[galaxyLogic]

It seems obvious to me that authoritarian regimes have much more corruption than democratic ones because in a dictatorship there is no transparency and therefore corruption goes undetected. That means that power and wealth gets concentrated into hands of a small elite. There is less true innovation. What makes things cheaper is the progress of democracy.

[dTal]

>That means that power and wealth gets concentrated into hands of a small elite

It is with some restraint that I note that "democracy" per se does a piss-poor job of preventing this, when Tim Cook's net worth exceeds the yearly GDP of the Seychelles. This is particularly true in a world where capital controls information channels, and therefore public opinion. To really prevent capitalists from capitalizing on their capital to amass ever more capital, you also need a social infrastructure that redistributes wealth away from powerful individuals back to society, so that social issues can be addressed.

[galaxyLogic]

That is true, but at least in theory in democracies people can vote for progressive taxation.

I'm not sure if wealth is any better distributed in autocratic countries, think Putin's Russia and its oligarchs.

Democracy is a continuum, any country can evolve into either direction. It's not like this country is democratic and that is not. Countries have more or less of it.

[JustifyContent]

"The only post-Jobs CEO of the second most valuable company in the world has a higher net worth than the 10th smallest country in the world, with less population than Apple has employees".

Yeah, I sure hope that would be true otherwise Apple has some explaining to do.