zlacker

It's a silly hypothetical though - the argument that some emergency measures during an international pandemic emergency are authoritarianism would only make sense if we were all still subject to the measures (like stay at home orders).

The problem for your argument is that the temporary emergency measures turned out to actually be temporary. Authoritarian regimes use emergencies (often fake ones) to entrench long-term change, this was a real emergency that had a temporary response...

>>stephe+(OP)
I don't think so? I'll state it again - temporary and authoritarian are orthogonal. Attempting to claim that the lack of permanence demonstrates that the measures weren't authoritarian thus my claim that the two concepts are orthogonal is incorrect is begging the question (at absolute minimum).

Naturally I never claimed that a dictator was attempting to take over. Merely posited that staunch resistance to such measures as a matter of principle is probably not a bad thing for society on the whole.

>>fc417f+Of
But temporary authoritarianism to avert a crisis is rarely what people are thinking of when they say authoritarianism.

Ancient Rome would elect dictators to take control for two weeks at a time, because that was the only effective way to control a crisis. It remains a very effective way to control a crisis, but it only works if people can trust the political system because the political system is worth trusting. Especially people have to be able to trust they can unelect that guy (at least by waiting two weeks).