Just War Theory

I'd like to take this moment to apologize to anyone who's decided to read through these  initial 26 blogs. I think apologies are getting a bad rap these days, so I just through I'd throw one in, and make apology tours great again.

But, it's impossible to hide I'm in the middle of a rush job to achieve the A to Z challenge. Let me just say, while quality will be impossible to maintain, I hope readers will at least be left with some key points about how I see things. Then later, when its not about blogging challenges any more, we can see how these ideas might apply to political issues of the day, or how they came from philosophical, political and religious readings or investigations I did in the past. Just War Theory is a case in point. It will be impossible to do a complete investigation of a topic that deserves it more than just about any other.

Two kinds of  just war ethics

Ok onto the topic. There are two ways to think about Just War Theory. The first, and most obvious, is the ethical justification for waging war. Are there ever situations where war is just?

The second, outlines the boundaries for conducing war. Rules of war, like the Geneva Conventions come to mind. For the purpose of this blog, I'm just talking about the first kind; although, I have plenty to say about the second, if someone reminds me to do so later on...

The main rule of war - Reluctance

I wanted to cross reference a basic idea about war justification between Christian apologetics and a classic Chinese text, to show how wide spread and culture crossing the concept is. Showing something's wide acceptance, doesn't make it true. However, it makes a good starting point for later discussion.

So, reluctance to go to war and the related concept: ethical justification leads to reluctance. This is so because the very nature of adding an ethical foundation has a built-in reluctance in the formula. It's “baked in the cake”, as Americas like to say. For most of us, what is ethical, stands in contrast to what war is. War is a pragmatic approach to things on the *extremes* of social/moral acceptance. It is “politics by other means”; but, clearly the normal means have broken down.

St Thomas Aquinas had a certain predictability with regard to what he was going to say about war. Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek, so there were only going to be limited ways any Christian could consistently talk about doing any kind of violence, never mind engaging in war. He and St. Augustine are pretty true to that pattern: they show an extreme reluctance to enter war.

Sun Tzu's difficult benchmark for war

Sun Tzu, who's work, "Art Of War", which I skimmed through for the first time in many years before writing this entry, showed near agreement on war justification, that was close to stunning to me.  He went beyond the need for an ethical justification. He argued, it was best to be RIGHT about the issues being fought over. Notice the difference between this and propaganda, where you are merely trying to convince people of your reasons.

Sun Tzu literally thought the side that was right about its convictions could count this as an advantage on the battle field. That isn't to say, convictions are going to win any  fights without a proper supply line. But, holding those things equal, the side that's right about why its fighting, will have an advantage.

Very few wars qualify as just wars

The moral underpinning, even in the case of Sun Tzu, for a just war, means that very few wars are going to be just.
If you are not defending yourself or not helping someone you are not trying to stop a force that's truly "evil", It's already going to be questionable if you can meet the ethical conditions for war. Wars for adventure, to create opportunities for one's industries, not only, do not pass the ethical standard for a just war, they, in the long run, fail to meet their own objectives, and they, through their short shortsightedness undermine the military plan itself.

Impeachment

In political conversations with Americans, they often want to impeach the leader of the other side. Unlike countries like Canada or Israel, however, where courts can charge a leader with a crime, the American system offers its president and head of state, immunity from such legal recourse. The leader can eventually be charged with crimes after his/her term has ended; but, not during.

In most parliaments the Prime Minister is not that different from other elected ministers. Like them, he represents a single riding (or district, as they call them in the US). In a country like Canada, it's the party, its policies, loosely tied together by an ideology, and the Prime Minster combined, that's elected by the population. The PM, btw, can be defeated in his/her local riding/district race.

In USA the districts and the president are given power in separate elections. The White House and the House of Representatives (along with the senate) stand in political opposition to each other as checks against each other.

Removing a president from office is based on two 2/3 votes: one from the House of Reps ...the impeachment... and one from the Senate...the conviction. That is, the check on his leadership is vote based, that is, it's a political mechanism, not a rule of law based one. And this is why, I like to argue, the American system is not based on rule of law; but rather, a system based on balance of power.

Hans Rosling

The main thing I want to say about Hans Rosling is that he, along with Nate Silver, opened my eyes to the power of statistics. While I agree with the statement, “You can prove anything with statistics”, I don't believe any position holds up when you start digging into them more deeply. Sometimes, astounding, inevitable and even anti intuitive conclusions can be made from them.

Here are two Hans Rosling lectures that made me re think many of my preconceptions about whats going on in the world.

The Best Stats You've Ever Seen

This first video Rosling challenges ideas like “poor countries have big families” and what “developing country” means.

Don't Panic – Hans Rosling Showing the Facts About Population

The second video Rosling shows the facts about population. Basic question: Why did population increase in Bangladesh while women had increasingly fewer children over time? No No No NO! Don't Switch Off! This video gives the answer!

Rest in peace Hans Rosling, who recently passed away. Many of us will be thinking about your ideas represented through big animated charts and over excited commentary for a long time to come!

Geopolitics

Recently, a friend, who I assumed was a completely reasonable person, phoned and said, "The problems we have today are all based on geopolitics." He then went into a detailed explanation about how the federal reserve was controlled by aliens.

Conspiracy theories aside, I was quite frustrated by his use of the term, *geopolitics*. So lets go over what it really means.

Historically, groups of people created stable communities when they settled resource rich tracts of land surrounded by natural, geographical barriers. Typically the kinds of barriers we are talking about are rivers, mountain ranges and oceans etc.

Before we go on, “stable” here does cover a wide range or social/political systems. This includes kingdoms or tyrannies, for example. So stable, here, just means a political system that lasts even for a relatively short period of time.

So its easy to understand why Egypt, for example, had long lasting, “stable” kingdoms both within its borders; and, when it came under the control of the Roman empire. It's natural borders included the Mediterranean on one side and its large supply of fresh water, brought by the Nile, made it the breadbasket and center of that region's power (no mater who controlled it) for centuries.

We can also see why the European part of the Roman empire had much of its border politics play along the Rhine and the Danube rivers. Their mastery of the political issues that developed along these rivers (both through diplomacy and war) is one of the key reasons they were one of the longest lasting empires.

But, just like large, stable, resource rich, areas surrounded by natural barriers become centers of power (in one way or another); areas broken up, divided, or exposed to a larger culture, (thus giving them little natural defense), become fault lines, buffer zones and “choke points” where instability and conflict never seem to go away as empires use these zones against each other.

What we now call The Balkans and the region surrounding Syria, seem like troubled regions now; but, they were during Roman times as well. These “broken” regions separating big powers from each other, have been pawns and buffer zones of those same big powers for centuries.

So the next time you hear, Americans or the Russians should stay out of Balkan or Syrian (or Ukrainian issues, for that matter) because these regions have “nothing to do” with issues back home; consider if the commentator is talking realistically, in terms of geopolitics. Or, maybe just blame it on the aliens in the federal reserve.

Free Trade

Suppose someone wants to build a factory in China. What are the reasons for blocking them? When companies are at home whats the point of protecting them with tariffs? Here is a list of some of the reasons some hate free trade. They are followed by some quick responses by me.

Objections to free trade:

1) Building a factory in China hurts local workers.
2) The factory builder has the duty to support the country that gave him roads, education and all the other things that lead to him being able to have the wealth and power to build factories.
3) We need to be “nationalists” and put our workers first.
4) Trade deficits are bad.
5) There are local companies that will go under if we don't protect them.
6) An “international game” develops that allows rich and powerful to break laws. We have to stop free trade in order to stop these international players from avoiding rule of law.

Responses:

1) It's innovation that helps workers in the long run. That's what improves their standard of living.

2) This response gets things reversed. If you want roads, a good education system and so on, you need a dynamic society filled with ambitious people. It's not the roads that facilitates this. It's the opportunity to be ambitious and part of something dynamic...

3)This begs the question. Will we really make our workers better off by enacting protectionist measures? I think we will make them better off by giving them a better standard of living, opportunities a more dynamic society and so on...

4) A country, by having a big market of consumers, attracts lots of goods and services from other countries. This leads to its own population having a better standard of living. Why? Because they pay less to have more and better things they need and want in their life. How many tv's and cars do the countries with the big market attracting others have?

5) Some companies may go under if they do not make their product cheap or good enough to compete with the foreign products. I agree this can cause short term harm. But, just like the people who made stage coaches ultimately benefit from the creation of cars; others benefit from technology and innovation. Let's add that foreign countries that “unfairly” block/protect OUR (whatever our home country happens to be) products just end up hurting their own people's standard of living.

Let's consider an important objection to 5.)

5a) Losing your manufacturing job “now” is worse than losing the stage coach job was in the past. The cars replacing stage coach makers were made locally.

Response to 5a)

As I understand it 5a.) is basically saying: The situation is fundamentally different now to what it was years ago when the black smiths and the stage coach makers lost their jobs.

The above statement is not factually true except in the following sense: New jobs being created are increasingly specialized and are often beyond the skill level of current workers. That is, there was a gap in skill between stage coaches and cars; but, we are still able to make cars with workers without extremely specialized skills. Sketch artists and computer programmers are not so easily handed “unskilled” work.

Thus the problem, in modern times, isn't the lack of jobs; but, the education gap between those who lost their jobs (in manufacturing for example); and, skills needed where there are job shortages. This problem is compounded by corporate/office culture (or academic culture) where there is a shortage of higher paying jobs. Will the anti establishment, union culture, prepare these workers for jobs that pay at higher rates? Learning new skills is not the only challenge these workers face. They must learn to be ambitious.

6) Let's make a distinction between enforcing rules on international players and stopping the benefits of free trade. If it turns out that its correct for businesses to pay taxes then enforce taxation law. If labor or environmental standards are the problem, then enforce rule of law to protect these standards. (A separate question might be whether some of these standards are actually good; but, let's assume for the moment there are at least some standards most would agree on.)

If NAFTA or WTO or the EU allowing agreed upon standards to be broken, then let's re negotiate any agreement to help a nations enforce rule of law. We should not, btw, open up these agreements for the purpose of sabotaging them or bringing about a “nationalist” agenda. Such opening of agreements should be done in good faith.

Additional Arguments/Comments:

7) Free trade isn't just an economic issue. It's a moral one. If I try to sell a book to someone outside my country what place is it for my government (or the foreign one) to step in and charge me or a foreign buyers a prohibitive fee? Even if a utilitarian argument could be created to justify such a policy; it would have to be demonstrated harms for “everyone” has reached a threshold great enough to over rides rights of individuals and business. Most trade examples are not going to meet this standard. Certainly not selling books across borders, for example.

8)It's easy to villainize big international players like Apple; but, take a look at Upwork.com or Freelancer.com and note: many of the international players are individuals and small businesses. Big companies like Ebay, Amazon and AliBaba are in essence providing structures or “rails” for these small players to operate. Yea, they get super wealthy in the process of doing so...

9) The benefits of free trade is a counter balance to war. Take a look at the US/Canadian border. Once one of the most militarized borders in the world, it is now recognized among the friendliest. Let's not pretend there is some kind of inherent friendship between these two nations when American troops were burning down peoples homes in their vigilance to capture Fort George.

It was, “the benefits of co operation”, that made this border peaceful; and, I'd argue, the way forward to making others more friendly as well.

Environmentalism and Poverty

How do we improve peoples lives and decrease harm to the environment at the same time? Our high standard of living is maintained by digging up minerals and changing the landscape for farming and city planning. Do the solutions of one problem create barriers to solving another?

Lets go down the rabbit hole a bit further with our assumptions: Increasing the standard of living of many nations has lead to a decrease in their birth rate. As women get jobs they have children in their 30's instead of their 20's or not at all. Decreasing poverty, at least in theory, should lead to a decrease in population. And whats the best thing we can do for the environment? How about decrease the population?

The Demographic “Crisis”

If policy makers focused on making their peoples' lives even better there should be an eventual population reduction.

We've see this happening already. An array of nations as diverse as USA , China, Russia (along with much of Europe) and Japan have experienced decreasing birth rates. The lowering of their populations has only been offset by nations able or willing to drastically increase immigration. Many refer to whats going on as “the demographic crisis”. But, to my mind it's not a crisis if its our goal to lower the population. If we focused on standard of living instead of GDP growth as a political target we would also have a goal that doesn't directly include having a greater population as part of what its calculation rewards.

Poverty Reduction

At the same time, poverty reduction, as suggested by demographics expert Hans Rosling, is leading to a long term downward trend in population, of the impoverished countries targeted. Areas of the most extreme poverty, such as, Bangladesh, have already shown a big difference. Population growth didn't decrease right away because of the increased number of people surviving sickness; but, birth rates did. The long run projection of population is that it will eventually follow suit.

So those of us who care about the environment should not just jump on the extremist bandwagon just yet: It's not quite time to start sterilizing the population in mass numbers. At the same time, we can't just sit on our laurels and hope things will solve themselves. Poverty reduction has been something of an active goal by many charities and other NGO's, and other forces outside the populations receiving the help.

Underlying this all we have to think about the unique character of human beings and how the principle of unintended consequences tends to put what we would think of a direct cause and effect result into question: After all, The Black Plague lead to an *increase* in population.

Disparity

There are many articles out there about income inequality.  They assume its unfair one guy can make a billion or more dollars while hundreds of  millions live in extreme poverty. The problem, is an attack on the rich wont help the people at the bottom.

Articles and conversations on the subject, including the one that lead to this post, do not attempt to establish the connection between disparity and problems for the poor. Disparity is often demonstrated then stated as a problem in itself. The benefits of getting rid of disparity are not. How to get rid of it is even further removed.

The reality is that as the number of billionaires have increased the number of world the worlds extreme poor reached record low levels. Extreme poor is defined here as people earning under $2 a day. These record low levels were reached in 2006, 2012 and again in 2015. The question I have been asking myself, since I first heard Fareed Zakaria talking about this issue on his PBS show (about 2006), is couldn't it be possible the extreme rich and extreme poor get better at the same time?

Note: I am not saying there is a cause an effect relationship between these two classes. I am also not discounting such a relationship.

Poverty is still a terrible problem in the world. At about 700 million or so by the World Bank's $2 definition, we still have a long way to go. Still, that's a big drop from what it was in 2012, about 900 million.

Anyways folks, don't always assume everything is a zero sum game.

To see more on this issue check out the World Bank's section on poverty:
http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview

Corruption

Google “define” states corruption as, “Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.” This standard definition sticks it to those in power, which is how the term is used by most people. But, a more expanded idea can take it beyond politicians and bribes.

Imagine someone wants to do something that has a law or sanction against it. Let's say, a married man wants to have an affair. So he sneaks around at night; maybe, creates fake ID for hotel rooms. He obfuscates the trail of clues that leads back to him. This obfuscation of the truth is a metaphor for corruption. It's the “system” he builds to help him live his normal life, with wife, kids and job unaffected by his sanctioned behavior.

Now, in those few moments when this guy is tired of the stress of lying and hiding things, we could imagine he wishes he could live in a different kind of world. One, where he could just do what he wants, truthfully. Straight forwardly, even. Without the lies, wouldn't things be so much easier? This kind of questioning of barriers, parallels the libertarian point of view. The honest, straight forward approach, it's assumed, would lead to things being so much better. A person is going to go after what they want, anyways, so let's just get rid of the lies, obfuscation ..the complexity; and, just let people do what they want.

I'll leave it as an open question whether the libertarian point of view should be adopted in the case of affairs; but, you get the point.

To restate the basic principle: You have a social value or law; and, a system develops to try and circumnavigate the “barrier” to the thing desired. This circumnavigation may be completely legal; but, there will be consequences. Namely, a less transparent, usually more complicated set of systems used for the circumnavigation. (Not to mention, the risk of a frying pan to the head.)

Black Markets

When a drug is banned people find a way to buy it anyways. For the right price, someone will scheme to get the product in another country (or make it in a lab). They smuggle it into the country and take the risk of confrontation with the state's law enforcers. For this to happen, the smuggler/lab producer is paid a premium. The amount must be high enough to cover the cost of the product, as well as, the risk they take to fight the legal system.

According to our framework, corruption is the subsystem that arises to get around society's laws or social value. In this case, drug dealers build an organization, including lab workers, smugglers, sales staff and other risk takers, to get around society's barriers. The system of corruption can become violent as they inevitably clash with law enforcement.

Investment tools created to circumnavigate US Real Estate Laws

The following is a more complicated example of our corruption principle. It would be impossible, given the scope this blog to cover every detail; but, here is the summary: A major company, Freddie Mac, was created, with a lot of input by the US government. Its purpose was to help facilitate the secondary mortgage market. One of the ways it did this was create investment tools related to real estate.

At the same time, the US has laws which put barriers on real estate investments across state lines. Freddie Mac's investment tools were designed to circumnavigate these barriers; or, at least not be in conflict with them. To achieve this, there was a combination of lobbying for some legal changes; and, the tools themselves contained enough complexity that US real estate laws wouldn't be broken. These investment tools, in other words, reached a level of complexity that went beyond the scope of the US and state laws to contain them.

Their role in the financial crisis

Real estate tools were created by other institutions, emulating Freddie Mac's; and, additional, secondary tools, were created that worked along side ones of this first type. This second type, in effect, added a layer of complexity to the contracts/legal relationships investors and banks would see at the end of the process.

When the financial crisis came these investment tools “gummed up the works” because the different banks couldn't understand (quickly enough) whether certain investments based on resultant contracts could be used as collateral. (The attempt to describe all of this exponential complexity, in a general way, is itself, near impossible to contain the messiness!)

The time it was taking to understand these investments played a major role in the credit freeze which took place between banks. Complexity and obfuscation was a major barrier to investigations by the banks and authorities.

In this case, nothing illegal happened. Even if we assume politicians didn't take bribes during the initial lobbying process the “corruption” is still there, however. There was indeed a legal sanction in place; and, a regime built up over time to create a LEGAL subsystem to get around it. The “getting around” was legal; but, the resulting regimen was necessarily complex. This very complexity, was one of many factors that lead to the catastrophic consequences of 08. It was one the key factors that combined to create the perfect storm for that year's “black swan”.

Circumnavigating the law

In both the case of drugs and avoiding trade/investment barriers, a set of systems can develop to facilitate this circumnavigation. It's possible this type of system gaming was facilitated by unnecessary law; but, whether you agree with the law or not, they corruption problem and resulting transparency problem, happened because there was some kind of market demand to get around the law.

Politicians Taking Bribes

Is there a complicated construction zoning law, a local politician, knows how to get around? Is there some other kind of permit he knows how to get his “customers” under the table? Again, the corruption, is the system that develops as the politician and his “team” are interested in circumnavigating.

It follows, a system with a lot of laws blocking things people want to do will develop a set of “black market professionals”. Whether these are politicians, civil servants or drug dealers, who sell their expertise at a premium on getting around these sanctions, it has the same underlying principle.

Approaches to corruption - Simplicity or Sanction?

The approach to corruption is at least two pronged. There is deterrence or punishment of the politician, civil servant, drug dealer, or adulterer. Another way of doing things would be the removal of the law, sanction or social barrier. The legalization of alcohol in USA lead to a drop in the organized crime surrounding it. Although there have been negative consequences, like drunk driving accidents, many of those problems existed when alcohol was illegal. An objection to this argument, might be, those drunk driving accidents happened far less frequently when drinking was illegal.

Whether there is a law or not there will always be behaviors and practices society frowns on. Some wanna be adulterers might find a partner who is willing to have an open marriage; but, then my question is, what sanctions will they impose on their partner?

Black Swan

What is the Black Swan?

A Black Swan is an event that is unlikely or surprising. It's not unlike the term, “Dark Horse”, which can refer to a player or competitor, who no one thought would do well; although, black swans are a wider range of things including unexpected physical events. Lately, the usage has come to focus on catastrophic events, like the financial crisis in 2008.

Credit for the popularisation of this term can be given to Nassim Taleb, who wrote a book, also named, Black Swan. This book was credited for predicting and explaining many aspects of the financial crisis of 2008.

Black Swan – Historical Usage

In 1697 Dutch Explorers saw black swans for the first time in Western Australia. Up until that point, the term "black swan" referred to what was thought of as a non existent bird. So, to say, “its like a black swan”, meant it was something impossible.

After the sighting of actual black swans, the term transformed. It came to mean something unlikely that may later be disproved

Black Swans in Philosophy

Notable in the field of philosophy, is the "Black Swan Fallacy". As a fallacy, this has been credited to John Stuart Mill but its not clear to me if it has a single author.

As I understand it, this fallacy goes something like this: Someone claims, because something hasn't been experienced, it can not be so. Eg. Jimmy says, “We have never seen black swans therefore they do not exist.” As happened historically, many people not having witnessed black swans, didn't mean they didn't exist.

How Experts Make Things Worse

Here is how the Black Swan applies to economics, social science and therefore politics:

You have experts who, if you follow their advice, give you confidence against a bad outcome, in the field they are experts in. However, when something bad happens in that field, the confidence these experts gave you, make things worse. Why? Because the confidence they gave you made you less wary of the bad outcome.

Example from the financial crisis:

Experts gave investments a “triple A” rating they often did not deserve. Some people who bought these investments found out they were built on a completely shoddy foundation; but, by then it was too late. Now the crashing value of these investments were doubly hard on the owners because they hadn't even considered the possibility there was a problem. It was..a double gut punch, so to speak.

The Danger of Taking Black Swan Ideas Too Far

I think there is a danger of going way too far with black swan thinking. For example, I read the following idea in the Black Swan entry in Wikipedia: Every significant event in history is a black swan.

Are the only significant events in history the catastrophic or surprising ones? This is taking things too far! Those who get too deep into the lore of black swan ideology, perhaps the result of a kind of pessimism, risk going off the rails with their analysis. I guess many good ideas can be taken to extremes or applied with too much reductionism.

A counter example to illustrate what I mean: Consider a long establish system of farmers working their farms every day (and bringing their goods to market). By doing this they feed hundreds of thousands of people. The sheer ordinariness of what these farmers do, day in and day out, does not make what they do less significant than the financial crisis or the great depression. In fact, this particular pattern seems more critical than those catastrophes.

And, that, my friends is where we come full circle. For, at any time, something can come along, to take down this “established system”. And, sometimes this unexpected event is beyond our ability to predict it...

Authoritarianism

A commentator claimed, authoritarianism was a made up and meaningless attack term. By the end of this blog, it is hoped, its meaning will have returned.

Local Rejection of Rule of Law

In many detective novels and thrillers there is a kind of supporting character that is willing to “cross the line” in order to help the protagonist in the name of justice. This character could be played by a chief of police or a computer hacker. They do everything from break into the villain's cell phone to reveal his tax returns.

What is the writer doing by telling this kind of story? Society has laws. Tax returns and cell phone data are private information. Why is it OK to create some hero's helper who can undermine these rules?

Readers of thriller novels are rewarded by fictional teams that don't play by the rules. It's all in the name of pursuing a just cause. An escape from real world frustration, where rights can mean, the bad guy gets away. Think OJ Simpson.

This is authoritarianism at the local level. In the big scheme of things, even the chief of police is just a small guy trying to do the right thing. Sure, he bends the rules a little; but, it's OK, because you have to do what it takes to get the jerk criminals. Until, some guy in uniform tells you, you're the bad guy, that is.

Macro Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism at the National Level

Rather than make a comprehensive list of the ways authoritarian leadership works at the top a couple of specific examples will be used to illustrate it in the context of democracy. Namely, crime and breaking bureaucratic deadlocks.

Where as, at the local level, we might have an honest cop perusing justice, at the top we have, WAR ON CRIME! Take, Rodrigo Duterte, leader of the Philippines, for example. He boasts, he personally kills criminals! No such thing as rights for scum bags in Manila or Quezon. Because even with a little slack, these folks will use their drug money to game the system and create chaos. Someone had to step in to protect the people...right?

It's not just about bending the rules to put the badman in jail. It's about flaunting who had the power and the will to bend the rules in the first place. It takes a special person to break the law for justice.

Breaking Deadlocks and Breaking Faces

Coalitions. Compromises. Committees. The three evil C's of freedom. Democracy seems filled with a lot of road blocks to getting anything done. And when things do get done its a watered down version of the initial proposal. Nobody is ever happy.

By having general elections we end up with regions, different economic classes and other special interests at the table. How else are we supposed to create policy that represents the general will of the electorate? But, when these competing interests and ideologies start to lock the system. A growing frustration begins to grow, especially among the voters who wanted a particular policy there seem to be a decent amount of agreement on.

Take health care in USA, for example. The groups most opposed to competition across state lines are the businesses themselves. The Republicans can't agree among what the general approach to health care should be. Never mind the left, who had a bitter, contentious fight that lasted 13 months, before they came up with the hardly agreed upon, Obamacare. And, it was the passing of this bill which is most often credited with their election defeat in 2010. (Note: My Democrat friends claim it was gerrymandering ;-))

Then the authoritarian pops up, promising to resolve the deadlock. No explanation is given on how this magic act will take place or why the normal process of coalition building is such a bad idea. All the reasons for disagreement are ignored, of course. All those different groups and regions seeing the problem differently are just dismissed as bureaucratic bs by the authoritarian.

The Paradox of the Democratic Authoritarian: Populism Undermining Rights

The authoritarian, if he comes on the scene at the right time, can truly ride a populist wave to victory. Why? Because the people, at such a moment, have been caught when they don't have the patience to wait for cops and courts to co ordinate on being in accordance with the constitution.

When it comes to policies, they are sick and tired of waiting for all those different groups at the "table" to agree on anything. NOW is the time for action. Because, action is the one thing, we the people, never seem to see. (Its also not clear being jacked up on soda chips, pop and video games is helping them with that patience thing either.)

The authoritarian has a decent chance to gain in popularity because he's delivering the goods. But, to succeed, he's going to have to undermine the rights of his supporters; because, what does cutting corners mean at the end of the day? How do you make these short cuts magically appear?

Whatever, pass the potato chips!