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Comment by johanvts | Hacker News Reader

Oppression and corruption is expensive. Systems based on them are not going to be competitive in the long run.

That may be the very long run. Taking it strictly, Russia never had real democracy. And they are trying hard to export that model.

Define "real democracy"

Like the American one where unelected billionaires control the government and the populace.

I always find it so surprising how people really do believe individuals have any real power despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

It's a capitalist society so capital is power. Doesn't get simpler than that. Voting is the circus to distract us so we don't realize how much we're being exploited, while giving a sense of agency that simply does not exist.

We can choose but they pick the choices we have.

> It's a capitalist society so capital is power.

Precisely.

I look at apartheid and how long it managed to hang on. And I can only determine it was surprisingly lucrative and competitive as well. It took a long, series of activists and a long time to finally delegitimize and finally break it.

And now, apparently, everyone involved with it had always been against it.

Systems based on oppression and corruption can still be extremely resilient. Countries like Russia, North Korea, China, Belarus, Cambodia, Eritrea, and Venezuela have all lasted many decades.

That's a very optimistic belief, not any kind of axiom, but even if we accept it, the long run could easily extend past the lifetimes of every loving person today. It could last generations or much longer.

Maybe oppression is where AI finally shines, making oppressive systems competitive. Technology is certainly helping China, and I can only imagine how much Stasi would love to automatically transcribe and store everything all their microphones caught.

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