Ironically, I think you approach this question from the naively egalitarian viewpoint of westerners. The only kind of westerner who would take the job may be a power hungry sociopath (though I think you underestimate how many would take it because they think they’d do a good job), but in many third world societies it’s accepted that the ruler has a right to live a life of opulence; in some the ruled wouldn’t respect the rules if he went about wearing sackcloth. Similar to old European kings. They weren’t all sociopaths, in fact many were clearly fairly conscientious. They just lived in a world where acute inequality between ruler and ruler wasn’t considered a moral problem the way it is in our society.
In short I think you lack moral imagination. Consider an extreme example: human sacrifice. You might look at a society where this is normal and note that no westerner would murder someone like that unless they were a deranged sadist, and conclude that this must be true of members of this society who do it. But really, in such a society you would find people who engage in human sacrifice but are also loving fathers, dutiful husbands, and law abiding citizens. The particular rules of the human conscience are largely socially constructed, so the correlation between one’s ’moral temperament’ and the morality of one’s behavior - according to any particular moral philosophy - tends to break down as you evaluate more dissimilar cultures.
Are you kidding me? I would LOVE to rule a "third-world" country. (I prefer the term "poor country". It cuts to the chase and doesn't refer to obsolete cold-war alignments). But maybe I'm not a normal person! 😅😅😅 As my Californian wife says: "Abno ka!" But being normal is laaaaame. Say, didn't you write a book about that? https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Not-Stampede-Non-Conformism-ebook/dp/B0CRGRMLZV
I spent a year living in the Philippines and have travelled to many other poor countries as well. I didn't feel "sheer disgust" looking at the human misery around me. I felt compassion. And, I saw human misery. I saw grandmothers washing their grandchildren's clothes in dirty gutters. I saw children sleeping on sidewalks. I saw plenty of shantytowns. etc. I also beautiful people with beautiful souls. Who would invite you into their homes in the Shanty towns to sing Karaoke or eat Pancit or chicken Adobo. At least, if you were the ruler, you could do something about the misery and make life better for these people. And, as an expert economist, Dr. Caplan, at least you'd know what to do. I would probably go to you for advice, like all the time. Heck, send some students to me as interns. 😃 Let's have the "Virginia Boys" fix the Philippines! 😁
Have you never played SimCity, SimCity Societies or Tropico? (I just revealed my Steam Library! 😛) If you WENT to South Sudan or the Philippines and you SAW all the problems, wouldn't you kinda wish they would just give you a chance to fix them?
As I've mentioned before, I actually do think a lot of dictators are well-meaning. They just hold on to power for too long because their ideas aren't working ... yet. It's true that even good ideas take time to work. Generally longer than the 4 to 6 years until the next election. And bad ideas will never work. I think in the case of a lot of these dictators its the latter. A lot of them aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. Maybe it doesn't take that much intelligence to be a dictator. And most people aren't that intelligent. At least, relative to you, sir, or me, or your typical substack subscriber.
But, people like you, sir. Or me. People like us... Imagine... If we were given the chance, we could probably fix the Philippines. We wouldn't kill anyone or disappear anyone. We'd take a modest salary and, yea, hire several bodyguards. We'd allow free speech. And listen to those hwho disagree with us. But then calmly explain to them hwhy they're wrong. We would be benevolent dictators. We'd bring in free trade, end price controls, import quotas, zoning restrictions, licensed professions, etc. And hwhen the world is clamouring to move to the Utopia we've created in the Philippines or South Sudan or hwhatever, we'd let them in! We could really make a difference. We wouldn't hold on to power for some "giddy little jollies", we could really make a difference in the lives of millions!
This is hwhat makes us different than Stalin, Rocketman (Kim Jong Un) or Ferdinand Marcos. We'd actually be competent!
And you wouldn't want to take that opportunity if offered to you???
(Note: For the record, I am NOT planning to take over ANY country forcefully or unconstitutionally. Just wanna make that abundantly clear to anybody reading this. My point is: IF somehow, I were to become leader of any country, I am pretty confident I would do a damm good job. With Dr. Caplan's advice!)
I think you're ignoring the fact that if you were to become such a ruler you'd be surrounded by people happy to murder you to take the power from you, and that you'd have to play their game to stay alive and have any effect.
If you could become a ruler and also be somehow invulnerable from all of that, then sure, it might be a great opportunity to do a lot of good.
Some kind of power hunger doubtless plays a role, especially in situations where someone could clearly safely abdicate and emigrate, but instead stays with an obvious risk of being overthrown or murdered.
But surely the more obvious explanation is just habit and status, and the uncertainty of a reward. If you're a poor Togolese, you'd obviously leap at the chance to make more money, even if it means a slight dip in status - going from a mid rung in a poor country and joining the bottom rung in a rich country. But if you're at the top of the ladder in Togo, your life is good in so many ways:
First, you're genuinely well-off - you have servants, greater access to illicit luxuries etc. to compensate for a lack of first-world conveniences. You can also travel relatively freely.
Second, everyone in Togo respects you. This is slightly tied to "extreme power-hunger", I guess, but more just a standard desire for status. The last time you visited France, no-one outside of your entourage treated you with any respect, even at international summits. If you emigrated, you know you'd be just another pleb speaking African patois in Paris, or an unwanted immigrant in Provence.
Finally, just habit. You're used to living in Togo - people speak your language, the climate and food are familiar.
Most people don't choose to emigrate for uncertain moderate increases in living standards. Most European STEM graduates could reliably double their earnings and get a massive house if they moved to the US, but most don't because their life is pretty good to begin with.
Also emigrating is difficult and unfamiliar. Moving is messy, especially when you have to manage all your political and business interests, which are often with your friends and family. You might have safety concerns after you move as well, and you're probably aware that you're on some ICC investigation list.
So this is definitely overdetermined, you don't need extreme power hunger.
An interesting book to contemplate in this context is Edward N. Luttwak's _Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook_. The first edition came out in 1968, and the revised edition in 2014. During that interval, the advice given in the original edition had been used both to help plan real world coups and to institute anti-coup changes in standard security practices around the world.
Luttwak offers some interesting insights regarding the various economic/political/security tradeoffs facing dictators in poor countries. One of them is that promoting capital goods accumulation for accelerating economic growth comes at the expense of state expenditures on the security apparatus and on propaganda, and thus puts a dictator at greater risk of being overthrown by his own military. Dictators in such countries have to prioritize taking care of their power base, not the people--Luttwak's data indicates that coups are a much greater threat to their survival than revolutions.
I pretty much agree with Jonas, but I also think it's not quite what Bryan was asking. I think a lot of people, if given complete power in a destitute and broken country, would and probably could make things better. Certainly the dictators could if they were so inclined.
The question Bryan is asking is whether, taking morality out of the equation, you'd prefer to live as the dictators do or as a regular person in a rich country. But I'm not sure you can take morality out of the equation. I think fundamentally the reason I wouldn't want to be an evil dictator is that I don't want to be evil.
Morality I think governs a lot of my behaviour, be it the food I eat, the company I choose to work for or how I conduct myself around others. I don't want to be an ass-hole.
Being a dictator means being immoral. A moral dictator would give their subjects the opportunity to choose how they are led. Mark references (medieval) European kings, and I would tend to agree that there were many good monarchs (at least by the standard of the day), but in those days democracy probably wouldn't have been thinkable since functioning democracies were not prevalent, so people didn't even know if it worked. Now the most prosperous countries in the world are all democratic, so choosing to be a dictator is choosing poverty for your people.
They find out he's smart and start asking him for advice. He suggests watering plants with water instead of sports drinks, among other things. They are about to execute him, then they see a plant growing. His advice worked. And then he's elected President.
You don't even need to be dictator. Just find one "quick win" that will convince people to implement the rest of your good ideas.
> Suppose a genie came to you and offered to make you the dictator of South Sudan.
I would become South Sudan's dictator and immediately start a population control x eugenics program (Islamist oppositionists to be disappeared by my secret police) while proclaiming it as a global crypto hub (within limits set by the CIA, I am not insane) and hosting an LGBTQ parade.
At 10M South Sudan will sadly never be a Great Power but I do expect it to become the Switzerland of Africa within a generation under my visionary leadership.
I would not expect that, as I'm not aware of you having a track record of successfully running anything, and you don't have any domain expertise about South Sudan. Human generation times are long, so you wouldn't get to see the results of your eugenics program.
Oh, and I can tell you read one of my comments on your last post, sir. Cause you paraphrased it: "they would rather rule in near-Hell than live pleasantly in near-Heaven"
Once you leave, your revenue source is cut off. Where do these people end up over time? Seems to me like the money tends to eventually run out, either for them or their children. They often aren’t the kind of people that can make it in the first world legitimately, rather than as a dictator that can do favors.
And I’m guessing they are the kind addicted to overspending, how many lottery winners go broke, a majority I think, and I imagine dictators are more extreme.
That’s one reason the most typical instance of someone that flees is some aging oligarch with no family or at least not family he cares about. It’s at least possible the money will last their last decade or whatever before they have a heart attack screwing some hooker.
Anyway, seems like there are risks to fleeing too that you’re waving off. Most do try to bribe their kids into working for first world ngos though (a second act in thievery).
Being the dictator of a small poor country would give you the opportunity to drastically improve the material conditions of millions of people. Look at Costa Rica vs Guatemala or Botswana vs. Zimbabwe. Putting in the right pro-market economic policies would actually be easier if you're a dictator. The population wants socialism? Too bad, this isn't a democracy.
Doesn't something like the anthropic principle come into play? Dictators who take such a deal leave, leaving people who wouldn't take that deal in charge.
Ironically, I think you approach this question from the naively egalitarian viewpoint of westerners. The only kind of westerner who would take the job may be a power hungry sociopath (though I think you underestimate how many would take it because they think they’d do a good job), but in many third world societies it’s accepted that the ruler has a right to live a life of opulence; in some the ruled wouldn’t respect the rules if he went about wearing sackcloth. Similar to old European kings. They weren’t all sociopaths, in fact many were clearly fairly conscientious. They just lived in a world where acute inequality between ruler and ruler wasn’t considered a moral problem the way it is in our society.
In short I think you lack moral imagination. Consider an extreme example: human sacrifice. You might look at a society where this is normal and note that no westerner would murder someone like that unless they were a deranged sadist, and conclude that this must be true of members of this society who do it. But really, in such a society you would find people who engage in human sacrifice but are also loving fathers, dutiful husbands, and law abiding citizens. The particular rules of the human conscience are largely socially constructed, so the correlation between one’s ’moral temperament’ and the morality of one’s behavior - according to any particular moral philosophy - tends to break down as you evaluate more dissimilar cultures.
Well said.
Are you kidding me? I would LOVE to rule a "third-world" country. (I prefer the term "poor country". It cuts to the chase and doesn't refer to obsolete cold-war alignments). But maybe I'm not a normal person! 😅😅😅 As my Californian wife says: "Abno ka!" But being normal is laaaaame. Say, didn't you write a book about that? https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Not-Stampede-Non-Conformism-ebook/dp/B0CRGRMLZV
I spent a year living in the Philippines and have travelled to many other poor countries as well. I didn't feel "sheer disgust" looking at the human misery around me. I felt compassion. And, I saw human misery. I saw grandmothers washing their grandchildren's clothes in dirty gutters. I saw children sleeping on sidewalks. I saw plenty of shantytowns. etc. I also beautiful people with beautiful souls. Who would invite you into their homes in the Shanty towns to sing Karaoke or eat Pancit or chicken Adobo. At least, if you were the ruler, you could do something about the misery and make life better for these people. And, as an expert economist, Dr. Caplan, at least you'd know what to do. I would probably go to you for advice, like all the time. Heck, send some students to me as interns. 😃 Let's have the "Virginia Boys" fix the Philippines! 😁
Have you never played SimCity, SimCity Societies or Tropico? (I just revealed my Steam Library! 😛) If you WENT to South Sudan or the Philippines and you SAW all the problems, wouldn't you kinda wish they would just give you a chance to fix them?
As I've mentioned before, I actually do think a lot of dictators are well-meaning. They just hold on to power for too long because their ideas aren't working ... yet. It's true that even good ideas take time to work. Generally longer than the 4 to 6 years until the next election. And bad ideas will never work. I think in the case of a lot of these dictators its the latter. A lot of them aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. Maybe it doesn't take that much intelligence to be a dictator. And most people aren't that intelligent. At least, relative to you, sir, or me, or your typical substack subscriber.
But, people like you, sir. Or me. People like us... Imagine... If we were given the chance, we could probably fix the Philippines. We wouldn't kill anyone or disappear anyone. We'd take a modest salary and, yea, hire several bodyguards. We'd allow free speech. And listen to those hwho disagree with us. But then calmly explain to them hwhy they're wrong. We would be benevolent dictators. We'd bring in free trade, end price controls, import quotas, zoning restrictions, licensed professions, etc. And hwhen the world is clamouring to move to the Utopia we've created in the Philippines or South Sudan or hwhatever, we'd let them in! We could really make a difference. We wouldn't hold on to power for some "giddy little jollies", we could really make a difference in the lives of millions!
This is hwhat makes us different than Stalin, Rocketman (Kim Jong Un) or Ferdinand Marcos. We'd actually be competent!
And you wouldn't want to take that opportunity if offered to you???
(Note: For the record, I am NOT planning to take over ANY country forcefully or unconstitutionally. Just wanna make that abundantly clear to anybody reading this. My point is: IF somehow, I were to become leader of any country, I am pretty confident I would do a damm good job. With Dr. Caplan's advice!)
I found a roadside karaoke machine in Baclaran and sang this with heart and passion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxFuQAIFyY8
Pinoy (sa puso) ako. Lalaban ako para sa Pilipino. Dr. Caplan, po, Pinoy tayo! Lalaban na TAYO para sa Pilipino! ❤
I think you're ignoring the fact that if you were to become such a ruler you'd be surrounded by people happy to murder you to take the power from you, and that you'd have to play their game to stay alive and have any effect.
If you could become a ruler and also be somehow invulnerable from all of that, then sure, it might be a great opportunity to do a lot of good.
Some kind of power hunger doubtless plays a role, especially in situations where someone could clearly safely abdicate and emigrate, but instead stays with an obvious risk of being overthrown or murdered.
But surely the more obvious explanation is just habit and status, and the uncertainty of a reward. If you're a poor Togolese, you'd obviously leap at the chance to make more money, even if it means a slight dip in status - going from a mid rung in a poor country and joining the bottom rung in a rich country. But if you're at the top of the ladder in Togo, your life is good in so many ways:
First, you're genuinely well-off - you have servants, greater access to illicit luxuries etc. to compensate for a lack of first-world conveniences. You can also travel relatively freely.
Second, everyone in Togo respects you. This is slightly tied to "extreme power-hunger", I guess, but more just a standard desire for status. The last time you visited France, no-one outside of your entourage treated you with any respect, even at international summits. If you emigrated, you know you'd be just another pleb speaking African patois in Paris, or an unwanted immigrant in Provence.
Finally, just habit. You're used to living in Togo - people speak your language, the climate and food are familiar.
Most people don't choose to emigrate for uncertain moderate increases in living standards. Most European STEM graduates could reliably double their earnings and get a massive house if they moved to the US, but most don't because their life is pretty good to begin with.
Also emigrating is difficult and unfamiliar. Moving is messy, especially when you have to manage all your political and business interests, which are often with your friends and family. You might have safety concerns after you move as well, and you're probably aware that you're on some ICC investigation list.
So this is definitely overdetermined, you don't need extreme power hunger.
An interesting book to contemplate in this context is Edward N. Luttwak's _Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook_. The first edition came out in 1968, and the revised edition in 2014. During that interval, the advice given in the original edition had been used both to help plan real world coups and to institute anti-coup changes in standard security practices around the world.
Luttwak offers some interesting insights regarding the various economic/political/security tradeoffs facing dictators in poor countries. One of them is that promoting capital goods accumulation for accelerating economic growth comes at the expense of state expenditures on the security apparatus and on propaganda, and thus puts a dictator at greater risk of being overthrown by his own military. Dictators in such countries have to prioritize taking care of their power base, not the people--Luttwak's data indicates that coups are a much greater threat to their survival than revolutions.
I pretty much agree with Jonas, but I also think it's not quite what Bryan was asking. I think a lot of people, if given complete power in a destitute and broken country, would and probably could make things better. Certainly the dictators could if they were so inclined.
The question Bryan is asking is whether, taking morality out of the equation, you'd prefer to live as the dictators do or as a regular person in a rich country. But I'm not sure you can take morality out of the equation. I think fundamentally the reason I wouldn't want to be an evil dictator is that I don't want to be evil.
Morality I think governs a lot of my behaviour, be it the food I eat, the company I choose to work for or how I conduct myself around others. I don't want to be an ass-hole.
Being a dictator means being immoral. A moral dictator would give their subjects the opportunity to choose how they are led. Mark references (medieval) European kings, and I would tend to agree that there were many good monarchs (at least by the standard of the day), but in those days democracy probably wouldn't have been thinkable since functioning democracies were not prevalent, so people didn't even know if it worked. Now the most prosperous countries in the world are all democratic, so choosing to be a dictator is choosing poverty for your people.
Jonas, take a deep breath. Feeling better?
In the immortal words of Alanis Morrissette:
Let's grease the wheel over tea
Let's discuss things in confidence
Let's be outspoken, let's be ridiculous
Let's solve the world's problems!
You ever see Idiocracy?
They find out he's smart and start asking him for advice. He suggests watering plants with water instead of sports drinks, among other things. They are about to execute him, then they see a plant growing. His advice worked. And then he's elected President.
You don't even need to be dictator. Just find one "quick win" that will convince people to implement the rest of your good ideas.
> Suppose a genie came to you and offered to make you the dictator of South Sudan.
I would become South Sudan's dictator and immediately start a population control x eugenics program (Islamist oppositionists to be disappeared by my secret police) while proclaiming it as a global crypto hub (within limits set by the CIA, I am not insane) and hosting an LGBTQ parade.
At 10M South Sudan will sadly never be a Great Power but I do expect it to become the Switzerland of Africa within a generation under my visionary leadership.
I would not expect that, as I'm not aware of you having a track record of successfully running anything, and you don't have any domain expertise about South Sudan. Human generation times are long, so you wouldn't get to see the results of your eugenics program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE
Make South Sudan Great Again!
Oh, and I can tell you read one of my comments on your last post, sir. Cause you paraphrased it: "they would rather rule in near-Hell than live pleasantly in near-Heaven"
Thanks for that, sir.
Once you leave, your revenue source is cut off. Where do these people end up over time? Seems to me like the money tends to eventually run out, either for them or their children. They often aren’t the kind of people that can make it in the first world legitimately, rather than as a dictator that can do favors.
And I’m guessing they are the kind addicted to overspending, how many lottery winners go broke, a majority I think, and I imagine dictators are more extreme.
That’s one reason the most typical instance of someone that flees is some aging oligarch with no family or at least not family he cares about. It’s at least possible the money will last their last decade or whatever before they have a heart attack screwing some hooker.
Anyway, seems like there are risks to fleeing too that you’re waving off. Most do try to bribe their kids into working for first world ngos though (a second act in thievery).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
Reading about life for him and his kids after losing power, it doesn’t seem great.
Being the dictator of a small poor country would give you the opportunity to drastically improve the material conditions of millions of people. Look at Costa Rica vs Guatemala or Botswana vs. Zimbabwe. Putting in the right pro-market economic policies would actually be easier if you're a dictator. The population wants socialism? Too bad, this isn't a democracy.
Have you not just established the moral obligation to become such a dictator if you believe that you can?
Doesn't something like the anthropic principle come into play? Dictators who take such a deal leave, leaving people who wouldn't take that deal in charge.