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Notes on El Salvador

mattlakeman.org

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Re: Notes on El Salvador

#151

Post by philwelch »

blackhawkC17 wrote: post #144
philwelch wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're getting the causation backwards here. Successful countries can maintain democracies, but when a democracy runs into a crisis it can't handle, it usually ceases to be a democracy. You're just not counting the failures because most failed democracies turn into some other form of government.

Hmm, good perspective. But doesn’t this seem to be a no true Scotsman fallacy? If you call all failed democracies not real democracies, you can write them off and only focus on the successful ones. Does a corrupt and poor democracy ceases to be a democracy? I agree that democracy is the best system when implemented well. I’m just pointing out that many countries have struggled to succeed as democracies because they l…

I think we’re mostly in agreement here?

I did say most failed democracies turn into other forms of government, which I think is broadly true. Consider Weimar Germany, Russia, and Zimbabwe as examples of this tendency. And while this is somewhat unfalsifiable, you could argue that any failed democracy that is still democratic is bound to eventually turn into another form of government eventually, or just to collapse into a completely failed state and de facto anarchy or civil war, like Haiti or Lebanon.

I definitely agree that many countries aren’t really capable of being successful democracies. Lee Kwan Yew famously thought this was true of Singapore, and judging from what he did with the place I wouldn’t argue with him. You should also consider failed attempts to establish democracies, such as Afghanistan.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#152

Post by donny2018 »

StrauXX wrote: post #148
whatever1 wrote: post #118

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…

No they don't. The issue with dictatorships is that your powerbase rurns from "the people" (or a wealthy subset of the people, depending on how well your democracy works), to a small group of powerfull supporters. Army generals, police chiefs and so on. Even if you were an angel, the power dynamics of dictatorships don't give you the ability of doing all too much for the general populace. Thats the beuaty of democrac…

A proper dictator will immediately remove all potential power from army generals, police chiefs, political party leaders and so on. He will not even remotely allow any potential challengers that are capable of consolidating enough resources to even think of causing any trouble.

On the other hand, he will allow his establishment to feed off the system, so they become dependent on him and remain interested in maintaining status quo and stay within the line. Of course, this is reinforced with brutal crackdowns on any form of dissent. He makes everyone worthless and replaceable, and makes it seem that it is very easy to lose everything if you show any disloyalty or try to push for your interests in a wrong way.

In the country where I'm from, military chief commanders were just some planted nobodies that were rotated every year or so. All political establishment was fully loyal and were too weak to even have fantasies on grabbing power.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#153

Post by megapolitics »

mixmixmix wrote: post #145
sexy_seedbox wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link the article? Sounds badly researched as Belarus and Russia are cold places with a lot more crime than hotter places in East and South East Asia.

You’re greatly misinformed. Russia and Belarus are tons safer than your average American or Western European city.

That’s just not true. The violent crime rate in Russia is many times that of any Western European country, and their intentional homicide rate is slightly higher than America’s. In terms of murder rate Belarus sits much closer to Western Europe than America, but it still sits above Western Europe.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#154

Post by imtringued »

screye wrote: post #8
stainablesteel wrote: post #5

> Rather, the best case against Bukele is that he has created severe systemic political risk in El Salvador by converting the government from a democracy to a de facto dictatorship then hes in a good place to introduce some kind of monarchy, or personal transfer of power, someday. people want him to be dictator for life and he seems to be loved enough to receive it. democracy doesn't deal with gangs well enough to ma…

As a cynical idealist, I once tried to find 1 country of decent size that could escape the poverty/mis-governance trap while being a democracy. I found zero success stories. Every 20th century economic success story was a defacto autocratic nation. They only transitioned to democracy after they'd reached a certain level of development. (I excluded preexisting high HDI nations and ones that accidentally hit mineral go…

The thing is, naive democracies believe that the IMF is giving them advice in their best interest, but in reality most countries that sent from developing to developed status had to break most of the IMF rules. I'm talking about countries like Japan.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#155

Post by suslik »

wolverine876 wrote: post #112
screye wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 econo…

> they are more important than all the programmers in Bangalore.

What do you mean by this?

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#157

Post by bluish29 »

philwelch wrote: post #62
bluish29 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The interesting one to watch out for is how often democracies form with the support of an existing democracy The more interesting one is how often a democracy can survive against democratic superpower wishes. I.e, during the cold war era, the US helped taking down more democratic governments than the USSR itself. That is a bit of ironic remark. People tend to forget that the US didn't like democracies outside its s…

Iran had already ceased to be a democracy by the time the coup happened. That was actually one of the precipitating causes for the coup, which had a ton of popular support at the time. Mossadegh was essentially a dictator ruling by means of emergency powers at the time he was overthrown, and even before that point, he had also interfered with the 1952 parliamentary election by stopping the counting of votes once the…

> That was actually one of the precipitating causes for the coup

Are you suggesting that the CIA was worried about democracy in Iran so they ousted him to give the absolute power to the king?

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#158

Post by legutierr »

whatever1 wrote: post #150
StrauXX wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. The issue with dictatorships is that your powerbase rurns from "the people" (or a wealthy subset of the people, depending on how well your democracy works), to a small group of powerfull supporters. Army generals, police chiefs and so on. Even if you were an angel, the power dynamics of dictatorships don't give you the ability of doing all too much for the general populace. Thats the beuaty of democrac…

Which works in long time scales as long as the players agree that they will play by the rules of democracy, aka respect the institutions. So democracy suffers from 2 main issues: 1) timeliness: some problems need to be solved now, not in 10 years. Example, need to decide your stance against Russia. 2) fragility from the inside: A malicious player can manipulate democratic institutions and convert it to an autocracy.…

> Not sure how one can design a system robust to these two threats.

The US at various time has had a system robust to these threats. A prerequisite has been an educated and well-informed electorate with at least a large majority committed to a shared set of national values.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#159

Post by lotsofpulp »

wolverine876 wrote: post #120
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If they want it, they will have it.

More like if they are lucky to have above subsistence living, and they (specifically the men) have sufficient time and are smart enough to organize and, eventually, over generations, create a culture of democracy and trust, AND a foreign power does not come in to meddle with progress or perhaps put in their own dictator, THEN “they” will have it.

I would even go so far as to say the process has to be started by consolidating power to one tribe, and then that tribe eventually adopts it. If you walk into a land with multiple competing tribes, and you enforce democracy on it, it will usually not work because there is insufficient trust/alliance amongst the people of the country.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#160

Post by nemo44x »

ks2048 wrote: post #25
screye wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a cynical idealist, I once tried to find 1 country of decent size that could escape the poverty/mis-governance trap while being a democracy. I found zero success stories. Every 20th century economic success story was a defacto autocratic nation. They only transitioned to democracy after they'd reached a certain level of development. (I excluded preexisting high HDI nations and ones that accidentally hit mineral go…

What are your top examples of autocratic success stories?

FDR. Packed the courts and ignored congress by way of emergency powers. Created countless agencies to perpetuate power in democratically and in perpetuity by virtue of the managerial state. Completely changed how America is run.

Not saying it was bad either. Just that he was an autocrat and extremely successful. The moment they could congress weakened the executive branch to the point of near uselessness as we see today.

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