COVID Authoritarian Measures Have Collectively Changed Our Personalities

COVID Authoritarian Measures Have Collectively Changed Our Personalities

Nov. 18, 2022

The Pulse

The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule

COVID measures have had massive collateral damage on society. As time goes on it becomes clearer and clearer that what censored scientists were saying early on was the way to go.

A new study looked at the "Big 5" personality traits and how they changed during COVID. We explore some facts and commentary that questions whether the mainstream dialogue deeply missed the warnings coming from scientists around these issues during COVID.

Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy—a form of self-government in which human rights are recognized and every individual is entitled to equal treatment under law—are accelerating their attacks.

What is authoritarian capitalism? This question is difficult to answer because the group of authoritarian capitalist countries is heterogeneous and not clearly defined. Authoritarian capitalism can include features such as authoritarian shareholding, predatory nationalizations, the extraction of private rents using the state as a tool, the reduction of economic pluralism through the alignment of economic and political interests, as well as state capture by particularistic interest groups and the creation of state dependence of economic actors. These features can result in the erosion of the rule of law and the colonization of the state by the ruling elite,[8] but softer authoritarian capitalist models can maintain impartial bureaucracies and the integrity of the rule of law.

A defining characteristic of authoritarian capitalism is the presence of a capitalist economy on one hand along with the absence or erosion of democracy and civil liberties on the other hand. Authoritarian capitalism must be carefully distinguished from public ownership, which is unproblematic insofar as state companies are democratically-controlled and accountable. There is nothing per se wrong with public ownership; on what grounds is ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, or BP preferable to Norway’s Equinor/Statoil? Especially in a situation in which competition has been weakened and corporate power is highly concentrated—a situation which arguably pertains to the contemporary United States[9]—there is little to recommend the status quo in comparison to democratically-controlled public ownership.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-expansion-authoritarian-rule

Original: https://youtu.be/y_sPEMJYjBw

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