Also when your comment ignores that China is not a meritocracy.

Authoritarians see everyone else as some other kind of authoritarian.

Most people are authoritarians. It's not their fault though since opposing such systems is very dangerous and disadvantageous to people. Hence why they persist.

That's not true at all in the west and you are proving my point by saying it. People who support authoritarians will disingenuously accuse democracies of being authoritarians and offer up their own ideology as the superior form of authoritarianism.

There are degrees of authoritarianism. But every state engages in it through policing, border controls, prisons, etc.

Just because some states are better than others doesn't mean that the state is not a fundamentally coercive institution.

This is one of those posts where I get confused, lose track of who's criticising who, and end up downvoting by mistake. But (as usual!) I realised my mistake and gave you an upnudge instead

I think people who support authoritarians do so because they believe democracy to be an inherently flawed and authoritarian system - but also inefficient and ineffectual, so they would rather "at least have an effective leader" than enable a system that wastes society's time, and (since they believe it to be authoritarian in its own way) doesn't reduce human suffering.

These people are such utter losers that they think the middle class is the enemy. They have no concept of who the truly rich are.

Fucking pathetic that they base their entirely ideology on one of millions of what-if scenarios. And it’s Incredibly convenient that the one they chose also aligns with their batshit insane take.