> improvements in prosperity come quickly [...] has historically almost never been the case But I don't think the parent was far off with what they said. The a

> improvements in prosperity come quickly [...] has historically almost never been the case But I don't think the parent was far off with what they said. The advantage of the authoritarian is that there's no red tape for them, whatsoever. This power can be directed for practical reasons like building a gigantic wall around your borders, or selfish reasons like erecting gigantic pyramids to retain your wealth and status in the afterlife. > It is actually quite anomalous for a non-democracy to see these sorts of quality of life improvements. This seems like survivorship bias to me. It's easy to point to NK or the Soviet Union or China under Mao as failed authoritarian states. But these were also extremely experimental and it's not hard to imagine that the current incarnation of Chinese authoritarianism is one that has learned from the last one's mistakes. Most of the quality of life improvements that were seen in the west in the 20th century were thanks to technological improvements stemming from the industrial revolution. China is going through an industrial revolution of their own right now. So was it actually because of democracy that the west saw so much improvement last century? > Honestly, your comment seems remarkably ill-reformed. Extremely rude.