[bonn1]

While I find the post a bit odd I value the 3rd bullet legitimate for debate:

Since the collapse of the USSR and the rise of post-Tiananmen China it has become glaringly obvious that capitalism does not require democracy. Or even benefit from it. Capitalism as a system may well work best in the absence of democracy.

I am also quite impressed and wonder how China got there where it is today in the absence of democracy. But I am not sure if I would agree with the OP since there many examples where states economically failed/are failing and assumingly because of the absence of democracy.

[cstross]

See also Singapore, arguably a democracy in name only. Or its neighbour Malaysia, ditto (and rather less successful).

I could cherry-pick examples until the cows come home, but I suspect other factors are at work -- and not just the obvious cultural stereotypes (look at how the two Koreas diverged after 1973, for example).

[SideburnsOfDoom]

An example of an undemocratic failing capitalistic state does not repudiate the statement "capitalism does not require democracy", but an example of an undemocratic succeeding capitalistic state proves the statement. And we have several examples of such states. Logic is like that.

[nothrabannosir]

While technically true, this is not pure logic, and his statement is more nuanced. To note:

> Capitalism as a system may well work best in the absence of democracy.

That's written in English, and it is reasonably interpreted to mean more than \not(capitalism-works-well \implies democracy). The author suggests capitalism-works-well \implies \not democracy.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Fair enough, though plainly, capitalism can work well in some kinds of democracy. The statement that is there to provoke thought is actually about where capitalism works best, i.e. what are the optimal conditions for capitalism or if "capitalism-works-best \implies \not democracy"

Which is now making me think of ways in which money distorts government, i.e in which capitalism and democracy are in tension. For a prime example, "Citizens United" is clearly pro-capitalistic, and anti-democratic. http://www.newsweek.com/five-years-after-citizens-united-sig...

[PakG1]

We don't yet have enough data to say if he's correct. I would posit that the fact that China is where it is today is due to his Afternote C, not his Bullet Point 3. There are massive structural risks inside of China that are difficult to see in the media, risks that are more difficult to have in a democratic system that tries to guarantee freedoms.

These are cracks in China's economic foundation that a lot of hot money foreign investment has been able to cover up over the past couple of decades. Risks due to population migration problems due to the hukou system, environmental problems stemming from short-sighted industrial investments, government corruption that grew and grew due to lack of separated oversight and his Bullet Points 4 and 5 (which only recently seems to be seriously considered an existential risk to the government's existence; but again, time will tell if this is for real), and more. The level of control of the government over the economy also goes against the tenets of free markets (although I suppose you can then get into an argument as to whether it's possible to have capitalism without free markets).

I'm not saying that his Bullet Point 3 is wrong. I'm saying that it's too soon to call China a reliable data point for making any long-term overarching claims.

edit: clarification

[gwern]

Let us wait until Chinese per-capita PPP has equaled, never mind passed, the USA or other major Western countries before we start singing its hosannas about how wise and effective the Communist Party is at overseeing an advanced highly-efficient capitalist economy.

We've heard this story before, and it didn't work out well for the USSR.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

The USSR wasn't really capitalist.

Also, you don't need to meet Western development to be a success. China has incredibly high growth rates and Deng Xiaoping's "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (i.e. the mixed economy) basically saved China.

[gwern]

> The USSR wasn't really capitalist.

The PRC isn't really capitalist either, consider how much of the economy is still state-owned enterprises. In any case, the reference class here is more 'fast-growing industrializing economies starting on a primitive agricultural basis', where regularly you see impressed people (and flacks) declaring that This Time Is Different and perhaps Western-liberal-democracy-plus-capitalism has been rendered obsolete. USSR, Japan - China?

[mcguire]

No, but during the middle of the twentieth century, the USSR grew from a mostly rural, agrarian country to one of the major world powers. (Modulo, of course, Russia, which was effectively European, in much the same way that the early colonies in the US were European and how parts of modern China are "advanced" and others are not.)

If we take these things to have a certain lifespan, I'd expect China to have a significant restructuring around 2030.

[VLM]

There is a simpler failure mode, the guy who decides what numbers to report, and how, decides the outcome, and the data from China is more corrupt than our own data, which in turn is more corrupt than the data from the USSR Pravda era.

On a small scale its fox guarding the henhouse corporate metric evaluations. You pick the winners and losers, and by how much, then you design todays metric to match the conclusion, then you use numerological processes to gather numbers for the metric. Thats the way the real world works.

[ubernostrum]

But I am not sure if I would agree with the OP since there many examples where states economically failed/are failing and assumingly because of the absence of democracy.

From a logic point of view "X does not require Y" does not entail "X must universally succeed when Y is absent". So a counterexample to the latter statement is not a counterexample to the former.

[lisper]

> many examples where states economically failed/are failing and assumingly because of the absence of democracy

Can you list some of these "many examples"? And in particular, can you list some examples of states that don't have democracies but do have capitalism and are still failing?

[sp332]

Even though the government is not configured as a democracy, Chinese people seem to be generally OK with what the government does. So they still have most of the benefits of "consent of the governed".