7 ms·

You have apparently no idea what an actual dictatorship is

by chrystalkey 2mo ago

psychoslave 2mo ago
[flagged]
skeptic_ai 2mo ago
Tell me the difference please. Which country we compare to?
- skeptic_ai 2mo ago
  I lived in a dictatorship, I can’t tell the difference. Is exactly the same for the average Joe.
- nuka_coffee 2mo ago
  A dictatorship has a dictator. Who doesn't know that?
  - aaomidi 2mo ago
    TBH modern dictatorships are a lot less obvious in the way you describing. There are dictatorships, where a very select few people have absolute power, but there’s no visible dictator. Iran is a country like this. There’s no visible dictator. It’s a game of power between the clergy, the military, and the civil government.
    - wongarsu 2mo ago
      Those are more like aristocracies or oligarchies than dictatorships though. Though maybe those are not the best descriptions of Iran either
      - cess11 2mo ago
        There is a long tradition of calling rule without care for the ruled 'tyranny'. Aristotle considered this the worst perversion of the best form of government, i.e. monarchy.
- chrystalkey 2mo ago
  What? Tell me the similarities :) There is not strong-willed, controlling figure or imposed ideology, the financial institutions are fairly independent, in general journalism is relatively free to choose topics, the federal states can be pretty independent from the central power if they choose to do so, and all the rest I already wrote in a sister comment. Note I did not compare this to any country, just applying criteria for dictatorships.
73738384 2mo ago
The European Comission is the top decision maker of the EU. The European citizen has zero (0) influence on the members or actions of the EC. No different than the politburo in China.
- iamnothere 2mo ago
  It is slightly different than China, China has implemented hotlines/apps for citizen complaints in response to social pressure, and it actually attempts to address those complaints.
  - pigpop 2mo ago
    Given a choice between China and the EU at this point I would choose to live in China.
    - iknowstuff 2mo ago
      ok lol objectively poor choice but go right ahead
      - ClumsyPilot 2mo ago
        What objective measurement is that? We have spent 20 years criticising China for the great firewall and control of social media, but now are adopting similar laws ourselves. There is significant probability that China will have better quality of life than Europe in 2045 and that very little will be left of European liberties
      - pigpop 2mo ago
        They have lower crime rates, more modern infrastructure, plentiful housing, lower cost of living (especially electricity), they're the place to be if you want to manufacture anything, affordable childcare, incredibly well educated doctors, many of the most incredible leisure and entertainment events in the world and they don't ban air conditioning. So yeah, if I had to choose to live in a country where I had to toe the party line and bite my tongue when it came to political expression it would be China. At least they would be providing a high quality of life and a secure and peaceful society in exchange even if I had to deal with the negatives of being a minority in their country.
pigpop 2mo ago
It's much more of an oligarchy where even though the members of the elite are elected the body of them as a whole appears to have enough influence over new members to force them to act in accordance with an ongoing plan. It seems like any real change would require a very large super majority of new members to be elected at the same time in order to change course. Even a country like the UK seems to still be under their influence after leaving the union which speaks volumes about the amount of backroom dealing that must be going on.
- iknowstuff 2mo ago
  You think the UK is influenced by backroom dealing and not just the fact that they want to trade with the single market, which is the whole point of banding together as the EU?
miroljub 2mo ago
I suppose you know? Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- Lio 2mo ago
  > Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst. Well they're not rounding people because of their religion or sexuality and putting them in "retraining" camps yet. Or using "criminals" as enforced organ donors. I suppose there's that. The EU is being a bit short-sighted and shit with regard to Chat Control but let's not loose perspective here.
  - atmosx 2mo ago
    > Well they're not rounding people because of their religion or sexuality and putting them in "retraining" camps yet. Right. They pay Turkey to do that: https://www.rescue.org/eu/article/what-eu-turkey-deal https://www.rescue.org/eu/article/what-eu-turkey-deal I don’t think the EU is a classic dictatorship, but it’s a colossal failure nonetheless, has a severe lack of democracy and acceptance. And their personnel is mediocre, not like the US administration but it’s closer than ppl in this forum realize.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    And you don't see the problem with allowing processes like this just before the extreme right might gain control of the French presidency AND gets a shot at the German chancillary (even if, yes, it's likely to fail)? The ability to make laws for the entire EU, overriding popular opinion ... You really have trouble imagining what this could lead to? https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c70yk5xjyl1t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c70yk5xjyl1t https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/ https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/ (the biggest party gets first shot at providing the chancellor and government) And while Hungary's Magyar is a huge improvement over Orban, let's be honest here, he's extreme right too. Anti-immigration rightist parties are the norm across Europe nowadays. The center is shifting right in a big way, and the current "sanity" coalitions are forced to make deeper and deeper cuts in government services. They will keep losing popularity for another decade or so. The extreme right's message of "let's kick immigrants out so we can instead spend on normal, good people" is total bullshit of course, it doesn't work like that. But voters are going to be more and more desperate for anything that stops the government service cuts, for a very long time yet. And the problem is that the base part of the argument is true. Immigration was supposed to save Europe's collective economic ass and has utterly, completely and totally failed to do that. And, of course, like the UK has demonstrated, the sad truth is EU governments are going to cause a lot of social problems through ECB-enforced spending cuts. They'll be looking for someone to blame and ... well we all know where that leads. We could easily see a repeat of Trumps wrecking ball, enforced by the EU, in Europe.
mikestorrent 2mo ago
It's mostly a lack of properly descriptive words in the language. I think "totalitarian liberalism" or the "managerial state" is probably closer to what we're talking about here. Power is not concentrated in one individual; responsibility and accountability are diffused so far that it is impossible to find someone who actually can do or change anything. "Rational systems" of business process and rigour serve to remove individual wisdom and intuition from the equation entirely. Adding AI on top of this will probably only further entrench it - walls of words protecting people from really improving anything meaningfully. In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. Trouble is, the people are seldom even morally aligned with each other in a unified way, so a dictator cannot easily represent their conflicting interests. Representative democracy does at least take a step towards solving that issue.
- jerkstate 2mo ago
  > In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. This is pretty much the exact argument that Hayek makes - socialism leads to fascism through political gridlock.
  - dgellow 2mo ago
    Did you mean to say liberalism?
    - lyu07282 2mo ago
      The right actually believes the EU and the German government for example have a far-left ideology it's very common, I even once heard someone say they thought the World Economic Forum is communist. The right captures these resentments towards neoliberal corruption and undemocratic decision making and straight up funnel that energy towards anti-immigration, anti-woke and notably pro-russian politics.
- BiteCode_dev 2mo ago
  It's not, not everything need to be a single word, because the world is full of nuances. Calling everything fascist, nazis, communists, etc. is making actual fascism, nazism and dictatorship more likely. Because you can't raise the attention of people to the absolute priority those needs when the time come if you just wasted it on stuff that were not it again and again. We are crying wolf, and we'll pay the price.
shevy-java 2mo ago
No, I think the term applies very well. That there are worse dictatorships does not really nullify the statement. Even "democracies" have death penalties and commit to genocide. See the USA as an example here. One can always reason that there are worse countries in this regard - nobody rejects that either. We need to have a much more nuanced view on democracy. The EU presently is not one.
- phainopepla2 2mo ago
  What relationship does the death penalty and genocide have to democracy (or lack thereof)? That seems orthogonal to the definition.
- Calazon 2mo ago
  If the decision-makers are elected by the people, it's not a dictatorship, no matter how many atrocities the nation commits. You can have some gray area I guess, with unfair elections or whatever, but when the bad decisions are made by leaders who keep on getting re-elected in reasonably fair elections, we do not have a dictatorship.
  - ClumsyPilot 2mo ago
    Many dictators were democratically elected, this is not a sensible approach.
    - layer8 2mo ago
      The criterion is if the parties in power can be voted out of office again, which is very much the case in Europe (see the recent example of Hungary). A dictatorship is if this is not possible anymore.
- chrystalkey 2mo ago
  I think you mean something different than I when we think of dictatorships. I agree in being unhappy with this decision and maneuvering, but we do have to keep a watch out for actual, in the political sense, dictatorships and not mix them up with other concerns.

You have apparently no idea what an actual dictatorship is

psychoslave 2mo ago

[flagged]

skeptic_ai 2mo ago

Tell me the difference please. Which country we compare to?

skeptic_ai 2mo ago
I lived in a dictatorship, I can’t tell the difference. Is exactly the same for the average Joe.
nuka_coffee 2mo ago
A dictatorship has a dictator. Who doesn't know that?
- aaomidi 2mo ago
  TBH modern dictatorships are a lot less obvious in the way you describing. There are dictatorships, where a very select few people have absolute power, but there’s no visible dictator. Iran is a country like this. There’s no visible dictator. It’s a game of power between the clergy, the military, and the civil government.
  - wongarsu 2mo ago
    Those are more like aristocracies or oligarchies than dictatorships though. Though maybe those are not the best descriptions of Iran either
    - cess11 2mo ago
      There is a long tradition of calling rule without care for the ruled 'tyranny'. Aristotle considered this the worst perversion of the best form of government, i.e. monarchy.
chrystalkey 2mo ago
What? Tell me the similarities :) There is not strong-willed, controlling figure or imposed ideology, the financial institutions are fairly independent, in general journalism is relatively free to choose topics, the federal states can be pretty independent from the central power if they choose to do so, and all the rest I already wrote in a sister comment. Note I did not compare this to any country, just applying criteria for dictatorships.

73738384 2mo ago

The European Comission is the top decision maker of the EU. The European citizen has zero (0) influence on the members or actions of the EC. No different than the politburo in China.

iamnothere 2mo ago
It is slightly different than China, China has implemented hotlines/apps for citizen complaints in response to social pressure, and it actually attempts to address those complaints.
- pigpop 2mo ago
  Given a choice between China and the EU at this point I would choose to live in China.
  - iknowstuff 2mo ago
    ok lol objectively poor choice but go right ahead
    - ClumsyPilot 2mo ago
      What objective measurement is that? We have spent 20 years criticising China for the great firewall and control of social media, but now are adopting similar laws ourselves. There is significant probability that China will have better quality of life than Europe in 2045 and that very little will be left of European liberties
    - pigpop 2mo ago
      They have lower crime rates, more modern infrastructure, plentiful housing, lower cost of living (especially electricity), they're the place to be if you want to manufacture anything, affordable childcare, incredibly well educated doctors, many of the most incredible leisure and entertainment events in the world and they don't ban air conditioning. So yeah, if I had to choose to live in a country where I had to toe the party line and bite my tongue when it came to political expression it would be China. At least they would be providing a high quality of life and a secure and peaceful society in exchange even if I had to deal with the negatives of being a minority in their country.

pigpop 2mo ago

It's much more of an oligarchy where even though the members of the elite are elected the body of them as a whole appears to have enough influence over new members to force them to act in accordance with an ongoing plan. It seems like any real change would require a very large super majority of new members to be elected at the same time in order to change course. Even a country like the UK seems to still be under their influence after leaving the union which speaks volumes about the amount of backroom dealing that must be going on.

iknowstuff 2mo ago
You think the UK is influenced by backroom dealing and not just the fact that they want to trade with the single market, which is the whole point of banding together as the EU?

miroljub 2mo ago

I suppose you know? Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
Lio 2mo ago
> Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst. Well they're not rounding people because of their religion or sexuality and putting them in "retraining" camps yet. Or using "criminals" as enforced organ donors. I suppose there's that. The EU is being a bit short-sighted and shit with regard to Chat Control but let's not loose perspective here.
- atmosx 2mo ago
  > Well they're not rounding people because of their religion or sexuality and putting them in "retraining" camps yet. Right. They pay Turkey to do that: https://www.rescue.org/eu/article/what-eu-turkey-deal https://www.rescue.org/eu/article/what-eu-turkey-deal I don’t think the EU is a classic dictatorship, but it’s a colossal failure nonetheless, has a severe lack of democracy and acceptance. And their personnel is mediocre, not like the US administration but it’s closer than ppl in this forum realize.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  And you don't see the problem with allowing processes like this just before the extreme right might gain control of the French presidency AND gets a shot at the German chancillary (even if, yes, it's likely to fail)? The ability to make laws for the entire EU, overriding popular opinion ... You really have trouble imagining what this could lead to? https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c70yk5xjyl1t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c70yk5xjyl1t https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/ https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/ (the biggest party gets first shot at providing the chancellor and government) And while Hungary's Magyar is a huge improvement over Orban, let's be honest here, he's extreme right too. Anti-immigration rightist parties are the norm across Europe nowadays. The center is shifting right in a big way, and the current "sanity" coalitions are forced to make deeper and deeper cuts in government services. They will keep losing popularity for another decade or so. The extreme right's message of "let's kick immigrants out so we can instead spend on normal, good people" is total bullshit of course, it doesn't work like that. But voters are going to be more and more desperate for anything that stops the government service cuts, for a very long time yet. And the problem is that the base part of the argument is true. Immigration was supposed to save Europe's collective economic ass and has utterly, completely and totally failed to do that. And, of course, like the UK has demonstrated, the sad truth is EU governments are going to cause a lot of social problems through ECB-enforced spending cuts. They'll be looking for someone to blame and ... well we all know where that leads. We could easily see a repeat of Trumps wrecking ball, enforced by the EU, in Europe.

mikestorrent 2mo ago

It's mostly a lack of properly descriptive words in the language. I think "totalitarian liberalism" or the "managerial state" is probably closer to what we're talking about here. Power is not concentrated in one individual; responsibility and accountability are diffused so far that it is impossible to find someone who actually can do or change anything. "Rational systems" of business process and rigour serve to remove individual wisdom and intuition from the equation entirely. Adding AI on top of this will probably only further entrench it - walls of words protecting people from really improving anything meaningfully. In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. Trouble is, the people are seldom even morally aligned with each other in a unified way, so a dictator cannot easily represent their conflicting interests. Representative democracy does at least take a step towards solving that issue.

jerkstate 2mo ago
> In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. This is pretty much the exact argument that Hayek makes - socialism leads to fascism through political gridlock.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  Did you mean to say liberalism?
  - lyu07282 2mo ago
    The right actually believes the EU and the German government for example have a far-left ideology it's very common, I even once heard someone say they thought the World Economic Forum is communist. The right captures these resentments towards neoliberal corruption and undemocratic decision making and straight up funnel that energy towards anti-immigration, anti-woke and notably pro-russian politics.
BiteCode_dev 2mo ago
It's not, not everything need to be a single word, because the world is full of nuances. Calling everything fascist, nazis, communists, etc. is making actual fascism, nazism and dictatorship more likely. Because you can't raise the attention of people to the absolute priority those needs when the time come if you just wasted it on stuff that were not it again and again. We are crying wolf, and we'll pay the price.

shevy-java 2mo ago

No, I think the term applies very well. That there are worse dictatorships does not really nullify the statement. Even "democracies" have death penalties and commit to genocide. See the USA as an example here. One can always reason that there are worse countries in this regard - nobody rejects that either. We need to have a much more nuanced view on democracy. The EU presently is not one.

phainopepla2 2mo ago
What relationship does the death penalty and genocide have to democracy (or lack thereof)? That seems orthogonal to the definition.
Calazon 2mo ago
If the decision-makers are elected by the people, it's not a dictatorship, no matter how many atrocities the nation commits. You can have some gray area I guess, with unfair elections or whatever, but when the bad decisions are made by leaders who keep on getting re-elected in reasonably fair elections, we do not have a dictatorship.
- ClumsyPilot 2mo ago
  Many dictators were democratically elected, this is not a sensible approach.
  - layer8 2mo ago
    The criterion is if the parties in power can be voted out of office again, which is very much the case in Europe (see the recent example of Hungary). A dictatorship is if this is not possible anymore.
chrystalkey 2mo ago
I think you mean something different than I when we think of dictatorships. I agree in being unhappy with this decision and maneuvering, but we do have to keep a watch out for actual, in the political sense, dictatorships and not mix them up with other concerns.