Dude. What? "Time-honored"? C'mon. You're training to become an economist and the best you can do is glib comments that don't bother to question why this is a pattern that perhaps can be tied to economics or other social sciences? You can't honestly think that these people are simpletons who just happened to "end up" in power and that they alone are responsible for the circumstances that are now unfolding. Oh, no doubt they played their roles and did at a minimum, their fair share of awfulness but Genghis Khan didn't alter the course of history on his own, you know what I mean? That governments overreact to peaceful protest time and again is terrible, but it is also worth puzzling out. Clearly, at least some of the people in those governments are very capable people and certainly capable of high level thought and discourse. By reducing them to mere idiots is to make light of what they've done. It's a much greater offense to purposefully engineer a situation where people then believe that they've accumulated enough wealth and power through illegitimate means to simply crush any opposition that rears its head, than for a fool to act without understanding any of the stakes. Clearly, these are people who were interested in becoming powerful and I have no doubt that they studied history and the history of powerful figures. There is something about that that creates monsters. Finding out what that is, is essential for the progress of human governance. We already know how to deal with stupid.
Stupidity is selective. This is interesting. I don't know if what you describe is actually what happened in Venezuela -- for instance Maduro's power is (probably) legitimate, scary as that thought may or may not be. Who knows if that was his actual thought process: "I'm above this protesting in the streets, I'm the southern hemisphere's Putin, they'll never get rid of me." We don't know. Maybe he made one stupid decision on the heels of the 100 brilliant ones that it took to get elected president. Selection bias. - Glibness is all I have time for tonight; I've read six Wikipedia pages and a handful of Democracy Now-ilk articles and I'm in the middle of a 20-page long CEPR report because I want to replace the glibness with intelligence by tomorrow morning. Maybe I should have held off commenting until then.It's a much greater offense to purposefully engineer a situation where people then believe that they've accumulated enough wealth and power through illegitimate means to simply crush any opposition that rears its head, than for a fool to act without understanding any of the stakes.
There is something about that that creates monsters.
...you aren't allowed to accuse me of glibness anymore. I don't know. I think you're being sort of rude in this conversation -- I have no idea why, it seems anomalous -- but the little hubski dots are on your side so I'm going back to my Mark Kozelek album and my green beans. It may be that I don't communicate well in plain text; I've always wondered. Can't really test that sort of thing.
A two word answer (and a seemingly dismissive one) is what seemed rude on this side of the screen. I'm not in this discussion to wound you, but I am surprised that for someone who seems to have an interest in international affairs, your take on the Ukraine and Venezuela was essentially, "this is dumb". It takes a lot for people to hoist themselves out of their everyday routines to challenge their governments and defend what they believe in, especially if they're being shot at. It's not as if the respective leaders simply said, "I want more money even though I'm not entitled to it" and then BOOM country is fucked and people are in the streets. Sure, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but man, the other thing is, in another comment you straight up called for someone to be assassinated. That's fucked. I'm down for free speech, but I think that's a fucked up thing to say. Do I think Russia would be better off if Putin weren't in power? From what I understand, yeah, probably but an assassination could have all kinds of unforeseen repercussions. With what's going on in Ukraine, that could be a whole storm of badness. If I'm blowing stuff out of proportion because I didn't get the joke, then sure, I'll apologize but I don't think I'm being out of line.
I'll chalk it all up to textual miscommunication then. I could've said "selection bias?" and meant more or less the same thing but with a different expression of ideas. There were at least 100 more words in that comment, but perhaps those weren't as immediately thought-provoking as I generally try for. I'm a bit drunk as well so I can't really tell what's going to be what. As far as Ukraine and Venezuela, the number of words I've written on both (moreso the former) in the last month or two on hubski would make a good-size though not good-read book so I don't want to see my opinion whittled down to 'this is dumb' because of one defeatist comment. I guess I earned it but it's a shame. And I stand by what I said: a leader who reacts to his citizens uniting in the streets by making it illegal to unite in the streets is in for a bad time and should know it. It's not really about money, or even about power. The leaders in question already had both. It's about an inexplicably bad decision that backfired. I am, again, "baffled"; I have no explanation for that strange decision. Crackdowns don't work in the age of the internet. Regarding Putin, eh. I don't think it's, I don't know, some sort of moral issue to posit that the world might be a better place if someone or another had never come to power, was dead, etc. It's more of a poli sci hypothetical exercise. Putin is a selfish bastard with too much power and no good ideas -- there are many such leaders -- if they all died we'd have chaos not roses. Obviously. Doesn't mean I can't hate him and express my hate flippantly every once in a while. Oh inre: selection bias before I forget; makes at least a bit of sense, right? It takes a certain person to become interested in the subject of Napoleons and Alexanders, one naturally more inclined to ape them. It's a distinct possibility.
"a leader who reacts to his citizens uniting in the streets by making it illegal to unite in the streets is in for a bad time and should know it." I've noticed a trend in protests in state violence/repression which seems to simply throw gas on the fire. What I am, unfortunately, ignorant about is major protests which have not been answered with legal sanctions and violence. Do you know of any examples where protests have been quelled using other methods?
I'm no expert, but there are peaceful protests in the US all the time. Obviously the magnitude is vastly different but if all the president of Ukraine had done was throw some people in jail overnight, or even just for a few hours -- or hell if he'd just let them sit there -- the problem might not have spiraled out of proportion. The old maxim is don't pass laws you aren't willing and able to enforce. Thinking about this a bit more, there have been in the past dictatorships (in name or in fact) that quelled protests ruthlessly for a long time (Soviets, say) -- but it never lasts. It's not a sustainable model, especially in the 21st century. In the world of satellites, I would imagine the only way to deal with a protest short of yielding is to stall it with pointless democracy. Which, to be fair, Yanukovych also tried, albeit it too late. EDIT: welcome to hubski.
I'll agree, but it makes me curious as to why, if there are such clear examples of why this is a bad idea, does this choice continue to be made? That strikes me as something that might have a psychological mechanism. As for the other things you've written about Venezuela and Ukraine, I didn't see much of that and was really responding to the comment in question. I suppose that I could have (should have?) looked further. That's perhaps a fault of how people interact though; when we interact with each other, we can't know all the other things that lead up to the interaction. So again, I don't mean to devalue anything else you've done and if it seemed that way, then I apologize. Leadership (much less governance) is a strange thing. For many roles in society and especially for very important roles, there is extensive training and vetting of qualifications. I suppose in the US that there are things in place that act as a vetting process, like the ability to fund raise or finance a campaign and to marshal popular support, but where are prospective governmental leaders to go to learn how to govern, except in the real world? A student government or mock-government necessarily falls short, because the stakes aren't real. The psychology of leadership and governance is something I'm very interested to learn more about. As for Putin, it makes me wonder who is waiting in the wings for when Putin is finally out of the political picture. I doubt that running any country is "easy" but a leading a vast country with such a remarkable political past (not to mention leading it well) has to at the very least, be daunting. I'd love to be able to get a look at the inner workings of various governments and be able to contrast that view with how they look from where I sit now.a leader who reacts to his citizens uniting in the streets by making it illegal to unite in the streets is in for a bad time and should know it.
If a smart person does something repeatedly it's because they think they have no better option ... which raises the question I guess of whether we're missing in our analysis the many times dictators have responded to peaceful protest by crushing it (and then gotten away with it). I don't think so, since that model of governance is all but gone from the world. Anyway, the president of Ukraine just fled to Russia and almost certainly in mid-November there were actions he could have taken that would've led to him still being in power today. The structure of hubski isn't linear, everyone's feeds are different, etc. This isn't immediately obvious day-to-day so I tend to forget it. Well the idea is to become mayor, then senator, then governor, then president. Or equivalent. But this only works in the first world. Take al-Sisi in Egypt; who knows if he can lead in peacetime? In the US, promoting generals to president has a completely mixed track record. Putin's grooming a stooge if I recall correctly, but that didn't work for Chavez and Raul Castro is stepping down in four years, so.... And of course glasnost only existed because the Soviets finally couldn't find another system man who was popular enough to run the country.That strikes me as something that might have a psychological mechanism.
That's perhaps a fault of how people interact though; when we interact with each other, we can't know all the other things that lead up to the interaction.
I suppose in the US that there are things in place that act as a vetting process, like the ability to fund raise or finance a campaign and to marshal popular support, but where are prospective governmental leaders to go to learn how to govern, except in the real world?