Discussion
There has never been a libertine authoritarian state.
Even if it would be easier to control the population, no one ever goes that route because controlling the minutiae of people's lives is the entire point of having power as far as the powerful are concerned.
I'd read it the other way around:
There has never been a non-libertine authoritarian state, because the rulers are always allowed to misbehave if they choose to; indeed, if they can't misbehave, that means they aren't really authoritarian rulers.
The difference is in whose misbehaviour is tolerated and whose is not.
@passenger The powerful always exempt themselves from their own rules. That's the whole point of being powerful.
Yeah, exactly.
In Britain there's a phenomenon where status-anxious people will intentionally misbehave to see if they can get away with it, as a way of reassuring themselves that they're counted as being among the powerful. The more anxious, the more misbehaviour, and the more aggressive they'll be about insisting that they avoid consequences.
This is probably not unique to Britain, but I think it underlies a lot of cyberpunk media: "I am a cyberenhanced badass who does cool things and breaks the law and gets away with it because of how awesome I am and how good at fighting I am" is just another sort of power which creates an expectation of exemption from the rules.
@passenger I think it works that way everywhere.
Bigotry works in a similar fashion. There's always a reactionary backlash when bigots start to feel like they can't get away with it. They will burn society to the ground just for the "right" to say the n-word or whatever. That's power to them.
That's a really good point, and it touches on Altemeyer: that authoritarians perceive a social norm as an aggression because it reminds them that they aren't the one who created that norm, and that suggests to them that they're the outgroup, which is intolerable.
Honestly I go back and forth on "cyberpunk media would be so good if it incorporated proper sociology" and "cyberpunk media would never be published if it incorporated proper sociology." Both are probably true. As a genre, possibly more than any other, it did not survive the audience's desire to identify with a powerful badass.
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