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Comment by vegabook | Hacker News Reader

"Democracy is like a tram. You use it to get to you destination, and then you get off" - Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The West was seriously duped by this guy. I remember The Economist's self-deluded/deceitful decade-long, apologetic editorial line, never letting a mention of the islamist AKP go unqualified with the adjective "mildly" (read: "market friendly"), and it is ironic that one of the most effective Brexit camp scare tactics was Turkish EU accession, when it was Britain under Blair and Cameron who were the most vociferous advocates of the policy in the first place.

The fix is in. This "coup" is a transparent manipulation by Erdogan so that he might grab absolute power. Who knows what havoc he will now wreak in the region, and in Europe, with it.

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He made GDP go up.

The West has also spent the past decade and a half fawning over the genius of the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA for the same reason. Look into their glorious human rights record, or the level of inequality there for that matter. Makes the USA look like an egalitarian utopia.

Dubai is another one. Look at those skyscrapers! What a dynamic economy! Never mind the slave labor and the caste system.

I'd throw Singapore in too. They're nowhere near as bad as the PLA or Dubai in practice but they are essentially totalitarian at heart. But the numbers look good and the streets are clean so it's okay.

Side note:

One thing that's disillusioned me about libertarianism is that the past 30-ish years of history seem to have proven that capitalism and economic health are absolutely compatible with totalitarianism. IMHO the Randian notion that the two are at odds and that a dynamic economy requires freedom and justice has been empirically proven wrong. Slave states work. GDP goes up. What's not to like?

>Slave states work. GDP goes up. What's not to like?

They work when they're sitting on a mountain of oil, or Singapore's equivalent: a shipping bottleneck. Sort-of, at some point corruption becomes intolerable, or the oil runs out (or becomes too cheap to pay for the oppression).

That said, the Singapore comparison may be a little far-fetched, they resemble the West far more than the totalitarian Middle East states.

Pretty sure Singapore gives the death penalty to drug dealers. Maybe even drug users, but I do know at some point the minimum punishment for any drug dealing was death.

You're going to have to provide a lot more than that one example to show me that Singapore is a "totalitarian" state. Just recently the entire State of Louisiana's "Justice" system was shown to be in cahoots with the private prison industry, for example. And judging by the "Making a Murderer" documentary, our entire judicial process resembles a totalitarian police state circus much more than any other developed nation. Singapore is a "totalitarian" state? Fine, by your standards, the US is a 2nd rate Banana Republic.

The more your economy relies on creativity and education of the workforce the less productive a slave will become compared to a free man.

So yes, economies relying on slave labor can outcompete our economies in sectors where masses of low skilled labor are required (because of the lower price), but once these economies move up and require highly skilled labor they'll usually get into trouble.

There's an easy solution to that: create a caste system and ensure that knowledge workers (who are willing to tow the line) belong to the upper caste. Of course it's a Faustian bargain, but just make sure it's a cushy enough deal with the devil and nobody complains.

It need not be codified into law. It can be accomplished by way of a severe wealth disparity, a glass ceiling, stratification of housing, stratification of education, etc., and a legal system that treats upper class people significantly better than lower class ones. Everyone is technically a citizen subject to the same laws but in practice a different set of laws apply to you based on your wealth, occupation, connections, and what neighborhood you live in.

Edit: yes the US is a bit like this, but you can take it a lot further.

Gosh, that sounds a really terrible place to live.

So glad the US isn't like that...

> ensure that knowledge workers (who are willing to tow the line)

If you're a semi-meritocratic secular authoritarian state like China that isn't too difficult. If you're a religious conservative authoritarian state, that's close to impossible. Knowledge workers are willing to live with authoritarianism as long as it doesn't overly restrict their personal lives and interactions, and religious conservatism is all about restricting personal lives and interactions.

That sounds like the world of Hunger Games.

Libertarianism is first about freedom. It's in the fucking name. It's not about "economic growth."

Obviously caste systems and totalitarianism are at ideological odds with libertarianism.

Oh, thank goodness that he doesn't fundamentally misunderstand the concept or anything! moans

Reminds me of the bitter colonialists' quip during the period of African independence: "one man one vote. Once"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote#One_man.2C_o...

Or Terry Pratchett on the Patrician:

"Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man, he had the Vote." (Mort, Terry Pratchett)

That was the /anti/ colonialists, I believe.

I've mostly heard it in echoes referring to later events, and am not clear on the origins, but intuitively it makes the most sense as a statement by the opponents of decolonialization commenting on the likely results of democratic elections after the departure of the colonial authorities, so it makes sense for it to be the colonialists rather than the anti-colonialists.

I agree Erdogan is using this as an excuse to seize complete control, but I don't buy the fake coup conspiracy theory. The military had no reason to agree to help Erdongan do something like that, and who would volunteer to get tried for Treason?

The military never liked Erdogan and he's been locking up military leaders for 'plotting' against him for years. Some of them finally got fed up with him, but made a mess of it.

the theorists are saying something more subtle happened. Either of:

a) A coup-credible general or two or three, would have been bribed to trigger it, so that Erdogan could identify his enemies red-handed. The rest of the plotters in the army would have been under the impression a real coup was happening. This would explain the quick surrender of the bridge soldiers without a fight, because the horrible reality that they had been duped would have dawned upon them.

Or possibly more likely:

b) Noises and rumours were discretely circulated by his agents that Erdogan was preparing a large purge. This is credible because it is reported the list of all the 3000 judge firings, for example, was pre-prepared (as you would expect with such a large number). Tactical leaks to the right people of would have forced an immature half-baked coup plan hastily and prematurely to be executed, in panic and to protect themselves pre-emptively from said purge. This is the scenario where Erdogan basically raised the stakes in order to call their bluff, and thus flushed his enemies out into the open.

Personally I find the consequences of this "coup" to be much too neatly convenient for Erdogan, the purge too pre-meditated in appearance and logistically well organised, for the finger of prime suspicion not to point directly at him.

Erdogan has been terrified there might be a coup for years. The idea that he'd deliberately manipulate part of the army into actually trying to overthrow him seems very thin because he'd be far too worried the coup would actually work. Could he really trust the instigators of the fake coup to back him and not go for a real coup? There's no way he'd ever take that risk, he doesn't trust anyone in the military. It's like asking someone with a pathological terror of guns to play Russian roulette. Yes you could win big, but consider the down side.

The Middle East is full of conspiracy theories like this. Pretty much everything that ever happens is either an Israeli or American plot or both. I get that there are actually a lot of conspiracies and plotting going on in the region. But sometimes a failed coup is just a failed coup.

I can kind of buy the big purge theory, but Erdogan would have had big lists of political enemies anyway whether he was actively plotting a purge or not. In fact hundreds of military personnel have already been tried an jailed for plotting and disloyalty over the years. Along with stripping opposition politicians of immunity and planning to try them for treason, he was already carrying out a step-by-step purge anyway. I don't think the coup plotters had any need to know about or believe in anything more in order to see what was happening and decide a coup was worth a shot.

Is there a link to this quote?

Earliest I can find is a NYTimes reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/the-east-in-the-w...

Search for streetcar.

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