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I'm not disagreeing with any of your points, but I think you're misunderstanding me. Markets are always better than planned economies, yes, and China is a good

I'm not disagreeing with any of your points, but I think you're misunderstanding me. Markets are always better than planned economies, yes, and China is a good example of the free market running its course, although its by no means perfect. All the problems you pointed out are not market inefficiencies but government bureaucrats interfering with the market mechanism using their monopoly of violence. Secondly, killing several 10s of millions of people doesn't transform into economic gains; I can give you a list of several African countries that have lost proportional numbers of their population without any commensurate economic growth. You don't lift an agrarian economy into the first world by killing of peasants. Foreign aid: I approach foreign aid with a libertarian lens - if Chinese (or whatever nationality) companies are investing in Africa with their private capital, that's perfect. If a state is doing it, the resources will be poorly allocated and will go into a dictator's pocket.

hnbad 3y ago
> Markets are much more efficient than central planning. Ironically large multinationals like Amazon are approximating planned economies in how their logistics are set up, especially if you compare them to what Cybersyn was intended to be in Chile rather than the stocky bureaucracy of the USSR. I think it's a mistake to label China "communist" just because that's what its ruling party calls itself (after all we don't call North Korea "democratic" either) but it's also important to keep in mind that capitalism in China very explicitly exists only under the watchful eye of the state and the state has intervened rather drastically in the past. It's a stretch to compare it to comparatively free market economies. > I approach foreign aid with a libertarian lens - if Chinese (or whatever nationality) companies are investing in Africa with their private capital, that's perfect. If a state is doing it, the resources will be poorly allocated and will go into a dictator's pocket. That's not a libertarian lens, that's just assuming a difference where one doesn't exist. If Chinese companies invest in Africa, they do so to further political goals of China (i.e. the "Chinese economy"). If the US invests in Africa, it is doing so to further economic goals of US companies (i.e. the "US economy"). If a state does it, it just comes with more moral pretense and the people deciding where the money should go are usually only paid by corporations, not working for them directly. The function of a state is to advance the interests of its economy and that is defined by its businesses, not its citizens. The well-being of its citizens is the presumed and stated ulterior motive but as history has demonstrated time and again, when it comes to sacrificing citizens or the economy, states generally favor the economy. In other words: in free market economies, politicians are the middlemen of corporations. The only difference in China is that those corporations are in turn under the direct control of the Party (i.e. Bezos is more influential to the US than Biden but Xi Jinping is more influential to China than Zhong Shanshan).

hnbad 3y ago

> Markets are much more efficient than central planning. Ironically large multinationals like Amazon are approximating planned economies in how their logistics are set up, especially if you compare them to what Cybersyn was intended to be in Chile rather than the stocky bureaucracy of the USSR. I think it's a mistake to label China "communist" just because that's what its ruling party calls itself (after all we don't call North Korea "democratic" either) but it's also important to keep in mind that capitalism in China very explicitly exists only under the watchful eye of the state and the state has intervened rather drastically in the past. It's a stretch to compare it to comparatively free market economies. > I approach foreign aid with a libertarian lens - if Chinese (or whatever nationality) companies are investing in Africa with their private capital, that's perfect. If a state is doing it, the resources will be poorly allocated and will go into a dictator's pocket. That's not a libertarian lens, that's just assuming a difference where one doesn't exist. If Chinese companies invest in Africa, they do so to further political goals of China (i.e. the "Chinese economy"). If the US invests in Africa, it is doing so to further economic goals of US companies (i.e. the "US economy"). If a state does it, it just comes with more moral pretense and the people deciding where the money should go are usually only paid by corporations, not working for them directly. The function of a state is to advance the interests of its economy and that is defined by its businesses, not its citizens. The well-being of its citizens is the presumed and stated ulterior motive but as history has demonstrated time and again, when it comes to sacrificing citizens or the economy, states generally favor the economy. In other words: in free market economies, politicians are the middlemen of corporations. The only difference in China is that those corporations are in turn under the direct control of the Party (i.e. Bezos is more influential to the US than Biden but Xi Jinping is more influential to China than Zhong Shanshan).