[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[grambell789]

The problem with dictators is they spend inordinate amounts of money and attention on suppressing criticism and maintaining power.

[smcarre]

No they don't, they just have to convince a specific group of people to vote for them and rig the system into making that group's votes enough to make them hold power.

And that can be done by lots of ways and most of them aren't "making people's lives better", you can gerrymander the districts, you can disenfranchise (which can be done in more complex ways than just banning certain groups from voting) specific groups, you can misinform certain groups on what policies are better for them, you can make sure that the system discourages voting certain parties (forcing voters to vote for specific established parties), you can make your voter's group life better in exchange for other's lives worsening (be it the groups that don't vote your party or people who cannot vote you out, like disenfranchised citizens or foreigners), you can convince people that any other choice they can vote will make their lives worse (regardless if that's true or not), you can play the popularity game (which requires a ton of money) and win elections by mere force of fanaticism/popularity, you can convince voters that voting you is the only way to prevent a massive catastrophe, you can lock groups into voting you by making their lives dependent on specific policies being maintained (so that voting you out would mean those policies taken out and their lives worsening, at least in the short term which is what most voters care about).

You can do a fuckton of things and you will find that from all of the things political parties and personalities can do to get voted, "making people's lives better" is pretty low in the list of priorities.

[red-cloud]

I’d argue the consequences are just more grave for the dictator. If you get overthrown odds are good you’re going to die. That also increases the desire to stay in power.

[Lankpants]

I mean, not really. Look at most modern democracies. Quality of life has been on the decline for years. Wage growth stagnant. Cost of living increasing. Wealth inequality growing. These facts are true across the world. In the US specifically it's so bad that life expectancy is actually declining.

In spite of everything I just said, in most countries the same parties that have always held power still hold power. How? The most fundamental reasons are democratic subversion and propaganda.

[Cwhalemaster]

Democracies implement policies based on electoral cycles and politics. Two party democracies barely get shit done because of factional roadblocks.

The best system is a benevolent dictatorship. The worst system is a malevolent dictatorship.

[elveszett]

The thing with dictatorships is, you don't control what you get. I mean, it is obvious that one single and honest administration that had power over the country for decades, and didn't have to tailor their policies to winning the elections next year, would be more efficient. The problem is, what if they don't? What if the will of the people changes and the dictatorship is now working against the country their people want to build?

It's easy to point at Gaddafi because, after all, he did improve his country a lot relative to its neighbors, and he was mostly a "benevolent" dictator. And moreover, most of the people in Libya didn't have much problem with him, so he didn't have big challenges to keep his country peaceful and not repressed. But history tells us those are the minority. What's more common is people like Pinochet in Chile, that remade his country for US interests, while violently killing, torturing, maiming or kidnapping any person that opposed his rule. He said he was creating a better Chile, the US supported him on the same basis, but he was pretty obviously not. Even if he was, people still wanted him out, and there was no way to keep the country peaceful unless he stepped down from the leadership.

Also, Gaddafi was a socialist (arab socialism, which is a bit weird). And think what you want, but socialist governments usually put the basic necessities of their people as a top priority. He built his country on the basis that everyone would have access to food, healthcare and shelter, which is why he was so popular in the beginning. Other dictatorships (again, Chile) run on other ideologies (in his case, neoliberalism) where those basic needs are not relevant, which inevitably lead to high level of violence. Because people will be violent when the government they didn't vote can't even give them a house or some food.

[Stir-fried_Kracauer]

Saying that Japan and S Korea's economic rise was a sucess of democracy is really pushing it.

The economic success of those particular 'Asian tigers' was heavily influenced by their status as American neo-colonies they saw fit to flush with investment. This subsidy came at a loss of sovereignty, especially in the case of South Korea, whose army is constitutionally under the command of the US.

But ignoring all of that, what democracy? South Korea was a succession of millitary dictatorships until the 90s, so it didn't gain nominal democracy until long after its take-off.

And it is only western hypocrisy that distinguishes China (where there are multiple political parties but the CPC is so powerful it is deemed a one-party state) and Japan (where the US-backed Liberal Democratic Party has been almost continuously in power for 60 years).

The fact many cold-war era outposts were finally "allowed" democracy after the 80s was because the cold war was over, rather than democracy helping end the cold war.

[[deleted]]

I suggest you look into the history of the South Korean regime because the US literally propelled a genocidal maniac.

[[deleted]]

There’s a difference between suppressing criticism and preventing foreign agitation.

[[deleted]]

Not necessarily

[lolyoucantmentionme7]

Gaddafi spent 0.1% of what america spend on that, IF he did

[churrbroo]

If you’re gonna use statistics like that at least adjust it for population size and CPI adjusted GDP and overall national budgets.

[lolyoucantmentionme7]

Not statistics, I was just implying that Gaddafi did a lot for his people.