Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by luckylion 1285 days ago
> The idea is that if the leader can live luxuriously in another country, they have an incentive to stop being a bad leader and retire in luxury already.

That sounds plausible, but does it actually happen? I mean, tyrants have certainly fled the country to live somewhere else and retire their ambitions, but have they ever done so peacefully?
4 comments
schubart 1285 days ago
Former East German leader Erich Honecker [1] lived in Chile until he died of cancer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Honecker

link
luckylion 1285 days ago
I don't think he was threatened, Germans are far too nice to take revenge on their dictators (and he probably also doesn't quite fit the 'dictator' model this is aimed at, as I'm not aware of him having funneled large sums of money out of the country; he was a dictator because of ideology, not because he was a power-hungry cleptocrat, and he resigned before the government folded). He could've lived in Germany, his trial was abandoned, but chose Chile to join his family who had emigrated when he asked for asylum.
link
saint_fiasco 1285 days ago
Stroessner ruled Paraguay for a long time, but when he was old and his generals staged a coup against him he only gave token resistance and fled to Brazil right away. As far as I know he lived peacefully there until he died.

He could have fought back much harder and plunged the country into a civil war like the one that got him into power in the first place. He chose to retire in wealth, comfort and peace instead.

link
themitigating 1285 days ago
How could he have fought back harder if his generals staged a coup?
link
saint_fiasco 1284 days ago
The normal way to fight back against it is to prevent it. You are supposed to generously compensate the armed forces at the expense of the entire rest of the country.

Stroessner did that, but he was not single-minded enough about it. He could have plundered much more, he could have named a successor that his generals liked, he could have raised taxes to unsustainable levels to pay off his generals and buy more time. If his life literally depended on that, he probably would have.

link
MonkeyMalarky 1285 days ago
Was more of a thing historically wasn't it? Napoleon was exiled to a far away island before his death. Not by choice though.
link
Georgelemental 1285 days ago
Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and went into exile without too much resistance.
link