I often thought about retiring to a country with a low cost of living but is safe and non-totalitarian. I've never done more than looking up standards of living and freedom index rankings on wikipedia but it is an attractive idea.
Costa Rica might fit your bill. Probably not as cheap as Vietnam but definitely cheaper than the US and very non-totalitarian; they abolished their military 70 years ago.
Think of it this way. You either have an imperfect central power that makes imperfect decisions or you have a bunch of imperfect people arguing over imperfect decisions.
Either way the decisions are imperfect. China gets a lot of shit wrong and a lot of shit right. Same with the states.
You just have to make sure the totalitarian ruling that state isn't some kind of psychopath. If the dictator is overall benevolent then it's not all that bad.
> You just have to make sure the totalitarian ruling that state isn't some kind of psychopath. If the dictator is overall benevolent then it's not all that bad.
I think that's the issue though. Totalitarian states rarely have guard rails for such contingencies of having a bad ruler or series of bad rulers. China historically solved this issue with very bloody rebellions -- it's estimated that tens of millions of people died during the An Lushan rebellion of the Tang dynasty. The whole "mandate of heaven" thing is just a wrapper around this concept -- basically if things get bad enough the people can always rise up and violently replace one dynasty with another. With that in mind, Chinese dynasties either did a good job of ruling the country or repressed the hell out of the people when things aren't going well. Democracy, on the other hand, has a nonviolent means of changing the trajectory. It may not always guarantee good results but a non-violent way of changing government is preferable to a violent one.
>It may not always guarantee good results but a non-violent way of changing government is preferable to a violent one.
I think it's because we've had good times throughout most of US history. Things haven't gotten bad enough for a revolt. Also US history is basically a minuscule fraction of Chinas' history.
I agree that democracy providing the theoretical mechanism for peaceful removal of bad leaders makes it a better system, but I think the distinction is more relevant when you're a local person deeply invested in the politics of the country which determine your family's future or as a matter of principle then when you're a foreigner looking for somewhere cheap to live (poorer democracies are generally pretty flawed and not immune to violent upheaval anyway).
"Totalitarian" tends to imply pretty extreme leadership, but there are a fair few non-democracies with non-extreme leadership which are pretty safe for expats, and a fair few developing world democracies where election time ratchets up the risk of violence.
>You just have to make sure the totalitarian ruling that state isn't some kind of psychopath.
Do you think you could find even one?
>Either way the decisions are imperfect.
I'd buy this if there would be a stable totalitarian state that's doing well in terms of productivity and human rights. Otherwise, I'm inclined to think that totalitarianism always means an elite oppressing the majority of the people, institutional abuse, and countless other horrors.
>I'd buy this if there would be a stable totalitarian state that's doing well in terms of productivity and human rights.
China is still an example. Human rights is also a matter of perspective. You have to realize from Chinas' perspective what they are doing is correct. The western media sort of paints a one sided story here. Although I totally agree that China is overall wrong in their actions here, there is still an alternative perspective that needs to be considered if you want your opinion to be as unbiased as possible.
Consider this. Did you know that Chinas actions towards the Uyghurs were caused by domestic terror attacks? The US reaction of going into an all out 2 decade long war for a terrorist attack is not far off from Chinas reaction. China is definitely wrong to make re-education camps, though I will argue much more people were slaughtered as a result of armed conflict from the US reaction then the amount of people who died as the result of being placed in re-education camps.
Not justifying anything for China here. I disagree with them. But if you didn't know about what I told you above then it likely means your information source(s) is/are biased.
All in all, I still believe China is an example of a totalitarian government ruled by an imperfect person, but he is definitely not a psychopath.
Singapore is another example of a more totalitarian government. Less biased media coverage on them though because they're not really an economic rival to the united states.
Now I want to caveat what I wrote here with some perspective. Don't take sides. Don't have extreme opinions on anything. Politics is complicated and you should view the world through the lens of complexity rather then through a lens of they're right or they're wrong.
