And when it’s not? Consider Ukraine. Or if you want to go a bit further in time the whole collapse of the USSR and its satellites.
Outcompeted by economic superpowers. Purge people all you want, if there are advantages to being integrated into the world economic system, the people who explicitly leave will suffer the consequences. China did not choose such a fate, but neither is it rebelling.
I don’t see why. It is advantageous for a leader to have satisfied and so complacent subjects. Benevolence can be a good tool.
Benevolence is expensive. You will always have an advantage in paying your direct subordinates (generals, bankers, policy-makers, etc) rather than the bottom rung of the economic ladder. If you endorse those who cannot keep you in power, those that would normally keep you in power will simply choose a different leader (who’s probably going to endorse them more than you are). Of course, your subordinates are inevitably dealing with the exact same problem, and chances are they too will optimize by supporting those who can keep them in power. There is no in-system incentive to be benevolent. You could argue a traditional republic tries to circumvent this empowering those on the bottom to work better (which has no other choice but to improve living conditions), but the amount of uncertainty for the leader increases, and leaders in this system do not enjoy extended times of reign. To optimize to fix this solution, you absolve rebellious sentiment.
Convince your working populace that they are happy (whether they’re happy or not), and your rebellion problem is gone. There is, therefore, still no in-system incentive to be benevolent (this is just a Band-Aid), the true incentive is to get rid of uncertainty as to the loyalty of your subordinates.
Side-note: analysis of the human mind scares me in a way. To be able to know precisely how to manipulate the human mind makes this goal much easier to attain. For example, take any data analytics firm that sell their services for marketing purposes. They can collaborate with social media companies such as facebook (which currently has over 1.7 billion active monthly users as data points, though perhaps more since this is old data), where you freely give away your personal information, and get a detailed understanding of population clusters in regions with access to such services.
Outcompeted by economic superpowers. Purge people all you want, if there are advantages to being integrated into the world economic system, the people who explicitly leave will suffer the consequences. China did not choose such a fate, but neither is it rebelling.
Benevolence is expensive. You will always have an advantage in paying your direct subordinates (generals, bankers, policy-makers, etc) rather than the bottom rung of the economic ladder. If you endorse those who cannot keep you in power, those that would normally keep you in power will simply choose a different leader (who’s probably going to endorse them more than you are). Of course, your subordinates are inevitably dealing with the exact same problem, and chances are they too will optimize by supporting those who can keep them in power. There is no in-system incentive to be benevolent. You could argue a traditional republic tries to circumvent this empowering those on the bottom to work better (which has no other choice but to improve living conditions), but the amount of uncertainty for the leader increases, and leaders in this system do not enjoy extended times of reign. To optimize to fix this solution, you absolve rebellious sentiment.
Convince your working populace that they are happy (whether they’re happy or not), and your rebellion problem is gone. There is, therefore, still no in-system incentive to be benevolent (this is just a Band-Aid), the true incentive is to get rid of uncertainty as to the loyalty of your subordinates.
Side-note: analysis of the human mind scares me in a way. To be able to know precisely how to manipulate the human mind makes this goal much easier to attain. For example, take any data analytics firm that sell their services for marketing purposes. They can collaborate with social media companies such as facebook (which currently has over 1.7 billion active monthly users as data points, though perhaps more since this is old data), where you freely give away your personal information, and get a detailed understanding of population clusters in regions with access to such services.