Comment by marcus_holmes
4 hours ago
Because they'll turn on each other.
In an authoritarian regime, it's all competition, no co-operation. Whoever the big dog is gets to say what happens, right up until a bunch of the little dogs drag him down and then fight each other to replace him. If he's lucky and skillful he'll have worked this out and kept the little dogs at each other's throats so they don't gang up on him.
The whole operation of government becomes about "who's the boss?" and the boss gets to run the government to favour himself and his cronies, acquiring more power and wealth.
Any pause to consider the ordinary folks caught up in this is a weakness, that will be taken advantage of by the other wannabe bosses.
It's not a utopia for any of them because of the constant paranoia and fighting. Try to rest on your laurels and enjoy the spoils of what you got for a second, and boom; you get thrown out of a window.
Nah, billionaires understand class solidarity (not intentionally, but coercively, because they have to to get where they are). They'll carve out fiefdoms where they don't step on each other but step on all us (for a tech example, see ISPs)
On the way up, yes. But once they're there, no. As soon as the only way of getting more power is to take over someone else's fiefdom, all that class solidarity disappears.
See the recent purges of the military leadership in China. Or Putin's cronies continually accidentally falling out of windows. It's not safe near the top.