[extropy-chat] How to bring down repressive regimes...

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Sat Jun 26 20:17:35 UTC 2004


--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> This makes the assumption that a repressive regime
> gains and keeps
> power based primarily on the ignorance and lack of
> free communication
> among the people.   I don't believe this is close
> enough to the full
> story.  In North Korea, for instance, one also needs
> to account for
> the extremely harsh living conditions and economy. 
> And no, history
> does not bear out that this was all the fault of
> said oppressive
> regime.   Some of it actually came from fallout
> after the Korean war,
> various embargos and so on.  Even a people that
> communicate freely and
> have access to outside ideals will not necessarily
> easily overcome
> those conditions or decide they are better off
> creating an internal
> revolution.

This is all true, however, it ignores that a freely
communicating people can start to change things.
Soldiers coming to raid your farm for food that you
had planned to sell so you could send your kid to
school?  Once they're gone, warn your neighbors, and
the soldiers mysteriously find less produce in the
surrounding farms...and perhaps a bit of produce winds
up on your farm's doorstep the next day.  Oh, and
there's these foreign guys who want to hear all about
it so they can discuss it with the higher-ups who deny
that raiding you is standard, if unofficial, policy
for compensating their goons and are wondering why
some of their goons quit government service to look
for more profitable jobs.  And then there's these
other guys who've come up with tricks and techniques
so you can produce more produce...

You don't need an internal revolution to destabilize
a repressive regime.  You just need the repression to
become less effective, perhaps until it's effectively
little more than what happens in Western societies.
At that point, regime change can be nearly bloodless.

> It should also be noted that the
> same technology
> purported to be a cure can be used in other
> applications for much
> greater surveillance and control of the people.

If remanufactured and reprogrammed, yes.  But that
takes resources these regimes typically don't have,
and until their governments acquire such (which
process usually involves the regime formally stepping
down anyway), this does not seem to be a realistic
concern.  There's a reason the PDAs have to be brought
into the country in the first place.



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