Is a dictatorship better than a democracy?

wolfing said:
Actually, I'm thinking if the simulation is good enough, you don't need players. Let the computer make the decisions for us.
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Let's play a game. Global thermonuclear war.

:D

(I seem to remember that you're old enough to get the reference. ;) )
 
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rossrjensen said:
After much thinking and internal debate, I have come to the conclusion that a benevolent oligarchy is the best form of government. Democracy is not ideal. It's inefficient, reactive (never proactive or based on sets of universal ideals), and the masses aren't to be trusted. A dictatorship is too susceptible to corruption and folly, because other perspectives don't need to be taken into consideration.
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Power corrupts benevolence - the quicker the lesser the control. Oligarchies do not generate enough control. Plenty of examples of that e.g. throughout the socialist world.
 
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Absolutely not. When has dictatorship done any good?
 
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dteowner said:
Can't answer that without a fairly specific definition of "done any good".
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You'll never get a room full of people to agree on what that is. Sometimes tough decisions are never popular even if they lead to long term success. "Success" is another word that you'd never get consensus on either.

Dteowner, thats a great avatar! :)
 
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The concept of doing good is the easy part. It's about benefit versus harm. If we're talking worldwide, then good is the action or actions that benefit most people the most, and harm the fewest the least.

Now, once you eliminate hunger and establish basic needs met for everyone, benefit gets tricky. Because once you move into luxuries, it's all but impossible to quantify what it means to benefit people.

But there's a long way until we'd need to focus on that, and the key is to enable people to benefit themselves in whatever way they see fit.

First step is to deal with suffering and needless death. Not hard to "do good" in that scenario, unless you're using ignorance as an excuse not to.
 
This thread is fascinating. Some of the posts imagine a world where we have rational human beings who are maximising the social welfare utility function. Ok nobody has said that but it has been alluded to on many of the posts. In this ivory tower almost any system can be made to work.

But in the real world we are dealing with human beings with imperfect information and different belief systems. [There was an interesting study about abuse of power in the New Scientist in the recent past. The case studies purport to show that people in power will, over time, change how they view the world including people which can lead to serious abuse. What was interesting was the case studies centred on democratic leaders (instead of the Hilters, Stalins etc) and showed that they are not immune.]

In the real world, I have to ask what system do I want to live in? Look around at the dicatorships and oligarchies and democracies. Syria, China or the UK? I know which I prefer. Yes it could be better but I am thankful that there will be no knocking on my door late one night by the state police or religious zealots because I criticise the “goverment” in public.
 
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Care to give a RL example of such an action?
 
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zahratustra said:
Care to give a RL example of such an action?
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Saddam was a piece of crap and a global menace, but there was absolutely no sectarian violence in Iraq during his rule. We have a serious in-process demonstration of the evils of sectarian violence going on in that region right now, so I'd have to consider that an example of a dictator accomplishing a good thing. You could actually make the same argument for Assad. Take away the iron fist and you've got ISIS. No way to call that anything but a step backwards.
 
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Wisdom said:
You'll never get a room full of people to agree on what that is. Sometimes tough decisions are never popular even if they lead to long term success. "Success" is another word that you'd never get consensus on either.

Dteowner, thats a great avatar! :)
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Completely true. Certainly, I'm egotistical enough to think that my views are right until proven wrong and I loves me some black-n-white morality, but I'm also realistic enough to admit that every other person in the world is thinking the same thing and there's enough relative morality out there that it's nearly impossible to say much of anything is objectively "better" in a universal sense.

Thanks. I've got a handful of avatars I juggle, but they're all muppets. I'll often change them to match a mood (Animal for when life is crazy, Sam the Eagle for when I "go to war" in P&R, a doctored Crazy Harry at Christmastime), but I've got a couple of Rowlf's that are my go-to favorites.
 
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dteowner said:
Saddam was a piece of crap and a global menace, but there was absolutely no sectarian violence in Iraq during his rule. We have a serious in-process demonstration of the evils of sectarian violence going on in that region right now, so I'd have to consider that an example of a dictator accomplishing a good thing. You could actually make the same argument for Assad. Take away the iron fist and you've got ISIS. No way to call that anything but a step backwards.
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On the other hand you had Mukhabarat, 1991 suppression of Kurdish and Shia revolts (estimated number of victims - 20,000 to 100,000 Kurds and 60,000 to 130,000 Shi'ites) and the use of WMDs against Marsh Arabs. I think that a better example would have been Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia.
 
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zahratustra said:
On the other hand you had Mukhabarat, 1991 suppression of Kurdish and Shia revolts (estimated number of victims - 20,000 to 100,000 Kurds and 60,000 to 130,000 Shi'ites) and the use of WMDs against Marsh Arabs. I think that a better example would have been Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia.
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Again, goes back to the definition of "good". OTOH, if you already had an answer that you deemed acceptable, why did you ask the question? Just seeing if someone can guess your "right" answer?

Besides, I remember quite clearly being shouted down because "there were no WMD in Iraq" and "Saddam had been rendered harmless by the UN sanctions". Can't have it both ways.
 
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Yes I can. I was talking about chemical attacks in 1983-1991 and not about WMDs in 2003.
 
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dteowner said:
Saddam was a piece of crap and a global menace, but there was absolutely no sectarian violence in Iraq during his rule.
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The first part is true, the second part is not. The ruling Ba'ath party (which represented 20% of the population) controlled with an iron fist and routinely had massacres to keep people in line. The strategy was to give Kurds and Shia just enough of an appearance of power and autonomy to keep them from uprising ... but any signs of taking power were quelled ... through slaughter and chem weapons, quite often.

Of course, it can be debated which is worse - the massacres under Saddam, the atrocities of ISIS, or the 500,000+ killed in Bush's war. None are good, that is for sure. And it isn't clear that any of the governmental situations are really workable.
 
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Iraq is a failed country with disgusting history. The only thing that can hold it together is a new extremely powerful dictator or puppet that is controlled by extremely powerful masters.

Its either that or Iraq should be split into new countries based on religion/ethnic background. It would be like a fresh new start for the people of Iraq. Something that they could actually believe into.

Trying to force ethnic/religous groups who have killed and raped each other for decades to live under same roof is just an invitation to groups like ISIS.
 
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zakhal said:
Iraq is a failed country with disgusting history. The only thing that can hold it together is a new extremely powerful dictator or puppet that is controlled by extremely powerful masters.

Its either that or Iraq should be split into new countries based on religion/ethnic background. It would be like a fresh new start for the people of Iraq. Something that they could actually believe into.

Trying to force ethnic/religous groups who have killed and raped each other for decades to live under same roof is just an invitation to groups like ISIS.
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While it's anyone's guess, I think it is indeed not unlikely that we will see some new states emerge and/or altered borders at the end of the current bloodshed in the Syria/Irak region. With the current arming of the Kurds against ISIS the emergence a Kurdish state would seem quite likely, e.g.
 
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GhanBuriGhan said:
While it's anyone's guess, I think it is indeed not unlikely that we will see some new states emerge and/or altered borders at the end of the current bloodshed in the Syria/Irak region. With the current arming of the Kurds against ISIS the emergence a Kurdish state would seem quite likely, e.g.
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Its helpful that Turkey is no longer going to declare war if kurdish state declares its independence:
“In the past an independent Kurdish state was a reason for war [for Turkey] but no one has the right to say this now,” Huseyin Celik, spokesman for the ruling AK party, told the Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/65ae9ac2-fe00-11e3-bd0e-00144feab7de.html#axzz3CuYoV9V8
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