Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

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> Probably because liberty does not mean prosperity.

In the post WW2 era, it has overwhelmingly meant that. Not subtly, not kinda sorta, overwhelmingly. And the lack of liberty has overwhelmingly meant poverty.

The scales are so radically tilted toward those things, that the outliers are few on each side, counted on one hand typically.

Prosperous + high degrees of liberty: Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Iceland, US, Canada, UK, Denmark, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Belgium, France, Japan, Israel, New Zealand, Italy, South Korea, Spain

You know, just nearly all the most affluent nations on the planet. Nearly all the most prosperous nations are also high liberty nations.

The list continues even further on down the line: Taiwan, Portugal, Estonia, Slovenia, Czech, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece, Poland

Even Romania for example now has a GDP per capita well exceeding that of China and Russia. How is that possible, that Romania is embarrassing Russia economically? One has far more liberty than the other; one is democratic, the other is autocratic to an extreme. In the not so distant future, Romania will double Russia's GDP per capita. Russia's liberty deprivation is beginning to show itself - again - in their economic regression (eg falling incomes for 5-6 years) and general stagnation.

What are examples of very impoverished high liberty nations? There are exceptionally few. So few I would challenge anybody to name more than three or four out of ~196 nations.

Outliers in the prosperous group when it comes to low liberty? Also exceptionally few: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE

The low liberty group of nations is dramatically dominated by poverty by comparison.

> Russia's liberty deprivation is beginning to show itself - again - in their economic regression (eg falling incomes for 5-6 years) and general stagnation.

Let's be fair, the last few years recession in Russia was largely, if not entirely, caused by post-Crimea sanctions and crashed global oil prices, it had little if anything to do with liberty deprivation.

As to the general point, nobody in Russia knows or cares how well off an average American is. People care how well off they are relative to their own yesterday. Russians know they have it better today than in the 90s, and they (think they) know whom to thank for that. I guess same goes for Chinese as their economy has been growing wildly at the time, although I have no personal experience there.

To be extra clear, this does not mean at all that autocracy contributed to that growth in any positive way – most probably the opposite, – only that it appears so from the inside, as without freedom of speech it is very easy for the regime to take credit for any improvements and blame the west for any setbacks. Russia excels at that game domestically, which explains why Russians are largely fine with the relatively small amount of freedoms they're enjoying. Again, probably a similar situation in China.

(I didn't downvote you, just wanted to expand on GP's point)

> Let's be fair, the last few years recession in Russia was largely, if not entirely, caused by post-Crimea sanction

And where did the Crimea sanction come from, if not from an autocratic, follow-the-leader regime who created the problem in the first place?

The sanctions came from liberal nations, to state the obvious. An external enemy, as far as Russians are concerned. The same countries never sanctioned USA over any of its similarly unjustified wars or the coup d'etat-s it organized. It's a matter of power relative to other nations, not the level of democracy in the aggressor.

Again, I'm not defending Crimea invasion by any means, but the original question is why do people accept autocracy, and the answer lies in their perception as much as actual truth, neither of which should be ignored.

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