I wonder if it will have some sort of long term impact on the economy. Is there a way of measuring relative government authoritarianism on economic development of a nation?
Political stability encourages growth [1]. The form of government seems largely irrelevant [2]. China is moving from a stable if novel mode (small-group democratic dictatorship) to an unstable mode (single-leader dictatorship).
Absolutely. That is why the US, thanks to having a multi-party democracy, never got anywhere with the industrial revolution. And that is why Putin's Russia is leading the world in technological innovation and economic growth.
Of course, if when you say "political stability" you mean the absence of things like civil wars and coups, well yes, that really helps economic growth. But I don't think Xi is making himself dictator-for-life because China is on the verge of that sort of instability.
When strongman-based cults of personality (real or wannabe) appoint themselves ruler for life, policy can go off the rails. Wars, purges, persecution of minority groups, and civil unrest are more likely. Corrupt systems of checks and balances, which may have already been weak, slide ever further.
Mao, Stalin, Chavez, Castro, Hitler, Mussolini, Chiang Kai-Shek ... a few of these strongmen presided over brief periods of spectacular economic growth, but always under unsustainable conditions. Many citizens (and the citizens of neighboring countries) paid a terrible price.
When you have a great king, it's among the best forms of government. The problem is that that great king's successor is probably not also great, and under a bad ruler, it's among the worst forms of government, and that bad king can last for your entire lifetime.
It's never spectacularly efficient, but the US' form of democracy is meant to be much lower variance. I think it's a good tradeoff.
Not sure if I would agree, given that estimates suggest that homo sapiens had evolved approx 400k years ago, and most of recorded history (with the somewhat stable hierarchies) lasts, at most, 20k years. So potentially much of recorded history, but certainly not proven to be necessary for evolution.
Typo there with _rose_ quality of life in Venezuela?
Pretty sure we've watched that 'democratic' experiment fail spectacularly, at least what news I know of the economy and living conditions in general seem very poor at best. Failed state comes to mind.
He might have raised the quality of life temporarily (I'm not sure even about that), but what is happening now in Venezuela was practically inevitable. You might be warmer for a little while as you take apart your house and burn it piece by piece, but in the end you will more assuredly freeze. In my opinion, it was a great tragedy that Chavez is not still alive today. Now people can say ridiculous things like this. If he was alive today, Venezuela would still be collapsing and it would be clear whose fault it was.
Economists believe that hyperinflations are caused by large persistent government deficits financed primarily by money creation (rather than by borrowing or by increasing taxation). --wikipedia.
Eli5
Their economy was mostly oil, they seized assets of oil companies extracting it. People left then oil crashed and they had too many promises to pay for
Hitler came to power on top of a democratic system, too (IIRC, by leveraging political alliances and grassroots violence in the pre-1933 parliamentary system). He surely improved the quality of life for the Nazi base in the mid-30s after he took power.
Didn't stop him from dismantling democratic institutions, eliminating all political rivals, invading his neighbors, and murdering millions of people.
Chavez definitely dismantled democracy in Venezuela. (If you want to be technical, he started the project, and Maduro finished it.)
Specifically, vote count manipulation, the Supreme Court refusing to allow opposition legislatures to be seated, the constitutional committee stripping the legislature of its power... that's dismantling democracy.
What happened when Mao unilaterally declared that ploughshares should be melted down for the good of the economy?
I'm not a huge fan of authoritarian systems, but individual people are even more fallible. Laying decision-making power on one individual is a recipe for failure; they're going to be wrong eventually, and chances are people will be reluctant to speak out against their god-emperor when that happens in a system where power is so ridiculously centralized.
provide an economic argument for not implementing additional authoritarian policies. Seems that these decisions are incredibly hard to measure. For example how much did Turkey's economy suffer from the previous failed coup?
[1] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4553024/alesina_...
[2] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.7.3.51