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Maybe the combination of capitalism + democracy is so successful because it aligns the incentives of leaders and the masses best (to the extent possible).
by baxtr 9mo ago
Maybe the combination of capitalism + democracy is so successful because it aligns the incentives of leaders and the masses best (to the extent possible).
- JumpCrisscross 9mo agoMy takeaway from China is democracy is less important than political competition. Between Mao and Xi, the CCP had the latter without the former. Today, America has the former and is struggling to keep the latter.
- baxtr 9mo agoYes agreed. But competition for what? I'd say for the good of the majority of the people. In other systems only those on top profit (maybe 10-20% max) even if they claim otherwise. Thus democracy, through competition, aligns the leader's incentive with their people best.
- justinclift 9mo ago> In other systems only those on top profit Are you saying the US isn't doing that presently?
- baxtr 9mo agoYes. Mind you that like most things in life, it's a spectrum.
- anigbrowl 9mo agoI think not. European colonialism was hardly a democratic project, and the extreme success of the US is attributable less to ideology and more to being an entire continent with a relatively tiny indigenous population that had not exploited any of its natural resources. Ideological/paradigmatic competition is not some neat controlled experiment where you can normalize existing conditions to unity and then draw conclusions from measuring subsequent growth; initial resource distributions make a massive difference and geography, while not the only factor, is highly determinative.
- baxtr 9mo agoSo you’re saying having a head start due to geography is all that matters? If power differences can be explained by better access to resource and it’s only about head starts, China should have stayed the leading power.