“Authoritarianism works, as long as the authorities are competent.”

Why’re you being a cunt and pretending that’s what you said?

That IS what I said. Why don’t you slow down and edit your responses before you hit “Reply”?

Your opinion is you wanna lick boots and don’t really know why, okay, just be honest.

Nowhere did I say that authoritarianism is good or even that I desired it. I just said it worked. I noticed you didn’t answer my question, and I think I know why.

Democracy, like all systems of government, is a tradeoff. Nobody’s found a perfect system yet, and one probably doesn’t exist. This is because it’s hard to get people to agree. You may have noticed this.

So, people argue, and it’s harder to get things done, and it’s slow…but on the upside, you have more freedom and it’s more egalitarian. When life is good, it’s pretty easy to maintain democracy. You might get frustrated at the slowness of government, but it isn’t a big deal, because, again…life is good.

What about when life is bad, though? That’s when the slowness of democracy becomes really frustrating, and authoritarianism begins to look more and more attractive. Authoritarianism offers speed. It offers decisiveness. It offers easy answers. The democracies have all been bought off by big corporations, anyway, so why not go with authoritarianism? At least you know that they’re on your side. For now…

So, that’s why the right wing has become so popular in the last 10 years. I’m hopeful that democracy can rally, but things are really touch-and-go right now. It does bother me that I won’t live long enough to see how this turns out, but maybe you will. Sometimes things reach a breaking point and big changes happen very quickly, too, so who knows? Maybe I can at least help, in some small way, to keep things on a sane and stable path. I try to remain optimistic.

I know that I’m talking to somebody who’s maxxing out on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and you probably didn’t even bother to read this far, but maybe you found somebody who could read this and explain it to you. Again, I try to remain optimistic.

You’re the leader of a country. Is it easier for you to get what you want if the country is A) a democracy or B) a dictatorship.

Don’t answer right away. Take all the time you need.

A source…on my opinion?

For the same reason that somebody can accidentally cut themselves with a knife.

That’s a relief! It’s a good thing that antibiotic resistance isn’t a problem.

Authoritarianism works, as long as the authorities are competent. US & Europe are getting the worst of both worlds: authoritarianism without the competence.

Amygdala? I hardly know 'er!

Belief that heirarchies are natural and desirable because some people are better than others is the worldview required to be vulnerable to the lie of fascism, it’s the precursor to all supremacist thinking.

It isn’t because “some people are better than others”, it’s because some people are better than others at leading. Leadership is a skill, and it can be learned and practiced just like any other skill. You could say, “Hey, Mary is good at fixing things, let’s put her in charge of repairs. Margaret is good at planning projects and organizing people, let’s put her in leadership.”

And no, it doesn’t imply that the person leading should have total control over everything or that they can’t be held accountable.

If you look at opinion polling across countries, die-hard support for supremacist candidates hovers around 25-40%.

You said “humans who want hierarchies” and you’re equating that with “support for supremacist candidates”. Does that mean that if I support a centrist or a left-wing candidate, then I don’t want hierarchies? I can tell you, there are certainly not that many anarchists in the world. 60-75% of the population?

Look at it this way. One of my values is having the courage to help others. So, I would admire somebody who risked their life to go into a burning building and save somebody. I’m doubtful that I have the same courage, but I hope that I would. It’s something that I aspire to.

In the same way, somebody who admires Musk has a value of “being rich”. They’re doubtful that they’ll ever be as rich as he is, but it’s something that they aspire to.

“Just about everyone”. What percentage of people are anarchists?

This, but unironically. As a sub who is anti-Trump, it becomes a bit uncomfortable when the conversation turns into “Conservatives are just subs who want to be dominated!” Yeah, okay, maybe there’s some truth to that. The problem is that there isn’t any safeword I can use on Trump.

I’d like to see how you got to “hierarchies = fascism”. I also think that the people who want hierarchies are much higher than 25-40%.

It raises the question. Begging the question is this.

It seems that populism/fascism is ‘ingrained’ in our simple minds.

These are not mutually exclusive. Right-wing populists can also be fascists.

This is what the US tried to do in Germany after WWII. There were “denazification” efforts. Unfortunately, they did a shit job of it, which is why Germany still has a problem with the right wing.

This is the same logic as “If I give the bully some money, then they won’t take all of my money”. If they can get some, why wouldn’t they take the rest? Appeasement doesn’t work. They just push for more.

You don’t need AI to do this…but they’re probably using it, anyway.

There also seems to be something about the echo chamber that has a weird reinforcing effect. It can become really pathological. People talk about the “reddit hivemind”, but it doesn’t really strike you until see people acting crazy.

One incident that really stuck out for me was a post with a woman holding a sign. I forget what the entire sign said, but the phrase had the word “stupider” in it. I went into the comments, and a ton of people were making fun of her for using that word. Why? Because they thought that it was grammatically incorrect. You’re supposed to say “more stupid”, they said. Well, that’s wrong, and I pointed out to them that it was a word according to any dictionary. I had people arguing with me that the dictionaries were incorrect.

Then there are the AI detectives. These people are fucking insane. It doesn’t matter if you have a statement saying that you don’t use AI. They don’t believe you! They can tell. If they were doing this to my artwork, I would be livid.

Why can’t you comment while on a VPN? I’m on a VPN right now and I’m commenting.

Also, I hate to tell you this, but reddit is the way it is because it’s so popular. If we had the amount of people necessary to make niche communities thrive, it would be just like reddit. Well, at least as far as the people posting and so on. There wouldn’t be any of the weird administrative stuff because it’s run much differently. But the fact that the system is just like reddit’s means that it attracts the same kinds of people and encourages the same kind of behavior.

You read some classic fucking Lemmy, that’s what you read.

Get cooler friends.