. . . We know from 20th century history that deeply authoritarian, centralized governments can generate wealth extremely rapidly - however, deeply authoritarian governments can also reduce their country to a wasteland far faster than a lousy democracy. Here is a relevant graph:
source. I confess to not having read the paper yet (got a huge backlog of other RL-relevant things to digest).
Not having read the paper yet myself either (though this used to be my area of particular interest), I would point out that the cause-effect can be tricky. Because we also know that wealth can lead to authoritarianism. Just look at resource-rich countries and the ubiquitous "petro-states" like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.
That's not to say that there isn't any support for the view that authoritarianism can foster development (Huntington was a proponent, I recall). The basic theory is that voters and free citizens can be too short-sighted and government needs to be insulated from the public to plan for the long-term.
At the same time, the other view, that democracy leads to development is, I think, stronger. Public participation can actually lead to better allocation of resources, especially when freedom of speech and freedom of the press allows society to generate, and use, better information. A constitutional democracy can create a degree of stability and predictability needed for development and economic growth. There is also the old axiom that democracies have never experienced famine (though I'm not sure how well it holds up. It's a lot like the democratic peace principle).
Anyway, thought I'd share some graphs I made myself for a paper a few years ago ("African Successes", looking at the confluence of economic and democratic development for a course in African political economy, ). Unfortunately they're not the clearest, but they get the point across:
First, income and freedom score (from Freedom House):
UN's Human Development Index:
(you might notice that some of the data points are solid - those are African countries. I have a graph just for Africa, but don't need to clutter up the thread any more).
Finally, this is probably the easiest to read. Basically just showing the distribution of Freedom House's "free", "partly free" and "not free" countries across the UN's classification of countries into low, medium and high levels of development:
How the hell was Brave New World a dystopia? It was a horrifying utopia but the system worked. The people had bread and jobs.
Brave New World also made some extravagant assumptions about how people behave - in effect, the people in BNW are not what the people we are would behave.
It's rather like describing a hamster habitat where there is always sunflower seeds and running wheels and everything hamsters would want. That's great for the hamsters, but that's not what we want. To try to imagine ourselves into such a world we already have to posit it breaking down - hence Bernard, the Alpha Plus who doesn't live up to the standards of an Alpha Plus. Of course it is horrifying. But it's not populated by people.
Don't forget the social conditioning. They are slaves with predetermined destinies, sure, but no one is whipping them, they're not chained, and the front gate is wide open. After a childhood full of hypnotic suggestions and electric shocks, they don't want to escape. They work their eight hours, pop some Soma tablets, have some sex, go to bed, get up the next day. Daily sex and drugs? They have it BETTER THAN US!
If you're trying to suggest that all dictatorships are identical to BNW - there are real actual dictatorships that work pretty well, without any attempt to conditions their people a la Brave New World. Dictatorships populated by, you know, people.
Ronya ... if you killed a citizen of BNW, it wouldn't be murder because they're soulless husks? What do you mean BNW isn't populated by people?
No, I meant that BNW isn't populated by anything that behave like how real people behave. Drawing moral lessons from BNW is hence an exercise in self-deception.
We sympathize with the protagonist Bernard at least in part because he isn't like other people in BNW - he isn't the perfect Alpha. Were he a perfect Alpha, the whole book would be "Got out of bed. Took some Soma. Had a lot of sex. Went to bed." over and over again and we would unsurprisingly discard it as unrealistic. Yet this is what the world of BNW is, for the vast majority of its fictional citizens - conclusion: it is deeply unrealistic to begin with.
Look, simplify BNW by looking at only the core story elements concerning happiness. There is, quite literally, a happy pill that people take - we are supposed to accept people being happy 'by definition'. Does this strike you as remotely realistic? Why attempt to draw practical or moral lessons about dictatorship from it?
. . . We know from 20th century history that deeply authoritarian, centralized governments can generate wealth extremely rapidly - however, deeply authoritarian governments can also reduce their country to a wasteland far faster than a lousy democracy. Here is a relevant graph:
source. I confess to not having read the paper yet (got a huge backlog of other RL-relevant things to digest).
Not having read the paper yet myself either (though this used to be my area of particular interest), I would point out that the cause-effect can be tricky. Because we also know that wealth can lead to authoritarianism. Just look at resource-rich countries and the ubiquitous "petro-states" like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.
That's not to say that there isn't any support for the view that authoritarianism can foster development (Huntington was a proponent, I recall). The basic theory is that voters and free citizens can be too short-sighted and government needs to be insulated from the public to plan for the long-term.
At the same time, the other view, that democracy leads to development is, I think, stronger. Public participation can actually lead to better allocation of resources, especially when freedom of speech and freedom of the press allows society to generate, and use, better information. A constitutional democracy can create a degree of stability and predictability needed for development and economic growth.
Anyway, thought I'd share some graphs I made myself for a paper a few years ago ("African Successes", looking at the confluence of economic and democratic development for a course in African political economy, ). Unfortunately they're not the clearest, but they get the point across:
First, income and freedom score (from Freedom House):
UN's Human Development Index:
(you might notice that some of the data points are solid - those are African countries. I have a graph just for Africa, but don't need to clutter up the thread any more).
Finally, this is probably the easiest to read. Basically just showing the distribution of Freedom House's "free", "partly free" and "not free" countries across the UN's classification of countries into low, medium and high levels of development:
None of those graphs show the rate of growth or development, just their current state! To support your thesis of public participation promoting growth, you need to show link political freedom to the rate of growth.
(which, by the way, is not difficult - the average rate of growth among dictatorships is indeed lower that the average among democracies (ignoring the endogenous problems you described, which obviously count against dictatorships). But then we find that the fastest-growing countries are dictatorships.)
I'm not making any claims about rate of growth, though rate of growth is an important consideration since a lot of states have a lot of ground to cover, and often the quicker the better. I'm not convinced that authoritarianism need be the best way to cover that ground, however.
I'm just posting these graphs to illustrate that, generally, democratic states are more likely to be better off, in their current state, and vise-versa.
Now, some might just be states that went through authoritarian-led development that itself later contributed to democracy (once people had their basic needs settled) and some might be genuine cases of democracy contributing to development. There's lots of literature that goes both ways, though I find the view that democratic government (or at least some degree of liberty) contributes to better development rather convincing.
If you're trying to suggest that all dictatorships are identical to BNW - there are real actual dictatorships that work pretty well, without any attempt to conditions their people a la Brave New World. Dictatorships populated by, you know, people.
Citation needed.
Also, a definition of "work(s) pretty well" would be handy as well.
Since the OP was a question about morality and not economics, I'm just going to respond directly to the OP:
I guess my answer would depend on which meta-ethical view you hold.
If you're an Objectivist, provided the tyrant is doing what is objectively good I find it hard to call it immoral. Of course, there are still ways that we could call it wrong - using Kant's argument about inconsistency you might be able to formulate an objection based on the fact that a tyrant probably cannot will every other person to also be a tyrant.
If you're a Relativist, the question gets very complicated very quickly. In this case, it basically depends on the perspective you're assuming, since the answer to your question will have to be relative to something. Is it bad for the tyrant? As long as they believe they are doing what is right, probably not. Is it right for the culture? Depends on what the generally accepted morality is. Etc.
Those are the two major views that I think are relevant here. In either one an argument can be made either way, but it would be helpful to specify what meta-ethical view the character in question holds, or which view you want to discuss this in terms of.
If you're trying to suggest that all dictatorships are identical to BNW - there are real actual dictatorships that work pretty well, without any attempt to conditions their people a la Brave New World. Dictatorships populated by, you know, people.
Citation needed.
Also, a definition of "work(s) pretty well" would be handy as well.
Asian Tigers, during their periods of peak growth. These are the unambiguous examples of "work pretty well" (since the mid-70s they have since both since slowed their growth and liberalized, which rather removes them from discussion. Singapore remains relatively authoritarian, though - chewing gum! - and it sustains high growth and high immigration).
Whenever dictatorships come up, people tend to think of Stalin or assorted banana republics, but this would rather be like upholding mid-70s India as the pinnacle of democratic growth (when comparing to other developing nations; obviously comparing the third world to the first is hardly fair).
For examples closer to the median, there are (like democracies) too many issues which, to some, would definitively outweigh the benefits.
Since the OP was a question about morality and not economics, I'm just going to respond directly to the OP:
I guess my answer would depend on which meta-ethical view you hold.
If you're an Objectivist, provided the tyrant is doing what is objectively good I find it hard to call it immoral. Of course, there are still ways that we could call it wrong - using Kant's argument about inconsistency you might be able to formulate an objection based on the fact that a tyrant probably cannot will every other person to also be a tyrant.
If you're a Relativist, the question gets very complicated very quickly. In this case, it basically depends on the perspective you're assuming, since the answer to your question will have to be relative to something. Is it bad for the tyrant? As long as they believe they are doing what is right, probably not. Is it right for the culture? Depends on what the generally accepted morality is. Etc.
Those are the two major views that I think are relevant here. In either one an argument can be made either way, but it would be helpful to specify what meta-ethical view the character in question holds, or which view you want to discuss this in terms of.
It's odd, I see the question as essentially invoking the Consequentialist v Deontologist debate.
If you're a Consequentialist, then what matters is the consequences brought about. Is there generally more happiness? More pleasure? (Depends on what you want to get out)
If you're a Deontologist then it doesn't matte what the consequences are, there is just something wrong. Perhaps Freedom is just something that's good and tyranny takes that away. Consequences be damned.
Of course, I'm not in either camp, but I'm a significant minority among human beings.
DrLoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Since the OP was a question about morality and not economics, I'm just going to respond directly to the OP:
I guess my answer would depend on which meta-ethical view you hold.
If you're an Objectivist, provided the tyrant is doing what is objectively good I find it hard to call it immoral. Of course, there are still ways that we could call it wrong - using Kant's argument about inconsistency you might be able to formulate an objection based on the fact that a tyrant probably cannot will every other person to also be a tyrant.
If you're a Relativist, the question gets very complicated very quickly. In this case, it basically depends on the perspective you're assuming, since the answer to your question will have to be relative to something. Is it bad for the tyrant? As long as they believe they are doing what is right, probably not. Is it right for the culture? Depends on what the generally accepted morality is. Etc.
Those are the two major views that I think are relevant here. In either one an argument can be made either way, but it would be helpful to specify what meta-ethical view the character in question holds, or which view you want to discuss this in terms of.
It's odd, I see the question as essentially invoking the Consequentialist v Deontologist debate.
If you're a Consequentialist, then what matters is the consequences brought about. Is there generally more happiness? More pleasure? (Depends on what you want to get out)
If you're a Deontologist then it doesn't matte what the consequences are, there is just something wrong. Perhaps Freedom is just something that's good and tyranny takes that away. Consequences be damned.
Of course, I'm not in either camp, but I'm a significant minority among human beings.
Both perfectly valid ways to approach the problem, but they're also both Objectivist views - in the first case "bad consequences" (presumably in the Utilitarian sense) are "objectively bad" and in the second case Freedom is "objectively good".
For me it's a meaningless question I'm afraid. Like wondering whether elves should be able to get pensions at 60, even though they live forever.
There's no such thing as a benevolent dictator, no such thing as a person who can't be corrupted, and no such thing as a person who can understand and represent all the different kinds of people that go to make up a state.
So there will be tyranny and injustice, if this is real life.
So when anyone says they want to have a benevolent tyrant, you have to try and stop them because they're covering the reality with a fable and using the fable to get power.
Sorry, I know that's a miserable answer but it's the truth and always will be. I understand the OP but I think pretending politics is Narnia or Middle-earth is no good for anyone.
For me it's a meaningless question I'm afraid. Like wondering whether elves should be able to get pensions at 60, even though they live forever.
There's no such thing as a benevolent dictator, no such thing as a person who can't be corrupted, and no such thing as a person who can understand and represent all the different kinds of people that go to make up a state.
So there will be tyranny and injustice, if this is real life.
So when anyone says they want to have a benevolent tyrant, you have to try and stop them because they're covering the reality with a fable and using the fable to get power.
Sorry, I know that's a miserable answer but it's the truth and always will be. I understand the OP but I think pretending politics is Narnia or Middle-earth is no good for anyone.
This is overly pessimistic.
I mean, I grant that the past is on your side. However, think of the advances that humanity has achieved over perhaps the last few hundred years. Humanity isn't forever stuck in the same mental and emotional place. I hope that this isn't the best that humanity is capable of, and I don't think that it is. Humanity will continue to evolve socially until perhaps such a thing is possible.
Nost: You're right I ignored the relativistic question. I ignore lots of other stupid things in addition to relativism.
DrLoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
A government is going to be good or bad depending on who is in charge. The smaller the number of people in charge, the more severely it can vary. It is much easier to have one amazingly good person or one amazingly bad person than one billion amazingly good people or one billion amazingly bad people.
Democracy is mostly about trying to stay in the middle of the bell curve with hopefully enough outliers in the right direction to shift the entire bell curve, and trying to keep the hell away from the bad side of the curve.
--
Eh. People are corrupted because they are that way to begin with, but can now ACT on it. The issue with truly good people is that they are unlikely to find joy in power, and thus do not seek it and may even actively avoid it. There is, of course, the difficulty in finding a single person with enough knowledge to run a large enough population, which approaches impossibility the larger the population is.
A government is going to be good or bad depending on who is in charge.
When you say good or bad, are you talking about whether they commit atrocities or not? Because a do-nothing government is pretty damn bad, in my mind. An ineffective government opens itself up to invasion and revolution and then bread and jobs aren't getting to the citizenry.
A government is going to be good or bad depending on who is in charge.
When you say good or bad, are you talking about whether they commit atrocities or not? Because a do-nothing government is pretty damn bad, in my mind. An ineffective government opens itself up to invasion and revolution and then bread and jobs aren't getting to the citizenry.
A government that does not provide for the common defense is bad, seeing as providing for the common defense is one of the primary purposes of a government.
Of course, bullets and bombs are not always the best defense.
It is my perspective that the primary problem with dictatorships and authoritarian governments in general is not morality, competency, or equality, but rather succession. Finding one good ruler is not too hard: throughout the millenia of human existence, democracies have been an outlier rather than the rule, and certainly humanity has had its share of admirable, unelected dictators of one sort or another. The problem is, one good dictator isn't enough. You need an uninterrupted string of competent leaders, and without a reliable means of selection, this isn't likely.
Well, it's simple then. Find yerself smart dude, make him Grand Exalted Luminous Leader, and cut out the pleasure center from his brain. BAM! Incorruptible dictator who works tirelessly for the common good. Repeat for the next ten dictators.
It is my perspective that the primary problem with dictatorships and authoritarian governments in general is not morality, competency, or equality, but rather succession. Finding one good ruler is not too hard: throughout the millenia of human existence, democracies have been an outlier rather than the rule, and certainly humanity has had its share of admirable, unelected dictators of one sort or another. The problem is, one good dictator isn't enough. You need an uninterrupted string of competent leaders, and without a reliable means of selection, this isn't likely.
Yep. This is why the system doesn't work. Same with royal lines and such.
Even if you luck out the first time, the people you lucked out with will die eventually.
It is my perspective that the primary problem with dictatorships and authoritarian governments in general is not morality, competency, or equality, but rather succession. Finding one good ruler is not too hard: throughout the millenia of human existence, democracies have been an outlier rather than the rule, and certainly humanity has had its share of admirable, unelected dictators of one sort or another. The problem is, one good dictator isn't enough. You need an uninterrupted string of competent leaders, and without a reliable means of selection, this isn't likely.
I'd agree with that. Isn't an oligarchical authoritarian dictatorship the easy solution to that though?
I'd agree with that. Isn't an oligarchical authoritarian dictatorship the easy solution to that though?
"authoritarian oligarchy" is a pretty big blanket that covers a lot of different governments, so the specifics certainly vary, but I'd hardly call it an easy solution: it seems that a group of governors that either rule jointly or elect a leader from amongst themselves might mitigate some of the unpredictability of a sole dictator, but at the same time they lose some of the decisiveness, and introduce some of the weaknesses that group thinking invariably produces, even disregarding the problem of selecting the elite to begin with. A group of leaders might diffuse the weaknesses of a dictatorship, but they also diffuse the strengths.
Or a dictatorship that invests in training masses of civil service executives, then picks a few off each generation to steadily grant more and more responsibilities too. Beijing does this, hence the relatively stable exchanges of power since Deng.
Succession is less of a difficulty than it might initially seem - a democracy locates the successor who can campaign best. A dictatorship could devote whole departments of government towards this mission - hence why you may sometimes read of organized authoritarian governments having positions which are perceived as "trainee" positions for the Big Seat. Someone may be appointed there to see how he handles pressure, how the public reacts, etc.
Remember that both dictatorships and democracies are subject to sustaining a majority in the long run; dictatorships can just buy themselves more time during a crisis, tolerate a higher level of dissent, or translate a small victory into a total mandate. Dictatorship doesn't grant you a magic "I'm king so listen to me" button, you still need to acquire legitimacy.
This process is obviously imperfect, but so is the democratic succession-picking mechanism. Take the US, where parties have pre-primary mechanisms and then 'primaries' to identify party presidential candidates, and there is a de facto certainty that well-organized and funded party campaign machines will ensure that either the D primary winner or the R primary winner will succeed to office. Contrast this with, say, the PRC, or Singapore - the single dominant party identifies a candidate through the process outlined above and then uses its uncontested campaign machine to push its candidate through whatever popular legislatures exist. Does one method necessarily strike you as better?*
And there are countries whose cultural institutions enable them to lie somewhere in between. Japan is democratic, but for a time its dominant party could remain in power with a popular support of 9%. This, if nothing else, speaks of the importance of institutions that translate successor candidate identification into electoral success.
* which is not to claim that dictatorship would work in the US; institutions and culture matter.
ronya on
0
VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
I don't believe you can say there would never be a good or benevolent dictator. however I'm fine with believing that if you really went that route, that after a series of dictators ruling the country you'd hit on someone who seriously abused their power and ruined everything, forever.
Are we drawing a line here between dicator and absolute monarch here? Because while i'd be pretty comfortable saying that dictatorships will fail 99% of the time, absolute monarchs didn't always screw up too badly, or at least not much more than regular ol' republics/constitutional monarchies in European History. Hell, some of the enlightenment absolute monarchs probably did more good for their countries than a democracy could have done in triple the amount of time.
Then again, the families that governed Europe at the time were pretty self regulating, if you suck, you die(unless you're Russia!).
A government is going to be good or bad depending on who is in charge.
When you say good or bad, are you talking about whether they commit atrocities or not? Because a do-nothing government is pretty damn bad, in my mind. An ineffective government opens itself up to invasion and revolution and then bread and jobs aren't getting to the citizenry.
A government that does not provide for the common defense is bad, seeing as providing for the common defense is one of the primary purposes of a government.
Of course, bullets and bombs are not always the best defense.
See, this I find interesting.
If government has a purpose, a function, then we open up a discussion about virtue (in the ancient greek sense, meaning roughly "excellence"). What would the most excellent government be? One that performed its particular function (or set of functions) best. As long as we don't define this in consequentialist language, we could have something here.
DrLoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't believe you can say there would never be a good or benevolent dictator. however I'm fine with believing that if you really went that route, that after a series of dictators ruling the country you'd hit on someone who seriously abused their power and ruined everything, forever.
A valid concern. Unfortunately it is not limited to only dictatorships. It can happen to any sort of politician. Also corrupt politicians have no fixed numerical limit. So even if you divide power its possible ALL abuse their position.
Today its all about economics. Who has the most influence who can give the biggest budget... donation... hell, we are here among us, no use for delusion: bribes.
So naturally THOSE decisions get favoured wich are in favour of economics. Oh... not YOURS or that of your country. The economics of the people who offered the bribe of course.
It all boils down to math and it can be done with a calculator. We finally sucessfully eliminated the human factor totally.
When was the last time your country walked over corpses for economic purposes?
Those who realize where it all leads are not corruptable. Unfortunately in the current system of things not opportunistically capitalizing on every chance being offered means you are not compeditive. Of course it won't take long before this whole system comes down with a big crash.
Tell you what: its not about the system. Every system can be abused, of course.
Its about humanity, virtues, morality... you know, all those things we abandon in favour of economic advantages.
Greed is the antithesis to humility. Do you think building a society on that concept is a good idea?
I disagree. If anything we need to promote the best aspects of humanity and not the worst.
Are we drawing a line here between dicator and absolute monarch here? Because while i'd be pretty comfortable saying that dictatorships will fail 99% of the time, absolute monarchs didn't always screw up too badly, or at least not much more than regular ol' republics/constitutional monarchies in European History. Hell, some of the enlightenment absolute monarchs probably did more good for their countries than a democracy could have done in triple the amount of time.
Then again, the families that governed Europe at the time were pretty self regulating, if you suck, you die(unless you're Russia!).
Yes, but these good monarchs were often followed immediately by a mediocre one, and this caused far more damage than a mediocre ruler would in a democracy.
See the transition between Louis XIV --> Louis XV, and between Bismarck (not really a monarch but effectively one) and Wilhelm II. Louis XV and Wilhelm II weren't really even bad leaders, but the systems of their nation were so dependant on having a brilliant leader in charger that they collapsed under a mediocre one.
Posts
That's not to say that there isn't any support for the view that authoritarianism can foster development (Huntington was a proponent, I recall). The basic theory is that voters and free citizens can be too short-sighted and government needs to be insulated from the public to plan for the long-term.
At the same time, the other view, that democracy leads to development is, I think, stronger. Public participation can actually lead to better allocation of resources, especially when freedom of speech and freedom of the press allows society to generate, and use, better information. A constitutional democracy can create a degree of stability and predictability needed for development and economic growth. There is also the old axiom that democracies have never experienced famine (though I'm not sure how well it holds up. It's a lot like the democratic peace principle).
Anyway, thought I'd share some graphs I made myself for a paper a few years ago ("African Successes", looking at the confluence of economic and democratic development for a course in African political economy, ). Unfortunately they're not the clearest, but they get the point across:
First, income and freedom score (from Freedom House):
UN's Human Development Index:
(you might notice that some of the data points are solid - those are African countries. I have a graph just for Africa, but don't need to clutter up the thread any more).
Finally, this is probably the easiest to read. Basically just showing the distribution of Freedom House's "free", "partly free" and "not free" countries across the UN's classification of countries into low, medium and high levels of development:
No, I meant that BNW isn't populated by anything that behave like how real people behave. Drawing moral lessons from BNW is hence an exercise in self-deception.
We sympathize with the protagonist Bernard at least in part because he isn't like other people in BNW - he isn't the perfect Alpha. Were he a perfect Alpha, the whole book would be "Got out of bed. Took some Soma. Had a lot of sex. Went to bed." over and over again and we would unsurprisingly discard it as unrealistic. Yet this is what the world of BNW is, for the vast majority of its fictional citizens - conclusion: it is deeply unrealistic to begin with.
Look, simplify BNW by looking at only the core story elements concerning happiness. There is, quite literally, a happy pill that people take - we are supposed to accept people being happy 'by definition'. Does this strike you as remotely realistic? Why attempt to draw practical or moral lessons about dictatorship from it?
None of those graphs show the rate of growth or development, just their current state! To support your thesis of public participation promoting growth, you need to show link political freedom to the rate of growth.
(which, by the way, is not difficult - the average rate of growth among dictatorships is indeed lower that the average among democracies (ignoring the endogenous problems you described, which obviously count against dictatorships). But then we find that the fastest-growing countries are dictatorships.)
I'm just posting these graphs to illustrate that, generally, democratic states are more likely to be better off, in their current state, and vise-versa.
Now, some might just be states that went through authoritarian-led development that itself later contributed to democracy (once people had their basic needs settled) and some might be genuine cases of democracy contributing to development. There's lots of literature that goes both ways, though I find the view that democratic government (or at least some degree of liberty) contributes to better development rather convincing.
Citation needed.
Also, a definition of "work(s) pretty well" would be handy as well.
I guess my answer would depend on which meta-ethical view you hold.
If you're an Objectivist, provided the tyrant is doing what is objectively good I find it hard to call it immoral. Of course, there are still ways that we could call it wrong - using Kant's argument about inconsistency you might be able to formulate an objection based on the fact that a tyrant probably cannot will every other person to also be a tyrant.
If you're a Relativist, the question gets very complicated very quickly. In this case, it basically depends on the perspective you're assuming, since the answer to your question will have to be relative to something. Is it bad for the tyrant? As long as they believe they are doing what is right, probably not. Is it right for the culture? Depends on what the generally accepted morality is. Etc.
Those are the two major views that I think are relevant here. In either one an argument can be made either way, but it would be helpful to specify what meta-ethical view the character in question holds, or which view you want to discuss this in terms of.
Asian Tigers, during their periods of peak growth. These are the unambiguous examples of "work pretty well" (since the mid-70s they have since both since slowed their growth and liberalized, which rather removes them from discussion. Singapore remains relatively authoritarian, though - chewing gum! - and it sustains high growth and high immigration).
Whenever dictatorships come up, people tend to think of Stalin or assorted banana republics, but this would rather be like upholding mid-70s India as the pinnacle of democratic growth (when comparing to other developing nations; obviously comparing the third world to the first is hardly fair).
For examples closer to the median, there are (like democracies) too many issues which, to some, would definitively outweigh the benefits.
It's odd, I see the question as essentially invoking the Consequentialist v Deontologist debate.
If you're a Consequentialist, then what matters is the consequences brought about. Is there generally more happiness? More pleasure? (Depends on what you want to get out)
If you're a Deontologist then it doesn't matte what the consequences are, there is just something wrong. Perhaps Freedom is just something that's good and tyranny takes that away. Consequences be damned.
Of course, I'm not in either camp, but I'm a significant minority among human beings.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Both perfectly valid ways to approach the problem, but they're also both Objectivist views - in the first case "bad consequences" (presumably in the Utilitarian sense) are "objectively bad" and in the second case Freedom is "objectively good".
There's no such thing as a benevolent dictator, no such thing as a person who can't be corrupted, and no such thing as a person who can understand and represent all the different kinds of people that go to make up a state.
So there will be tyranny and injustice, if this is real life.
So when anyone says they want to have a benevolent tyrant, you have to try and stop them because they're covering the reality with a fable and using the fable to get power.
Sorry, I know that's a miserable answer but it's the truth and always will be. I understand the OP but I think pretending politics is Narnia or Middle-earth is no good for anyone.
This is overly pessimistic.
I mean, I grant that the past is on your side. However, think of the advances that humanity has achieved over perhaps the last few hundred years. Humanity isn't forever stuck in the same mental and emotional place. I hope that this isn't the best that humanity is capable of, and I don't think that it is. Humanity will continue to evolve socially until perhaps such a thing is possible.
Nost: You're right I ignored the relativistic question. I ignore lots of other stupid things in addition to relativism.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Democracy is mostly about trying to stay in the middle of the bell curve with hopefully enough outliers in the right direction to shift the entire bell curve, and trying to keep the hell away from the bad side of the curve.
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Eh. People are corrupted because they are that way to begin with, but can now ACT on it. The issue with truly good people is that they are unlikely to find joy in power, and thus do not seek it and may even actively avoid it. There is, of course, the difficulty in finding a single person with enough knowledge to run a large enough population, which approaches impossibility the larger the population is.
Oh you.
I feel the same way about Objectivism.
When you say good or bad, are you talking about whether they commit atrocities or not? Because a do-nothing government is pretty damn bad, in my mind. An ineffective government opens itself up to invasion and revolution and then bread and jobs aren't getting to the citizenry.
A government that does not provide for the common defense is bad, seeing as providing for the common defense is one of the primary purposes of a government.
Of course, bullets and bombs are not always the best defense.
Yep. This is why the system doesn't work. Same with royal lines and such.
Even if you luck out the first time, the people you lucked out with will die eventually.
I'd agree with that. Isn't an oligarchical authoritarian dictatorship the easy solution to that though?
Succession is less of a difficulty than it might initially seem - a democracy locates the successor who can campaign best. A dictatorship could devote whole departments of government towards this mission - hence why you may sometimes read of organized authoritarian governments having positions which are perceived as "trainee" positions for the Big Seat. Someone may be appointed there to see how he handles pressure, how the public reacts, etc.
Remember that both dictatorships and democracies are subject to sustaining a majority in the long run; dictatorships can just buy themselves more time during a crisis, tolerate a higher level of dissent, or translate a small victory into a total mandate. Dictatorship doesn't grant you a magic "I'm king so listen to me" button, you still need to acquire legitimacy.
This process is obviously imperfect, but so is the democratic succession-picking mechanism. Take the US, where parties have pre-primary mechanisms and then 'primaries' to identify party presidential candidates, and there is a de facto certainty that well-organized and funded party campaign machines will ensure that either the D primary winner or the R primary winner will succeed to office. Contrast this with, say, the PRC, or Singapore - the single dominant party identifies a candidate through the process outlined above and then uses its uncontested campaign machine to push its candidate through whatever popular legislatures exist. Does one method necessarily strike you as better?*
And there are countries whose cultural institutions enable them to lie somewhere in between. Japan is democratic, but for a time its dominant party could remain in power with a popular support of 9%. This, if nothing else, speaks of the importance of institutions that translate successor candidate identification into electoral success.
* which is not to claim that dictatorship would work in the US; institutions and culture matter.
Then again, the families that governed Europe at the time were pretty self regulating, if you suck, you die(unless you're Russia!).
See, this I find interesting.
If government has a purpose, a function, then we open up a discussion about virtue (in the ancient greek sense, meaning roughly "excellence"). What would the most excellent government be? One that performed its particular function (or set of functions) best. As long as we don't define this in consequentialist language, we could have something here.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Today its all about economics. Who has the most influence who can give the biggest budget... donation... hell, we are here among us, no use for delusion: bribes.
So naturally THOSE decisions get favoured wich are in favour of economics. Oh... not YOURS or that of your country. The economics of the people who offered the bribe of course.
It all boils down to math and it can be done with a calculator. We finally sucessfully eliminated the human factor totally.
When was the last time your country walked over corpses for economic purposes? Those who realize where it all leads are not corruptable. Unfortunately in the current system of things not opportunistically capitalizing on every chance being offered means you are not compeditive. Of course it won't take long before this whole system comes down with a big crash.
Tell you what: its not about the system. Every system can be abused, of course.
Its about humanity, virtues, morality... you know, all those things we abandon in favour of economic advantages.
Greed is the antithesis to humility. Do you think building a society on that concept is a good idea?
I disagree. If anything we need to promote the best aspects of humanity and not the worst.
Yes, but these good monarchs were often followed immediately by a mediocre one, and this caused far more damage than a mediocre ruler would in a democracy.
See the transition between Louis XIV --> Louis XV, and between Bismarck (not really a monarch but effectively one) and Wilhelm II. Louis XV and Wilhelm II weren't really even bad leaders, but the systems of their nation were so dependant on having a brilliant leader in charger that they collapsed under a mediocre one.
adrian veidt on the other hand...