Ilya Somin: actually, only a minority of those who charged at Gettysburg actually died as a result, and they could not know that the charge would fail in advance. Same with those who fought in WWI. By contrast, both Civil War and WWI soldiers knew that refusal of orders in the middle of a battle would likely result in execution or long prison terms.

Yes, but once you’re ordered over the top of the trenches or told to rush the union artillery you have something on the order of 90% certainty of death. Yet your chances of death or jail if you just turn around and run the other way are almost surely lower. Even if your side is dead set on executing people who desert during battle at least it will be harder to shoot you since your behind your own lines.

My point wasn’t that this kind of analysis said everyone would go AWOL during basic training. Rather that in fact people will take an obviously greater chance of dying rather than dessert their country or group.

Yet very few people actually seem to act on these principles — perhaps because, in prehistoric times, most of those whose instincts of that type really are stronger than self-preservation were less likely to successfully reproduce before they died.

I disagree, I think people do it all the time (how many people ran the other way instead of going into no man’s land). Mostly, however, they do it for their platoon, family, or some other small group to which they have loyalty thus the reason it’s less effective in combating tyranny. The scale is just too large.

Some undoubtedly do feel that way. But there has never been an oppressive regime in all of history where that was true of more than a small minority.

Only if ‘defect’ means ‘not passionately participate’. If defect means ratting out their friends and neighbors or kicking their brother to the curb because he speaks out against the regime.

I guess my point is just that in order to offer sufficient deterrence the regime ends up pushing on those bonds of friendship and family people really will die rather than betray. Thus small scale disobedience snowballs into more extreme anti-regime positions as people find themselves sucked into the resistance by the actions of friends and family (first you hide your brother who is an insurgent, then you give him some money since your already dead if you’re caught, then you have to ask your close friend for help avoiding arrest).

—–

Also I would point out the paucity of succesfull insurgencies against tyrannical regimes doesn’t actually show they are implausible/ineffective. I mean if, as I argue above, the commitment to insurgency builds over time in the population then the dictators will always see it coming and make some show of reform in a last desperate attempt to hang onto power or their life. Of course if they don’t their generals will stage a coup and do so themselves.

So a successful insurgency would look exactly like the ways despots do lose power, internal coups, internal reforms, etc..

Chewbacca, being a student of game theory, lays out the payoff bimatrix to Han in their “conversation”

This is the only problem I have with this analysis – the assumption that Chewbacca is acting strategically. In fact, the evidence drawn from the earlier films and books strongly suggests that Chewbacca is a committed ideological opponent of the Empire dating back to its destruction of his homeworld of Kashyyyk and enslavement of his people. Thus, Han’s game theory analysis will be strongly influenced by the fact that his co-pilot will hate his guts if he backs away and will probably rip his head off if he sides with the Empire.

I suggest that he let the Wookie win.

But it seems to me that even totalitarian regimes cannot live on repression/oppression alone. When a state becomes truly predatory–e.g., Maoist China (Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution), Stalinist Russia, North Korea today–it can’t long last without some return to moderation.

This sounds very much like wishful thinking, not backed by history. Stalinist Russia only started its long (and very incomplete) journey towards a liberal society with the death of Stalin. North Korea seems to be lasting quite well, after 50 years of keeping its people in utter misery.

Ilya Somin writes:

And ask yourself what you would do in their place if any act of dissent you undertook was both highly unlikely to make a difference and likely to draw severe punishment such as death or imprisonment.

Having asked myself that, the answer wasn’t very pretty. I think modern totalitarianism may be a form of organization that cannot be defeated internally, and only goes away from either outside intervention or by the choice of its elites (e.g. USSR, China).

Iran, in this analysis, is certainly vulnerable to overthrow – precisely because it is not totalitarian. The government is authoritarian and evil, but not even close to Stalinist. Consider, for example, the difference in freedom of speech and access to information between Iranians and North Koreans (or Russians under Stalin).

Sorry, but only a small part of the Soviet army was engaged in Afghanistan: less than 120,000 men at peak, out of over 2.8 million in service.

The collapse of Soviet Communism was ultimately a failure of nerve on the part of the rulers. They ceased to believe in their own authority, at least to the point where they would kill rebels in large numbers or incur widespread disapproval. Such breakdowns often precede revolutions: the Shah was old, sick, and denounced by the U.S. which he had viewed as his protector. Louis XVI ordered his Swiss Guards to cease firing on the Paris mob that was storming the Tuileries Palace. The Soviet-bloc gerontocrats were old, and they hadn’t had to kill anybody much for many years. Nicholas II was demoralized by years of defeat in war. James II lost his nerve in 1688.

It sounds a little too familiar with 60 American Senate votes and the current President what with watch lists for dissent and all.

I’m just sayin’…

Mass starvation was not, however, the case in the Soviet Union of the 1980s. There were shortages of consumer goods, and the famous queues, and so forth; but there was not mass starvation on the order of the Ukrainian famines of the 1930s, or in China during the Great Leap Forward, or in North Korea today.

It was more of a case of the average Soviet consumer beginning to understand that life in the West was much better than in the Soviet Union and wanting a piece of that prosperity.

At the same time, the average Soviet consumer was well enough off that the notion of “shared sacrifice in the name of communism” began to ring follow. In the 1950s and 1960s consumers might have accepted a poor living standard on the ground that the Communist Party won the war. By the 1980s, that was no longer true.

Concurrently, falling oil prices meant that the Soviet regime could not satisfy consumer demand (which was in any case incompatible with a centralized economy) while simultaneously keeping defense spending as high as it was.

The Soviet Union, in short, was a textbook case of the idea that richer societies tend to become more democratic.

North Korea is a relatively small country, as is Cuba, Albania, Cambodia and many other oppressive despotisms where mass starvation didn’t lead to revolt because of collective action problems like the ones I describe in the post.

actually, only a minority of those who charged at Gettysburg actually died as a result, and they could not know that the charge would fail in advance. Same with those who fought in WWI. By contrast, both Civil War and WWI soldiers knew that refusal of orders in the middle of a battle would likely result in execution or long prison terms.

The failure in this analysis is assuming that people’s payoffs are easily described in terms of harms/benefits like death, monetary reward etc.. Probably exactly for this reason we’ve evolved powerful group identity mechanisms that cause people to value not betraying that group more than their own life.

Yet very few people actually seem to act on these principles – perhaps because, in prehistoric times, most of those whose instincts of that type really are stronger than self-preservation were less likely to successfully reproduce before they died.

Now consider this in the context of oppressive regimes. It very well could be the case that particularly vicious regimes further cement this kind of loyalty to the resistance. Thus it’s far from clear that the equilibrium solution for these individuals is to stay quite. It can genuinely be true that people would rather choose certain death than to defect from the resistance.

Some undoubtedly do feel that way. But there has never been an oppressive regime in all of history where that was true of more than a small minority.

Once the Millenium Falcon is forced to land on the Death Star, he became a member of the Rebellion as far as the Empire is concerned (essentially making him part of Truepath’s “class of people with no incentive not to revolt”). He can use his reward money to pay off Jabba, which removes the threat from the bounty hunters, but Jabba can’t protect him from the Empire; only the Rebels are strong enough for that. As long as the Empire believes him to be a member of the Rebellion, his only option is to actually become a member of the Rebellion in order to gain their protection. If Han has a decision to make it’s not if he should fight, but when. Remember, whichever side wins this battle, both the Empire and the Rebellion

Since the Rebels have chosen to fight now, Han has to fight with them in order to maintain his value. By holding back at first he is gambling that they won’t lose — which would leave him with no protection, but has a slight chance of convincing the Empire that he’s not really a threat — but also won’t win until he arrives to shift the balance — which significantly increases his value to the Rebels, while not making the Empire hate him any more than they already do.

Solo wasn’t just a jumped up smuggler making General, he was a graduate of the Imperial Academy, a trained officer.

He picked up rank quickly, sure, but at least he had the background for it. Compared at least to some farm kid from the back of nowhere whose sole selling point is the ability to lift rocks.

Acemoglu, Daron, and Robinson, James A., Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

It’s just a beginning model, but it’s a hell of a beginning.

There is plenty of evidence of mass starvation occurring in North Korea right now (think of the massive state-sponsored starvations which lasted over a decade both in large swaths Russia and China under communist rule).

You’re right!

The fact that people starving in Soviet client states did not arm themselves and march hundreds of miles to overthrow the central government that was starving them is proof that miserable conditions can’t produce revolts in smaller countries! Just like the failure of starvation to produce a revolt each and every time it happens proves that it can never do so!

I learn so much from VC commenters.

Hans Solo was also hot for Princess Leia, which may have influenced his game theorizing.

That simple enough for you?

Who hasn’t wanted to choke the living sin out of a stupid subordinate?

Veni, Vader, Vinci
(“I came, I choked everyone I saw, I conquered”)

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. [...]those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In “The Empire Strikes Back” Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor “falls down on the job.”

*facepalm*

In essence, the author’s argument is that if you can create chaos in a democratic system by illegal and immoral means, then you have the right afterwards to restore order by becoming a despot. Or, in other words, the Nazis had the right to turn the Weimar Republic into a Fascist dictatorship because they had the nerve to burn down the Reichstag. I don’t think most of us think that willingness to create chaos and destroy a society gives one any kind of moral rights whatsoever, let alone the right to become ultimate ruler.

And, also, the author claims that it was okay for the Empire to kill Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru because they were harboring Rebel fugitives and were therefore “traitors.” Of course, all Owen and Beru did was buy a couple of droids to help out on their farm. They didn’t know the droids had any connection to the Rebellion and, in fact, weren’t traitors at all. Hell, Luke only found out about the droids’ connection to the Rebels about the same time as Owen and Beru were killed, and he had decided at that point not to go off and join the Rebels! It was only the fact that the Empire killed his family (in the name or “order,” I guess) that Luke decided to join the Rebellion at all!

corneille1640: I think Mr. Somin is right to say that just because there is not a revolt does not, by itself, mean that the people accept a repressive regime. But it seems to me that even totalitarian regimes cannot live on repression/oppression alone. When a state becomes truly predatory–e.g., Maoist China (Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution), Stalinist Russia, North Korea today–it can’t long last without some return to moderation. Deng Xiaoping’s China was still repressive, but its liberalization eased some of the more repressive features of the PRC. Krushchev’s “reforms” did not end political repression, but it was probably a little easier to live under Krushchev than under Stalin. North Korea….well, it’s North Korea and I don’t have an answer to that one.

Lasting long is really a matter of successful succession. Stalin and Mao did not groom and designate a legitimate and loyal successor. In each case a power struggle ensued and a less rigid alternative arose. In each case there were vilified losing groups (the anti-party group, the gang of four). Indeed, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin was also a tool, albeit a risky one, in that struggle. Kim Il-Sung was able to put up a viable successor and you can see the results. Note also that perestroika started when a bunch of Gensecs died out.

In case of Khomeini, there was some dissent brewing on the part of Montazeri (just deceased), but it was too early in the revolution and he was shafted aside. Somewhat like Stalin was able to consolidate power after the death of Lenin.

I mean the omniscient narrator states that the rebels are on the side of good at the beginning of episode IV what more do you want?

It’d be neat if the Jedi didn’t try to assassinate the Chancellor, or discriminate against religious minorities (the force is good except when it’s not; kill the Sith!), and all that. That’d help make it clear that the Rebel cause was just, instead of merely a way to reinstate the oppressive theocracy we saw at the beginning of the series…

Also, the TIE fighters were letting the Falcon get away, so I wouldn’t take their performance there as entirely accurate.

A Conservative Teacher: This assumes that Han Solo was in fact ‘the good guy’ and that the empire was an oppressive regime.In The Case for the Empire, by Jonathan V. Last, the argument is made that the Empire was the ‘good guy’ and that Han Solo was simply a lawbreaking thug who wanted to put in place a small group of elitists (Jedi and Royalty) to rule the galaxy.In that case, his behavior represents more of an insider coup more so than a popularly supported uprising.

Except the point is made in an inconsistant and unconvincing fashion. You can’t consistently object to the elitist anti-democratic nature of the jedi while excusing the empire as a ‘benign’ dictatorship. Either you evaluate both based on outcomes or you evaluate both based on some political philosophy that stipulates some fundamental right to representation.

Moreover, the idea that the jedi are somehow less meritocratic than the empire because only people with midi-chlorians can become jedi is absurd. It’s not some kind of discrimination, that is simply the biological manifestation of a certain ability. If we found out that IQ was strongly heritable it wouldn’t magically make our math/science programs (or the empire’s schools) any more or less meritocratic.

Ohh yah and there is the whole bit with the empire’s willingness to destroy whole planets to enforce their rule. But that’s only a minor consideration compared to the fact that in Lucas’s fictional universe the Jedi are stipulatively on the side of good. Unlike in our morally cloudy universe sufficiently advanced jedi have the supernatural ability to directly perceive good and evil.

I mean the omniscient narrator states that the rebels are on the side of good at the beginning of episode IV what more do you want?