"Benevolent Dictatorship" is meaningless so stop suggesting it.

Yes, you can't please everyone. Doesn't change the fact that Dictator may keep 99% of population happy, safe and generaly have them voluntary hold opinion "rather him than other form og goverment".

There are always revolutionaries, people who want different. They are in US, they are in F Inland, they are in China. Whenever it's communist, facist, democratic, theocratic or whatever goverment they want, there will allways be them. Whenever they pose a threath is different matter.

Okay, so internal corruption and external revolutionaries are two constants that remain with all goverments.

This. And every now and then, even in times not needed, we need them to remind us of what freedom and democracy really mean!

You and I are using two different definitions of accountability. I'm saying in an evil democracy, there is no accountability in that no one knows who is actually responsible, nevermind the ability to actually punish. In a dictatorship, you may not be able to punish the dictator because of force of arms, but you know who is accountable for the actions of the government. And the thing about people is that they will tolerate authoritarianism to a point...its when you go beyond the point, like Muammar Gaddafi and others in his league that, should you be caught at a weak moment, you will be destroyed by that people. It is true that weak moments are rare, but the price one must personally pay for that is often what leads to the collapse of their regime in some form or fashion.

Neither system is particularly better than the other. Its case by case, always has been, always will be.

That's a big pronouncement you're positing there. No revolution ever came from the bottom.

The fact of the matter is, as long as first-world nations are content to sit by and watch you dominate, your domination will last forever. And even if it doesn't, you can rack up a lot of grisly fun in the short run.

Thats just as much of a generalization.

And in anycase, the actual grassroots may not always be the ones to pull the trigger themselves, but it is usually their revolts that provide the catalyst (as either an excuse or because the ruler is too weak from fighting them off) to oust the dictator in question.

thread hop:

i am more than willing to be such a leader, i will lead this nation to greatness as the supreme power of the world

Explain to me the logic of "the litmus test of a bad dictator is that he gets overthrown."

Well I was only talking about the worst of the lot (and yes, there are shades of gray in these things), so thats what the litmus test was for, just that extreme.

The reasoning is that while we won't find a "perfect people" who could administer a "perfect democracy", there could be a majestic, perfect genius dictator. It's still stupid, though.

The Indian Revolution did, no? While Gandhi wasn't exactly poor to start out with, he certainly wasn't rich, either.

My Indian history is sketchy at best, however.

Revolutions come from the bottom all the time, the only thing is who leads the aftermath of the revolution. In Russia for example, it wasn't at ALL guarenteed the Communists would gain power. In fact, it was mostly an accident mixed with a few Butterfly of Doom decisions.

A benevolent dictatorship requires a benevolent dictator, and an effective means of enforcing his will. A benevolent democracy requires a benevolent, rather than merely self interested, public. Much harder to arrange.

There are basically two ideas behind a benevolent dictatorship. One bad general is better than two good ones (multiple people in charge harm each other's efforts more by working at cross purposes than they help by pooling their abilities,) and even given good education, it's easier to find one person who knows how the country ought to be directed than a lot of them.

USAF: What Indian Revolution?

Gandhi's revolution.

There wasn't one, India was just simply too expensive to run when you're skint and have a foreign power who owns all your debt telling you to decolonise.

The gigantic marches and protests couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it.

That's more of an independence movement, though, I grant you that.

Actually it wasn't USAF, Harry Truman and then his successor, Ike used the Marshall Plan debt as a stick to beat the European powers into giving up their empires

Not true. By the 1930s, the Crown had already been loosening its control of India thanks to Gandhi's movement (which was making the Empire's only profitable colony ungovernable and yet done so in a way that couldn't justify extra expenditures like a terrorist group would be), and had it not been for WWII, the only difference would be that India would be a Dominion akin to Australia and Canada which the Indians would have been just as keen to convert into a Republic soon after (thanks to Jalianwala Bagh, had it not been for that, India would still be a Dominion). The war merely hastened its downfall by maybe a decade, and some suggest that the war actually delayed progress in some cases because the British needed Indian soldiers to balance out Britain's troop differences with both Germany and Japan.

Eh, I can't say I'm angry about that.

We're off-topic though, so I'll just leave it alone.

It was a revolution.

Deal with it.

It was a colonial revolution. Which doesn't apply to the ethos of regional dictators getting overthrown.