Thread:4th of Augustball/@comment-38190122-20200311185625/@comment-34650195-20200411164652

WestKoreaBestKorea wrote: is that so? time and time again, kings, absolute monarchs, dictators more oft than not fell towards self-gain. again, you stated that both Democracy and Totalitarianism are faulted by the nature of man. why would a single man, with a good majority of the power in the state, work for the betterment of the people if he could just as easily indulge in his own pleasures, whisking away political enemies, and silencing those he disagrees with? Joseon, North Korea, early PR China, the USSR, all eventually devolved into poor, impoverished nations in which most of the gains were aimed towards their respective supreme leaders.

and even if such isn't entirely the case, there's also always the vulnerability of incompetence and disconnect from reality - here, I lay down Tsarist Russia and the 1st Republic of Korea as case examples. And time and time again democratic leaders were after self-gain, expect their societies actually encouraged going after self-gain.

There are many people who honestly want to work for betterment of their people and country as well as what they stand for. It is one of the main differences between totalitarian and democratic societies that totalitarian societies encourage and promote self-sacrafice and working for the greater good while democratic societies encourage centering your activity around yourself and your individual desires and interests while rebelling againt collective good.

Joseon was a prosperous state. DPRK is internationally isolated and one of its main goals it so be fully self-sufficient, something that will naturally lead to a period where they will be poor compared to the rest of the world but what they view as a necessary sacrifice for their goal, which is independence and a stable prosperity in the future. Early PR China indeed wasn't the greatest example of prosperity but look what they have turned into today. USSR was quite wealthy during late Stalin's government and later governments febore Gorbachev.

How was Tsarist Russia disconnected from reality? And democracy is vunerable to disconnection from reality as well, in fact I would say far more than totalitarian states, something we can see around the world even today.