5.3.1. Why would democracy and freedom of speech make China richer? (为什么民主和言论自由能够让中国变得更加富有？)
Democracy is even one of the Core socialist values (社会主义核心价值观)!
There is infinite debate about this out there, some examples:
For:
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dictatorships are more likely to start Why would democracy and freedom of speech make China less likely to start a war? (为什么民主和言论自由会让中国不太可能发动战争？) or other crazy policies like the Great Leap Forward, which completely destroy the economy in one go
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society becomes richer when people know that they can do their startups, get rich, and stay in the country without fear of being persecuted unfairly and losing everything instead of migrating to Canada, see also: Rule of law (法治), Jack Ma’s disappearance (马云的失踪, 2021)
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it is much harder to fix problems if you can’t talk about the. Any criticism of the government, even if constructive, is taken as menace to power, and more likely to be shut down, which makes the government and just becomes less efficient since there is less feedback.
This greatly increase the probability of dealing poorly with such problems, see e.g. all the global problems listed at: Non-Chinese people should not interfere in Chinese politics (外国人不应该干预中国政治).
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governments are monopolies, and the more powerful they are, the worst it is for competition an efficiency in general. E.g.: the startup with better government ties wins, instead of the most efficient one.
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people in dictatorships tend to hide their true identities online and in life in general. It is best not to stand out, because if you make any mistake, you are really fucked. As a result, for example, if you do something awesome like a creating an open source project, but do it anonymously, you won’t get as much fame. And therefore everyone does less of such awesome things on average.
Against:
-
presidents only care about the 4-8 year horizon, while dictators can make longer term decisions to maintain power forever, their power being limited only by "the people are happy enough to not start a revolution"
-
dictatorships can make changes faster without the same amount of discussion that happens in democracies, where power is more spread out.
Killing a million people will make us richer? No problem, let’s do it.
That is great when they make good decisions, but it sucks when they make bad ones more likely.
Maybe China was poor because of Mao’s crazy communist regime. Similar regimes also made Russia (俄罗斯) poor. And yes, before that exploitation by the West may have been a factor.
Definitely, the current regime is better than Mao’s, but just imagine how rich China could be if it had more freedom and justice.
Imperial China lost the race for the Industrial Revolution. Will another dictatorship be able to stay on top of the next technological revolution?
Figure 5. XKCD 937 "TornadoGuard" comes to mind in relationship to the variable performance of dictatorships. Source.
Democracy is even one of the Core socialist values (社会主义核心价值观)!
There is infinite debate about this out there, some examples:
For:
-
dictatorships are more likely to start Why would democracy and freedom of speech make China less likely to start a war? (为什么民主和言论自由会让中国不太可能发动战争？) or other crazy policies like the Great Leap Forward, which completely destroy the economy in one go
-
society becomes richer when people know that they can do their startups, get rich, and stay in the country without fear of being persecuted unfairly and losing everything instead of migrating to Canada, see also: Rule of law (法治), Jack Ma’s disappearance (马云的失踪, 2021)
-
it is much harder to fix problems if you can’t talk about the. Any criticism of the government, even if constructive, is taken as menace to power, and more likely to be shut down, which makes the government and just becomes less efficient since there is less feedback.
This greatly increase the probability of dealing poorly with such problems, see e.g. all the global problems listed at: Non-Chinese people should not interfere in Chinese politics (外国人不应该干预中国政治).
-
governments are monopolies, and the more powerful they are, the worst it is for competition an efficiency in general. E.g.: the startup with better government ties wins, instead of the most efficient one.
-
people in dictatorships tend to hide their true identities online and in life in general. It is best not to stand out, because if you make any mistake, you are really fucked. As a result, for example, if you do something awesome like a creating an open source project, but do it anonymously, you won’t get as much fame. And therefore everyone does less of such awesome things on average.
Against:
-
presidents only care about the 4-8 year horizon, while dictators can make longer term decisions to maintain power forever, their power being limited only by "the people are happy enough to not start a revolution"
-
dictatorships can make changes faster without the same amount of discussion that happens in democracies, where power is more spread out.
Killing a million people will make us richer? No problem, let’s do it.
That is great when they make good decisions, but it sucks when they make bad ones more likely.
Maybe China was poor because of Mao’s crazy communist regime. Similar regimes also made Russia (俄罗斯) poor. And yes, before that exploitation by the West may have been a factor.
Definitely, the current regime is better than Mao’s, but just imagine how rich China could be if it had more freedom and justice.
Imperial China lost the race for the Industrial Revolution. Will another dictatorship be able to stay on top of the next technological revolution?