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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

This is not at all what I said, I suggest you look at HN guidelines.

When "we" "improve" other countries, it often doesn't come well. "We" tend to create power vacuums and help the rise of fundamentalist groups. "We" messed up Iraq and neighboring countries. "We" helped create the opportunity for the Islamic Revolution to occur. All of what I'm saying is documented fact, not conspiracy theories. Recent history.

All I'm saying is self evident to any thinking person: do not wish for the "collapse" of a nation state. Not unless you are willing to live there during its collapse. Not from the comfort of your home.

Having the decency to exercise some restraint before wishing for the collapse of anyone's nation state is a lesson we should have learned by now.

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I am a thinking person and I wish for the collapse of the Iranian, Russian, and Chinese nation states (among others). Some people always have a rough time in a societal collapse, but that would at least offer the possibility of a brighter future instead of perpetual authoritarian oppression. And, selfishly, it would eliminate threats to the US and our allies.

I don't think we should intervene military to cause such a collapse. But we should exert peaceful pressure to hasten it, just like we did with the USSR.

And the "crazy nineties" happened shortly after USSR's collapse. Hyperinflation, high levels of poverty, poor law enforcement, gang wars and high unemployment where things the average exsoviet citizen had to face in his daily life for years.

In some countries this was solved with external intervention (like adhesion to the EU) but others ended up being post-soviet dictatorships. In my humble opinion, we wouldn't have seen this many wars unfold in Eastern Europe if both Yugoslavia's and USSR's collapse had been better organized and supervised. Citizens of countries under oppressive regimes must fight against them... But avoid at all costs a power vacuum to appear.

No snark inteded, but how can a collapse be organized better?

Sadly it's not something that has an easy answer.

Trying to switch systems peacefully without losing total control of a country is not an easy feat.

Even countries that managed to do that like Germany's unification, Portugal (Carnation Revolution), Greece (military junta fall) or Spain ended up with regrets and damage that takes generations to cure.

Germany's unification? A huge mess and the damage is ongoing. Kohl bought votes by setting Ostmark exchange rates to 1:1. This took on all debt of the GDR at full price but got him favour with veryone with money in the bank. He enriched his cronies by selling companies and banks with credits in billions (taxpayer backed) for peanuts. He promised them "Blooming Landscapes" but they got sold out big time. What is blooming there? Fascism.

The USSR collapse was actively organised badly, at least in Russia proper, in the years following 1991. A neoliberal society was transplanted from whole cloth to the people. In reality, a few oligarchs-to-be in various ways acquired for free what had been state property. A ruling elite replaced by another ruling elite who could climb the ladders fast enough.

Had the transition not been so chaotic and fast, a lot of grief would have been spared.

But is there any reasonable way for that to happen without outside intervention from an organized entity? It seems like something that can’t happen “without bootstrapping”.

No, there isn't, but also it's a virtual certainty that you will have outside intervention. So the powers that be should take it seriously and try to reign in both official operators and buckaroos going over. Every opportunistic country and individual will take a shot, so standing back won't work either, unfortunately.

Why not wish for a peaceful transition to a more open and free society? China has already proven it can move towards being more open without collapse, for example.

Why wish for a peaceful transition? The best approach for China, and the world as a whole, would be for revolutionaries to summarily execute every member of the Communist Party down to the lowest village commissar. Communism is a cancer, and it's too dangerous to leave them alive.

Not often you get people on HN saying we should murder 90 million people.

> All I'm saying is self evident to any thinking person: do not wish for the "collapse" of a nation state. Not unless you are willing to live there during its collapse. Not from the comfort of your home.

I guess what's leaving you open here to hostile takes is that you're not mentioning other things to hope for instead, so some number are defaulting to interpreting your comments as "the status quo in Iran is fine".

Ah, but I can be asked about what I think and I will happily reply: I do not think the status quo of Iran is fine. I dislike Islamic theocracies and I don't think Iran does well in public freedom. I think it is a tragedy that Iran used to be closer to a democracy (yes, with a king and all, but still) and Western interference created the conditions for both a dictatorship and the horrible Islamic theocracy that came later and is still in power today.

I hope the Iranians get a better deal (hopefully without being part of some power game by external nations), because they deserve it.

I do not wish any families living in Iran to go through a "collapse", especially not a violent one.

See? If people reply to my comments with reasonable questions, I reply in a similar tone. When people go in full attack mode, they get worse responses. Which is the tone that HN should favor?

There's one common logical error we all often make, and it's becoming more relevant by the day. We naturally see things as being either a good choice or a bad choice. But in reality, you're often not choosing between a good choice and a bad choice, but between a bad choice and a horrible choice. So focusing on the bad choice being bad doesn't really therefore suggest that the other choice is any better!

Thanks. It's surprising to me that this needs stating, but it apparently does, here on HN.

Exactly. This is the exact logic people fail at when it comes to medication side effects. Sure, the vaccine has a tiny chance for this and that negative side effect, but you are not choosing between getting the vaccine and gambling on the side effect, vs not taking any risk, but gambling on not taking a vaccine and having a higher chance of catching the virus which has orders of magnitude higher chance for way worse side effects. It is a tradeoff with a quite clear better shot (pun semi-intended)

I don't think your analogy is right.

A vaccine has a small risk that it can cause harmful effects to a small subset of the population. The predicted outcome is very positive.

Societal collapse and power vacuums in Iran and neighboring countries have a high risk of resulting in harm to a large population. The risk is very high and it has happened before -- in the same country, even!

Collapse and revolutions, unlike vaccines, are a high risk gamble. They can, for example, result in the Islamic Revolution, ISIS or who knows what.

So I don't think the analogy works at all.

My point was more regarding the zero sum nature of these problems. Of course the “weights” are way different, but one situation is something everyone have experienced, so I don’t think it is a bad analogy.

The effect you describe is called a "moral hazard".

Have you ever asked yourself, whether you have any right whatsoever to "improve" other countries? It looks like this simple question is very rarely being asked in US..

I'm not from the US and I share the sentiment in the question you're asking. More importantly, I don't think any country has the right to hasten another country's collapse.

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