Reading Material

[rebeccmeister]

Maybe the book written by this author will provide me with some food for thought.

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/9/14207302/authoritarian-states-boring-tolerable-fascism-trump

Comments

[annikusrex]

Ack, I do think living in a country where *the media did not criticize the government* and *the government can detain you indefinitely without trial* would be very, very different for me. It's true I may not be most people, but I find those two concepts insane.

[rebeccmeister]

I think some of the problems attached to those two conditions are that a lot of people wouldn't really notice at all. But for those who DO notice, well...yeah. Yikes.

My mind goes back to El Salvador and the death squads.

[scrottie]

Malaysia doesn't have a war based economy.

"The mental image that most Americans harbor of what actual authoritarianism looks like is fantastical and cartoonish." ... "This image of authoritarianism comes from the popular media"... that may be true, but I wonder how helpful this is.

"Life under authoritarian rule in such situations looks a lot like life in a democracy." In places where the US has installed far right wing governments, this is not the case... Brazil, Panama, etc. I feel like this author is extrapolating from one case too much and erasing dimensions.
T
http://reason.com/archives/2006/03/01/why-poor-countries-are-poor was one thing that stuck with me. Those authors consider another factor to have more bearing on quality of life.

Free Software people (including famously Torvalds) joke about their software project being a "benevolent dictatorship", but even in the realm of software, some dictatorships are far more benevolent than others.

But learning about countries as cases is never a bad idea.