Hacker News Reader

Comment by verall | Hacker News Reader

> A fascist dictatorship? You still need a functioning government for that.

Not really, just a functioning police force.

That functioning police force needs a functioning tax collection system to fund it, and a functioning civil society to pay for it. So you need enforcement of contracts, and a functioning financial system, and working roads, and all kinds of stuff. You can't just sit there and say "we've got the police, so none of the civilians can touch us" - not for long, anyway.

If you look how every dictatorship works, they always make sure that the military and police force do well. That and they look the other way when police steal from people.

Sure they do. And to do that, they need a functioning society, at least functioning well enough to produce the things that the military and the police need and want. (And that means that the police can't steal too much from people.)

A dictatorship can't be just a thugocracy. It has to keep society running, perhaps not up to western capitalist standards, but at least above the point of collapse.

How do you explain North Korea?

And there is always prison labor that you can depend on. Especially with private prisons. Prison labor is already being used to fight wildfires in LA for instance and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. That’s cheap labor and another benefit it’s all those “drug dealing thugs” anyway.

North Korea functions fine for the constraints it is in. The people (rightfully imo) don’t view their government the way western propaganda states.

Fair point. North Korea is the one that I can't explain.

Maybe looking at North Korea through the eyes of western propaganda is the issue. Not that North Korea isn’t explainable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com