The Free World fears China’s rise. Will authoritarianism win? Is it a viable model? Will other countries take inspiration from China and follow its path? No. The system is doomed to fail.
Really interesting analysis and I hope you're right. Would be interesting to see how income inequality maps on to these variables. GDP per capita doesn't provide an accurate picture if much of a country's wealth is held by a small percentage of the population, as in the US and Russia. Some analysts have suggested that our high level of economic inequality is a factor in why parts of the population devalue democracy.
Another weakness of authoritarian systems is that leaders do not get reliable information from their bureaucracy out of fear of punishment for reporting bad news. This overlaps with, but is not the same, as free speech. We saw this in the initial reporting on covid in China as you said, and it helps explain why Putin's invasion of Ukraine has fared so badly. Given the critical importance of reliable information to economies and governance of large countries, this seems like a fatal weakness of autocracies that create a climate of fear among their bureaucracies.
The fear of repercussions for criticism goes hand in hand with free speech. Both of them are about the right to speak freely to power, and both of them are a culture influenced by regulations that go hand in hand nearly always.
You need freedom of speech and the ability to criticise or you crash and burn. Literally. Speaking to pilots, they tell me they would never fly on airlines belonging to authoritarian countries because if something goes wrong, you are unable to pass it up the chain of command due to it being perceived as criticism.
Plane engine on fire. Can't tell the pilot because I can't criticise him. Plus they have been indoctrinated to think that their superiors always know best.
Authoritarianism and restricting free speech, always leads to crash and burn.
Singapore merits its own post and analysis. What they accomplished is unprecendented and may well hold lessons for us all. I hope you decide to look into it in a future post
Not really unless you’re another tiny country/city-state. Countries like Singapore/Switzerland/Ireland/Liechtenstein/etc. can profit by leach-like strategies. Not so much larger states. The US/Germany/Japan can’t drive their entire economies by being tax havens or havens for private wealth.
1 - Taxes are an important part of policy that needs to be studied. Not waved away. If tax policy didn't matter I would agree with you
2 - Singapore has almost 6 mn people. Portugal, my country, has 10 mn. The great majority of countries in the world are around that ballpark. Also, regional policy choices are made on that scale as well. Florida and Texas are growing faster than NY for example due to different policy choices. Tax leech or not, policies matter.
Explaining away success because it is inconvenient to our argument is not a path to illumination. Science advances when outliers are pursued and studied rather than ignored.
Small states have more leeway in terms of strategies. So your country could join Singapore and Ireland in adopting leech-like strategies (and also thus lower taxes). Not so much large countries and economies. And let's face it, what large countries do affect a lot more people.
Singapore is indeed the outlier in the Asian controlled countries. Singapore university system always has a slogan campaign to motivate students and much of the population. About 1995, it was the slogan "Be Productive from 2:45 to 3:10 PM" It had been duly noted that was the 1 sigma of lowest productivity in previous survey studies.
Singapore is a small state where the economy was carefully developed. For many years a Dutch economist played in important role in this: Albert Winsemius served as an adviser to Singapore between 1961 and 1984.
Yep, and being a small state, it can adopt strategies (like being the Switzerland/private wealth banking center of SE Asia) that larger countries can’t really implement.
Singapore in no small measure owes its greatness to its founder, Stamford Raffles. He got them started on the right course and set the template for future success.
Some errors and issues with the argument that weaken its credibility:
HK is labelled as a petro-state on your Top 40 richest chart. It's obviously not. And it's not been politically free until very recently, and now no longer. So, it will need to be addressed in the same city-state outlier bucket with Macao and Singapore. You can explain away this better by making the case here that city-states are, generally, wealthier, wherever they are, just as large cities are generally wealthier per capita than their hinterlands. That's as true within authoritarian states (e.g. Beijing and Moscow) as within politically free ones (e.g. New York and London).
The India vs. China contrast is left to the end as a hand-wavey epilogue. Why leave it out from the "Authoritarian Regimes vs. Comparables" section? That's a GLARING omission since you have the two largest populations in the world directly neighboring each other, with a democracy vs. authoritarian regime... and the democracy is a lot poorer, both on net and per capita. How are these not a perfect comparable pair? Because it doesn't neatly match the argument? India is and has been as poor as the poorest Sub-Saharan African states, and that's embarrassing for the democracies-are-wealthy crowd.
Speaking of Africa, the divergent trajectories of Nigeria (a petro-state that is a democracy, but suffering the highest absolute poverty rate on the planet) vs. the likes of Ethiopia or Rwanda (both authoritarian regimes self-consciously in the China with better economic outcomes recently) further complicate the case. I don't personally think either will even achieve middle-income status, much less become among the wealthiest countries, so maybe they're just among the majority of states that won't be rich for other geographic reasons. But we invite such problematic rebuttals when we make generalizations like in the "Authoritarian Regimes vs. Comparables" section.
There's an answer to the above that would help to explain China's (relative) success, but also introduce a complicating, temporal factor: we shouldn't just compare China to near-peers now, but also to Chinas past. Because for MOST OF HISTORY China was the single richest place on earth. Having Europe and then its settler-colonies in North America and Oceania supplant it is historically aberrant and therefore telling. It's a massive failure that China today is poor. Something went REALLY WRONG in the Early Modern Period through the Second Industrial Revolution Era and then again during the 20th Century for China to stumble so far behind. Was it authoritarianism? Perhaps. That's an opening for your argument here.
Corrected HK, that was indeed a mistake. Thx! City-states also have an advantage vs. non-city-states: the Tax Leech Effect
You're right on India vs. China. As you can see in the link below though, I think this is just a matter of time. You should revise your priors on India, as it's way richer than most of Africa now, and its trajectory is better than most countries there.
The example deserves much more detail, you're right. My understanding is that India is very multiethnic, had much more regulation, and never aligned itself with the liberal West. So you can't take it as a standard Free World nation-state, even if it has a democratic government. Worth its own article!
The point of the comparables section is to take cases that are as comparable as possible. Each one of the examples you present have many confounding factors. Nigeria's oil and population growth, Ethiopia's mountains, Rwanda's mountains + landlocked situation...
And I agree on your point re China. I did write an article on it that adds some thoughts
India and China are at different points of the demographic transition. I agree with Tomas that once the demographic transition in India is complete, it will end up richer than China unless China changes drastically (towards freedom).
To add another point to why criticism helps grow an economy is on the basis of Trust.
In the Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley points out a correlation between the level of trust in a society and the wealth of that society.
Trust in each other and in public institutions to protect their rights. If you can't openly criticize things in your society you can't fully trust that something is what it is. Without the ability to criticize there's no trust.
This is one reason why Amazon allowed public ratings when few stores at the time did. In the short run bad reviews stopped sales, but in the long run the culture of criticism means that people can trust the reviews of good products and by extension Amazon.
Trust is a fundamental part of a successful society. It gets little attention and is taken for granted so has been grossly undervalued until recently ("You don't know what you've got till it's gone"). This year the global level of trust has plummeted and we are yet to feel the full pain of its loss. My thoughts on the subject are nearly ready for a proper post.
That was one of the most surprising things after I moved to the US in 1994. How little trust many people here have in their government. "Politicians are only in it for the money" was an expression I often heard. Most people felt not represented at all. After the crisis of 2007/2008 trust diminished even further - about half of the USers voted for the non-politician. Many would do so again given the chance.
Cheaply produced daily babble on several cable channels, not helping. Where in previous days there was news, now there is mostly commentary. Fanning discontent is the most profitable form of cable programming.
… and in the even longer run people learned how to game Amazon reviews. Add in some pseudo-AI systems that add misleading / plainly wrong technical specs to some merchandise in order to lure people to articles they don't actually search for …
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I wonder if there is an in-between. Right now we have democracy, which has too many cooks in the kitchen so we can’t get anything done, and we have authoritarianism which has one authority that can get a lot done, but maybe not in the best interest of the people.
I’m exploring this in my next few posts but I wonder if countries might have the benefits of both worlds if they act more like capitalism? At companies, there are board members who can ensure the better behavior of leadership, and employees can contribute to the decision making process, but there is still a group at the top who is appointed and trusted to make decisions. Thinking this through in my November posts ☺️
I'm a big believer in balance in so many areas. Authoritarianism wouldn't exist if it didn't work well in some circumstances. At least you know who is setting the agenda and making the decisions. I'm not sure that's true in some democracies.
I do agree with your central thesis and also that legibility doesn’t necessarily improve productivity, but it is linked to accountability, fairness and trust and it can help reduce corruption. These improve social harmony which is one important ingredient for productivity. But “winning” isn’t just about productivity, it’s about the overall wellbeing of a society. Threats to this are much more subtle in democracies and if you can’t see a problem it is harder to fix.
There is also the greyness of autocracy and democracy. Russia maintains a thin varnish of democracy as do some other states to varying degrees. On the other hand there are varying degrees of consultation and concession by any autocrat. A benign autocrat can be a good way of maintaining stability in the short term though of course in the longer term there is the problem of succession. Conflict requires energy and creates uncertainty and if not managed well can be a drain on productivity. Predictability and consistent rules allow people to be more confident in investing time and capital to improve productivity. The UK is has in recent years been a great example of a democracy where the rules change bewilderingly often. I feel so sorry for anyone running a business and trying to negotiate Brexit, Covid and now economic instability.
The logical extreme of freedom is anarchy and constant open conflict. Human society developed rules over millions of years to help manage conflict, but there is always a balance between rules that are too restrictive and ones that are too free. In general I think most current democracies are still quite restrictive so there is still a fair way to go towards more freedom and equality. I will be interested to see what balance Elon comes up with now he’s running Twitter.
Take freedom of speech and media in general, which is very different than the West. Does that have something to do with size which makes it irrelevant as a source to learn from? Despite being a small state, it is multiple ethnicities & religions.
Actually, yes. Singapore is still essentially just 1 city. I’m sure you could find a city in the West where race relations are harmonious, but that wouldn’t mean they are in all cities even in the same country.
Democracy carries within itself the seed of its destruction. If it has survived for millennia it is because it confers some advantage. And that advantage is its ability to adapt to change. As a biologist, I compare the survival of a species to that of a society. The basis of natural selection is that there is genetic variability so that the species can adapt to change. In the same way, the survival of a democracy depends on the existence of different ideas that can facilitate the transition to the new challenges that sooner or later end up arriving.
It is not entirely true Thomas. Democracy did survive in a few pockets of freedom during the Middle-Ages : for example Venice was a republic from 697 to 1797, when it was conquered by Napoleon.
I wouldn’t say that means it has survived. There were centuries between Rome’s republic and Venice’s republic. Even then, Venice became an oligarchy during its apogee. The rest are rather examples of when some sort of democracy emerged and disappeared, rather than any grand-scale survival of democracy through the ages.
Interesting debate, although super adjacent to the main topic of the article, and I’m not even sure how it ties into the main point?
Even ideas that give way to authoritarian regimes can have a place in democracy. There are many examples of dictatorships that came to power through votes.
I came to the US 25 year ago on an H-4 visa. I realized not too long after that I had fallen into a trap. Especially Dem politicians told me (gleefully) that as a non-immigrant woman my place was in the home - and I should be grateful ! I could not be allowed to work, as the whole US economy would crash if H-4's started looking for jobs too ! But wherever I went I was offered one: full-time, part-time, seasonal, in stores, offices, banks, etc. So why could I not accept one of them, in an economy obviously needing workers ? I communicated this with politicians, government agencies, experts, university professors, etc. Furthermore, how could in the US of A (!) "the country of opportunity" a visa like this - sexist/racist - exist ? Many agreed. But whatever changed in immigration-land, the H-4 stayed the same. So you can be able to voice your opinion, people can even agree you are right, but as long as those in power are unwilling to change the rules, you are stuck and your life goes to sh-te. So much for constructive criticism & Freedom of Speech ! Useless if no one wants to listen.
The issue is that your voice doesn’t count as a non-voter. By definition the system doesn’t take into account your dissent. Only insofar as you can help voters. I know it’s not optimal for either you or voters, but the system is not perfect. It’s just less bad than authoritarianism.
Lame excuses. The system is not optimizing the human resources available. It wastes the skills/experience/talents of a group of well-educated people. But the majority of H-4's is from India/are females and that apparently means they can be discarded without consequences. Try the same with illegal Mexican males: the MSM will be all over you - and rightly so !
Well-voiced and properly founded criticism can improve society. But that only works when those in power listen. Companies that relocate specialists/managers on L-1/L-2 visas had the conditions of the L-2 changed, over 20 years ago already, making it possible for those women to work. That means the issue is not the vote. The issue is that in the US only (big) money speaks (loudly). That means democracy for just a top-layer of the population.
Was your wife able to keep her life on track/get it back on track ? I hope so. I was not.
I would like to hear your thoughts on how democracies can deal with unfettered freedom of speech. How will we survive when anyone can say anything no matter true or entirely fiction? So many in our country appear to want to believe lies. How will our country survive this?
I am not sure you can so easily throw Trump in with the authoritarians. First, his administration significantly decreased the amount of regulation. Second, while you can find plenty of pro-authoritarian material in his tweets and speeches, he throws out so much word-salad that his speeches are effectively ink-blot tests. You hear what you want to hear. Third, while he declared himself the winner of the 2020 election, the distributed power model of American government prevented him from remaining in power. The various election officials and judges, many of them Republican (and a good number of the judges were appointed by him), rejected his claims. Now he lives in Florida, not in the White House.
I agree that lack of ability to criticize the Glorious Leaders results in stupid actions. Case in point: watch the Chinese workers slosh every surface in sight with "tetra-methyl-death" in an effort to knock out the coronavirus - which is airborne. Now the US CDC recommended surface cleaning and hand washing for far longer than they should have - but Americans were free to argue with them and disregard their recommendations.
On Trump: I think what you're saying is that Trump was authoritarian, but not enough to overcome the US' anti-authoritarian mechanisms. I would agree with that (at least for one term)
Agree with your overall conclusion. Thank you for the article. In the chart of the 40 richest countries, Hong Kong is coloured black, as a petro state. Later on you correctly note it is not a petro state. Is Ireland really that rich?
Thank you. The Irish Government cut tax deals, which the EU is attempting to restrict. I didn't realise the numbers were so large - but it's no surprise that one small country would have its per capita GDP shifted by booking company earnings for the entire EU. I believe Puerto Rico does some similar things vs the rest of the US - many pharmaceuticals are supposedly 'made' in Puerto Rico when they are actually only packaged there. Similarly Macau and Hong Kong move large amounts of money through their economies, but the average person doesn't directly benefit. Most goods exported from the port of Hong Kong are from China, but they magically gain value as they enter Hong Kong, thus swapping some Chinese tax liability for (lower) Hong Kong liability. Not quite sure why China puts up with it.
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Singapore, San Marino, Monaco, Hong Kong, BVI, Caiman Islands, Panama... Many many small countries benefit from this "Leech effect"
Ireland's GDP is skewed by many large (mostly American) companies that use a small island with a <5 million population to domicile their entire EU economic activities and revenues and tax residence. Ireland is certainly rich, but GDP measures are extremely skewed by this.
For an academic view of China's economic boom which tolerates corruption, see China's Gilded Age by Yuen Ang. She points out that corruption at high levels in China and USA are not so different, merely that they are legal in the US and illegal but tolerated in China. For example, buying legislators with campaign donations to induce them to provide government benefits is common practice in the US.
I look at corruption as a form of parasitism. If the host is doing well it can tolerate higher levels, but if the host /parasite relationship becomes unbalanced then problems ensue.
Would be interesting to explore the threats to free speech in the countries that traditionally safeguard this right. US, Canada, UK for example have all undergone some level of tightening around this freedom in recent years. I wonder if even ‘small’ restrictions (ex. US government working with twitter to censor journalists) have reverberations through our economy that can be measured? Great article!
Really interesting analysis and I hope you're right. Would be interesting to see how income inequality maps on to these variables. GDP per capita doesn't provide an accurate picture if much of a country's wealth is held by a small percentage of the population, as in the US and Russia. Some analysts have suggested that our high level of economic inequality is a factor in why parts of the population devalue democracy.
Another weakness of authoritarian systems is that leaders do not get reliable information from their bureaucracy out of fear of punishment for reporting bad news. This overlaps with, but is not the same, as free speech. We saw this in the initial reporting on covid in China as you said, and it helps explain why Putin's invasion of Ukraine has fared so badly. Given the critical importance of reliable information to economies and governance of large countries, this seems like a fatal weakness of autocracies that create a climate of fear among their bureaucracies.
True!
The fear of repercussions for criticism goes hand in hand with free speech. Both of them are about the right to speak freely to power, and both of them are a culture influenced by regulations that go hand in hand nearly always.
You need freedom of speech and the ability to criticise or you crash and burn. Literally. Speaking to pilots, they tell me they would never fly on airlines belonging to authoritarian countries because if something goes wrong, you are unable to pass it up the chain of command due to it being perceived as criticism.
Plane engine on fire. Can't tell the pilot because I can't criticise him. Plus they have been indoctrinated to think that their superiors always know best.
Authoritarianism and restricting free speech, always leads to crash and burn.
Oh wow, what a great image. Thanks!
Singapore merits its own post and analysis. What they accomplished is unprecendented and may well hold lessons for us all. I hope you decide to look into it in a future post
Not really unless you’re another tiny country/city-state. Countries like Singapore/Switzerland/Ireland/Liechtenstein/etc. can profit by leach-like strategies. Not so much larger states. The US/Germany/Japan can’t drive their entire economies by being tax havens or havens for private wealth.
I think you are forgetting two things:
1 - Taxes are an important part of policy that needs to be studied. Not waved away. If tax policy didn't matter I would agree with you
2 - Singapore has almost 6 mn people. Portugal, my country, has 10 mn. The great majority of countries in the world are around that ballpark. Also, regional policy choices are made on that scale as well. Florida and Texas are growing faster than NY for example due to different policy choices. Tax leech or not, policies matter.
Explaining away success because it is inconvenient to our argument is not a path to illumination. Science advances when outliers are pursued and studied rather than ignored.
Small states have more leeway in terms of strategies. So your country could join Singapore and Ireland in adopting leech-like strategies (and also thus lower taxes). Not so much large countries and economies. And let's face it, what large countries do affect a lot more people.
Singapore is indeed the outlier in the Asian controlled countries. Singapore university system always has a slogan campaign to motivate students and much of the population. About 1995, it was the slogan "Be Productive from 2:45 to 3:10 PM" It had been duly noted that was the 1 sigma of lowest productivity in previous survey studies.
Singapore is a small state where the economy was carefully developed. For many years a Dutch economist played in important role in this: Albert Winsemius served as an adviser to Singapore between 1961 and 1984.
Yep, and being a small state, it can adopt strategies (like being the Switzerland/private wealth banking center of SE Asia) that larger countries can’t really implement.
Singapore in no small measure owes its greatness to its founder, Stamford Raffles. He got them started on the right course and set the template for future success.
Some errors and issues with the argument that weaken its credibility:
HK is labelled as a petro-state on your Top 40 richest chart. It's obviously not. And it's not been politically free until very recently, and now no longer. So, it will need to be addressed in the same city-state outlier bucket with Macao and Singapore. You can explain away this better by making the case here that city-states are, generally, wealthier, wherever they are, just as large cities are generally wealthier per capita than their hinterlands. That's as true within authoritarian states (e.g. Beijing and Moscow) as within politically free ones (e.g. New York and London).
The India vs. China contrast is left to the end as a hand-wavey epilogue. Why leave it out from the "Authoritarian Regimes vs. Comparables" section? That's a GLARING omission since you have the two largest populations in the world directly neighboring each other, with a democracy vs. authoritarian regime... and the democracy is a lot poorer, both on net and per capita. How are these not a perfect comparable pair? Because it doesn't neatly match the argument? India is and has been as poor as the poorest Sub-Saharan African states, and that's embarrassing for the democracies-are-wealthy crowd.
Speaking of Africa, the divergent trajectories of Nigeria (a petro-state that is a democracy, but suffering the highest absolute poverty rate on the planet) vs. the likes of Ethiopia or Rwanda (both authoritarian regimes self-consciously in the China with better economic outcomes recently) further complicate the case. I don't personally think either will even achieve middle-income status, much less become among the wealthiest countries, so maybe they're just among the majority of states that won't be rich for other geographic reasons. But we invite such problematic rebuttals when we make generalizations like in the "Authoritarian Regimes vs. Comparables" section.
There's an answer to the above that would help to explain China's (relative) success, but also introduce a complicating, temporal factor: we shouldn't just compare China to near-peers now, but also to Chinas past. Because for MOST OF HISTORY China was the single richest place on earth. Having Europe and then its settler-colonies in North America and Oceania supplant it is historically aberrant and therefore telling. It's a massive failure that China today is poor. Something went REALLY WRONG in the Early Modern Period through the Second Industrial Revolution Era and then again during the 20th Century for China to stumble so far behind. Was it authoritarianism? Perhaps. That's an opening for your argument here.
Thank you so much! Point by point:
Corrected HK, that was indeed a mistake. Thx! City-states also have an advantage vs. non-city-states: the Tax Leech Effect
You're right on India vs. China. As you can see in the link below though, I think this is just a matter of time. You should revise your priors on India, as it's way richer than most of Africa now, and its trajectory is better than most countries there.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020?country=CHN~IND
The example deserves much more detail, you're right. My understanding is that India is very multiethnic, had much more regulation, and never aligned itself with the liberal West. So you can't take it as a standard Free World nation-state, even if it has a democratic government. Worth its own article!
The point of the comparables section is to take cases that are as comparable as possible. Each one of the examples you present have many confounding factors. Nigeria's oil and population growth, Ethiopia's mountains, Rwanda's mountains + landlocked situation...
And I agree on your point re China. I did write an article on it that adds some thoughts
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/what-china-wants
Here's the Ethiopia one:
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-splintering-of-the-african-horn
Thanks for sharing! Very good points
India and China are at different points of the demographic transition. I agree with Tomas that once the demographic transition in India is complete, it will end up richer than China unless China changes drastically (towards freedom).
Great article Tomas.
To add another point to why criticism helps grow an economy is on the basis of Trust.
In the Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley points out a correlation between the level of trust in a society and the wealth of that society.
Trust in each other and in public institutions to protect their rights. If you can't openly criticize things in your society you can't fully trust that something is what it is. Without the ability to criticize there's no trust.
This is one reason why Amazon allowed public ratings when few stores at the time did. In the short run bad reviews stopped sales, but in the long run the culture of criticism means that people can trust the reviews of good products and by extension Amazon.
Thank you for writing.
Do have an amazing day ✨
Fantastic example and mechanism. That makes sense. Thanks for sharing!
Trust is a fundamental part of a successful society. It gets little attention and is taken for granted so has been grossly undervalued until recently ("You don't know what you've got till it's gone"). This year the global level of trust has plummeted and we are yet to feel the full pain of its loss. My thoughts on the subject are nearly ready for a proper post.
That was one of the most surprising things after I moved to the US in 1994. How little trust many people here have in their government. "Politicians are only in it for the money" was an expression I often heard. Most people felt not represented at all. After the crisis of 2007/2008 trust diminished even further - about half of the USers voted for the non-politician. Many would do so again given the chance.
Cheaply produced daily babble on several cable channels, not helping. Where in previous days there was news, now there is mostly commentary. Fanning discontent is the most profitable form of cable programming.
… and in the even longer run people learned how to game Amazon reviews. Add in some pseudo-AI systems that add misleading / plainly wrong technical specs to some merchandise in order to lure people to articles they don't actually search for …
Corruption is the enemy of trust which is why it is so important to be vigilant against it
eBay did that from the beginning, buyers and sellers rating sellers and buyers.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I wonder if there is an in-between. Right now we have democracy, which has too many cooks in the kitchen so we can’t get anything done, and we have authoritarianism which has one authority that can get a lot done, but maybe not in the best interest of the people.
I’m exploring this in my next few posts but I wonder if countries might have the benefits of both worlds if they act more like capitalism? At companies, there are board members who can ensure the better behavior of leadership, and employees can contribute to the decision making process, but there is still a group at the top who is appointed and trusted to make decisions. Thinking this through in my November posts ☺️
Looking forward to them!
My take is that the Internet allows a different vector of possible political systems.
In what way?
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-end-of-nation-states
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/debate-is-broken
Oh thank you!
I'm a big believer in balance in so many areas. Authoritarianism wouldn't exist if it didn't work well in some circumstances. At least you know who is setting the agenda and making the decisions. I'm not sure that's true in some democracies.
Legibility is frequently against productivity
I do agree with your central thesis and also that legibility doesn’t necessarily improve productivity, but it is linked to accountability, fairness and trust and it can help reduce corruption. These improve social harmony which is one important ingredient for productivity. But “winning” isn’t just about productivity, it’s about the overall wellbeing of a society. Threats to this are much more subtle in democracies and if you can’t see a problem it is harder to fix.
There is also the greyness of autocracy and democracy. Russia maintains a thin varnish of democracy as do some other states to varying degrees. On the other hand there are varying degrees of consultation and concession by any autocrat. A benign autocrat can be a good way of maintaining stability in the short term though of course in the longer term there is the problem of succession. Conflict requires energy and creates uncertainty and if not managed well can be a drain on productivity. Predictability and consistent rules allow people to be more confident in investing time and capital to improve productivity. The UK is has in recent years been a great example of a democracy where the rules change bewilderingly often. I feel so sorry for anyone running a business and trying to negotiate Brexit, Covid and now economic instability.
The logical extreme of freedom is anarchy and constant open conflict. Human society developed rules over millions of years to help manage conflict, but there is always a balance between rules that are too restrictive and ones that are too free. In general I think most current democracies are still quite restrictive so there is still a fair way to go towards more freedom and equality. I will be interested to see what balance Elon comes up with now he’s running Twitter.
I also feel there should be more to learn from Singapore.
Honestly, really only if you're also a small state.
Take freedom of speech and media in general, which is very different than the West. Does that have something to do with size which makes it irrelevant as a source to learn from? Despite being a small state, it is multiple ethnicities & religions.
Actually, yes. Singapore is still essentially just 1 city. I’m sure you could find a city in the West where race relations are harmonious, but that wouldn’t mean they are in all cities even in the same country.
Democracy carries within itself the seed of its destruction. If it has survived for millennia it is because it confers some advantage. And that advantage is its ability to adapt to change. As a biologist, I compare the survival of a species to that of a society. The basis of natural selection is that there is genetic variability so that the species can adapt to change. In the same way, the survival of a democracy depends on the existence of different ideas that can facilitate the transition to the new challenges that sooner or later end up arriving.
How does that carry the seed of its destruction?
Democracy hasn't really survived for millennia...
It revived in the 1700s after nearly 2 millennia dead.
I like your analogy and agree with it!
But I have the same Q as Richard. What about the seed of destruction?
It is not entirely true Thomas. Democracy did survive in a few pockets of freedom during the Middle-Ages : for example Venice was a republic from 697 to 1797, when it was conquered by Napoleon.
There are many other examples : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_republics#Middle_Ages
Thank you for the link!
I wouldn’t say that means it has survived. There were centuries between Rome’s republic and Venice’s republic. Even then, Venice became an oligarchy during its apogee. The rest are rather examples of when some sort of democracy emerged and disappeared, rather than any grand-scale survival of democracy through the ages.
Interesting debate, although super adjacent to the main topic of the article, and I’m not even sure how it ties into the main point?
Even ideas that give way to authoritarian regimes can have a place in democracy. There are many examples of dictatorships that came to power through votes.
I came to the US 25 year ago on an H-4 visa. I realized not too long after that I had fallen into a trap. Especially Dem politicians told me (gleefully) that as a non-immigrant woman my place was in the home - and I should be grateful ! I could not be allowed to work, as the whole US economy would crash if H-4's started looking for jobs too ! But wherever I went I was offered one: full-time, part-time, seasonal, in stores, offices, banks, etc. So why could I not accept one of them, in an economy obviously needing workers ? I communicated this with politicians, government agencies, experts, university professors, etc. Furthermore, how could in the US of A (!) "the country of opportunity" a visa like this - sexist/racist - exist ? Many agreed. But whatever changed in immigration-land, the H-4 stayed the same. So you can be able to voice your opinion, people can even agree you are right, but as long as those in power are unwilling to change the rules, you are stuck and your life goes to sh-te. So much for constructive criticism & Freedom of Speech ! Useless if no one wants to listen.
The issue is that your voice doesn’t count as a non-voter. By definition the system doesn’t take into account your dissent. Only insofar as you can help voters. I know it’s not optimal for either you or voters, but the system is not perfect. It’s just less bad than authoritarianism.
As a previous H1B with an H4 wife, I hear you.
Lame excuses. The system is not optimizing the human resources available. It wastes the skills/experience/talents of a group of well-educated people. But the majority of H-4's is from India/are females and that apparently means they can be discarded without consequences. Try the same with illegal Mexican males: the MSM will be all over you - and rightly so !
Well-voiced and properly founded criticism can improve society. But that only works when those in power listen. Companies that relocate specialists/managers on L-1/L-2 visas had the conditions of the L-2 changed, over 20 years ago already, making it possible for those women to work. That means the issue is not the vote. The issue is that in the US only (big) money speaks (loudly). That means democracy for just a top-layer of the population.
Was your wife able to keep her life on track/get it back on track ? I hope so. I was not.
I would like to hear your thoughts on how democracies can deal with unfettered freedom of speech. How will we survive when anyone can say anything no matter true or entirely fiction? So many in our country appear to want to believe lies. How will our country survive this?
The short is I think nation-states will be replaced by something else, and democratic decision-making will be nothing like the votes we have today.
Another Substack that went in depth on this topic - interesting thoughts on freedom of speech.
https://open.substack.com/pub/eriktorenberg/p/twitter-elon-and-the-challenge-for?r=1k5ada&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Hi Tomas,
I am not sure you can so easily throw Trump in with the authoritarians. First, his administration significantly decreased the amount of regulation. Second, while you can find plenty of pro-authoritarian material in his tweets and speeches, he throws out so much word-salad that his speeches are effectively ink-blot tests. You hear what you want to hear. Third, while he declared himself the winner of the 2020 election, the distributed power model of American government prevented him from remaining in power. The various election officials and judges, many of them Republican (and a good number of the judges were appointed by him), rejected his claims. Now he lives in Florida, not in the White House.
I agree that lack of ability to criticize the Glorious Leaders results in stupid actions. Case in point: watch the Chinese workers slosh every surface in sight with "tetra-methyl-death" in an effort to knock out the coronavirus - which is airborne. Now the US CDC recommended surface cleaning and hand washing for far longer than they should have - but Americans were free to argue with them and disregard their recommendations.
That's a crazy example indeed...
On Trump: I think what you're saying is that Trump was authoritarian, but not enough to overcome the US' anti-authoritarian mechanisms. I would agree with that (at least for one term)
Agree with your overall conclusion. Thank you for the article. In the chart of the 40 richest countries, Hong Kong is coloured black, as a petro state. Later on you correctly note it is not a petro state. Is Ireland really that rich?
Thank you, corrected!
Geoffrey's diagnosis below is spot on
Thank you. The Irish Government cut tax deals, which the EU is attempting to restrict. I didn't realise the numbers were so large - but it's no surprise that one small country would have its per capita GDP shifted by booking company earnings for the entire EU. I believe Puerto Rico does some similar things vs the rest of the US - many pharmaceuticals are supposedly 'made' in Puerto Rico when they are actually only packaged there. Similarly Macau and Hong Kong move large amounts of money through their economies, but the average person doesn't directly benefit. Most goods exported from the port of Hong Kong are from China, but they magically gain value as they enter Hong Kong, thus swapping some Chinese tax liability for (lower) Hong Kong liability. Not quite sure why China puts up with it.
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Singapore, San Marino, Monaco, Hong Kong, BVI, Caiman Islands, Panama... Many many small countries benefit from this "Leech effect"
Ireland's GDP is skewed by many large (mostly American) companies that use a small island with a <5 million population to domicile their entire EU economic activities and revenues and tax residence. Ireland is certainly rich, but GDP measures are extremely skewed by this.
For an academic view of China's economic boom which tolerates corruption, see China's Gilded Age by Yuen Ang. She points out that corruption at high levels in China and USA are not so different, merely that they are legal in the US and illegal but tolerated in China. For example, buying legislators with campaign donations to induce them to provide government benefits is common practice in the US.
I hear you on corruption. Might very well be true.
Different vs free speech no?
Also there are still some laws limiting corporate meddling in the US, despite Citizens United vs FEC, no?
I look at corruption as a form of parasitism. If the host is doing well it can tolerate higher levels, but if the host /parasite relationship becomes unbalanced then problems ensue.
Would be interesting to explore the threats to free speech in the countries that traditionally safeguard this right. US, Canada, UK for example have all undergone some level of tightening around this freedom in recent years. I wonder if even ‘small’ restrictions (ex. US government working with twitter to censor journalists) have reverberations through our economy that can be measured? Great article!
How big a theater is it ok to yell fire in?
" a world-class, benevolent, freedom-appreciating can be really good for you” -- this sentence no subject.
Thanks, corrected!