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Comment by emilsayahi | Hacker News Reader

Democracy is a system of government, not an economic model. You could easily argue, simultaneously:

1. Capitalism has failed in those countries, even if in different times and places one could say capitalism has succeeded

2. India and Mexico have major issues with their democracies—if a democracy is a system of government in which the citizens of a state hold collective power over their government, then there are many obstacles preventing either country from having a well-functioning democracy.

I can sympathise with your feelings that the current global status-quo is failing many people—I would agree—and I would argue India and Mexico are great examples of how unchecked capitalism and authoritarianism are causing an active erosion of democracy (and standard of living) in those two countries.

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> Democracy is a system of government, not an economic model.

For the longest time, "Democracy" the political system was bandied about to be the primary precondition for economic progress.

The thinking was, that when people (countries) have democracy this somehow "empowers" them to become economically successful.

This reasoning was fairly prevalent, after all, the U.S., the showcase of democracy, was such an economic powerhouse. Worth noting as well is that democracy was normally peddled with economic liberalization, free trade, etc.

After China's rise however, the idea that democracy is a necessary for economic prosperity has more or less been debunked. China has demonstrated that democracy is not a precondition for economic prosperity.

Now, developing countries are faced with the question, what political model should be followed? If economic prosperity is the objective, the Chinese model seems to be promising. On the other hand, what does democracy have to offer? Looking at the U.S. as the showcase of democracy, what does the U.S. have that a developing country would find worth emulating?

> For the longest time, "Democracy" the political system was bandied about to be the primary precondition for economic progress.

I agree with you. I think that mindset has a fundamental misunderstanding of the root cause of economic prosperity.

Economic prosperity comes from liberty. Democracy and liberty are two very different things. For a long time, they were treated as roughly equivalent.

China figured out that economic liberty, coupled with state sponsored abusive labor conditions and few ecological restrictions, can effectively compete with "democracy" where people are able to vote to regulate labor markets.

In the face of this, Democracy is a weakness. After all, how can a Western economy that's voting itself (for example) four day work weeks and great work/life balance benefits compete with forced labor in the short term?

I think it competes well in the medium to long term, as economic systems that maximize liberty seem to mostly win.

China can compete in this method because they have 4 times the population of the US. And even so in aggregate they are still clearly in 2nd in the global hard power race.

Scarily for china their demographics look horrific through the rest of the century while America will likely continue growing due to immigration. By 2100 it's projected they could have less than twice the population of the US. Will they still be competitive then? Will any of the asian tigers besides Japan & SK escape the middle income trap?

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