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Originally posted by Spanky
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Poor + Free market dictator = always get rich and turn into democracy - Korea, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand etc.
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Always get rich? Always turn into a Democracy?
First, I'm not sure you've got "free market" dictators, in these countries. Yeh, Singapore's pretty close, but Indonesia? Ever heard of Pertamina? Korea has had a significant nationalized industrial sector as well. We'll leave aside Fringey's point that torture defines your country, and market, as unfree, something your Chicago boys never got.
And, in terms of wealth, the number of Chilean's below the povery line doubled, from 20% to 40%, as a percentage of the population during the 70s and 80s. Chile also features an enormous bail out of private industry, with the government assuming $16 billion in debt (leaving it with one of the worst debt burdens of any country in the world) and subsidizing private industry by selling it nationalized businesses at fire-sale prices. And don't forget about the repression of labor unions -- but, wait, you're going to argue that the freedom to organize is not part of a market economy, right? So is all this what you mean by free market? Yeh, free-market Chrysler style. So are you sure you want Chile to be the post-child for free markets?
And, what about other so-called "free-market" dictatorships that have not become democratic? Iran would be one. The fact is that there is a general trend in the world toward Democracy throughout the last couple of centuries, and it's not stopping, but I see almost all of the resulting economies also trending toward the practical, with some mix of free markets, regulated markets, and nationalized markets. There just ain't no pure model out there anywhere.
