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Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? It seems that the best predictor of wh

Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? It seems that the best predictor of whether a country is prosperous in 2024 is whether it was prosperous in 1724. It's also easy to forget that Russia was quasi-medieval almost up to the 20th century.

RandomLensman 2y ago
Germany? Didn't even exist in 1724 and the area was heavily destroyed by the 30 year war the century before. But depends what you mean by "laissez-faire capitalism".
roenxi 2y ago
[flagged]
ziggyzecat 2y ago
Singapore
- hatenberg 2y ago
  Singapore has a great coat of paint over its economic system so westerners think it’s pure capitalism but that’s a mirage. - The majority of locals work directly (PSD, Government, Education) or indirectly (Temasek / GIC owned entities like CapitalLand, Surbana, Singapore Airlines, the three local banks, etc. - 80% of the property market is directly under government control (HDB), with 20% heavily regulated but “free” I could go on, but Singapore works precisely because it’s not free for all capitalism but a tightly controlled economy that makes sure the country benefits
- orwin 2y ago
  Singapore is like the 5th most communist country in the world.
xenospn 2y ago
Singapore? Korea? Israel? Norway?
- andrepd 2y ago
  Singapore is not a liberal democracy. Israel has a very particular situation which I'm not gonna get into. Norway might be the best example on that list, but it's also the flagship example of a mixed economy; hardly laissez-faire turbo capitalism.
  - xenospn 2y ago
    Literally every country has a “very particular situation”.
mopsi 2y ago
> Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? Most of Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, average wages were ~30 USD per month, that is, less than dollar a day. Now they are rapidly catching up with Western Europe. Laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a choice, but the only responsible option left when you have no meaningful national economy. People were told that the state budget is empty and there's no money to hand out, and that they have to find a way to survive on their own. And they did.
inglor_cz 2y ago
The countries that were prosperous in 1724 were the ones that had highly developed trade networks and a market full of not-very-constrained individual players. It is precisely by mimicking them that capitalism spread into other nations and pushed out various previous feudal forms, even though the local nobles fought back against the tide for decades and centuries, sometimes managing to stop it for a while. If you take a historical map of Europe in the 18th century and mark various instances of liberalizing legislation on it, you can see the spread quite nicely. It is almost like an ink blotch spreading on a table. The places that resisted the new ideas the most (the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire) and managed to keep their old feudal norms deep into the 19th century were the ones that ended up on the bottom, and had to speedrun industrialization and development in the 20th century under top-down reformers like Lenin and Ataturk.

RandomLensman 2y ago

Germany? Didn't even exist in 1724 and the area was heavily destroyed by the 30 year war the century before. But depends what you mean by "laissez-faire capitalism".

roenxi 2y ago

[flagged]

ziggyzecat 2y ago

Singapore

hatenberg 2y ago
Singapore has a great coat of paint over its economic system so westerners think it’s pure capitalism but that’s a mirage. - The majority of locals work directly (PSD, Government, Education) or indirectly (Temasek / GIC owned entities like CapitalLand, Surbana, Singapore Airlines, the three local banks, etc. - 80% of the property market is directly under government control (HDB), with 20% heavily regulated but “free” I could go on, but Singapore works precisely because it’s not free for all capitalism but a tightly controlled economy that makes sure the country benefits
orwin 2y ago
Singapore is like the 5th most communist country in the world.

xenospn 2y ago

Singapore? Korea? Israel? Norway?

andrepd 2y ago
Singapore is not a liberal democracy. Israel has a very particular situation which I'm not gonna get into. Norway might be the best example on that list, but it's also the flagship example of a mixed economy; hardly laissez-faire turbo capitalism.
- xenospn 2y ago
  Literally every country has a “very particular situation”.

mopsi 2y ago

> Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? Most of Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, average wages were ~30 USD per month, that is, less than dollar a day. Now they are rapidly catching up with Western Europe. Laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a choice, but the only responsible option left when you have no meaningful national economy. People were told that the state budget is empty and there's no money to hand out, and that they have to find a way to survive on their own. And they did.

inglor_cz 2y ago

The countries that were prosperous in 1724 were the ones that had highly developed trade networks and a market full of not-very-constrained individual players. It is precisely by mimicking them that capitalism spread into other nations and pushed out various previous feudal forms, even though the local nobles fought back against the tide for decades and centuries, sometimes managing to stop it for a while. If you take a historical map of Europe in the 18th century and mark various instances of liberalizing legislation on it, you can see the spread quite nicely. It is almost like an ink blotch spreading on a table. The places that resisted the new ideas the most (the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire) and managed to keep their old feudal norms deep into the 19th century were the ones that ended up on the bottom, and had to speedrun industrialization and development in the 20th century under top-down reformers like Lenin and Ataturk.