How many governments around the world would use force to try to put down a rebellion? Pretty much all of them. So why does “my” country say it is invading Libya, which is using force to put down a rebellion? Mainly because Libya is not a democracy:
By that logic, we should all leverage heavily in higher risk shares, since growth variance is deemed to be so important.
The trend towards democracy and stability is likely due to the fact that stability is preferred once a minimum standard of material wealth is achieved. Transparent and accountable democracies (not necessarily the USA), combined with a market economy are most likely to achieve this.
Wealthy dictatorships tend to be small countries, therefore more likely to represent their constituents, commit to relatively free market based economies and prevention of corruption.
Perhaps this is more of an argument for the US to be split up back into individual states, or at least the majority of the tasks of the federal government to be devolved back to the states and local government.That way you are likely to have more cohesion within an individual democratic state and therefore less likely to have "consensus failure" as a previous commenter described it.
a democracy such as South Korea where consensus is easier to muster and losers less able to prevent effective governing
I thought you had a good summary until here.
South Korea is similarly affected by lack of consensus: the elections are carried out with military policy (North Korea) in mind, while economic/domestic policy is ignored. Then the people hate their politicians for representing elite/business interests.
This is definitely worth looking into, but I wonder: Why couldn't a *democratic* state exploit the lucrative demand in rich democracies? Shouldn't that demand drive growth equally in democracies and dictatorships?
I have a much simpler explanation: Democratic states are much richer, so they have less room to grow. I think we'd see this effect most clearly with historical data - for example, if we looked at how democracies did growth-wise in the 50's, 30's, etc. And obviously, the answer is that historically, democracies did much better in terms of growth, because democracies are now richer, and they didn't normally become rich first and democratic second. (Why the heck would we be discussing the growth-inducing power of democracy and *only* look at this year's growth data?) I suspect that there is a finite toolkit of growth-inducing tricks. Dictatorships haven't played all theirs yet, while the democracies have. So dictatorships have more room to grow, partly because (as you said), outsourcing and demand from the rich democratic states pulls them up, while the democracies have largely been pulled up already, so they're too rich to benefit from the outsourced sweatshop revolution.
Direct democracy isn't very widespread. Politicians in representative democracies do a lot that not demanded by voters.
Lack of public support didn't stop the bank bailout because politicians considered the bailout to be too important.
When criticizing real world democracies on should actually try to understand how real world political decisions are made.
The recent problem with bundled mortgage securities is an example. The experts doing the trading were way ahead of the electorate and the representatives.The US system is organized in a way that the decisions to regulate the trading where neither made by the electorate nor representatives that the electorate had chosen.
The SEC is supposed to be staffed with subject experts instead of being stuffed with generalists.
The Glass–Steagall Act wasn't repealed because the average person on the street wanted it gone. It was repealed because well funded people with subject matter expertise thought that it limited their profits.
Added 9p: The paper Bryan cited clearly shows that democracies have less than half of the (residual) growth variance of non-democracies even after controlling for these factors:How about controlling additionally for population size.
I'm just quibbling with your last example. The way to get scientists to work on life extension is to give them grants to work on it. (Of course, as Robin Hanson convincingly argues, prizes would probably work a lot better.) The US government is definitely able to do this, but chooses not to for various reasons. Yes, progress would probably be even better if scientists intrinsically "wanted" to pursue it, for whatever cultural or intellectual reasons, but those aren't things China has much better control over than the US. Hypothetical Chinese conscripted scientists are not going to do better than money- and status-driven American ones.
Singapore is definitely some good evidence in support of Robin's claim, which I hadn't considered.
It's not quite fair to call it a dictatorship, though. Wikipedia points out that Freedom house classifies it as "Partly Free", with a political rights score of 5/10. The Economist ranks Singapore as a "hybrid regime", the third rank out of four, in its "Democracy Index": [PDF]. Singapore is ranked as "more" democratic than Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Yes, these metrics are crude and subject to debate, but putting Singapore in the same mental bin as Burma is a mistake.
The term “dictatorship” necessarily refers to a very narrow range of possible governments. The term “democracy” historically, but not necessarily, refers to a very narrow range of possible governments.
Some of the problems with “democracy” are really problems with “one-person one-vote” democracies. We should think about ways of weighting people’s votes more heavily on subjects that they know more about, or care more about. We should see democracy as a work in progress, not as something the Founding Fathers carved in stone and brought down from the mountain.
One-person one-vote democracy was well-adapted to the 18th century, when it was possible for one person to be well-informed on all subjects. It is increasingly obsolete, because its basic model assumes that generalists (whether voters or their representatives) can regulate systems that are built by specialists. If technology and knowledge advance, while the standard-issue human neurobiology remains the same, we will increasingly have voters and representatives legislating in areas they have no understanding of.
The recent problem with bundled mortgage securities is an example. The experts doing the trading were way ahead of the electorate and the representatives. There’s no way a one-person one-vote system can regulate complex financial markets, except by always “fighting the last war” (legislating against whatever went wrong most recently).
The term "dictatorship" necessarily refers to a very narrow range of possible governments. The term "democracy" historically, but not necessarily, refers to a very narrow range of possible governments.
Some of the problems with "democracy" are really problems with "one-person one-vote" democracies. We should think about ways of weighting people's votes more heavily on subjects that they know more about, or care more about. We should see democracy as a work in progress, not as something the Founding Fathers carved in stone and brought down from the mountain.
One-person one-vote democracy was well-adapted to the 18th century, when it was possible for one person to be well-informed on all subjects. It is increasingly obsolete, because its basic model assumes that generalists (whether voters or their representatives) can regulate systems that are built by specialists. If technology and knowledge advance, while the standard-issue human neurobiology remains the same, we will increasingly have voters and representatives legislating in areas they have no understanding of.
The recent problem with bundled mortgage securities is an example. The experts doing the trading were way ahead of the electorate and the representatives. There's no way a one-person one-vote system can regulate complex financial markets, except by always "fighting the last war" (legislating against whatever went wrong most recently).
"And the nominees are:Robin Hanson, Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky and... a sudden late entry on the ballot...Marc Geddes..The voting machines have counted.. envelope please...the winner is...extraordinary...with 100% of the vote..first El Prediente of the World... Marc Geddes!"
Holo-TV shows the first row of the crowd roaring their approval, cheering and clapping with gusto. Camera pans to the row behind.. droids holding laser guns to their heads..
The fundamental strength of democracy is that consensus gathering among citizen expressed in an election confers legitimacy on the government that represents all citizens including those who voted for the losing side.
The weakness of democracy is how it deals with consensus failure. When a substantial number of citizens refuse to recognize the legitimacy of elected leaders, the effectiveness of the government is undermined. In the United States and elsewhere there is a growing trend for citizens to refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the winner unless he/she accepts their policies, values or goals. Democracy lacks a mechanism to deal with a vocal minority of citizens who refuse to recognize their legitimacy to govern and do everything in their power to undermine the government.
Rather than consensus there is perpetual conflict that no election is able to settle. The resulting political distraction this causes offsets the usual benefits of democracy in terms of stable policy goals that innovators and creators can rely on to pursue their goals. In a dictatorship, the repressive powers are effective—at least in the short run—in controlling, co-opting, intimidating the opponents.
An enlightened dictatorship such as Singapore or Taiwan, or a democracy such as South Korea where consensus is easier to muster and losers less able to prevent effective governing indicate that the issue is far more complex than democracy vs. dictatorship.
If consensus is impossible and the losers refuse to accept their political loss, is democracy the best political solution to ensure optimal economic outcome? Until democratic states formulate a good answer to that question, others will be inclined to believe the proponents of democracy as the best way to guarantee economic benefit are overstating their case.
Probably different data sets are used than in the study cited by Robin, But it's interesting to me that although I can see the higher volatility of GDP/capita growth at the low end of the democracy axis from the 1960's to the 1980's, the effect seems to disappear starting in the '90s.
By that logic, we should all leverage heavily in higher risk shares, since growth variance is deemed to be so important.
The trend towards democracy and stability is likely due to the fact that stability is preferred once a minimum standard of material wealth is achieved. Transparent and accountable democracies (not necessarily the USA), combined with a market economy are most likely to achieve this.
Wealthy dictatorships tend to be small countries, therefore more likely to represent their constituents, commit to relatively free market based economies and prevention of corruption.
Perhaps this is more of an argument for the US to be split up back into individual states, or at least the majority of the tasks of the federal government to be devolved back to the states and local government.That way you are likely to have more cohesion within an individual democratic state and therefore less likely to have "consensus failure" as a previous commenter described it.
a democracy such as South Korea where consensus is easier to muster and losers less able to prevent effective governing
I thought you had a good summary until here.
South Korea is similarly affected by lack of consensus: the elections are carried out with military policy (North Korea) in mind, while economic/domestic policy is ignored. Then the people hate their politicians for representing elite/business interests.
This is definitely worth looking into, but I wonder: Why couldn't a *democratic* state exploit the lucrative demand in rich democracies? Shouldn't that demand drive growth equally in democracies and dictatorships?
I have a much simpler explanation: Democratic states are much richer, so they have less room to grow. I think we'd see this effect most clearly with historical data - for example, if we looked at how democracies did growth-wise in the 50's, 30's, etc. And obviously, the answer is that historically, democracies did much better in terms of growth, because democracies are now richer, and they didn't normally become rich first and democratic second. (Why the heck would we be discussing the growth-inducing power of democracy and *only* look at this year's growth data?) I suspect that there is a finite toolkit of growth-inducing tricks. Dictatorships haven't played all theirs yet, while the democracies have. So dictatorships have more room to grow, partly because (as you said), outsourcing and demand from the rich democratic states pulls them up, while the democracies have largely been pulled up already, so they're too rich to benefit from the outsourced sweatshop revolution.
Direct democracy isn't very widespread. Politicians in representative democracies do a lot that not demanded by voters.
Lack of public support didn't stop the bank bailout because politicians considered the bailout to be too important.
When criticizing real world democracies on should actually try to understand how real world political decisions are made.
The recent problem with bundled mortgage securities is an example. The experts doing the trading were way ahead of the electorate and the representatives.The US system is organized in a way that the decisions to regulate the trading where neither made by the electorate nor representatives that the electorate had chosen.
The SEC is supposed to be staffed with subject experts instead of being stuffed with generalists.
The Glass–Steagall Act wasn't repealed because the average person on the street wanted it gone. It was repealed because well funded people with subject matter expertise thought that it limited their profits.
Added 9p: The paper Bryan cited clearly shows that democracies have less than half of the (residual) growth variance of non-democracies even after controlling for these factors:How about controlling additionally for population size.
I'm just quibbling with your last example. The way to get scientists to work on life extension is to give them grants to work on it. (Of course, as Robin Hanson convincingly argues, prizes would probably work a lot better.) The US government is definitely able to do this, but chooses not to for various reasons. Yes, progress would probably be even better if scientists intrinsically "wanted" to pursue it, for whatever cultural or intellectual reasons, but those aren't things China has much better control over than the US. Hypothetical Chinese conscripted scientists are not going to do better than money- and status-driven American ones.
Singapore is definitely some good evidence in support of Robin's claim, which I hadn't considered.
It's not quite fair to call it a dictatorship, though. Wikipedia points out that Freedom house classifies it as "Partly Free", with a political rights score of 5/10. The Economist ranks Singapore as a "hybrid regime", the third rank out of four, in its "Democracy Index": [PDF]. Singapore is ranked as "more" democratic than Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Yes, these metrics are crude and subject to debate, but putting Singapore in the same mental bin as Burma is a mistake.
The term “dictatorship” necessarily refers to a very narrow range of possible governments. The term “democracy” historically, but not necessarily, refers to a very narrow range of possible governments.
Some of the problems with “democracy” are really problems with “one-person one-vote” democracies. We should think about ways of weighting people’s votes more heavily on subjects that they know more about, or care more about. We should see democracy as a work in progress, not as something the Founding Fathers carved in stone and brought down from the mountain.
One-person one-vote democracy was well-adapted to the 18th century, when it was possible for one person to be well-informed on all subjects. It is increasingly obsolete, because its basic model assumes that generalists (whether voters or their representatives) can regulate systems that are built by specialists. If technology and knowledge advance, while the standard-issue human neurobiology remains the same, we will increasingly have voters and representatives legislating in areas they have no understanding of.
The recent problem with bundled mortgage securities is an example. The experts doing the trading were way ahead of the electorate and the representatives. There’s no way a one-person one-vote system can regulate complex financial markets, except by always “fighting the last war” (legislating against whatever went wrong most recently).
The term "dictatorship" necessarily refers to a very narrow range of possible governments. The term "democracy" historically, but not necessarily, refers to a very narrow range of possible governments.
Some of the problems with "democracy" are really problems with "one-person one-vote" democracies. We should think about ways of weighting people's votes more heavily on subjects that they know more about, or care more about. We should see democracy as a work in progress, not as something the Founding Fathers carved in stone and brought down from the mountain.
One-person one-vote democracy was well-adapted to the 18th century, when it was possible for one person to be well-informed on all subjects. It is increasingly obsolete, because its basic model assumes that generalists (whether voters or their representatives) can regulate systems that are built by specialists. If technology and knowledge advance, while the standard-issue human neurobiology remains the same, we will increasingly have voters and representatives legislating in areas they have no understanding of.
The recent problem with bundled mortgage securities is an example. The experts doing the trading were way ahead of the electorate and the representatives. There's no way a one-person one-vote system can regulate complex financial markets, except by always "fighting the last war" (legislating against whatever went wrong most recently).
Singapore is a dictatorship, and it's not playing catch-up.
"And the nominees are:Robin Hanson, Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky and... a sudden late entry on the ballot...Marc Geddes..The voting machines have counted.. envelope please...the winner is...extraordinary...with 100% of the vote..first El Prediente of the World... Marc Geddes!"
Holo-TV shows the first row of the crowd roaring their approval, cheering and clapping with gusto. Camera pans to the row behind.. droids holding laser guns to their heads..
A good example is the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Let's see London top that.
Nice graph. :)
The fundamental strength of democracy is that consensus gathering among citizen expressed in an election confers legitimacy on the government that represents all citizens including those who voted for the losing side.
The weakness of democracy is how it deals with consensus failure. When a substantial number of citizens refuse to recognize the legitimacy of elected leaders, the effectiveness of the government is undermined. In the United States and elsewhere there is a growing trend for citizens to refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the winner unless he/she accepts their policies, values or goals. Democracy lacks a mechanism to deal with a vocal minority of citizens who refuse to recognize their legitimacy to govern and do everything in their power to undermine the government.
Rather than consensus there is perpetual conflict that no election is able to settle. The resulting political distraction this causes offsets the usual benefits of democracy in terms of stable policy goals that innovators and creators can rely on to pursue their goals. In a dictatorship, the repressive powers are effective—at least in the short run—in controlling, co-opting, intimidating the opponents.
An enlightened dictatorship such as Singapore or Taiwan, or a democracy such as South Korea where consensus is easier to muster and losers less able to prevent effective governing indicate that the issue is far more complex than democracy vs. dictatorship.
If consensus is impossible and the losers refuse to accept their political loss, is democracy the best political solution to ensure optimal economic outcome? Until democratic states formulate a good answer to that question, others will be inclined to believe the proponents of democracy as the best way to guarantee economic benefit are overstating their case.
If anybody is interested to see the relationship of GDP/capita growth vs. democracy graphically over time, I set-up a gapminder.org animation.
link: http://bit.ly/f1YZB7
Probably different data sets are used than in the study cited by Robin, But it's interesting to me that although I can see the higher volatility of GDP/capita growth at the low end of the democracy axis from the 1960's to the 1980's, the effect seems to disappear starting in the '90s.
We're not invading Libya, we're just bombing it. Reagan bombed Libya back in the 1980s, too...
Right. Can dictators do better than democracies in pushing the frontier? I doubt it too.