> Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.
That sounds quite similar to Lenin's principle of democratic centralism - once upon a time communist parties allowed for a brief period of internal discussion prior to accepting policy decisions (in theory), once the decision was made every party member was committed to the 'collective' decision.
Now that one did not quite work out, because you always depend on the whims of who is heading the discussion; I wonder if the Bezos principle works any better, as there are no third party regulators that might constrain the one who is heading the discussions.
Once upon a time they had this theory of gradual convergence between a west dominated by big corporations and the Soviet Union (for example ' 2001: A Space Odyssey' made this assumption); this observation might have had a grain of truth in it.
> they had this theory of gradual convergence between a west dominated by big corporations and the Soviet Union
That sounds like only something a resentful Westener could say, in feeling entitled to a society exactly as they wish it, dismiss the one they have as "practically similar to tyranny".
I think its fair to measure tyrannical states in units of genocide of their own citizens. By this measure, the western democratic capitalism stands at 0% tyranny.
Britain used to rule over half of the world, France had some in Africa - like Algeria; Belgium had Congo, the Netherlands had a few colonies some time ago. Not to mention the colonies of Spain, Germany when these countries were not quite as democratic as they are now, but democracy is a continuum, isn't it?
They were not democratic at all. Clearly you know nothing about the history of these countries.
Universal enfranchisement in the UK happened only after WW1, with more than 90% of the population unable to vote for the whole history of "voting". And germany was just simply a dictatorship.
In 1800 90% of all of europe were farmers. The political class to even create a political system was tiny.
Democracy is rule by the people. Votes among feudal lords for which is the most powerful is not democracy.
You made a claim about two political systems: USSR's communism and western democratic capitalism.
If you're going to equivocate any old political system with any other then the claim to "convergence" is incoherent. I'm not even sure what "covergence" means when we're equivocating 19th Germany dictatorship, democratic capitalism, and USSR communism.
"Convergence" is severely under-evidenced. And my original claim is only ever-more evidenced: it is only possible to imagine our present system of government "converging" to mass murder upon some resentful delusion.
That sounds quite similar to Lenin's principle of democratic centralism - once upon a time communist parties allowed for a brief period of internal discussion prior to accepting policy decisions (in theory), once the decision was made every party member was committed to the 'collective' decision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism
Now that one did not quite work out, because you always depend on the whims of who is heading the discussion; I wonder if the Bezos principle works any better, as there are no third party regulators that might constrain the one who is heading the discussions.
Once upon a time they had this theory of gradual convergence between a west dominated by big corporations and the Soviet Union (for example ' 2001: A Space Odyssey' made this assumption); this observation might have had a grain of truth in it.