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but it leads to another point. The economically fastest growing country in the world today is "mostly unfree."

It is the delta that matters. It took a huge amount of suppression to keep China, a country with everything but economic freedom going for it, down. A little freedom goes a long way in a place with people and a culture like China has.

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I know nothing about Pakistan but from my experience living in Honduras, I would say that they Honduran government is far bigger relate to their economy than that of the USA. In Honduras the Government provides the electricity, the phone service and the water. It also provides medical care but most people with a little money to private providers. I worked for technical mission of Kansas state university in the Honduran institute of Agriculture and so I can tell you that they mess extensively with agriculture. Also imports where highly taxed and my wife a native Honduran would bribe that customer people.

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Thanks for the example.

Is it rationally compelling? In my view, no, although it is perhaps the way people generally reason politically. As I see it, looking at the problems with regulations outside of a comparison with the harm they were designed to avert is no different from a socialist who finds in defects in capitalism an automatic argument against it.

It seems to me that it would be very hard to construct a plausible basis for such "leanings," because there's no reason to suppose that an arbitrary construct like "libertarianism" or "well-defined regulations" is a natural kind likely to yield strong justified priors.

One way to construct such a justification for a "leaning" is by means of a theory that dominant societal processes produce over-regulation. If society over-regulates because of some social dynamic (and there is no counter-dynamic) then you'll have justification for tending to prefer less regulation at the margin. (I don't see much promise for such a theory.)

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I meant they were sociological impossibilities, not logical ones.

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But in the minds of every liberal college student, there exists a "government of only good things" that is at least stoichiometrically possible.

Which is mirrored, in the mind of every libertarian college student, the view that there exists a truly egoistic capitalist, who won't combine with his fellows, politically and economically, to advance their common interests.

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Fastest in a longer time frame. China has been growing rapidly since the 70s.

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I was taklking about the period where unfettered capitalism thrives and hasn't yet maximized rent-seeking. I don't think a society that has maximized rent-seeking would automatically not qualify as capitalist anymore either. It's possible the rent-seeking elite might eventually try to officially establish an aristocratic system but that could take a while, or they could choose not to. In any case I think we agree we both want to avoid that maximized rent-seeking endgame.

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North Korea and East Germany ignore(d) their own regulations. Regulations in those countries are a branch of public relations, not anything worthy of the name. Those countries are examples of lack of regulation.

Regulations are what make the freedom that we have, and that libertarians appreciate, possible. Bad regulations can also reduce freedoms. The whole issue is a question of quality of regulation, and adherence to them, not the amount of them.

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China isn't the fastest growing economy in the world (Mongolia and some African countries grow faster). I suppose it's also unfair to compare China to Western democracies when it comes to growth: China is poor so it can grow easily because its people are used to low wages and because they still have a lot to gain from merely implementing existing technology and knowledge.

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I wasn't aware of the Heritage rankings. As I find out, China and India are very close, and both are in the "mostly unfree" category.

This pretty much rebuts my comparison based on India and China, but it leads to another point. The economically fastest growing country in the world today is "mostly unfree."

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Regarding D: Would unfettering capitalism reduce the amount of wealth directed politically? Why, when creating new targets for lobbying is always, itself, a lobbyable option?

[If anarcho-capitalism ever came to exist, would it not likely to be rapidly replaced by a highly authoritarian state?]

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It's been a while since I read Chomsky, but I can't help but share his view that smaller government is dissimilar from liberty. Can we claim that a society like Pakistan is more "libertarian" than the United States? Or even Sweden?

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weak:a) relation between economic freedom and wealth inequality not at all clear,b) wealth is one among many factors that enables political power; asians are richer than blacks but far less political pullc) among wealthy people and institutions interests are quite diverse; Harvard and Koch Bro's, for example.d) lobbying increases in proportion to things (agencies, programs) to be lobbied.

the claim that unfettered capitalism causes inequality which causes more rent seeking is weak. for reason D in particular.

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Here is an example. I am very skeptical of government regulations. Regulatory capture is a very serious problem that isn't going to be solved soon. And the incentives faced by regulators tend to be terrible. For example the FDA faces a huge backslash if it approves a drug that turns out to kill people. But little if any backslash for not approving drugs that would have saved lives. Similar issues face msot regulators. So the type1 and type2 errors are not going to be in balance.

I am not opposed to all regulations. I tend to like the ones that are discrete and do not require discretion to enforce. For example (moderate) minimum wage laws. Or enforced parental leave. But I "lean" very heavily against regulations that are ill-defined. Though I do think we need something like the EPA even if its going to cause alot of problems :(

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I don't think many people believe its "civil liberties" that create economic prosperity. Its economic liberties. And China is clearly more economically free than India.

Though I think the Heritage rankings of economic freedom point toward economic freedom only being useful up to a point. While the richest countries are fairly free the correlation we care about is freedom and economic growth. There is little evidence freedom beyond the level in say France is especially useful.

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"Unfettered capitalism" is an impossibility: concentration of wealth leads to concentration of political power (and to successful rent seeking).

For the same reason, egalitarian capitalism is impossible. Politics can't override economics.

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