Dwarkesh Patel: belief

Transcript context

…Thank you for having me. That would be the more important thing. There’s an interesting question of why the Soviet Union collapsed when it did. I think the even more interesting question is why a system that was so centrally planned, monstrously inefficient, brutal, a colonial land empire, how such a country could survive for so long into the 20th century. I feel like that’s the thing that actually needs explanation. How did this regime last for 74 years? There are loads of dysfunctional places all over the planet that have been dysfunctional forever. You look at well, why are they dysfunctional? To me, the answer to that one in a way is the example of North Korea. Of all countries that should fall, a place that has ongoing famines in the 21st century, and it used to be the richest part of the Korean Peninsula. These authoritarian regimes are really good at maintaining coercive powers. Think about it. In order to educate someone, it takes years as a parent to bring up a little person and then you get them educated and maybe they’re an A-list politician. It takes seconds to assassinate them. It’s the asymmetry between construction and destruction. Destruction is so easy. Dictatorships are all over the world. It’s a sad part of the human condition. They clearly know what they’re up to. In the case of the Soviet Union, there were multiple intelligence organizations. That’s what Stalin was using to keep track of everyone. So you want to monopolize information so that you know more information than other people. And then they have a whole bunch of people who are the winners of the nomenklatura, the elites there. You make sure you pay all of them off. I mean think about it. Human societies, slaves, serfs… We humans have been doing these things to each other for a long time.…

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