorship, a democratically “elected” single party government.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/dictatorship

> Dictatorship, form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations.

No, this isn't what I was describing, and isn't the same thing as a one-party state. There were important limitations on central power that were respected throughout the entire period of PRI rule; notably the restriction that a president couldn't serve for more than one term, which since the Mexican Revolution has never been broken.

"Dictatorship" to "liberal democracy" is a spectrum, and Mexico for most of the 20th century was not at either of the endpoints.

> Critical to this essay is Joseph and Buchenau’s interpretation of the post-1940 period vis-à-vis the other works under review. Using a term coined by Mario Vargas Llosa in 1990, they describe a “perfect dictatorship” between 1940 and 1968: a one-party system with the appearance of democracy that sustained regular elections and avoided military coups and social upheavals. In the reorganization that became the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in 1946, the party removed the army from formal political power. The state/party emphasized securing dominance with loyalty, order, and representation of PRI sectors in local elections. The latter required central government reliance on local strongmen and their minions, effective political and cultural brokers. [0]

> The public split encouraged voices from the right and left. Add to this political contention the increasingly visible contradictions: uneven benefits of economic growth, population explosion creating pressure on the land and migration to cities, growing unemployment and inflation. For Buchenau and Joseph, the students rebelling in Mexico City in 1968 represent a coming-together of these critical contradictions: they demanded the rule of law, freedom from repression, and social justice. [0]

I’m definitely not an expert in Mexican history. But that to me sounds an awful lot like a typical dictatorship, and a bad one at that. Otherwise, people wouldn’t push back.

[0] https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.294/

Women's right to vote in Switzerland is much more recent than you might expect. 1971 for federal elections, 1991 when the last hold-out canton was forced to allow them to vote in local elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...

And its a good reminder just how fledging this moment can be.

Two days ago I posted an article on just how rapid was the downfall of democracies in the last decade: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27320565

There are less functioning democracies today than in 1991.

The truth of life is simple. There is no deep, philosophical argument to it. Who wins, rules, be it a democracy, or totalitarianism.

If you lose to totalitarians, you die. If totalitarians lose to you, they die.

Do not discount military action as sometimes the only option on the table to defend, and solidify a democracy.

And if that military has other plans, well, learn to live under the new regime. I always think how fortunate western Europe was to have the US force them into democracy and freedom for the individual. Many don't agree with that, but if left to either the Nazis or the Soviets, we'd all be living under some sort of authoritarian regimes to this day.

Or Democracies could just try attack ala Soliemani.

If you lose to totalitarians, you die. If totalitarians lose to you, they die.

That's kind of a bizarre and exaggerated way to put things. Nominally, what separates dictatorship and democracy is that a democratic regime doesn't wantonly murder it's enemies. Some dictatorial regimes engage in brutal attacks on their enemies but even there, for most people life goes on.

Also, there are a variety of regimes mid-way between democracy and totalitarianism - the current regimes of India and Turkey for example. Which is to say the loss and the gaining of democratic rights is often (though not always) a gradual thing.

The way I think of it is that democracy is a very expensive form of governance. Having legal protections and representation for all members of society is great, but it is also a luxury that allows various bad actors and interest groups to clog up the entire system for their personal gain. And the only way to afford this political luxury is to ensure that the economic vibrancy of an open system produces enough wealth to patch up what gets bled away by democracy's inherent costs. And if that is not enough, to have an external source of wealth to subsidize this continuous bleeding. Because if democracy fails to produce enough wealth and distribute it to enough people, then people quickly turn to authoritarians who claim they have all the answers.

Under these assumptions, the burgeoning of democracies in the 1990s might be due to indirect economic subsidies from the US. And the reason why the US could be a democracy is because the American continent, with other resource claimants eliminated by disease and war, could generate enough wealth to subsidize a messy but democratic system of governance that otherwise might have been overrun by more powerful authoritarian neighbors if it had been born on the Eurasian continent.

> it is also a luxury that allows various bad actors and interest groups to clog up the entire system for their personal gain

I don't see how this is something that democracy enables. Self-serving dukes, officials, and autocrats possessing difficult-to-check powers also exist in less democratic regimes.

And don’t assume the democracy will stay here. It is in constant threats and can be lost if you don’t fight hard always. Just a few years ago in Korea, the very daughter of the dictator became the president and people had to fight again to expel her. I’m observing similar things happening in the US now…

Yes, it's important to remember that in the modern world, states often transition between a variety of forms. The common forms are representative democracy, military dictatorship, populist/strongman dictatorship (which can be formally democratic to whatever extent) and single-party "totalitarian" dictatorship but there are endless variations.

All these are based on particular power groups and only partially relying on the consent of the governed - while also organizing the governed to give their consent, with represent democracy naturally relying most on the consent of the consent of the governed.

To add further: the ancient Greeks already had democracy. And yet most of history since then is not filled with democratic systems of governance.

South Korea was a dictatorship until the 90s. There were a lot of protests in South Korea up through the 90s.

Definitely.

For me, at least from what I remember from school in the 90s/00s in the US, this stuff wasn't taught at all. We just learned a bunch of left-over cold war rhetoric about being "leader of the free world", and little discussion of what actually went on in the "free world" that was being "lead".

Events like this one -- or the Bodo League mass killings [1], or the institution of slavery in Korea [2], etc -- were not covered at all. Even more shocking is how violent and unimaginably cruel so many governments have been, and yet to this day they manage to be fondly remembered by many conservative citizens. For example, President Park Geunhye, daughter and "successor" to the dictator President Park Chung-hee, became president in a (questionable) election in 2012, with mass support from conservative voters. So even if a given dictatorship is gone, it's supporters are still here, and will be voting in as many similar policy as they can.

History in high school used to be my least favorite subject, but as an adult, reading history books is like all I do, and I will use any excuse to go on and on about it (as evidenced by this now very long post lol)

Edit: Not sure why I got so many downvotes so quickly, but just to be clear I'm not trying to pick on Korea or single out Korean conservatives --- this applies to many, many countries [3] --- I'm only using South Korea as what I thought was an interesting example, due to the original post being about Gwangju.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre

[2] Slavery is now illegal, but for a modern horrific example in 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_on_salt_farms_in_Sinan...

[3] Brazil is one I know well, but for a European example, the Mussolini Family continues to be elected by Italy's conservatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#Legacy

More recent slavery: https://time.com/longform/african-slave-trade/

...and the GDR as well.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from one of the only functioning Democracies to the only other functioning Democracy.

And half the people in the US apparently do not believe in Democracy.

Dictatorship is very common today:

https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/

January 6th was close to creating another dictatorship here.

How close were we? Was there a pivotal moment where an individual hero saved the day, or maybe something completely different? Just trying to get a handle on the truth of the matter, I don't seem to know very much about the specific details of that infamous day where our most precious institution hung in the balance (if I'm understanding correctly).

It was a dumb protest. There was absolutely zero threat to the machinery of government in any way shape or form, and anybody claiming otherwise is simply working as part of the machinery desperately trying to rid itself of an outsider.

Had the certificates been destroyed, or Congressional leadership or the VP killed, it’s not at all obvious what the result would have been.

Very few “dumb protests” involve beating police officers to unconsciousness to get past them into a federal building.

Is it a fact that multiple police officers were beat into unconsciousness so people could get past them?

Very questionable assertion.

Considering how many of the cases against the insurrectionists are being thrown out or reduced, I’m not sure I agree with your assertion.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/26/capitol-riot-defend...

I’m not sure I agree with your assertion. That's a bail hearing.

Government says "these people shouldn't get bail as they are insurrectionists" and judges say "if they didn't commit any violence, then no, they aren't a threat and will be released on bail".

The gov't is losing a lot of their arguments in the courtroom trying to paint it as an insurrection versus a protest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com