[brabel]

There’s a good argument for America having been able to do all it did despite being a democracy without a strong central government, not because of it. Look around the world and see how many countries managed to achieve similar success using the same liberal principles? Most of Europe became rich under imperialist, authoritarian governments not with their current system. I would love to see a good counter argument that’s convincing since I find this realization extremely sad as for all my life I believed the propaganda about democracy and liberalism being the route to success just to see most countries that tried to emulate that fail miserably.

[majoe]

> Most of Europe became rich under imperialist, authoritarian governments not with their current system

Europe prospered under democratic governments after the second world war. My particular region of Germany was rural, agrarian and piss poor before the war. Now it is an industry hub and one of the richest regions in Germany, all thanks to a democratic government, which prioritised development of rural areas.

The wealth we now enjoy is incomparable to what we had under authoritarian rule before.

Let's also not forget, that the Cold war divided Europe in two halves, one with democratic governments and one under authoritarian rule, an A/B test so to say. The end result was, that they needed a wall in Berlin to keep the people from fleeing to the west.

> Look around the world and see how many countries managed to achieve similar success using the same liberal principles

Beside the whole of Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Uruguay and Taiwan come to mind. Taiwan has a per capita GDP 2.5x that of mainland China.

[brabel]

Sorry but I have to mention that Nazi Germany became incredibly prosperous, but it decided to use its wealth to obtain military power.

Also, Europe dominated the world for a couple of hundred years before the Great War. Some parts of Europe may have been poor during that time, but compared to the rest of the world I do think it was a whole lot better.

Japan was incredibly rich in the beginning of the 20th century - and it was definitely not a democracy. Australia, Canada and NZ are all part of the ex-British Empire and I would say that's what made them prosperous, not their political system.

South Korea rode on the back of US support, like Japan after the war, but I do agree they did that while being mostly democratic.

Uruguay has just very recently become a nice place due to basically a single guy! That president, Jose Mujica, was such a legend! And a big critic of capitalism , by the way.

Taiwan was what we used to call the "Asian Tigers" that became rich in an incredibly fast manner... I don't know that you can attribute that to a political system at all: Singapore was and is a dictatorship and is perhaps the best example of Asian Tiger - it became richer than Australia in like 20 years!

All in all: you do not convince me. You do not seem to understand what made those countries rich in my opinion and you haven't really reflected on it if you really think that democracy was the common theme.

EDIT: Taiwan is a tiny island, China is a huge country. The GDP percapita of Shanghai and Beijing is about the same as Taiwan... Hong Kong and Macau, also part of China, have much larger GDP/pc still.