> He was addressing a debate over how leaders should act—whether they should follow their citizens’ wishes or act in the interests of future generations, against current pressures.
There's a third option and a fourth option that are both more frequent under autocracy: leaders acting against current pressures in accordance with ideologies that in reality have terrible outcomes in both the present in the future (e.g. authoritarian communism and fascism), and just being kleptocrats.
The dichotomy isn't between wise autocratic leadership and democracy. The dichotomy is between democracy and horrible autocratic leadership most of the time with only very occasional periods of wise leadership.
(Edit: I'm not even being cynical here, it's just a bit of reality, the word 'autocracy' makes it sound harsh but it is what it is - most important things happened behind closed doors and not even by politicians)
Public sentiment and elections have little influence over most things unless there is 'outrage' or some kind of 'focus' on an issue.
A 'few key issues' drive public narrative and votes, but the gears are run by the bureaucracy.
What we get in democracy is mostly just the ability to pull the plug on groups, and the ability to outrage over some new bit of information about the system. Much less so setting the overall direction. Or rather, we 'kind of influence that' by having a 'rough idea over who is in charge, politically'.
The cronyism problem is mostly solved with transparency and making sure the general public understands.
There are a handful of very 'standard ways' that corruption happens - frankly we should be teaching this in school.
A certain 'recent former president' bought a home in Florida for $20M, then sold it 2 years later for $90M to a Russian oligarch. (Before this person was president).
That is 'perfectly legal' - however, regular people should understand that transactions that happen above or below market value signal something. It's like a 'gift'.
A better way to look at that, is a 'Russian oligarch' gave someone who is now a 'former President' a 'gift' of $50M dollars.
It's irrational for people to just hand over huge sums to other people for no reason.
Ergo - there's probably a quid-pro-quo, which can come in many forms.
It can be to influence policy directly, softly, in a specific direction, a general direction.
Insider Trading is another example. It's not obvious why or how that works, but it's not complicated.
How the 'Art World' can be a big fraud/scam (in an illegal way).
Teenagers can be taught this, and frankly I think it would be an entertaining course that they would really pay attention to.
Also, add that acting against current pressures in accordance with terrible ideologies often invokes the interest of future generations, or present generations in future years. Because it's a lot easier to justify your ideology and cronyism with reference to people we can't see yet because they're in the future, rather than people we can.
Going against the public for the benefit of future peoplke is something that in practice is worse than it sounds, because if you ignore the feedback of the general public, it's much easier to act in self-serving or blindly reckless ways, even if "the public is wrong this time".
In democracies, leaders act according to some ideology too. One of the advantages of democracy is that it's not always the same ideology, i.e. sometimes you get FDR and sometimes you get Margaret Thatcher, and this is good.
Cultural capital is just another type of capital. That's one element that I think the book missed a little. Rewards can take the form of financial capital or cultural capital.
They make think so, but often it seems not really so. Many of these people end up "rich and powerful" but also hiding in a bunker their whole lives, or not able to trust anyone. They could have a better life by being "good" leaders.
There's a third option and a fourth option that are both more frequent under autocracy: leaders acting against current pressures in accordance with ideologies that in reality have terrible outcomes in both the present in the future (e.g. authoritarian communism and fascism), and just being kleptocrats.
The dichotomy isn't between wise autocratic leadership and democracy. The dichotomy is between democracy and horrible autocratic leadership most of the time with only very occasional periods of wise leadership.