4 ms·

This is better deployed against the viewpoint that makes the affirmative statement about democracy leading to stagnation. Cheers.

anovikov 2y ago
I think it's a big big question - how is democracy related to growth rates. Certainly democracy is a necessary, but not the sufficient, precondition for growth of capital. Because capital is ownership. In a dictatorship, a dictator/"the Party" eventually decides as they please, so no ownership is "real". Being rich is about physically controlling things rather than nominally "owning" them. In this sense, dictatorships suck. As a consequence, they also suck at keeping human capital in because those want to get rich so they move to where it's possible. But in other measures, it's really hard to see whether democracy or a dictatorship is a better tool for economic development. I think it greatly depends on stage of development of a particular country, and stage of technology development worldwide. Say, India suffered poor growth rates historically and was progressively falling behind China (starting with per-capita equality in 1990 down to about 40% of Chinese level a few years ago), because it was too democratic: if many children in the country go hungry every day, taking some money for industrial investments means that some children will die. No democratic country will vote for that, and no free market will "vote" for that with people's cash. But a dictatorship can do it, no problem. Once society becomes more advanced, dictatorship becomes an impediment because it limits free expression, knowledge exchange, travel, and limits capital ownership just because of the stuff above. But then, we may encounter further issues like those we have in Western societies where NIMBYsm can just simply choke the entire society by literally ban any new construction because the incumbents don't want values of their homes to fall - and that might give dictatorships an edge because they don't give a damn what people think. I don't think anyone has an answer there. Dictatorship or democracy, in the end of the day, depend on culture, religion, and the like, not on economic factors. A rather "clean" experiment in that regard with the fall of the Soviet Union did not give us any answer: some democratic countries jumped ahead (Baltic states), some fell way behind (Ukraine, Moldova), some dictatorship became successful (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan), others fell into utter dystopia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).

anovikov 2y ago

I think it's a big big question - how is democracy related to growth rates. Certainly democracy is a necessary, but not the sufficient, precondition for growth of capital. Because capital is ownership. In a dictatorship, a dictator/"the Party" eventually decides as they please, so no ownership is "real". Being rich is about physically controlling things rather than nominally "owning" them. In this sense, dictatorships suck. As a consequence, they also suck at keeping human capital in because those want to get rich so they move to where it's possible. But in other measures, it's really hard to see whether democracy or a dictatorship is a better tool for economic development. I think it greatly depends on stage of development of a particular country, and stage of technology development worldwide. Say, India suffered poor growth rates historically and was progressively falling behind China (starting with per-capita equality in 1990 down to about 40% of Chinese level a few years ago), because it was too democratic: if many children in the country go hungry every day, taking some money for industrial investments means that some children will die. No democratic country will vote for that, and no free market will "vote" for that with people's cash. But a dictatorship can do it, no problem. Once society becomes more advanced, dictatorship becomes an impediment because it limits free expression, knowledge exchange, travel, and limits capital ownership just because of the stuff above. But then, we may encounter further issues like those we have in Western societies where NIMBYsm can just simply choke the entire society by literally ban any new construction because the incumbents don't want values of their homes to fall - and that might give dictatorships an edge because they don't give a damn what people think. I don't think anyone has an answer there. Dictatorship or democracy, in the end of the day, depend on culture, religion, and the like, not on economic factors. A rather "clean" experiment in that regard with the fall of the Soviet Union did not give us any answer: some democratic countries jumped ahead (Baltic states), some fell way behind (Ukraine, Moldova), some dictatorship became successful (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan), others fell into utter dystopia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).