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Comment by roshin | Hacker News Reader

If the extremely low crime rate is true, that is amazing. However, my concern is that as a de facto dictator, he can fudge the statistics. Just like Mussolini was credited for making the trains run on time only to later be found out that he simply forced the news to report that the trains ran on time. Although, if, as the author writes, people on the street love him and they all claim that crime is down. Then maybe the ballpark figure is right.

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I think this reduction in crime is only temporary. You still have a poor country full of desperate people, and it's only a matter of time before the criminal enterprise vacuum gets filled by the next generation. The slate did get wiped clean, but the root cause is still there.

A protection racket fills a power or monopoly on violence vacuum. The current government would seem to be filling this vacuum today.

I mean an "economic surplus" vacuum. There's lots of money to be made doing human and drug trafficking and the whole market in a country just got wiped out. And the citizens there are still poor. So it's only a matter of time before a group fills the void.

He has weeded out corruption from within too so I’d say he has identified the root cause. The biggest risk they have is it’s difficult to replicate a great leaders abilities. It doesn’t scale well. So he needs to shift the culture during his era.

Extortion was one of the biggest impediments to economic growth, eliminating it should help the economy, no? And he is building schools, hospitals, etc too

When the government is the most powerful gang, with all the firepower of government, then they can seize power and overcome other gangs. But that doesn't reduce the gangs in people's lives.

Except the gov there wasn't able to do that until recently. Haiti has zero chance of it, Mexico let it infiltrate to include the former president, and the US has been unable to largely stomp out its gangs.

I understand you were trying to make a cynical point about govs, but I don't think it's even true.

I'm making an genuine point about dictators. They are no more than gang leaders with a title.

> But that doesn't reduce the gangs in people's lives.

TFA says that before the crackdown gangs directly extorted money from civilians, and frequently threatened and murdered them. As far as anybody seems to be able to tell, the current government is not doing that. You can maybe argue that they are harming any innocents swept up in the crackdown, but the scale of civilian suffering seems far lower now. I don't get how that isn't "reduc[ing] the gangs in people's lives".

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