What exactly IS a father knows best state?

[Greater Petersland]

I don't really get it. It's classified as a "medium economic freedom & medium civil freedom, with little/no democracy", but how would a state like this look like IRL? How does a state like that act? Heavy surveillance, conservative values, big police forces and such? Or is it just a society where the state acts as a parent, where it interferes where it feels it should and leaves the rest to the "children" themselves to figure out?

[Cerian Quilor]

The ever-theoretical benevolent enlightened despotism, I think, would probably be what it would be IRL. Fredrick the Great's Prussia is a state that arguably managed to get that general idea close, depending on who you ask. There are other examples too - Rome under Augustus was pretty Father Knows Best State-esque.

[Leutria]

More like the second, which you can get an idea of from how it describes it on the nation page "...are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up."

So picture a dictator that is mostly happy to let people and business run as they wish, but has a few hard rules that that will not let anyone break.

[Greater Petersland]

More like the second, which you can get an idea of from how it describes it on the nation page "...are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up."

So picture a dictator that is mostly happy to let people and business run as they wish, but has a few hard rules that that will not let anyone break.

Ah right, that seems makes sense, yeah.

[Greater Petersland]

The ever-theoretical benevolent enlightened despotism, I think, would probably be what it would be IRL. Fredrick the Great's Prussia is a state that arguably managed to get that general idea close, depending on who you ask. There are other examples too - Rome under Augustus was pretty Father Knows Best State-esque.

Right right, thank you. I will check out their legacies.

[Narwhalitz]

It would be a country that runs a mixed economy with both private business and nationalised, state owned industry...it would be reasonably socially conservative but you probably wouldn't be persecuted for being black or gay I think....the big difference would be that someone has seized control, outlawed elections and political opposition, and shapes all government policies and national decisions.

So, the population have reasonable civil rights and economic freedom but - there is no political freedom, democracy is almost unheard of and it is sometimes regarded as: soft fascism. In theory the dictator is not trying to systematically oppress people, but rather establish a strong and stringent "roadmap" to prosperity and equality. In theory.

At least that's my take on it.

[New Drodistan]

Yeah, it's basically a good representation of what this nation is supposed to be: liberal on social issues (or it could be moderate I guess), but no political freedoms. Alcohol/tobacco/marijuana, abortion, gay marriage etc are all legal, but you can't criticize the government, there's a lot of capital punishment, torture is fairly common, surveillance is everywhere.

[Viscondy]

I don't really get it. It's classified as a "medium economic freedom & medium civil freedom, with little/no democracy", but how would a state like this look like IRL? How does a state like that act? Heavy surveillance, conservative values, big police forces and such? Or is it just a society where the state acts as a parent, where it interferes where it feels it should and leaves the rest to the "children" themselves to figure out?

A dictator who has some rules, but not to many.
It does explain it. To put it incredibly simply:
Civil rights are: how many rules do you have on things that aren't economic? The more rules in this are, the lower the civil rights.
Economy is: how many rules do you have on the economy? The more rules, the more left-wing the nation is.
Political Freedoms are: How democratic are you? The more democracy, the higher the political freedoms.

[Solomons Land]

What is the clasification with the highest lifespan