Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 8note 1904 days ago
Dictators have broad powers -- the tenure is orthogonal. You could have a dictator who's in for a year
1 comments

> Dictators have broad powers -- the tenure is orthogonal. You could have a dictator who's in for a year

Technically you're right, but typically the highest priority for a dictator is to extend their tenure, indefinitely if at all possible, by exercising those broad powers.

Making a foundational set of laws dictator-proof is actually a hard problem. It is kind of like designing a programming language that is deliberately Turing-incomplete. You're trying to make abusing the system impossible, without crippling the desired functionality.