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I think of democracy like a diversified portfolio. Putting all of your money into one stock can go either incredibly well or incredibly poorly, depending on wha

I think of democracy like a diversified portfolio. Putting all of your money into one stock can go either incredibly well or incredibly poorly, depending on what the one stock is. Diversifying the portfolio is the safest option; it may not yield the highest returns, but it also never yields the lowest returns.

vkou 5y ago
> Diversifying the portfolio is the safest option; it may not yield the highest returns, but it also never yields the lowest returns. If we wave our hands and discount all the failed democracies (that turn into autocracies, or fall apart in civil wars), and if you think that the difference between India's development in the past 30 years and China's development in the past 30 years is just a matter of 'it's not the highest returns...' One's GDP/capita grew from $300 to $10,000, the other from $300 to $2000 in that timespan. That's not a difference of 'not the highest returns', that's a quantitative difference between remaining in poverty on one hand, and a hundreds of millions of people living Western lifestyles on the other. I think it's safe to say at this point that the historic record indicates that democracy and economic development are likely to be orthogonal.