|
One major reason, is that the wealth of democracies are almost never derived from export of a raw material such as oil. If your country generates a fuckton of wealth from just digging poo poo out of the ground and selling it to other countries and nothing else, you don't need to care whatsoever about your citizens beyond the basics when it comes to deciding how to spend the money. All you need to do is keep the population subdued and the right people paid off and you get to stay in power. This also means coups are more likely because power is more concentrated, and so typically these societies need extremely strong security services controlled by a very small cadre of people who control all of the treasury, with any dissent put down as soon as it's discovered. This is why autocracies have such illiberal laws, because they are inherently paranoid and for good reason. Therefore, if you live in a country where the needs of the population don't align with the needs of the elites, such as when you only care about enslaving people to work in dangerous mines, rigs, or similar, it's generally a poo poo experience for the average civilian. By contrast when the majority of the wealth is derived from advanced industries and services, in order to run these industries you need to have liberal laws to keep the population educated and well fed because those are the only people who can work in those industries. Happy educated workers are extremely productive compared to starving peasants, and so in these societies power tends to be more decentralized and this surfaces itself ultimately as democracy. On top of that, any actual coup attempts are unlikely in a democracy, not just because power is fractured amongst many, but because a civil war would result in the destruction of the mechanism by which the country derives its wealth. As a result, a grossly funded gestapo tends to be a waste of money because honestly when people have all the things and freedoms they need and want (for the most part), they aren't likely to be a threat to the state. So the caveat is that this is probably a massive over-simplification with exceptions to the rules, but historically whether a country is liberal or not mostly comes down to the natural resources the country has access to, and its geopolitical situation. qhat fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Oct 25, 2022 |
#
¿
Oct 24, 2022 20:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 09:36 |
|
|
Because they are more educated and healthy.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2022 21:06
|
|
|
You're not considering why those rulers even listen to those votes at all. Why not just ignore the votes and send the entire budget into the hands of the military and security services? Money spent on citizens is ultimately money not spent on brute force. It's because the military in and of itself is not productive beyond protecting the wealth generation of the country. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but if the wealth is derived from the productiveness of its citizens, then it is in the interest of the government to actually keep those citizens educated and happy because that means more productive workers which means greater money generation and so on and so forth. So the government actually listens to the population because the needs of government just so happens to align with the needs of the population. If the wealth generation is in general not dependent on the happiness or health of the citizens at large, then guess what, the government doesn't end up spending anything on education or healthcare for the population because it's a waste of money compared to paying the military or whoever, and also because educating your population and keeping them healthy and keeping them connected makes a revolt more likely than if you just starved them. If your argument is just "no it's because people vote for things and government gives them those things because liberal governments are just gracious people", and that's what you're sticking to, then I think we're done here since you're failing to comprehend some basics about how power of a government is derived at all.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2022 21:30
|
|