One thing that I never understood as a pleb non-Veeky Forums person is the motivation for dictators of failed states...

One thing that I never understood as a pleb non-Veeky Forums person is the motivation for dictators of failed states. What are the motives of dictators like Kim or Fidel Castro anyway? They clearly know the quality of life in their countries is shit, I mean they can't not be aware that Yuropeans and Murricans live much better off, right? So why do they still stick to their guns and screw their people over so adamantly?

Teach me Veeky Forums.

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A life of luxury for themselves and (presumably) their descendants, absolute personal power and the adoration of millions. Not that hard to understand.

quality of life is a middle-class meme

What does that even mean

there's more to life than all your subjects having television and mcdonalds

Pretty sure politics is Veeky Forums related.

IT IS hard to understand. They knowingly deprive even simple human rights from their subordinates, manipulating them to adore them, despite the population not seeming to have any sincerity put into it. From people who each has a life of their own, treated like cattle. It's as if the dictators are gluttonous outer space aliens void of basic feelings. Surely they could've tried to develop the nation, gradually expanding a system hindering psychopathic rulers to gain absolute power. Start a process that leads to democratic values. What's really hindering them from developing their nation, or retire and become a pensionist in a nice villa after a period of presidency?

I've tried to understand this. Through all the suffering they cause just to live like some middle class Swiss citizen. I'd wager it is upbringing. Never underestimate the ability a sociopath has to trample over other people to gain position.

To maintain and consolidate power.

O'Brian in 1984 sums it up pretty well

> They knowingly deprive even simple human rights from their subordinates
>non-westerners don't follow made-up western enlightenment ideals

Kim is a king, not a dictator.

When you have that much power over people you literally become a god. People that high up the social ladder probably don't even consider their subjects human. Plus pretty much anyone in that position is a sociopath by default.

>Cuba and north Korea
>failed states
Top meme friend, Venezuela in the other hand...

In the case of Castro exactly what could he have done to improve the lives for people in his country?
USA blocked most venues he could take and stepping down and scrapping communism as a whole would have just ended up with the US sponsoring civil war after civil war at the behest of their various corporations.

>They knowingly deprive even simple human rights
> human rights

The issue that you are having is that you are thinking to subscribe to them to high of degree of similarity to you. They do not see the world thru the lenses of humanism to any meaningful degree.
I know that it is likely hard to accept that anyone who is not a sociopath could be that way for someone raised in a environment were humanist values are praised. Part of the basics of western up-bring is to get you to empathize with the stranger, the other. On some level he is just like you and you are just like him. The other is a basically good/moral person who at times makes mistakes, but most of his differences come from a different point of view. Walk a mile in his shoes and you would understand why he does what he does. However the other is still much like yourself: a caring, compassionate, rational, and trusting person. People learn to think like that and thus take the hint that they SHOULD also be like that. Else they are not normal. The thing to point out is that is learned to think that, it is not human nature to think like that.

True human nature is mutability, nothing more, nothing less.

Back to the subject of how to understand dictators of failed states. The easiest way to overcome the barrier of understanding them to read up on two subjects. Firstly non western and pre-modern justice systems.Try to understand why what is rather cruel punishments to modern sensibility to be very rational to a pre-modern thinker. Next read up on the great many ways the west has fucked over various dictators or non western states under going a hard time of it ( Iran the first time they kicked out their monarch). The take away is that in their position the west can not be trusted and is out to get them. To them western culture is a tool of influence wielded by powerful foes. Example would be Libyan giving up its chemical weapons in the early 2000s and later on NATO inventing

Last time I looked on [spoiler]wikipedia[/spoiler]
They're not a failed state at all. Lets ignore their military prowess. Is it really that hard for normies to understand people can actually be happy in a totalitarian state?

i like having luxuries though, if you're still stuck worrying about necessities you pretty much are a failed state in my book.

'necessities' is a social construct.

Power. Some people LOVE power, and they don't much care who has to suffer for them to have it. Also, while the country may be devastate, the dictator lives in luxury and may be so sheltered from his people that he genuinely doesn't realise how terrible things are for them.

I do like what Castro did with Cuba desu. It´s way better than any other caribean shithole.

On the other hand, North Korea is a bloody disgrace.

>food is a social construct

Oh lerd

Prove it

They're assholes.
It's that simple.

>live like some middle class Swiss citizen
implying

It's a struggle for independence that in the case of NK has gone well passed the line of madness.

Opening up means losing control, which means allowing political factions to try to gain power, some of them as pawns of foreign powers, and this might result in civil war or the submission of the country to foreign political and economical interests.

Also, being a democracy doesn't equal prosperity at all. There are way more democratic shitholes in which people live like shit than prosperous ones.

Contrary to popular Western belief, however, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for all places and people. Not all dictatorships end in misery, and not everyone wants to live in a democracy. “A bad democracy might be worse than a humane dictatorship,” Pinker points out.

There is no proof that the desire for freedom and democracy is an innate part of human nature, Ezrow says. As long as quality of life remains high and people are allowed to live their lives as they wish, citizens can be completely happy under a dictatorship. Some even become nostalgic for the authoritarian regime after they lose it. “When I was younger, as a student in graduate school, I just assumed that everyone wanted to be living in a democracy,” Ezrow says. “But if you look at survey research in some countries under authoritarian regimes, people are happy.”

In other words, ending all dictatorships might not be ideal for everyone. As long as leaders avoid the inherent pitfalls of that mode of governance and take their citizens’ wishes into account, dictatorships are simply a different approach for leading a country, one that values order over individual liberties. As Ezrow puts it: “Some cultures may just prefer security and stability over freedom.”

This answers OP

I really don't think the Norks would be much better off if the regime fell. They'd still be poor as shit but they wouldn't have the deified Kim family and the desire for autonomy to keep them happy.

This

I hear the Swiss are all swingers, that's kinda like having a harem.

>le asian people can't into democracy meme

Japan and South Korea would like to have a word with you

>East Asian """""democracies"""""
They're about as democratic as Russia.

Freedom is another meme word. There's no freedom to do whatever the fuck you want to do anywhere in the world.

Political liberties is basically what defines a democracy, and this has been a relatively new thing even for Europe, which was restricting vote and participation in the political system to a fraction of the population until well into the XX century in many cases. People don't care as much for these liberties as they care for civil rights and economic liberties.

China is a good example of a country with zero political liberties but that opened up to extensive civil and economical liberties.

Children weep at the sight of him. He's basically a god

Yeah, things like education, health care and fulfilling jobs

>One thing that I never understood as a pleb non-Veeky Forums person is the motivation for dictators of failed states

Failed states according to you, not according to them

DELETE THIS

Are you implying that if Cuba wasn't socialist somehow it would be on par with the seats of capitalist power in terms of living standards?

Because that's retarded, as it stands it isn't that much worse than the poorer parts of Europe and is lightyears ahead of the rest of the Caribbean.

I feel like people that become politicians are a special kind of person. And revolutionaries like Kim and Fidel are even more eccentric and crazy

kim treats his state as a farm he inherited. the residents of the farm are property of the owner, kim un. very plain and simple, does make sense, but since the west think their morals are superior and being such divas, kim is deemed a dictator.

Why are you stereotyping?

>tries giving his people a better quality of life
>gets assassinated

If you let the West be your eyes, then you will be blinded. Kim Jong Un could make North Korea a democracy overnight, yet western media would still report this as a tyrannical act.

This is happening with Iran. Western media tells us that Iran is a tyrannical shithole and that every Iranian wants to kill westerners. Yet this video tells a completely different story: youtube.com/watch?v=_2LEgowbzSc

Alright children, you argue as if you are in highschool. Some attempts of explaining everything with moral relativism based on ideology or customs, but that won't do. Nono not at all.


OP there isn't one answer to your question. You have to look at each and every dictator to figure out the motives, there might be a whole different range of reasons why they act as they do. From insane psychos just doing it for power or believing themselves to be god, to cold hard logical reasoning.


Now you bring up the Kim regime in North Korea, a very interesting case that most likely is doing it for the latter.


Take the elite of North Korean society, including Jong-Un, what are they? They are living a relatively prosperous life with some luxuries, they are often quite well educated and know pretty well what is going on outside the borders of North Korea.


So what are their options for North Korea? And what are their challenges? Remember we aren't talking about the mass of people struggling to survive, but just the elite.


Their primary concern will be to protect themselves and their children from falling into poverty or being dragged into the streets and hung from the nearest lamppost.


They don't really have an interest in democracy or people in the country having a better life, because that would come with their own, probably violent downfall.

They act cold and logically in their own interest of self-preservation.