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Comment by tboyd47 | Hacker News Reader

The mercy of God.

Indeed. 2022 was the year we realized God doesn’t like authoritarians. All the talk of an American decline and yet in a single year all (except NK) of the major world authoritarian regimes have been facing real crisis. In the west our crisis seem to be overhyped both by the news and said authoritarian regimes.

The crisis is real, and the western democracies are very poorly (and frequently corruptly) run. The western powers have been doing a great job of shooting themselves in the foot.

However, it seems the authoritarians are even more incompetent and/or corrupt than the corrupt Western powers.

Imagine what kind of society humanity could have if people didn't constantly allow incompetent and corrupt leaders to take over.

The curse of dictators. The longer you stay in power, the more detached from reality you become because everyone treats you like a god

billionaires as well. look at an interview woth a famount billionair when they jusy made their wealth, and 10 years later. The dofference is plain to see.

Oower gets to your head. Human psycology is notndesigned to cope with like a million people qued up to kiss ass and suck your dick

> Imagine what kind of society humanity could have if people didn't constantly allow incompetent and corrupt leaders to take over.

I think part of it is the “power corrupts” aspect and another is the likelihood that the kind of people who seek power generally aren’t the kind of people who should be put in power. We haven’t really figured out a solution to that problem that works at scale.

>another is the likelihood that the kind of people who seek power generally aren’t the kind of people who should be put in power.

That's indeed a problem, but only part: terrible people are still just people, and have no ability on their own to hold onto power. They only do so because a legion of people enables them: security forces, police, military, and ultimately the regular citizenry. All these people either happily risk their lives defending the terrible person, or stand back and do nothing and allow themselves to be abused. Just look at Russia: Putin is an elderly man in poor health. He has no ability to keep himself in power unilaterally. But a bunch of security people are happy to follow his orders and keep him in power, and even murder other rich, powerful people on his behalf. It would be easy for them to murder him in his bathtub like another terrible autocrat long ago, but they prefer to stay loyal to him even while he destroys their country.

> It would be easy for them to murder him in his bathtub like another terrible autocrat long ago, but they prefer to stay loyal to him even while he destroys their country.

No, it wouldn’t. Even if it was and let’s say they do it, then what next? Do you assume that some kind-hearted leader will just fill in the power vacuum instead of war hawks like Yevgeny Prigozhin and Sergei Shoigu?

If the security forces were smart and wanted a good leader that wouldn't destroy the country, they'd kill those guys too.

Do you really think it's better to just let a horrible leader keep leading, because there's a chance the next guy will be worse? Even if he is, the chaos of transition should make it easier to cut his reign very short and choose again.

The point is it’s never that simple…what you’re proposing is a full revolution, which is very difficult to pull off and not to talk of transitioning to another regime peacefully.

I’m not sure if you’re a westerner but one of the issues I notice with people in western developed countries is thinking it’s easy to just fix the government. I live in a country similar to Russia and the issue is that taking out the leader won’t suffice because the entire system is corrupt from top to bottom.

You know why those security forces continue to just do their jobs? It’s better to live under a tyrant within a governmental system than in a chaotic failed state.

There's quite a few people in the Russian security and military forces who think that Putin isn't going far enough, if anything. If Russia actually has a successful coup, I'd say it's a decent change that the new guy will be worse than Putin in all respects. The more extreme forces are more likely to try, and probably more likely to succeed if they do.

Other than resorting to nukes, how much farther can they even go? Their military is gutted at this point.

Russia hasn't had a true total mobilization yet, so there are still bodies to throw at the enemy. And, well, nukes aren't exactly off limits to the kind of people I'm talking about, either.

> We haven’t really figured out a solution to that problem that works at scale.

In fact, we have, but we aren't capable of implementing it. The solution is to select leaders randomly. https://realkm.com/2020/10/13/would-we-do-better-choosing-le...

This could work, but with an additional step: there should be a background check and/or psych test on the candidates. If they're found to have (or have had) any desire to become one of the leaders, they're disqualified. Only people who don't want the job are allowed to have it (and it's mandatory).

Many of the factors and changes in society that are making democracy dumber is also making autocrats dumber and less effective.

America has alot of dumb people are are getting systematically dumber. But the smart people are really really productive and keep the rest of the place bumbling along. Most of these authoritarian states lack that.

Also, democratic systems have mechanisms for getting rid of truly ineffective people in a relatively reliable and predictable fashion. Authoritarian regimes have a hard time replacing the top without chaos, and the replacements are also often not vetted to be better.

For a while, it seemed like China's one-party state promised to have the best of both worlds, with a single party and lack of general elections to avoid the problems with in-fighting between parties and the voters making stupid choices, and the general inefficiency of democratic systems, while having a party (with many thousands of members) in charge rather than a single person so the party can replace the top leadership when necessary.

In practice, however, it doesn't seem to be working out as promised, with Xi turning into a dictator.

>merica has alot of dumb people are are getting systematically dumber

Is there evidence of this? Anecdotally at least even dumb people are a lot more knowledgeable than they were two generations ago.

The nice thing about being a (professed) smart cynic is that you don’t have to bring any sources to the table. The more cynical and the more “everyone is stupid (but me)”, the less you have to substantiate your claims.

Oh for sure, democracies have to figure out how to actually get things done domestically. However authoritarians are able to get things done domestically and are just incompetent.

If democracies can become well oiled machines, it’s clear that no dictatorial government could complete with them.

All? Saudi Arabia had a good year.

I think it's more like authoritarians had a bad year, except the ones allied with the US.

That’s fair but then again that’s from being allied to competent nations. Left on its own the Saudi dynasty would not exist as it pays its way out of rebellion with subsidies and lacks the martial intellect to ensure a monopoly on violence against rebel groups (even with western weapons of war.)

Riight. This does present a conundrum though.

If god exists, then he may have chosen to make the wather warm, but then it also means that he chose to not stop the killing of innocent civilians in the war.

So, if god exists, he is an a*hole.

> So, if god exists, he is an a*hole.

Isn’t that the unavoidable conclusion, if you read common religious texts?

Yes.

Or wrath depending on whose perspective you’re looking at it from.

Yes, burning down your house does provide some heat temporarily. Nothing to do with god or mercy.

> The mercy of God.

The mercy of probabilities.

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