Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Notes on El Salvador

mattlakeman.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 210 posts

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#161

Post by nemo44x »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22
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…

I think democracy needs a “Deep State” to succeed. This can be imposed by a time of autocracy gradually evolving into democracy - see the UK, imposed during colonialism and then taken over after independence - see the Indian Civil Service, Courts, etc, or imposed by an occupying force - see Germany. Without that “Deep State” it will degenerate in alternating bouts of violence until people cry out for autocracy - See…

In any organization there will be a minority group of highly organized people with most of the power. We call them elites.

But there’s a difference between aristocrats and oligarchs. When people reference the deep state they are referencing what they believe are oligarchs that are self interested and use the state to advance personal goals of power and wealth. What they want but can’t usually communicate is an aristocracy that takes care of them and the country.

Oligarchy decays into populism eventually (years, decades, more?) as we see in many places now. Populists will call for a monarch. This has happened in El Salvador.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#162

Post by Gualdrapo »

cageface wrote: post #146
HlessClaudesman wrote: post #107

My friend from Central America got upset when nearly everyone at a London party took turns to do coke in the bathroom. He told me a pretty harrowing story of how his family had had their lives ruined by drug gangs. A colleague of mine was on a flight when balloon of drugs burst inside a drug mule. They died. Our appetites fuel a cycle of violence and depravity.

My experience traveling in Colombia was that they are generally quite down on it because of the harm they see the illegal drug trade has done to their country. It's the worst kind of resource curse.

As a colombian, I can confirm.

Yet there are people who still idolize Pablo Escobar or think that becoming a drug lord is the only way to be wealthy - besides being a (corrupt) politician, that is. FARC leftovers think that way and that's why they won't stop doing crime.

The criminal organizations that came from Venezuela ("Tren de Aragua", "Los Satanás") aren't helping either.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#163

Post by mycologos »

wolverine876 wrote: post #94
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…

When the government is the most powerful gang, with all the firepower of government, then they can seize power and overcome other gangs. But that doesn't reduce the gangs in people's lives.

> But that doesn't reduce the gangs in people's lives.

TFA says that before the crackdown gangs directly extorted money from civilians, and frequently threatened and murdered them. As far as anybody seems to be able to tell, the current government is not doing that. You can maybe argue that they are harming any innocents swept up in the crackdown, but the scale of civilian suffering seems far lower now. I don't get how that isn't "reduc[ing] the gangs in people's lives".

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#164

Post by mycologos »

julienreszka wrote: post #103

Despite the lengthy article I have so many questions and suspicions. For example: If the elections are rigged how did he “win” If he is responsible for the crime reduction, how did he do it in such a short time, how were the police trained so fast If the original crime reduction was due to gangs hiding the bodies is it really that unreasonable to think that what actually is happening is that the government is more ef…

TFA addresses all of these questions.

Briefly, the author's beliefs appear to be:

> If the elections are rigged how did he “win”

The election is partially manipulated by gerrymandering but won in the sense that Bukele's overwhelming popular support is real, and the gerrymandering only pushed him from "clear victory" to "almost total victory".

> If he is responsible for the crime reduction, how did he do it in such a short time

The crime reduction came because it happened at a time when both of its opponents (the gangs themselves, as well as anti-Bukele government forces) were weak. It may also have benefited from a decline in murders that had already started before Bulele took office.

> how were the police trained so fast

The police and army were less "trained so fast" than having been relatively competent for a while but hamstrung by insufficient political will/funds (this point is less well explained -- maybe because the gangs trade so much off honor rather than actually paying off economically, reasonable people find the police/army a more enticing career path?).

> If the original crime reduction was due to gangs hiding the bodies is it really that unreasonable to think that what actually is happening is that the government is more effective at hiding the bodies?

Maybe the government is fudging things, but even anti-Bukele organizations and media don't seem to think so, and Bukele's popular support in the absence of repression (yeah, Bukele is not a champion of free press, but he doesn't yet seem to police the actions of everyday civilians to the extent that they would all be scared and lie to a visiting ~journalist) suggests that the murder rate really is down, and not just faked.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#165

Post by keiferski »

tayo42 wrote: post #138

Skipping El Zonte (aka bitcoin beach) but covering btc use seemed like an odd choice. I was told it was mostly used by bitcoin tourists and foreign idealists. It was funny being told by a shop they don't accept credit, but only bitcoin or cash lol. Skimmed it, interesting thoughts overall.

Is Bitcoin Beach different from Bitcoin City? Because the latter is talked about extensively.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#166

Post by jenny91 »

I think the author is a tad naive on the worst-case scenarios. Bukele sounds a bit sociopathic: for now he seems good, but it doesn't seem he has the most principled world-view. With the god-level worship from his people and crazy high levels of support, I would worry about him turning into a lifetime dictator. You have to remember that Hitler was democratically elected for seemingly bringing back the glory of his country.

Re weapons making people feel safer: this is something I heard from Israelis (~2017) that for them seeing soldiers with big assault rifles makes them feel safer; for me it normally does not. I wonder what the conditions are under which this makes people feel good/bad.

Re innocent people ending up in jail and abused: I wonder how the number of people whose lives are now destroyed by the state is vs how many peoples' lives were destroyed (e.g. murders) pre-crackdowns?

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#167

Post by mycologos »

bradrn wrote: post #6

> As with everywhere else in the developing world, there are also a bunch of cheap Chinese imports […] Note: the images below this text actually show Korean writing, not Chinese.

(The author has since added a correction.)

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#168

Post by sfmike »

roenxi wrote: post #12
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…

The interesting one to watch out for is how often democracies form with the support of an existing democracy - I only have a loose understanding of the history but France seemed to have an outsized role in the US becoming what it is today. The failures (USSR, Republic of China for example) where democracy doesn't take on a wide scale are probably also interesting studies. The key problem in setting up a democracy is…

you forgot the word People's

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#169

Post by Spooky23 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #119
jjav wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

In a police state, it’s good to be a cop.

Re: Notes on El Salvador

#170

Post by nemo44x »

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.

He has weeded out corruption from within too so I’d say he has identified the root cause. The biggest risk they have is it’s difficult to replicate a great leaders abilities. It doesn’t scale well. So he needs to shift the culture during his era.
Post reply on HN