I agree with the other commenter that "capitalism does not require democracy" is interesting enough to kick around. The rest of it seems more and more tenuous t

I agree with the other commenter that "capitalism does not require democracy" is interesting enough to kick around. The rest of it seems more and more tenuous the further you get down the list (and the more things that are combined in some sort of quasi-logic to reach a conclusion). I'm not saying the guy is wrong, just that there's a lot to digest there -- too much for a forum like this. From what I've read, there are clear things that separate various civilizations. A quick list that I pulled out of the air might look like this: - Private property - Rule of law (contracts) - Freedom of political speech - Consent of the governed - Ability to freely associate into commercial units (corporations) - Peaceful transfer of authority Societies that have these things, on average, are able to solve more problems for more people over a longer period of time than those who do not. These problems are usually solved from the bottom-up; whether through innovation or grassroots political efforts, distributed, self-optimizing systems beat centralized ones. The various forms of democracies that we see instantiated usually have more of these things than the other types of governments we've tried as a planet. Capitalism refers to a very specific type of financial arrangement. It seems to map man's desire to trade with the above values -- at least as good as anything else. To say "captialism does not require democracy", then, is true -- but it's woefully incomplete. The Chinese are getting away with rapid growth because they've met many but not all of the criteria, and that's only for the last decade or two. The problem with the statement is that it wants to form a broad conclusion about complex topics using simple language. If you do that, you miss out on the important parts. This is also the problem with the rest of the list. Do enough of this and string a thread through it, you can prove pretty much any dang thing you'd like.