Which prevents any wannabe Stalin or Mao from doing much, since everyone is busy feuding instead of pulling together to accomplish a disaster more effectively.
Everything is always done in the name of ‘the people’ if it helps sell the lie. Always has been that way.
Instead of one tinpot tyrant in your life, you have a dozen, each of which wants a pound of flesh from you.
Most of the feuding they do is not with each other, but with their subjects. Capital owners usually act in unison when it comes to their class interests, it's the rest of us that are busy being divided by culture wars and the gaffe of the week.
I take it you’ve never had this discussion with someone who has dealt with actual tyrants?
No one who was under their sphere of influence would classify Stalin or Mao as tinpot. They killed nearly 100 million of their own people between the two of them.
Khmer Rouge being a third example.
I’ll take squabbling (but still competing) landlords over ‘great leaps forward’ or holodomor any day of the week.
Everything is always done in the name of ‘the people’ if it helps sell the lie. Always has been that way.