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buybuydandavis comments on Orwell and fictional evidence for dictatorship stability - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think you'd do well to distinguish between dictatorship and totalitarianism.
Ideological totalitarianism seems very stable to me in ways that a corrupt and venal dictatorship is not. Add in a panopticon that is already technically feasible, and there's little reason I see it can't last and last and last, particularly if the group in power sees benefit in the system.
Really? What examples do you have in mind? China (which has changed a lot), North Korea and Cuba (which survive because of isolation), the Vatican (tiny anachronism), and a few others?
Whereas large parts of Europe have been democratic since the end of the 1940s, and the USA, the UK and Switzerland have been pretty democratic for over a hundred years (I count the US since the end of the civil war).
This isn't a systematic analysis, but all the evidence available to me seems to scream that democracies are the absorbing states - once your country's been there for a while, it doesn't tend to leave.
Edit - moved to a different comment.