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Comment by SkyMarshal | Hacker News Reader

One thing we Americans really need to learn is that Capitalism does not necessarily bring Democracy. It's very possible to have a capitalistic economy under an authoritarian regime, with multiple historical examples.

But after the Cold War ended, America/ns conflated Capitalism with Democracy, thinking they are one and the same, and that if we could bring bring the former to authoritarian nations, the latter would inevitably follow.

But they aren't, and it doesn't. If you want to spread Democracy and human rights, you have to spread Democracy and human rights. If Capitalism follows, fine, but it needs to be built on a foundation of freedom, represenative government, separation of power, checks and balances, and institutionalized protection of human rights, and it can't be relied upon to guarantee that.

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> One thing we Americans really need to learn is that Capitalism does not necessarily bring Democracy

And after that, we need to learn that capitalism does not only “not necessarily bring democracy”, but that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with and limits realization of democracy (but less so than, say, feudalism); the transition from relatively pure capitalism to the modern mixed economy in the developed West was important in continuing the advance of meaningful democracy, but the significant remaining capitalist elements are still in tension with democracy.

(Which, while it is problematic in many places isn’t necessarily all bad; unrestrained democracy isn’t a universal good, though the places capitalism is in tension with it aren't even approximately 1:1 with the problem areas of democracy.)

Yes, one of the biggest problems is extreme wealth concentration, combined with private cradle-to-grave funding of politicians, combined a with plurality/first-past-the-post voting system.

When 1% of the country can determine who gets to run for, and stay in, office, and which political parties are viable and which are marginalized, then such a Democracy is flawed at best and doesn't always represent the will or interests of most people.

> Capitalism does not necessarily bring Democracy.

But Democracy does solve a number of issues capitalism has. Free-markets allocate tangible and (pardon the cliché term) fungible goods quite well.

Non-tangible (e.g. intellectual property) and non-fungible (e.g. environment) goods are not managed well in a purely capitalist system. Some sort of a majority vote and public goods solution work much better and in fact create the necessary infrastructure (safe streets, reliable electricity, clean water) for capitalism to function.

So Capitalism ≠> Democracy, but Democracy => Capitalism is more true than not.

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