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Comment by dragonwriter

2 days ago

If the country has to survive and recover rather quickly, not collapse, for your prosecution scenario to be likely and effective against any significant share of the people who caused this.

12 comments

dragonwriter

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ithkuil  2 days ago

It's astonishing how many people really seem to think that total collapse / destruction of a system can be an effective way for fixing things

  • cbg0  2 days ago

    It's kind of a childish view of the world; The expectation is that all the "quality" people will rise up and fix the problems of the country, but my perspective is that the political class is just a reflection of the people, so the existing idiots will just be replaced by new idiots, unless you raise the average somehow.

  • thingswecantsay  2 days ago

    To respond to both you and the parent at once.

    1. While dragonwriter's point is not entirely wrong, I also wouldn't say I agree either. Czar Nicholas was "prosecuted" quite rapidly after the russian revolution.

    2. The problem, ithkuil, is if the population does not see any other way to effectively fix things. (System capture, pareto distributions, disenfranchisement, etc.)

    As an aside, I created a new account for this vs. my normal because I've wanted to speak more openly than I can on a work-associated profile for a while now, I will be keeping this account lest anyone thinks it's astroturfing.

    • ithkuil  1 day ago

      I understand the _impulse_ of wanting to destroy the status quo. But it's immature reaction and it's very common in teenagers and young adults.

      Most positive progress has been done via hard work, sacrifice and time; most basic rights that we all give for granted now have been achieved that way and not by violence and destructions.

      Yes, there are occasional counterexamples when people had to get rid of dictators via violence, but that worked because gradual, grinding, collaborative progress under such rulers was not allowed.

      What we're witnessing today is not that: we don't have a strong system that systematically represses people who have a different opinion and discuss new ideas; we have a system where people are increasingly immature and want results fast because their attention span is limited, take huge achievements for granted and are willing to burn everything down because they think it's a game and they have never lived under a civil war