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This is quite rude of me, but I find your views to be horrifying, > Ability to exploit labour > The hard part, the _initial_ pool of human capita > ugly busi

This is quite rude of me, but I find your views to be horrifying, > Ability to exploit labour > The hard part, the _initial_ pool of human capita > ugly business of "solving ethnic and sub-national conflicts" including groups that operate contrary to state development interests, like these > Authoritarians / state controls simply is better at starting the ball rolling That "human capital" is made out of people, human beings, who are often executed for speaking out of turn in authoritarian countries. Who are worked without fair pay in starvation wages in these countries. What you seem to be - and I deeply apologize if I'm wrong - implying when you say "colonial direction, then exploitation/slavery" is that slavery itself and near-slavery like conditions are necessary for development. That is a deeply disturbing perspective to me. I may seem to be rejecting your core thesis out of hand, but I feel like you handwaved these examples away. I can talk a great deal about the US as I know it well, and the industrialization of America is a complex story with many moving parts, with labor rights being fought for side-by-side. The most backwards states today are the ones that were the most exploitative of the "human capital" that you mention. It also feels like as if you've handwaved the other answers away. Western Germany and the UK etc were flattened, glassed as you said it, and their "human capital" had been greatly diminished. And yet they prospered with the right policies and public investments. Reducing this to a "wank around" is deeply misguided. > preeminent superpower happens to be democratic and made war with ideologic rivals while handwaving away the contribution of their authoritarian roots Furthermore, the US hasn't always spread democracy around the world. When the CIA did regime change, they usually replaced democracies with autocracies, with extremely bad results in several places. These examples are excluded in your analysis. But setting aside all the historical evidence and the statistical arguments that others have made, the sheer idea that exploiting and authoritarianism i.e. telling people, with force, is necessary for economic growth and that this is desirable is appalling. You seem to be under no illusion of what it means, but let me spell out what it does mean, It means parents disappeared in the middle of the night. It means the torture of anyone who disagrees. It means the rejection, beating, and killing of those who are different (the "ethnic and subnational conflicts" you mentioned, that's how autocrats usually resolve these, murder and ethnic cleansing). It means forcing people to work against their will. It means suspending the right to due process. It means making some people more than others. And it means a legacy of death, destruction, and hate that will take generations to dissipate. It feels as though you understand all of this and yet you support it as the "necessary price" for "progress", because you believe that you won't be the one paying the price. And that's what horrifies me. The implication here, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you genuinely think that in an autocratic society, you'll come out on top. The odds are that you won't. Even if you're the supporter of the right autocrat and kiss up to the right people. The first thing autocrats do, when they come to power, is that they purge their supporters. Ask the supporters of Mao, Stalin and Hitler (nacht der langen messer/the Röhm Purge) how it went for them. A famous story from a small town in the Netherlands during the Nazi occuption is that they had an air raid shelter in the town. The Mayor invited everyone to safety at the shelter. When they arrived there, mind you these were the "aryans" that the Nazis were obsessed about, they were soon gunned down, because they weren't loyal enough. Not that they were disloyal. But simply because they weren't loyal enough. > It's also just useful to evaluate most recent successful development models: Japan Yes, Japan. Japan's record economic growth happened under a democratic constitution and government enacted in 1947. Their industrial base was rebuilt from scratch after the firebombing/raids had decimated all industrial capacity. . dang, if you ever see this, I apologize for the rudeness.

dirtyid 6y ago
You're not rude. It's a unpleasant position to endorse. Excuse curtness of my writing and lax structure, in hurry. TLDR is poor autocrats can make a country rich and democratic fast. The vice versa isn't true, poor democratic countries have historically stayed poor. You are fixating on "bad" autocratic regimes, there are benevolent and benign ones as well - hence notion of benevolent dictatorship. There are proven success stories this century from spectrum of autocracy that has succeeded in rapid development which sets up condition for transition into democracies. Some/lots of eggs broken in process, but moral calculus still comes out "on top" - the winner is broader society and future generations. Key point is fast / rapid / expedient. First, a comparison of infant mortality using 2019 data: India population: 1353M Birth rate: 18 per 1000 people Infant mortality: 28/1000 births Infant mortality: ~736000 China population: 1393M Birth rate: 10 per 1000 people Infant mortality: 7/1000 births Infant mortality: ~97000 That's the moral calculus once you look past platitudes of slow democratic development from poor countries that start at the bottom. Infant mortality is just _one_ cost of retarding development in terms of avoidable / excess deaths. India had substantially worse child mortality and higher birth rate 20 years ago relative to China (authoritarian family planning perk), the improvement is steady but glacial. Poverty translates to hundreds of millions of avoidable deaths as function of slow development / poverty alleviation rate since Indian democratic experiment began postwar. That is the cost of being poor and democratic. Persistent poverty and deprivation ripples through generations and has mortality comparable to total war - compare military vs famine + disease (poverty) related WW2 fatalities, when both data points is available, poverty consistently comes out worse. Addressing poverty rapidly trumps all other moral considerations. Poverty will outlasts bad dictators but is avoidable under good ones. Repression is short term, gains compound long term. Short term because even living generations can enjoy fruits by very nature of developing rapidly. Korea/Taiwan remember growing up under dictators. Singapore/China remembers how shit postwar struggles were. Indian democracy is eeking out 1/5th of China's GDP despite having comparable starting position and much better external conditions for development - CCP was sanctioned and hamstrung by western bloc for decades postwar. India's slow / dysfunctional and now more and more illiberal democracy had more unfettered opportunities, but is just not effective relative to proven authoritarian models. Which leads us to Japan who developed under authoritarian prewar government. Their Manchukuo model is copied by Asian Tigers. They are the poster child for rapid modern development jump started by authoritarianism. Postwar Japan was in the same position as other destroyed postwar countries, the institutions setup by authoritarian legacy enabled transitioning back into previously developed conditions when US funded reconstruction. There is continuity in state capabilities due to institution memory embodied in human capital initially cultivated by authoritarian direction [0]. Again, starting autocratic doesn't mean staying autocratic. Different systems are effective for different stages of development. Inefficiency is total deaths under curve for time to develop to wealth level necessary to mitigate effects of poverty. This is an incredible number of lives over multi-generational time scale. Manchukuo = Manchuria, the amount of Japanese atrocities there was incredible, but subsequent SKorean / Taiwan dictatorships managed to replicate Japanese model with comparably less atrocities. Which circle back to spectrum of authoritarianism, from relatively benevolent (Singapore) to benign available to make this model work. India democracy could still succeed, if it does, it will take longer, the interest rate is millions of avoidable deaths. That's what gets hand waved when people fixate only on good democracies and bad autocracies instead of the entire spectrum. Another personal handwave... the moral costs of starting authoritarian is cheap. It's better population to have 5/10/15 of bad time now in exchange for generational prosperity. India "democracy" is kind of devolving into a shitshow, they seem to be hurtling towards the worst of both worlds. [0] Re: human capital, I poorly articulated my point. I really mean state coordinated institutions that makes running a modern developed country possible. It's easy to train a bunch of scientists, engineers etc, but you need competent state to coordinate moving parts into something productive. OECD democracies are standing on foundations built by exploitive / authoritarian pasts. Hence my emphasis on modern India as an experiment on "total" development based off democracy. They started from close to zero and after 60 years, coordination is not there and the system is floundering on the precipitate of significant demographic, technologic deadlines. The system is not producing the results. Ultimate question is if it's a matter of "if" or "when". If not then democracy will have doomed 1.4B indians -> 1.6B by 2050.

dirtyid 6y ago

You're not rude. It's a unpleasant position to endorse. Excuse curtness of my writing and lax structure, in hurry. TLDR is poor autocrats can make a country rich and democratic fast. The vice versa isn't true, poor democratic countries have historically stayed poor. You are fixating on "bad" autocratic regimes, there are benevolent and benign ones as well - hence notion of benevolent dictatorship. There are proven success stories this century from spectrum of autocracy that has succeeded in rapid development which sets up condition for transition into democracies. Some/lots of eggs broken in process, but moral calculus still comes out "on top" - the winner is broader society and future generations. Key point is fast / rapid / expedient. First, a comparison of infant mortality using 2019 data: India population: 1353M Birth rate: 18 per 1000 people Infant mortality: 28/1000 births Infant mortality: ~736000 China population: 1393M Birth rate: 10 per 1000 people Infant mortality: 7/1000 births Infant mortality: ~97000 That's the moral calculus once you look past platitudes of slow democratic development from poor countries that start at the bottom. Infant mortality is just _one_ cost of retarding development in terms of avoidable / excess deaths. India had substantially worse child mortality and higher birth rate 20 years ago relative to China (authoritarian family planning perk), the improvement is steady but glacial. Poverty translates to hundreds of millions of avoidable deaths as function of slow development / poverty alleviation rate since Indian democratic experiment began postwar. That is the cost of being poor and democratic. Persistent poverty and deprivation ripples through generations and has mortality comparable to total war - compare military vs famine + disease (poverty) related WW2 fatalities, when both data points is available, poverty consistently comes out worse. Addressing poverty rapidly trumps all other moral considerations. Poverty will outlasts bad dictators but is avoidable under good ones. Repression is short term, gains compound long term. Short term because even living generations can enjoy fruits by very nature of developing rapidly. Korea/Taiwan remember growing up under dictators. Singapore/China remembers how shit postwar struggles were. Indian democracy is eeking out 1/5th of China's GDP despite having comparable starting position and much better external conditions for development - CCP was sanctioned and hamstrung by western bloc for decades postwar. India's slow / dysfunctional and now more and more illiberal democracy had more unfettered opportunities, but is just not effective relative to proven authoritarian models. Which leads us to Japan who developed under authoritarian prewar government. Their Manchukuo model is copied by Asian Tigers. They are the poster child for rapid modern development jump started by authoritarianism. Postwar Japan was in the same position as other destroyed postwar countries, the institutions setup by authoritarian legacy enabled transitioning back into previously developed conditions when US funded reconstruction. There is continuity in state capabilities due to institution memory embodied in human capital initially cultivated by authoritarian direction [0]. Again, starting autocratic doesn't mean staying autocratic. Different systems are effective for different stages of development. Inefficiency is total deaths under curve for time to develop to wealth level necessary to mitigate effects of poverty. This is an incredible number of lives over multi-generational time scale. Manchukuo = Manchuria, the amount of Japanese atrocities there was incredible, but subsequent SKorean / Taiwan dictatorships managed to replicate Japanese model with comparably less atrocities. Which circle back to spectrum of authoritarianism, from relatively benevolent (Singapore) to benign available to make this model work. India democracy could still succeed, if it does, it will take longer, the interest rate is millions of avoidable deaths. That's what gets hand waved when people fixate only on good democracies and bad autocracies instead of the entire spectrum. Another personal handwave... the moral costs of starting authoritarian is cheap. It's better population to have 5/10/15 of bad time now in exchange for generational prosperity. India "democracy" is kind of devolving into a shitshow, they seem to be hurtling towards the worst of both worlds. [0] Re: human capital, I poorly articulated my point. I really mean state coordinated institutions that makes running a modern developed country possible. It's easy to train a bunch of scientists, engineers etc, but you need competent state to coordinate moving parts into something productive. OECD democracies are standing on foundations built by exploitive / authoritarian pasts. Hence my emphasis on modern India as an experiment on "total" development based off democracy. They started from close to zero and after 60 years, coordination is not there and the system is floundering on the precipitate of significant demographic, technologic deadlines. The system is not producing the results. Ultimate question is if it's a matter of "if" or "when". If not then democracy will have doomed 1.4B indians -> 1.6B by 2050.