What can a country do to shake its pesky dictator problem? How Tyrants Fall author Marcel Dirsus is here to explain why it's difficult but not impossible! What We Discuss with Dr. Marcel Dirsus: Dictators are trapped on what Dr. Marcel Dirsus calls "the dictator's treadmill" — they can't safely step down because they've committed too many crimes to retire peacefully, but must keep running to survive. Statistics show 69% of dictators end up imprisoned, exiled, or killed. Dictators weaken their own militaries through "coup-proofing" — creating multiple competing security forces and promoting based on loyalty rather than competence. While this helps prevent coups, it makes their forces less effective against external threats. Natural resources like oil and diamonds help dictators maintain power because they can generate wealth without requiring an educated population or competent administrators. This allows them to focus on loyalty over capability in their government. Most dictators who fall (about 80%) are replaced by new dictators rather than democracies. Simply removing a dictator often leads to civil war or another authoritarian regime rather than democratic reform. There are effective, peaceful ways to gradually weaken dictatorships and empower democracy, such as supporting independent journalism, providing communication networks, and training civil society groups. These methods have historically helped create positive change without the catastrophic risks of violent intervention. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1103 And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Today we're talking with Dr. Marcel Derzis. We are diving deep into dictators. Who are these guys? Why are they always so crazy? How do they stay in power? What kind of crazy dictators are out there right now? There's so many weird quirks these guys have. They rename them months after themselves. They kill a bunch of their own people. Okay, that's not a quirk.
That's, you know, sort of a different thing. They ban haircuts. They kill people with anti-aircraft cannons. They ban hot dogs. A lot of that stuff might not even be true. Who knows what is in the mind of a dictator? But it's not just their crazy. It's their violence. It's their evil, really, that keeps them at the top of the game. But it's a precarious position to be in.
We're going to talk about how dictators fall today on this episode. And here we go with Dr. Marcel Durzis. Let's talk about dictators, shall we? Sure. First of all, thank you for joining me. I appreciate your forthcoming expertise here. Yeah, thank you very much for having me. I've always been fascinated by dictators.
Your pitch was something like, I wrote a book about dictators, and I was like, I don't need to read the rest of this. I'm sold. Because they're just so weird. Dictators are just almost universally weird as hell. And I want to know... What's up with that? You got Gaddafi, right? He had all this plastic surgery. He looked like an old Persian woman from L.A. by the time he'd gone out.
He had all female bodyguards that ride on horses. He seemed legitimately mentally ill, talks for hours at the U.N. about nothing slash himself, was a terrorist domestically, a terrorist abroad, seemingly just didn't even realize how much his own people hate him. And then you got Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-il, who bought like a million dollars a year in Hennessy. Crazy North Korea stuff.
We've done entire episodes on this. You can search the site for it. And then Turkmenistan, which we'll get to later. The dude renames the months after himself, and his mother tells all the women to rip their gold teeth out, builds an ice palace in the desert. Why are all these guys seemingly just totally off their rocker, out of their tree, and yet they're in charge of an entire country?
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