More related to the things I read than I'd prefer

[james_davis_nicoll]

[Poll #1460636]

Comments

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

I wanted to vote for the unfettered free market of Somalia, but you didn't give me that option.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The franchise-operated quasi-national entities will rule everything.

[abidemi.livejournal.com]

The asteroid miners, because everyone knows Earth is decadent. Duh.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I prefer C, where Aliens conquer the Earth.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"...time's gonna tell on that one."

[jwgh]

I reserve the right to change my answer if the killer bees get involved.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

"I have seen the future and it works."
   Lincoln Steffens

[(Anonymous)]

Efficient dictatorship has not yet been developed, leaving it up to us Americans in the next century to show the world how it can be done _properly_, once the Republican Party has entirely imploded and the Democrats hand over power to the next group of people to talk to them in a loud angry voice.

Bruce

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Inefficiency works better because more people think they see what they want.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The cities will go Okie.

[skapusniak.livejournal.com]

Well, only if the burbs and the gated communities don't go Okie first to get away from the Cities.

I would like to complain about this poll

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

The date of this poll is what? 1932? 1947?

Re: I would like to complain about this poll

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

That said, I voted for "messy and inefficient". Not 20/20 hindsight, just good old curmudgeonism.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

What's the situation? Have SF writers discarded their obsession with "wise and benevolent monarchies" in favor of dictatorships?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Since most SF writers seem to think monarchy = absolute monarchy without the inherent failure modes, there's less difference between the two than you may think.

[wayward-va.livejournal.com]

Efficiency works against you when it means you're efficiently doing the exact wrong thing. While democracy is messy and all over the place, it means that at least some part of the society is going to be doing the right thing for that time and place. It's a kind of redundancy that dictatorships weed out by definition.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see any proof that the dictatorships in the (former) Soviet bloc - or any other dictatorships, for that matter - were lean and efficient.

They just wasted money, people and resources on different things.

Sometimes.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

However, the lean and efficient dictatorships of the future will think they're democracies, and the citizens will all think they speak English.

(The latter part ^tm TNH.)