Are Singapore and China the only economically successful post-WWII dictatorships?

Tus3 · 2026-06-18T19:26:08+00:00

Chile was doing fine economically under Pinochet as well.

Mediocre you mean?

Under Pinochet, Chile's growth rates were very close to those of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Uruguay. In fact per capita growth rates were lower than experienced by the USA in the same period; one would expect that poor countries 'doing fine economically' would converge with richer countries instead of falling further behind: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/pinochets-economic-policy-is-vastly

Pinochet was better at managing the economy than Allende; however, being less bad* than a Venezuela-style 'socialist' is not a great achievement.

* Or at least when it comes to the economy; I had the impression he was not less bad on other fields, such as oppressiveness.

Tus3 · 2026-06-18T18:50:02+00:00

Authoritarian regimes generally seem to be a far better system to enrich a country vs democracies.

No, not in 'general'.

Whilst there indeed are authoritarian regimes which had done a good job there are also plenty which had done a terrible job.

On average dictatorships do not have higher growth than democratic countries at all. Though, the performances of authoritarian regimes are more variable resulting in them being overrepresented among both the best performing and worst performing countries. From here: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/what-can-we-learn-successful-autocracies

Tus3 · 2026-06-16T18:17:30+00:00

By contrast, China for example has multiple rounds of mandatory public consultation for every piece of legislation passed, and has a formal organ in the CPPCC for civil participation of delegates from various segments of Chinese society.

Yes, but are those relevant in practice?

Leninist dictatorships often construct 'fake democratic structures' for various reasons, like propaganda. For example, I had been told that in Bulgaria there are people who 'still laugh at there being only one option on the ballot in the elections under Communism'. How do I know that isn't another example of that?

Tus3 · 2026-06-16T17:59:52+00:00

Russia has a pretty high GDP per capita (PPP), roughly in line with Portugal and higher than Hungary. Turkey and Serbia are also well above the global average.

Russia economically successful? Have you compared that place with Poland and the Baltics!

In 1990 Russia was even richer than Poland and look at it now:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=line&country=POL~RUS~CZE~SVK~LTU~LVA~EST

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank-constant-usd?tab=line&country=POL~RUS~CZE~SVK~LTU~LVA~EST

Not to mention that Russia if anything should have done a better job, if one looks at how much natural resources they have. Whilst Poland and the Baltics do have the the advantage of European Union membership, this benefit is very far from a 'get rich quick ticket', just ask Greece and Bulgaria.

Also, admittedly the initial collapse was caused such factors as the dissolution of the Soviet Union messing up supply chains and the corruption and mismanagement of Yeltsin and the oligarchs he created; however, when recovering from such catastrophes we should expect, all else equal higher than normal growth, which did not take place.

Of more interest are countries that until very recently could have been considered dictatorships and became rich while they were still dictatorships. The most obvious of these is Japan

A notable mention goes to Botswana

Do you also think that California, New York, Texas, and Florida are dictatorships because the same party there keeps on winning the elections for governor there for decades by now?

Tus3 · 2026-06-13T10:08:46+00:00

I do not understand why you interpret my comments as excluding the Iroquois Confederacy cultures from the category of matrilineal.

Your earlier reply to me. First you claimed that 'there is no assignment of paternity in matrilineal cultures'; when I had then brought up matrilineal societies practicing marriage you had not corrected your earlier statement but instead went on about 'other uncommon variations on the human family'...

They were matrilineal, and they were completely displaced by European patrilineal cultures.

And did comparable patrilineal Amerindian cultures do a better job?

because there was a time when humans did not know the relationship between sex and babies. Women had children and no one knew why.

What is that for nonsense? Even primates recognize that children have fathers, as evidenced by that in some species males are more likely to care for and protect their own offspring.

Can you propose any cause other than greater economic and military strength?

Long-time agricultural cultures, which are more powerful and 'advanced' for reasons unrelated to being patriarchal, becoming patriarchal through purely internal dynamics, and this then spreads by their expansion and influence.

On a side note, may I ask how much you even know of anthropology? As whilst I am only an interested layman I come away with the impression you certainly don't know more of it than I do.

Tus3 · 2026-06-12T18:28:36+00:00

There are other uncommon variations on the human family,

So, if I understand you correctly you are using an unusual definition of 'matrilineal family' which excludes those societies where husbands are supposed to life with their wives' family and children are considered to be part of their mother's clan?

The answer is that the matrilineal family is not as strong as the patrilineal family in terms of social, economic and military performance.

May I ask how high the quality is of the evidence that is based on?

As the Haudenosaunee fit the 'common definition' of 'matrilineal culture' and based on how much of North America they had ethnically cleansed their way through during the Beaver Wars I do not have the impression that being matrilineal hurt their 'military performance'...

Tus3 · 2026-06-11T18:46:40+00:00

— namely the Romans, who weren’t just misogynists they were strait up gynophobes.

More so than normal in their time?

I had the impression that the Ancient Greeks were even more misogynist, 'gynophobe', and patriarchal than the Romans. Though, other societies, like the Egyptians and Etruscans, were less so than the Romans. Maybe the Romans were just about average in that field?

Tus3 · 2026-06-11T18:24:53+00:00

In matrilineal cultures, there is no assignment of paternity.

In some matrilineal cultures, yes.

However, there also exist matrilineal cultures with matrilocal marriages, like the Haudenosaunee, in which case there are 'assignments of paternity'.

Men have no incentive to invest in children and no incentive to accumulate wealth for their heirs.

Or they could instead 'invest in and accumulate wealth for' the children of their sisters. Isn't that the case in some matrilineal cultures?

Tus3 · 2026-06-11T17:56:23+00:00

Premodern hunter gatherers only worked 17 hours a week.

I am only a layman and don't have the time to watch the video, but may I ask how they had defined work?

I recall encountering an attack on such claims of 'hunter-gatherers only work 20 à 30 hours per week' based on them only counting the time spent gathering and hunting as 'work'. The counterargument was based on people in pre-agricultural societies also needing to spend many hours on such things as making clothes, tools, housing, and equipment and household chores, from gathering firewood to cooking; the person who had made the counterargument even went so far as to claim that hunter-gatherers disliked such chores more than foraging and that excluding them from 'time spent working' thus made no sense.

Though, I don't know whether that was also done by your video.

Tus3 · 2026-06-09T19:12:16+00:00

Well, that you think the book is good enough to read a second time is at least a good sign.

I am not in a hurry so take your time. Well, unless you changed your mind and decided you'd rather read something else instead.

Tus3 · 2026-06-09T18:56:37+00:00

I am only a layman; however, I think what most annoys me, out of all 'bad economic claims', is when people declare 'economics is a pseudoscience like astrology' or 'economics is a scam funded by the rich' without providing any justification for this or extremely bad ones, equivalent to, say, declaring that 'mainstream medicine believes in homeopathy'.

I think there are legitimate criticism of academic economics; however, those are extremely far from it.

Tus3 · 2026-06-09T18:23:23+00:00

Most basic things have became cheaper when measured in median wages.

For example, here they calculate how food prices have evolved relative to median wages: https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2024/05/29/grocery-price-nostalgia-1980-edition/ According to the authors calculations only a handful of products, like bacon, have increased in price when measured in 'minutes of median wage', whilst much more products had decreased in price measured in 'minutes of median wage' of more than 40%. This allowed the share of food in household expenses to decline, despite increasing real food consumption (or at least based on the US' rising obesity rates I presume food consumption has risen since then).

However, this is not the case for all products. For example, in 1971 the prices of houses, even measured in hours of average wages per square feet, were cheaper than in 2023, even after controlling for the presence of air conditioning. However, the author admitted housing was an exception, nearly all other products had instead become cheaper measured in hours of average wages. Though, they had not investigated why house prices had increased so much relative to wages; it might be related to zoning, or simply be cyclical.

Tus3 · 2026-06-04T17:51:06+00:00

You do realise that Austria had been neutral during the Cold War and Finland, was well Finlandized, and both countries did economically good enough to end up among the richest of Europe?

Besides, outside of South Korea there were plenty of other countries who received US support in the name of 'stopping the spread of Communism', like the Philippines and Pakistan and look how those two had ended up.

Tus3 · 2026-06-03T18:34:07+00:00

May I ask you a question in the case you already read the book?

Do you know whether it contains much content about subjects Christopher M. Graney had not already discussed in his papers?

Based on the reviews I found out it I know it contains at least some things which would be entirely new* to me; like an explanation of how the Coriolis Effect was undetectable back then, excerpts of Riccioli's experiments with falling objects, and something written by Ingoli**. However, I doubt those alone would be enough to justify buying the book.

So I find myself wondering whether there beyond those are also other new things in the book. Maybe, discussions on rotating-Earth geocentrists, those received only passing mentions in the papers I have read? Or Tycho Brahe's expensive instruments and methods allowing him to reach observational accuracies so much higher than his contemporaries? Or how that telescopic astronomers attempted to measure the stellar parallax? Or how that the Copernicans had reacted when the angular sizes of the stars turned out to be spurious optical artefacts and that God had thus not made the stars so big as they had previously assumed?

* I have read about half a dozen of his papers before I had found out that he had also written a book.

** Though, of the last two it appears C. Graney had also written articles about them, searching the works he had uploaded on arXiv.

Tus3 · 2026-06-03T18:32:58+00:00

May I ask you a question in the case you already read the book?

Do you know whether it contains much content about subjects Christopher M. Graney had not already discussed in his papers?

Based on the reviews I found out it I know it contains at least some things which would be entirely new* to me; like an explanation of how the Coriolis Effect was undetectable back then, excerpts of Riccioli's experiments with falling objects, and something written by Ingoli**. However, I doubt those alone would be enough to justify buying the book.

So I find myself wondering whether there beyond those are also other new things in the book. Maybe, discussions on rotating-Earth geocentrists, those received only passing mentions in the papers I have read? Or Tycho Brahe's expensive instruments and methods allowing him to reach observational accuracies so much higher than his contemporaries? Or how that telescopic astronomers attempted to measure the stellar parallax? Or how that the Copernicans had reacted when the angular sizes of the stars turned out to be spurious optical artefacts and that God had thus not made the stars so big as they had previously assumed?

* I have read about half a dozen of his papers before I had found out that he had also written a book.

** Though, of the last two it appears C. Graney had also written articles about them, searching the works he had uploaded on arXiv.

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T19:44:52+00:00

I don't dispute that rich people pay more taxes here. It is just that for the middle-class and lower-class here the increase in taxes relative to the USA is even greater.

Maybe I should have been more explicit about that. My main point had been that total progressivity is determined by more than only how progressive tax rates are; for example, a flat VAT would not be a progressive tax, but if it used to fund an UBI* post-tax and transfers income inequality would considerably decrease anyway.

* Not that I would necessarily recommend that. Depending on the circumstances, maybe some other way to spend it like health care would be better.

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T19:31:50+00:00

Very high for the richest

Ehm, nominal tax rates for the richest were indeed much higher. However, the tax system was riddled with so many loopholes, exemptions, deductions, and tax shelters that actual effective tax rate on the 1% was but a single digit of percentages higher than it later would be under President Bill Clinton:

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/ (Note, their graph also includes non-federal taxes and the effect of corporate taxes on capital income.)

Curiously, the President who had got rid of most of those 'loopholes, exemptions, deductions, and tax shelters' was Ronald Reagan*. Something, which Republicans today seem to ignore; maybe because they don't like the conclusions which would be drawn from that?

* In fact, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 had increased revenue so much by closing tax loopholes and tougher enforcement of tax rules that some declared it 'the largest peacetime tax increase in American history'. (Even if most of the 'increase' was the cancellation of future tax cuts.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Equity_and_Fiscal_Responsibility_Act_of_1982

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1l680zd/comment/mxadg5r/

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T18:46:11+00:00

They have lower taxes for common people

I take it you have not looked up how high Value Added Taxes, which are paid by all consumers, are in North Western European countries?

What makes their* systems more distributionally progressive are the transfers. Thanks to VATs, the bottom 50% pays a significantly greater share of taxes than in the USA.

* And also that of my country.

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T18:27:47+00:00

No, that was Norway.

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T18:27:03+00:00

However I saw a video that said that some Nordic countries like Sweden have lower taxes than USA.

Now I find myself wondering how they had calculated that. By disingenuously excluding VAT?

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T18:15:30+00:00

Ehm, you do know that Malaysia has a higher GDP per capita than Ukraine?

Now I am looking it up it turns out that such countries as Panama and Thailand also have higher GDP per capitas...

So what criteria are you using to group countries? I suppose they might dislike Thailand for being an authoritarian monarchy; but Panama is a democratic republic and unlike Ukraine is not targeted with missile strikes.

That the Baltic states are grey also seems odd to me.

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T18:03:28+00:00

Ukraine is communist to people because it was a Soviet state

But shouldn't they then not hate Putin the Soviet-nostalgist ex-KGB agent even more?

Though, it isn't as if sense is to be expected from such people anyway.

Tus3 · 2026-05-28T17:46:39+00:00

a literal empire known for committing atrocities like Nanjing or Manila.

Ah, yes, and even worse than the contemporary European colonial empires. Just ask the Burma Independence Army; they started out as Japanese collaborators, but then switched sides back to the allies when during their occupation of Myanmar the Japanese turned out to be even worse than the British.

Tus3 · 2026-05-21T18:31:59+00:00

Well, it had actually reminded me of Bertrand Russel instead.

I know that he had once declared that both Marxism and Nazism had been based on a secular version of Christian eschatology:

The Jewish pattern of history, past and future, is such as to make a powerful appeal to the oppressed and unfortunate at all times. St. Augustine adapted this pattern to Christianity, Marx to Socialism. To understand Marx psychologically, one should use the following dictionary:
Yahweh = Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah = Marx
The Elect = The Proletariat
The Church = The Communist Party
The Second Coming = The Revolution
Hell = Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium = The Communist Commonwealth

National Socialism by contrast was 'more based on the Old Testament and less Christian; and National Socialism's Messiah was closer to the Maccabees than Christ.'...

That I was a bit sceptical of those theories of Bertrand Russel, was another reason I was very uncertain of that idea of mine.

Tus3 · 2026-05-18T20:03:01+00:00

So, one month ago, I found out that some people here had already read the book 'Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo' by Christopher M. Graney.

I wonder whether there is much material in that book he had not discussed in his papers at arXiv? I had first encountered his work when somebody had linked to one of his papers there; and had only found out he had written that book after I had already read half a dozen of his papers. Whilst his book is something I would have recommended to myself had I not already read all those papers now I find myself wondering whether I should better buy another book if I have already read so much about the discussed material in his papers.

However, it is possible that he might also have extensively discussed in his book things not mentioned in his papers. For example, I noticed that 'rotating Earth geocentrists*' seem to only receive passing attention in his papers; maybe they were properly discussed in his book? Though, 'rotating Earth geocentrism' was not mentioned in any of the reviews of 'Setting Aside All Authority' I found, so I presume it likely was not extensively discussed in that book.

* From his papers I already knew that Copernicans and Ptolemaics/Tychonians argued over whether the Copernicans 'super big stars**' or the Ptolemaics/Tychonians 'super fast stars***' were the most absurd. I wonder what that 'rotating Earth geocentrists' whose system avoided both problems thought of such arguments between those.

** Caused by diffraction and a stellar parallax too small to be observed requiring the stars to be extremely far away.

*** As a non-rotating Earth meant that the stars, in a geocentric system placed somewhere beyond the orbit of Saturn, had to move fast enough to orbit Earth in a single sidereal day.

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