But if dictatorship were to be seen as the norm, and you couldn’t easily fall back on democracy, rule by committee, anarchy, etc, and had to choose between a few dictators, then the standards of dictatorial control would surely plummet and it would be psychologically much more difficult to change the form of organization.
Interesting. Do you think there are dictator-selection procedures that don’t have either set of failure modes (selecting for looks/promises to loot the commons/lack of leadership, selecting for power-hungry tyrants)?
Do you think there are dictator-selection procedures that don’t have either set of failure modes (selecting for looks/promises to loot the commons/lack of leadership, selecting for power-hungry tyrants)?
Only a single one: a great actually-benevolent-dictator, with a good insight into people and lots of rationality, personally selects his successor among several candidates, after lengthy consideration and hidden testing. But, of course, remove one of the above qualifiers, and it can blow up regardless of the first dictator’s best intentions. See e.g. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. So, on a meta level, no, there’s likely no system that would work for humans.
(I think that “real” democracy is also too dangerous—see the 19th and early 20th century—so either some form of sophisticated rule by committee or a state of anarchy could be the safest option for baseline humanity.)
Interesting. Do you think there are dictator-selection procedures that don’t have either set of failure modes (selecting for looks/promises to loot the commons/lack of leadership, selecting for power-hungry tyrants)?
Only a single one: a great actually-benevolent-dictator, with a good insight into people and lots of rationality, personally selects his successor among several candidates, after lengthy consideration and hidden testing. But, of course, remove one of the above qualifiers, and it can blow up regardless of the first dictator’s best intentions. See e.g. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. So, on a meta level, no, there’s likely no system that would work for humans.
(I think that “real” democracy is also too dangerous—see the 19th and early 20th century—so either some form of sophisticated rule by committee or a state of anarchy could be the safest option for baseline humanity.)
What about technocracy a-la china?
And FAI, obviously.
Really? Safe in the sense of “too incompetent to execute a mass-murder”? Also, anarchy is a military vacuum.