An autocratic country could easily spread propaganda in the democratic country, because of “free speech” rules that most democratic countries have, but a democratic country cannot easily spread its propaganda in the autocratic country.

An autocratic country can buy an election in the democratic country, but the democratic country cannot easily coup an autocratic country.

Are all democracies are doomed to fail?

Is the future of humanity, autocracy? For the rest of humanity’s existence?

  • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 hours ago

    so, every argument in favor of autocracy works based on magical thinking.

    autocracies have one point of articulation. it might be a very clever point of articulation, but there is only one of them. simply meaning: it’s very hard to govern a diverse group-culturally, geographically, or otherwise- with the orders of one guy. then you have to rely on other people to actually carry out those orders, to interpret them at various levels down to, say, putting bricks on top of each other or shooting dudes. which means they always have to act in deference to an imagined version of this one guy. why would they do that? how do they feel about that? how fucked in the head do they have to get to reliably execute his orders pretty much as he would wish them, even assuming that isn’t regularly a terrible fucking idea?

    now, you can solve this by giving the people under the autocrat a lot of autonomy. say, “hey army, go conquer this place” and give the army resources and have them go do that, with no more interference from the autocrat. now that’s no longer the autocrat’s accomplishment. now you have to count on the loyalty of all those now battle hardened officers, from captains to generals/admirals, to not think they’re better leaders than the autocrat. and they probably have the loyalty of all their troops, who just either won a war, or got their asses kicked in a nonsense war they had to fight but could not have won. autocratic armies, for example, tend to be a lot more brittle and a lot more reliant on rigid ineffective command structures than democratic armies. but it’s not just war-everything is like, that, everyone has to be controlled by pissy political maneuvering at all times, so they don’t try to be the autocrat and just kill the last guy. but it gets even more complicated! see, near the end of world war one, and there’s a lot of argument that this is the thing that caused the end of world war one, there was a new (well, resurrected from one particular group in ancient greece) military doctrine: that power should be devolved (put lower on the power structure) as much as possible, with more tactical and operational decisions going to people of lower ranks. this worked ridiculously well. but this also means there are more people practiced at giving orders and keeping loyalty in your military. which is very very dangerous to an autocrat, especially if those people are pretty good at war/killing.

    the core concept of democracy, and one that neoliberalism absolutely does not buy into, is that if a society is clearly in everyone’s best interest, and stays egalitarian enough, with nobody totally left behind and everybody given at least a chance, then nobody will try to fuck with the system too much, and anybody who does will be dragged out into the street and made an example of by just about everyone around them. and this, to a shocking extent, does actually seem to work as long as it’s applied. egalitarian societies with a less focused power structure do seem more resilient on average against power struggles and the regular shocks a civilization might suffer. the problem is they get fucked up and less egalitarian over time, because nothing is stable, humans are complicated, and entropy is a bitch.

    like, armies. okay, so, which is better, a huge conscript army, or a small core of focused professional-by caste(knights! jannisaries! etc!) or volunteer(think the american system)-soldiers?

    you might think this is a question of ‘lots of barely competent soldiers’ vs ‘a small handful of badass operators’. and that factors in, kinda, but it’s not actually the main difference. it’s loyalty, and how your society reacts to the routine costs of war. who comes back from war trained and capable of fighting the government? who suffers at home when half your army gets killed in ten minutes because you did a whoopsie, or the people you were fighting were awesome, or luck just wasn’t on your side? who sees spoils and plunder? if you’re fighting a defensive war against an aggressor with genocidal war aims, a conscript army actually works pretty well, with very few down sides. if you’re fighting an obviously nonsense imperial boondoggle, using conscripts is a good way to get your entire ruling class beheaded.

    it’s all complex as fuck, and it’s all weirder than you would think. generally though; a more egalitarian society, where decisions can be varied and adaptive, without deference to some dipshit in nuremberg/constantinople/versailles, is more adaptive, more stable, and more functional.

    that said, there are different things that make these societies work. autocracies are most stable when the populace is stupid, xenophobic, and stratified enough that when someone in the mid levels of power fucks people over at the king’s explicit orders, the peasants can say “damn I bet if the king/fuhrer/presidentforlife knew about this, he’d fucking hang the bastard”. democratic egalitarian societies are most stable and functional when the populace is educated, informed, and empowered.

    in practice these power structures are never quite as a binary. the anthropologist david graeber did a lot of really cool work on this. ‘on kings’ which he co-wrote with marshal sahlins and ‘the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity’ which he co-wrote with the archaeologist david wengrow, are fucking great reads. read them instead of my inchoate text wall; I’m delirious as fuck right now.

  • cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    57
    ·
    16 hours ago

    Quite the opposite. Due to systemic corruption autocracies are economically highly inefficient with low productivity across the board with all kinds of long term effects this brings. And while it might look bad for democracies at the moment, I think many of the current crop of autocracies will be short lived. In the end, economy is where it’s at, and autocracies are horrible at it.

    • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Not many want to fight for the autocracy either. Bunch of slack-ass soldiers. Fight for freedom? You’ll get people volunteering.

    • Condiment2085@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      16 hours ago

      It’s one of those things where evil people actually don’t win - it just looks like it on the short term!

    • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Definitely. Autocracies always end up being poorly run. Any system that concentrates all authority in a single ruler is going to have some pretty bad outcomes. Even if the dictator really was the smartest guy in the country, instead of merely the most ruthless, even geniuses make bad decisions from time to time. Autocrats quickly find themselves surrounded by yes men. This is how you end up with boneheaded ideas like Mao’s backyard steel production or Stalin embracing Lysenkoism.

  • trolololol@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    10 hours ago

    but the democratic country cannot easily coup an autocratic COuntry.

    CIA: am I a joke to you? Look at my portfolio

  • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    15 hours ago

    Autocracies are short-lived power grabs by certain people or groups of people. They pillage what they can, oppress who they want, and then run or fall when the walls start closing in.

    Many have come and gone during our history on this planet. Many more will rise and fall.

  • Steve
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    10 hours ago

    I think your questions are more complicated than you realize.

    Are Autocracies more powerful than Democracies?

    If you separate the form of government from the governing, yes autocracy is a superior form of government. A dictator can instantly marshal resources to face any threat, or completely shift an entire nation, if a direction becomes clearly wrong. The reason they don’t work, is because the leader is always human. Humans make shit leaders, almost always. So distribution of power across a large number of people mitigates the risks of putting it all in one.

    Are all democracies are doomed to fail?

    Yes. Obviously. Everything eventually fails. The Sun will fail and take the earth with it.

    Is the future of humanity, autocracy? For the rest of humanity’s existence?

    No. Obviously. Everything eventually fails. The Sun will fail and take the earth with it. I would hope humanity (or whatever species humanity evolves to) lives past that.

      • naught101@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        13 hours ago

        Between what? Democracy and oligarchy? Yeah, I guess. Most of those terms are often used pretty loosely…

    • Amnesigenic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      14 hours ago

      The US has never been a democracy, we’ve never been a particularly equitable representative republic either and our government was designed this way on purpose

      • naught101@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        13 hours ago

        Guess it depends on how you define the term. The US certainly fits the minimalist representative definition. I don’t think equity is inherently part of the definition… Obviously I think it should be, but that’s more of a value overlaid on the organisational system, I think…

  • index@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    16 hours ago

    “countries” are invisible lines draw on a map by someone. Propaganda and lies are a tool used by people to persuade others, free speech and freedom are a natural condition upon which humanity can evolve and prosper.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    14 hours ago

    Autocratic countries have a small number of leaders, often one.

    The goal of said leader isn’t really to grow and bring wealth and prosperity, but to never lose power.

    So overall, the economics of the country would plateau, cause why risk allowing wealth to grow and fall into your opponents’ hands?

    Hence why countries like Russia and North Korea rarely innovate, but just take what’s available to further entrench their country’s position.

    So the only way autocracy can prevail is by brining down anything superior to it, much like what Russia is doing to the US.

  • Princessk8@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    15 hours ago

    The problem isn’t that autocracies are better or that they win. The problem is specifically the democracy in the U.S, which is fucked because of ignorant/lazy population and greedy corrupt politicians.