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Notes on El Salvador

mattlakeman.org

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Re: Notes on El Salvador

#111

Post by blackhawkC17 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #105
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy has largely worked and ushered in widespread economic and social development in the West. The issue is that many cultures are quite incompatible with democracy, unlike the West. Many countries are still stuck in a culture of tribalism and corruption and keep voting horrible leaders (the vast majority of Africa and a few in Asia and Eastern Europe). But I agree with you that people should have a say in who l…

> many cultures are quite incompatible with democracy, unlike the West That's an old excuse of dictators, one of a series of obviously self-serving justifications for their taking power and oppressing others. Consider the cultures worldwide where democracy has thrived: The 'West' (Western Europe/US/Canada), Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia (S Korea, Japan, Taiwan - the wealthiest part of China by far, per capita…

I agreed with you in my statement. Democracy works excellently when done well.

The problem is that figuring out how to make democracy work is one of the hardest tasks on earth (I’m living in a country suffering from terrible corruption and tribalism under democracy).

Yet, I still said that I prefer a system where people choose their leaders…it’s on them to make it work.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#112

Post by wolverine876 »

screye wrote: post #102
thisislife2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite true - and even with democracies like Japan and India, it is quite apparent from their early history that they were kind of autocratic democracies with one large party / leader / family in power for a long period. In India, the Indian National Congress ruled for nearly 5+ decades since independence, and 3 of its Prime Ministers were dynasts (Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi) from the same family. Note also th…

I'm Indian, I would seriously question anyone who considers India to be an 'economically successful' democracy. 400 million Indians still make less than many sub-saharan African nations. India is admittedly stable. But it was very much an economic failure. Things only started turning around in the mid-90s.

Let's not forget that before the 1990s, there were the partitions with Pakistan and Pakistan-Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi's seizure of power ...

> 400 million Indians still make less than many sub-saharan African nations.

Yes, and they are more important than all the programmers in Bangalore. Also, non-Hindu Indians, including those who are Muslim, are relegated to second-class status (which also must affect their economic opportunity).

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#113

Post by jjav »

wolverine876 wrote: post #92
yichi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictatorship is very good at combating crime if it's under good hands (which itself is a tall order imo), just look at Singapore, the problem with dictatorship is the lack of accountability and 99% of dictators simply suck at governing hence democracy is usually better since most dictators have a severe case of Dunning–Kruger effect. People like Bukele and Lee Kuan Yew are very few and far between.

Do you have evidence of the first sentence? Or is it circular?: If crime goes down, they are 'good' dictators. What about the victims of those dictators, who lose lives and families and freedom? They don't much benefit from the 'good'.

> If crime goes down, they are 'good' dictators.

Crime nearly always goes down with dictators, that's not a good metric. The question is how many completely innocent people have their lives ruined or lost in the process.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#114

Post by ip26 »

1270018080 wrote: post #98
roshin wrote: post #89

If the extremely low crime rate is true, that is amazing. However, my concern is that as a de facto dictator, he can fudge the statistics. Just like Mussolini was credited for making the trains run on time only to later be found out that he simply forced the news to report that the trains ran on time. Although, if, as the author writes, people on the street love him and they all claim that crime is down. Then maybe t…

I think this reduction in crime is only temporary. You still have a poor country full of desperate people, and it's only a matter of time before the criminal enterprise vacuum gets filled by the next generation. The slate did get wiped clean, but the root cause is still there.

A protection racket fills a power or monopoly on violence vacuum. The current government would seem to be filling this vacuum today.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#115

Post by wolverine876 »

thisislife2 wrote: post #76
bitcurious wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US became absurdly wealthy during the 20th century. Canada did well too. Poland, Czechia, Estonia and a few other recently independent democracies are thriving as well.

Can you really disregard its imperialistic history here - the foundation of the American economy was built on slave labour and colonisation (even if it was a late player), and you wish to completely ignore the role of the early western settlers in America.

> the foundation of the American economy was built on slave labour and colonisation (even if it was a late player)

I thought the slave states were significantly poorer than the free states, a major advantage of the North in the Civil War? I'm sure it's been examined, but would the South have been better off with paid labor of free people? Countries using that model do far better. Imagine someone trying to compete with slave labor against a modern enterprise.

For colonization, that seems to have played a minor role in the US economy?

My understanding of the pre-industrial or non-industrial US economy is that it's most powerful engine was the Mississippi River basin, which is something like the largest continguous amount of farmland in the world with navigable waterway access to the sea (and thus a way to get goods to market, as overland transport was much too expensive - compare a barge to a horse, or even a train).

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#116

Post by wolverine876 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #106
wolverine876 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historical humanity was nothing like what you have now, a product of generations of modern democracy which has yielded the most free, most wealthy, most prosperous places and times in the history of humanity. For ~95% of human (homo sapien) history, we were hunter-gatherers. Everything else is a recent phenomenon. Even starting with settled, post-hunter-gatherers, democracy wasn't common at all until the last couple…

I have never voted, and can’t vote in the country I live in. And I’m perfectly happy with it. You could say I voted with my feet and my wallet. There are plenty of ways to wield power without voting. I know it’s a touchy point for people, the justifications being if you’re taxed then you must be able to vote. I know plenty of people who would give up their vote to live tax free. Then there is also the draft, if you c…

> I know it’s a touchy point for people

You don't need to try the BS characterizations of people who disagree with you. Just make your argument.

You may know people who make those choices, but those are their choices, their democratic, free choices, and they can change their minds tomorrow if they don't like how it's working out. That's the point - they choose, nobody else gets to choose for them.

> The point I’m making is people are thinking the two options are dictatorship or universal suffrage democracy and I’m saying not only does a middle ground exist but that middle ground used to be the default.

And the same questions apply - see the GP.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#117

Post by schoen »

ojbyrne wrote: post #81
rsync wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I drove the entire pan American highway from Alaska to Argentina ..." How did you cross that part of Colombia that is impassable and has no road and blah blah blah ? Genuinely curious as I was dissuaded from a similar trip by the supposed inability to go all the way through Columbia.

You take a ferry. https://www.fodors.com/world/mexico-and-central-america/pana...

That ferry isn't currently operating. (If you follow the link, the operator's site has been replaced with a domain squatter site.)

I've read a number of articles about the Darién Gap, and they all indicate that there have been several ferry operators in the past, in some cases for years at a time, but that there's currently no regularly scheduled service. For example, Wikipedia states this several times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap

Wikivoyage suggests that you can make it by boat if you're willing to fly part of the way, and/or that you can make private arrangements with a shipping company that can transport cars.

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Darien_Gap

My understanding from these and other articles is that people with enough money can buy access to sea transportation for themselves and/or their cars, but that you can no longer just buy a ticket for any kind of regularly scheduled departure. But this could conceivably change again in the future.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#118

Post by whatever1 »

Quoting from the article:

"The whole point of democracy is to spread political decision-making and create approval-based feedback loops with the population so that good leaders are elected and bad leaders are deposed without resorting to violence. Dictatorships concentrate power to permit more state dynamism but at the expense of this dispersed risk. This makes dictatorships a higher risk-higher reward proposition. A good dictator can do more good without democratic constraints, but a bad dictator can do more bad."

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#119

Post by wolverine876 »

jjav wrote: post #113
wolverine876 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence of the first sentence? Or is it circular?: If crime goes down, they are 'good' dictators. What about the victims of those dictators, who lose lives and families and freedom? They don't much benefit from the 'good'.

> If crime goes down, they are 'good' dictators. Crime nearly always goes down with dictators, that's not a good metric. The question is how many completely innocent people have their lives ruined or lost in the process.

> Crime nearly always goes down with dictators

Wow, I am pretty well informed and I've never seen that. Do you have evidence of it?

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#120

Post by wolverine876 »

blackhawkC17 wrote: post #111
wolverine876 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many cultures are quite incompatible with democracy, unlike the West That's an old excuse of dictators, one of a series of obviously self-serving justifications for their taking power and oppressing others. Consider the cultures worldwide where democracy has thrived: The 'West' (Western Europe/US/Canada), Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia (S Korea, Japan, Taiwan - the wealthiest part of China by far, per capita…

I agreed with you in my statement. Democracy works excellently when done well. The problem is that figuring out how to make democracy work is one of the hardest tasks on earth (I’m living in a country suffering from terrible corruption and tribalism under democracy). Yet, I still said that I prefer a system where people choose their leaders…it’s on them to make it work.

> figuring out how to make democracy work is one of the hardest tasks on earth

Lots and lots of places have done it. But yes, it can be difficult - it's up to the people, like everything else. If they want it, they will have it.

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