> For the longest time, "Democracy" the political system was bandied about to be the primary precondition for economic progress.
I agree with you. I think that mindset has a fundamental misunderstanding of the root cause of economic prosperity.
Economic prosperity comes from liberty. Democracy and liberty are two very different things. For a long time, they were treated as roughly equivalent.
China figured out that economic liberty, coupled with state sponsored abusive labor conditions and few ecological restrictions, can effectively compete with "democracy" where people are able to vote to regulate labor markets.
In the face of this, Democracy is a weakness. After all, how can a Western economy that's voting itself (for example) four day work weeks and great work/life balance benefits compete with forced labor in the short term?
I think it competes well in the medium to long term, as economic systems that maximize liberty seem to mostly win.
China can compete in this method because they have 4 times the population of the US. And even so in aggregate they are still clearly in 2nd in the global hard power race.
Scarily for china their demographics look horrific through the rest of the century while America will likely continue growing due to immigration. By 2100 it's projected they could have less than twice the population of the US. Will they still be competitive then? Will any of the asian tigers besides Japan & SK escape the middle income trap?
I agree with you. I think that mindset has a fundamental misunderstanding of the root cause of economic prosperity.
Economic prosperity comes from liberty. Democracy and liberty are two very different things. For a long time, they were treated as roughly equivalent.
China figured out that economic liberty, coupled with state sponsored abusive labor conditions and few ecological restrictions, can effectively compete with "democracy" where people are able to vote to regulate labor markets.
In the face of this, Democracy is a weakness. After all, how can a Western economy that's voting itself (for example) four day work weeks and great work/life balance benefits compete with forced labor in the short term?
I think it competes well in the medium to long term, as economic systems that maximize liberty seem to mostly win.