Adam Gurri

So liberalism and allowing for these individual rights is one way of achieving social peace, basically.

And that is the basic elevator pitch of liberalism.

There are particular challenges of modern society, and liberal democracy specifically is by far the best one.

It's no guarantee at all.

You have to do the actual hard work of politics in that world and within a liberal democracy.

Liberal democracies can fail, and some authoritarian systems have achieved a period of social peace as well and even prosperity.

Again, nothing is guaranteed, but by far the best package is liberal democracy of rights...

universal enfranchisement and democracy.

Right.

No, absolutely.

I mean, the argument against dictatorship is just so easy.

And it is...

But what are the odds that you're going to get the right guy?

The way that they're going to get power is not going to be neutral.

We're not going to pick them based on how wise they are.

It's going to be political just like democracy is political.

They're going to do it by having a patron network, in which case they're going to just be relying on that patron network and keeping it happy to stay in power rather than the common good.

Or they're going to do it because they've consolidated control of the military, in which case they're just the ones that are best at controlling the use of force, not necessarily at doing, you know, making the country wealthy or something.

And also the longer that they're in the job, if they get worse at it, you know, if they if they're aging more.

there's no real mechanism for replacing them and no one lives forever.