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Autocracies are efficient only as long as they are correct. It certainly helps if they're lead by scientists and engineers, at least for some issues. But when an autocratic government is wrong, it's nearly impossible to correct it. And every government is wrong sometimes.

As much as I like China stimulating electric cars, there are a lot of issues they're handling poorly or are being downright evil about (Uyghurs, for example).

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Huge buried assumption in this comment that democracy in general or America's system in particular is more likely to produce 'correct' decisions than China's 100 million party members and their hierarchical politics.

It's interesting to compare/contrast the incentives created in each system but in light of the last 20 years of decision making, it's hard to claim America aced it.

I think a well-functioning democracy with an educated electorate will do better than China, but I wouldn't argue that the US meets those criteria. A better comparison might be the Nordic countries. If that's too much cherry-picking for you, consider that China is probably also the best-functioning autocracy in the world; plenty of autocracies are terrible.

Very well put re: the cherry picking. I wasn't so much arguing for autocracy as arguing against buying our own agitprop.

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