How did every non-inherited national leader, both democratic and dictatorial, both Roosevelt and Stalin, manage to become leader in the first place? Convincing people with the right string of words.
How does every single religious leader on earth, big and small, from the Pope to Jim Jones, get that power? Convincing people with the right string of words.
What is a contract, what is source code, what is a law? The right string of words.
There is no "just" when it comes to words.
That why they are important to protect, it is why dictators are afraid of them, and it's why it matters that we don't treat a magic box spewing them out faster than a machine gun does bullets as harmless.
> Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational?
People, including leaders, are influenced by those around them.
A sane leader has advisors, which they trust to provide rational arguments, which sometimes may differ from their own.
A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions. So, there is no one to provide a counter argument to the dictator's own viewpoints and makes them believe in their supreme power. This is what makes them dangerous and act irrationally.
Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
> Few irrational people attain position of power and even fewer retain it.
Few overall, but if there were zero the world might be a much happier place than it actually is. Given the effect that such people have, even that small number is significant, and the numbers get larger among children of dictators whose parents bequeathed them a massive security apparatus.
> the burden of proof is on you
Um, no, it's on the OP and anyone who takes their side. That's how this really works.
> When it doesn't, we're talking about coercion, force, and violence, not power
“Power”, at least in the social sense, is the ability to get people to act as you wish; idealized moral or rational persuasion is one mechanism of that, the direct application or imminent threat of violence is a mechanism, and there’s a whole spectrum in between. But a leader’s ability, in practice, to apply power (by any mechanism) over a population is largely due to the successful use of power to influence a group of agents to act on behalf of the leader, and their application of power to others, etc. We might talk as if the state is a real concrete thing, but its really just an abstraction of the penumbra of indirect power emanating outward from the leadership.
>>> Show me one truly powerful person who could have survived 30% of his subjects actively resisting.
>> It's a lot easier for "truly powerful person" to keep "his subjects [from] actively resisting" than you seem to think.
> Depends completely on the people.
Not really, unless you have a fictitious people that isn't subject to social coordination problems.
However, real populations are subject to those problems, which is why we've seen dynasties of awful dictators survive for generations (e.g. North Korea). The lesson of those dynasties is also probably "don't let up on the oppression or you'll lose power," which might be easier to keep up if the immortal leader doesn't doesn't have to be replaced by a naive successor.
> You have a mental virus that wants to believe everything is doomed.
LOL. Comments like that are totally unpersuasive, and also against the rules.
>> And there is little 'new ruler' can do to establish himself if people don't need a ruler.
How charmingly naive!
I don't know that people have needed a ruler at many times in history, but there has always been one. A power vacuum almost always results in war, revolution almost always results in war... basically humans like war and leaders. I don't think that will ever go away. We're tribal animals.
Even if people don't need a ruler, leaders will arise, and some of them will recruit violent men to force their will on others, growing into warlords. Factions will fight each other, people will die.
Better, IMHO, to have a codified power structure that seeks to eliminate or at least mitigate these flaws.
>I think the tendency of the masses to follow the perceived leader is a facet of the human psychology rather than the result of a nefarious scheme.
May be to an extent. But you cannot deny that this is exaggerated by social pressure and training from child hood. For example, in most school, the obedience is seen as a foremost quality of a good student.
Imagine the animals in the wild and how they can be tamed by training them in a specific way. You can see how a small man or woman is able to control a large animal such as an elephant or tiger in this fashion.
When you look at that, and when you see how, if the people put their minds, they can so easily revolt/react against the increasingly oppressive actions from governments, and how they don't, just like a tiger or lion can so easily refuse to obey their trainer, but they don't, only because of their training they have received from their birth, and the thought of not obeying just does not cross their minds..
You see, you have to stop looking at the people individually, and have to look the populace as a single entity. Like a reagent in a test tube. You pour in the obedience and compliance and you get more work and taxes out of it (and less unwanted reactions). You pour things like nationalism and patriotism into it, and you get lives to expend in the name of service of nation. You pour dreams of a better tomorrow, and you get votes...
> hard to admit your own country is run by a power hungry dictator
That is not hard. What is hard, is to realize that sometimes politics transcends particulars of the power structure and the character of the ruler, when it looks more and more like a nation has to do what it must, given the circumstances (no matter how they got there).
>Just how much veto power do you think the average person has in Russia and China when the elites choose to do something?
They don't, but most of them don't care, because the leaders are getting things done. They may not be the things you want done, or some other malcontents, but to say authoritarian systems are completely ineffectual is just wrong. They really do get things done.
The problem is that they usually get the wrong things done (e.g., idiotic wars in Ukraine). But most of the citizens in those places are easily misled into believing these actions are justified or necessary.
Authoritarians frequently come into power because the previous systems weren't working well, and people wanted a strong leader to take power. Just look at the Roman Empire for example.
> The government has demonstrated that they will abuse every power given to them, and even those that weren't
I think this mixes up what is true and what people (myself included) wish was true.
Governments don’t have power given to them. Their default state is God-Kings ruling on personal whims.
Governments have power taken from them, either by corporations, or by religions, or by other governments — sometimes these groups even call themselves “the people” — but the restrictions are not stable equilibriums, they are constantly fought against on all sides.
>There are advantages to the efficiency of authoritarian power, but how do they handle peaceful transition of power?
Europe had hereditary transitions of power, which were about as peaceful as any other form of transition of power. In Rome you would choose your successor and he would be the next emperor.
> I probably could not be persuaded that limits on speech and government censorship are good long-term for the health of a society that I'd want to actually live in. I think it's a good thing for governments to ultimately be accountable to their people.
Just because it's supposed to work that way doesn't mean it actually works that way. Do you think Americans are using free speech well? Do you feel like the government is accountable to you? In America you have free speech but it's not practically useful for anything. Have a go at trying to stop some government abuse of power.
> The problem is that most authority believers seem to think it is ok to inflict governance on everyone else too!
Or more precisely they wish to inflict their ideals through governance on everyone else. No need to inflict anything on them because they are already true believers.
> Then why don’t the people rise up against their state?
Because the governments have taken away or undermined all ability for people to organize. When you have to fear every single friend of you being a potential informant of the Secret Service, how will you find someone willing to do anything that goes against the government? Rule by fear is incredibly effective, it was what held together the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the GDR and modern Russia and China.
> Why would it be the business of other nations to intervene in the internal affairs of another?
Because we as humanity should have learned something from what my ancestors did in 1933-1945 - namely, to not stand aside in the face of obvious inhumanity.
>This is a standard thing that has been happening for centuries as people try organisational structures that rely on good people being in charge.
Honestly, if your organizational structure relies on good people do be in charge, you've already lost. The trick is so that people in power never have too much power, and don't have the power to destroy it. It can be a simple system like requiring 3 keys of 3 people to launch a nuclear strike, or something way more complex, like the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution.
When creating the structures, you have to think of it like a video game designer to a degree. You have to always keep in mind how would a bad actor hack this to his or her advantage, then remove whatever it is you find.
Indeed, and the problem with dictatorships is that sooner or later your country will be run by a person you really don't want in charge, and it will be impossible to remove them.
>Look, I just don't agree with you that we are inevitably sliding towards tyranny.
You may not, but history repeats itself and human history is filled with a lot more tyranny than gilded ages. Hell we are only 200 years out of it now. Rome who we modeled ourselves after slid into it and imploded. So all historical relevance leads one to logically consider that it is a slightly higher than average possibility that we will repeat the cycle of history. Did we do so much better this time?
>If you struggled like I do to consider that the Man could organize His way out of a paper bag, let alone subjugate us all with tyranny.
It's happening all around the globe as we speak. It does not take much effort to find tyranny everywhere you look. Just because the 1st world has grown comfortable and detached does not mean that the 3rd world does not still experience it. Many times from 1st world people that are propping up the tyrants.
>Not every battle is worth fighting to the steps of Capitol Hill
Yes it is this is how tyranny works, the slow erosion of rights. One of the greatest quotes ever penned was by Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller in which he said:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
This was in response to the Nazi's tyrannical rule of Germany.
The point being, slow erosion of rights and targeting of other groups is the modus operandi of oppression. It has to be checked at every advance or it becomes that much more difficult to resist.
Have you ever noticed that not one President has ever repealed any powers gained by the executive branch and many times oversteps the allotted powers they are given. Make no mistake about it absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It is human nature, the founding fathers new it and tried to set up a system that would leave it in check. Unfortunately, with the erosion of the state governments and militias as a counterweight and the devastation that Europe felt in 1 and 2 it left the US executive branch with the legislative branch as it's only opposition and much like the senate of Rome we can see how well that counterweight worked.
So you can not agree, but you are disagreeing with a lot of historical evidence to the contrary and are pinning your hopes on the fact that this time above all the rest we got it right.
Me I will remain a paranoid whack job like the founding fathers where and the Jews of Germany where and like the Taiwanese are today.
>> The way to prevent this is to maximize the control of the people over the government
Oh? How do we do that? We all know a civilized discussion is much more persuasive than cursing and raging, right? -I guess we need to write respectful, eloquent letters to our "representatives", and ask them to pretty-please be less corrupt and keep their campaign promises?
>> make sure that no unaccountable-to-the-people entity gets too much power
An entity that's not accountable to the people, huh? -Such as, the government itself? Or how much sway do you hold over the secret FISA "courts"? What about how your tax money is spent?
>> the people must take an aggressive stance against rent-seeking monopolists
Oh? What about the ultimate monopoly, the government? Or is there some other entity that decides what happens in a country, what's allowed and what's forbidden?
How did every non-inherited national leader, both democratic and dictatorial, both Roosevelt and Stalin, manage to become leader in the first place? Convincing people with the right string of words.
How does every single religious leader on earth, big and small, from the Pope to Jim Jones, get that power? Convincing people with the right string of words.
What is a contract, what is source code, what is a law? The right string of words.
There is no "just" when it comes to words.
That why they are important to protect, it is why dictators are afraid of them, and it's why it matters that we don't treat a magic box spewing them out faster than a machine gun does bullets as harmless.
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