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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 29 Dec 2023 \ on: Reflections from my time in Shanghai tech
This is such a great writeup. So many good and non-obvious points.
Maybe this one is my favorite:
It's good to reflect on what can be, for a while, some very nice features of authoritarianism. From everything I read, the peeps in El Salvador are over the moon about what Bukele has done, because their lives are less chaotic. It seems like a great tradeoff for them. It probably is a great tradeoff for them, at least for now. It's all a matter of perspective.
I dunno if you travel regularly, but please, keep doing stuff like this.
Interesting that you should mention Bukele and El Savador, because for most of the 1st world Asian countries, they did require some authoritarianism to bring them into the modern world. For example, Taiwan didn't really become a democracy until the 80s. But good on them, they were able to successfully transition to a democratic society without bloodshed. Sometimes it seems like you might need a strongman to bring order out of chaos, and the question is whether that power can be relinquished peacefully
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