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Maybe—just maybe—there are legitimate goals other than efficiency

Founding fathers would like a word with these freedom-hating (except their own) wannabe dictators. Also, WTF: "Thing A is great when thing B is true about thing A" when thing B is pretty much *never* true about thing A. "Benevolence" for some is inevitably oppression for others.

I didn’t see my dad for most of my childhood. I started seeing him as an adult (he raised my siblings) but pretty early on he espoused on the “benevolent dictator is better than democracy” (in like 2003?) and I was like “mom wasn’t lying, he really IS an asshole”.

As the last few years have taught us, “efficiency” really means “dismantle a bunch of well-established infrastructure and programs that are actually very important and necessary, and pass the savings on to tax cuts for billionaires and megacorps.”

We had all this before. We know how it will go beyond any doubt. So many very clever people have written about this for thousands of years. Why are we so hellbent on doing this again?

Has this guy ever read a history book, or gone to school. Every fascist in history destroyed their country, robbed their country & the people blind, many starved their people, they abused & locked up people just for disagreeing with them and on and on. FFS, these assholes are all insane.

Yeah, try telling them that the benevolent dictator is going to be AOC and see what happens.

It's the tiniest step from this quote to thinking "all these pesky people with their demands for respect & a life of dignity - we should eliminate them to reclaim our efficiency". The entire point of Step 1 is to make Step 2 possible, of course.

I'm starting to think the scientists do the work while the rich scumbag AI trogs tell us, with their orctech fascism fully engaged, that they're geniuses & they've learned it's good to be ruled by incels with no conscience.

is definitely not a dictator. I often think that if people had to earn their right to vote by proving they are sufficiently informed on a topic instead of just believing propaganda we would have better elections. There are many more versions in the grey zones that make more sense than dictators.

It's the whole Plato's Republic's "philosopher king" thing except they ignore the actual philosopher part and the wisdom and mental flexibility required for that and instead decide benevolence is defined by Ayn Randian objectivism. A nightmare, really.

Maybe Bloody Stupid Johnson

Sorry but if a banker said to me "Just give me Power of Attorney and I'll control your money and assets for you. I'm better at this than you, and it'll be incredibly efficient" I'm going to laugh at him. NO we don't want a dictator. Especially one who's already been convicted of crimes like fraud.

also, i would love to hear the people who say this kind of shit list some historical examples of "benevolent dictators." there's a reason the quote about how absolute power corrupts absolutely is so famous...

History reminds us endlessly that a man may start out as a "benevolent dictator," but the very fact of possessing the power to dictate rapidly destroys the benevolence.

The bureaucracy, the waste, the red tape…that’s what makes it stable. That’s what makes it good.

The problem with benevolent dictators is that you give up the power to guarantee their benevolence. Then you're just stuck with a dictator, and that famously sucks

I'm sure rich guys have always thought that they should be in charge of the world, but I don't remember it being treated like it was newsworthy. Were there nyt interviews with the pets.com CEO asking her opinion on the viability of democracy?

Normalise asset seizure for criminal activity.

Myriad of reasons billionaires should be stripped of most of their money, and I don't know that I've encountered a single reason that didn't make good sense...

Polyethylene glycol 3350 is efficient. Doesn’t mean we all should be taking it constantly.

And let's not even get *started* on Om....

At some point the Roberts court is going to skip the whole “money equals free speech” middleman and go straight to “money equals votes”.

Dude, buy an island and establish your dictatorship. Here, efficiency is not our greatest value.

benevolence for me, tyranny for thee

A "benevolent dictator" chosen by me would be significantly better than democracy, but since I don't trust anyone else with the choice democracy it is.

But Sir, haven’t you heard of Lord Snapcase? He’s much better than Lord Windor!

This also fucks up your family life because you eventually forget how to sacrifice for another person

But without bank account numbers, how can they know is is the Most Person?

You also end up in a bubble where everybody who works for you tells you how smart and right you are all the time. Even after you promised not to fire them for disagreeing with you, so they must be telling you the truth, right?

Not one follow-up question?!?! How would this work? What happens if s/he stops being “benevolent?” Who determines what benevolent means? What are some successful historical models of this?

From my personal experience it’s 1.5 billion. Sorry dude but you didn’t pay me near enough to tell me how to speak, where to speak or not to prevent one or more people from dancefloor injuries. He paid me $0. I don’t take orders for $0.

Historically even if an autocrat is competent and well-liked they don't last forever. Having their idiot kid take charge and run the state into the ground is somehow the good option usually, with the bad being a violent succession war

I know of only one person who has more or less fit the benevolent dictator bill and he's a Discworld character and probably would not describe himself as such. In fact, to be a benevolent dictator, one probably has to not believe one is one.

And no, our progressive celeb faves are not exceptions. Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon and John Leguizamo all do stupid anti-housing nimby stuff with their money in NYC.

News flash for these people: every dictator in history has been a "benevolent dictator" from the dictator's perspective!

“This person has amassed a massive fortune through a series of very shady and often illicit dealings, thus, their opinions on the structure of society are valid and worth listening to,” is a crazy way to live.

Money gives you the ability to confidently assert things that are the direct opposite of true (democracies outperform autocracies by every conceivable efficiency metric over the broad course of history, see attached) and have nobody call you on it.

What does efficiency mean to a "benevolent" plutocrat dictator. Why, the same thing it meant when they were exploiting people to become a plutocrat. Efficient creation of wealth for the benevolent super-plutocrat who now has access to 100% of the GDP.

It's as Scarface said: first you get the money, then you get the power, then you start making the miraculously non-zero-sum universally beneficial proclamations.