Prevent stable global totalitarian regimes through uncensorable broadcasts
Great Power Relations, Epistemic Institutions
Human civilization may get caught in a stable global totalitarian regime. Current and past totalitarian regimes have struggled with influences from the outside. So it may be critical to make sure now that future global totalitarian regimes will also have influences from the outside.
North Korea strikes me as a great example of a totalitarian regime straight out of 1984. Its systematic oppression of its citizens is so sophisticated that I could well imagine a world-wide regime of this sort to be stable for a very long time. Even as it exists today, it’s remarkably stable.
The main source of instability is that there’s a world all around North Korea, and especially right to its south, that works so much better in terms of welfare, justice, prospecity, growth, and various moral preferences that are widely shared in the rest of the world.
There may be other sources of instability – for example, I don’t currently understand why North Korea’s currency is inflated to worthlessness – but if not, then we, today, are to a hypothetical future global totalitarian state what the rest of the world is to North Korea.
Just like some organizations are trying to send leaflets with information about the outside world into North Korea, so we may need to try to send messages into the future just in case a totalitarian dystopia takes hold. These messages would need to be hard to censure and should not depend on people acting against their self-interest to distribute. (Information from most normal time capsules could easily be suppressed.) Maybe a satellite can be set on a course that takes it past earth every century and projects messages against the moon. This probably not the most cost-effective method, so I’d first like to think about approaches to this more. (From my blog.)
The main source of instability is that there’s a world all around North Korea
Have you thought more about sources of instability and weighed them? Would be interested. Others that come to mind are: - North Korean citizens must be fairly unhappy about a lot of the government and wouldn’t take much to support a coup against the government - the military leadership is never perfectly aligned with the government and historically seems ready to coup under certain circumstances - having successors that can sustain autocratic rule
I’ve written this article about human rights in North Korea. Some parts are probably outdated now, but others are not, and the general lessons hold, I think.
All but very few of the citizens are isolated from all information from the outside, so that they have no way to know that the rest of world isn’t actually envious of the prosperity of North Korea and they aren’t under a constant threat from the US, and the south isn’t just US-occupied territory, etc. The only things that can weaken this information monopoly are phone networks from China that extend a bit across the border, leaflets from South Korea, and similar influences from the outside. But they are localized because people are not allowed to move freely within the country. The information monopoly of the government is probably fairly complete a bit further away from the borders. But note that I haven’t been following this closely in the past 5 years.
They also have this very powerful system in place where everyone is forced to snitch on everyone else if they learn that someone else knows something that they shouldn’t know or else you and your whole family can go to prison or concentration camp. The snitching is also systematically, hierarchically organized so that there are always overseers for small groups of citizens, and those overseers have their own overseers and so on, so that everyone can efficiently be monitored 24⁄7.
A big exception to that is all the “corruption” and the gray markets. They’ve basically become the real economy of the country. But those are mostly based on Chinese currency, Chinese phones and networks, etc. So again I think black markets would be easier to prevent if there were no outside influences.
Without outside forces to defend against, you can concentrate completely on using the military as a mechanism of oppression as opposed to giving it any real power. Almost everyone in NK is in the military but that’s just to keep them busy and to have them build stuff. They have no useful military training. The real military in NK is said to be well-trained but tiny by comparison. It would probably not be needed and even a risk factor if it weren’t for other countries.
That was probably a real mistake that Kim Il-sung made. Everyone thought that he was immortal, so when he died it was probably hard to spin. He should’ve predicted that he might die and create a fictional ruler from the start who would then really be immortal, sort of like with God and the pope or something. Generally he combined the most successfully manipulative strategies of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and others, so this seems like a strange lapse in evil judgment. An even more perfect system of oppression would probably not make such a mistake. But I suppose after his death he probably become the sort of incorporeal, immortal leader, so maybe that loose end is tied up now too, sadly.
It’s plausible that compared to a stable authoritarian nuclear state, an unstable or couped authoritarian nuclear state could be even worse (in worst-case scenario and even potentially in expected value).
For a worst-case scenario, consider that if a popular uprising is on the verge of ousting Kim Jong Un, he may desperately nuke who-know’s-where or order an artillery strike on Seoul.
Also, if you believe these high-access defectors’ interviews, most North Korean soldiers genuinely believe that they can win a war against the U.S. and South Korea. This means that even if there is a palace coup rather than a popular uprising, it’s plausible that an irrational general rises to power and starts an irrational nuclear war with the intent to win.
So I think it’s plausible that prevention is an entirely different beast than policy regarding already existing stable, authoritarian, and armed states.
Prevent stable global totalitarian regimes through uncensorable broadcasts
Great Power Relations, Epistemic Institutions
Human civilization may get caught in a stable global totalitarian regime. Current and past totalitarian regimes have struggled with influences from the outside. So it may be critical to make sure now that future global totalitarian regimes will also have influences from the outside.
North Korea strikes me as a great example of a totalitarian regime straight out of 1984. Its systematic oppression of its citizens is so sophisticated that I could well imagine a world-wide regime of this sort to be stable for a very long time. Even as it exists today, it’s remarkably stable.
The main source of instability is that there’s a world all around North Korea, and especially right to its south, that works so much better in terms of welfare, justice, prospecity, growth, and various moral preferences that are widely shared in the rest of the world.
There may be other sources of instability – for example, I don’t currently understand why North Korea’s currency is inflated to worthlessness – but if not, then we, today, are to a hypothetical future global totalitarian state what the rest of the world is to North Korea.
Just like some organizations are trying to send leaflets with information about the outside world into North Korea, so we may need to try to send messages into the future just in case a totalitarian dystopia takes hold. These messages would need to be hard to censure and should not depend on people acting against their self-interest to distribute. (Information from most normal time capsules could easily be suppressed.) Maybe a satellite can be set on a course that takes it past earth every century and projects messages against the moon. This probably not the most cost-effective method, so I’d first like to think about approaches to this more. (From my blog.)
Interesting idea.
Have you thought more about sources of instability and weighed them? Would be interested. Others that come to mind are:
- North Korean citizens must be fairly unhappy about a lot of the government and wouldn’t take much to support a coup against the government
- the military leadership is never perfectly aligned with the government and historically seems ready to coup under certain circumstances
- having successors that can sustain autocratic rule
I’ve written this article about human rights in North Korea. Some parts are probably outdated now, but others are not, and the general lessons hold, I think.
All but very few of the citizens are isolated from all information from the outside, so that they have no way to know that the rest of world isn’t actually envious of the prosperity of North Korea and they aren’t under a constant threat from the US, and the south isn’t just US-occupied territory, etc. The only things that can weaken this information monopoly are phone networks from China that extend a bit across the border, leaflets from South Korea, and similar influences from the outside. But they are localized because people are not allowed to move freely within the country. The information monopoly of the government is probably fairly complete a bit further away from the borders. But note that I haven’t been following this closely in the past 5 years.
They also have this very powerful system in place where everyone is forced to snitch on everyone else if they learn that someone else knows something that they shouldn’t know or else you and your whole family can go to prison or concentration camp. The snitching is also systematically, hierarchically organized so that there are always overseers for small groups of citizens, and those overseers have their own overseers and so on, so that everyone can efficiently be monitored 24⁄7.
A big exception to that is all the “corruption” and the gray markets. They’ve basically become the real economy of the country. But those are mostly based on Chinese currency, Chinese phones and networks, etc. So again I think black markets would be easier to prevent if there were no outside influences.
Without outside forces to defend against, you can concentrate completely on using the military as a mechanism of oppression as opposed to giving it any real power. Almost everyone in NK is in the military but that’s just to keep them busy and to have them build stuff. They have no useful military training. The real military in NK is said to be well-trained but tiny by comparison. It would probably not be needed and even a risk factor if it weren’t for other countries.
That was probably a real mistake that Kim Il-sung made. Everyone thought that he was immortal, so when he died it was probably hard to spin. He should’ve predicted that he might die and create a fictional ruler from the start who would then really be immortal, sort of like with God and the pope or something. Generally he combined the most successfully manipulative strategies of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and others, so this seems like a strange lapse in evil judgment. An even more perfect system of oppression would probably not make such a mistake. But I suppose after his death he probably become the sort of incorporeal, immortal leader, so maybe that loose end is tied up now too, sadly.
It’s plausible that compared to a stable authoritarian nuclear state, an unstable or couped authoritarian nuclear state could be even worse (in worst-case scenario and even potentially in expected value).
For a worst-case scenario, consider that if a popular uprising is on the verge of ousting Kim Jong Un, he may desperately nuke who-know’s-where or order an artillery strike on Seoul.
Also, if you believe these high-access defectors’ interviews, most North Korean soldiers genuinely believe that they can win a war against the U.S. and South Korea. This means that even if there is a palace coup rather than a popular uprising, it’s plausible that an irrational general rises to power and starts an irrational nuclear war with the intent to win.
So I think it’s plausible that prevention is an entirely different beast than policy regarding already existing stable, authoritarian, and armed states.