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293 points doener | 4 comments | | HN request time: 1.087s | source
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room271 ◴[] No.23831071[source]
This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on. Let us hope they do so as quickly as possible, not least for the sake of the Chinese people themselves. And let us work to improve our example and unity too in countries where we do have these things, however imperfectly.
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1. ◴[] No.23831397[source]
2. yushuf ◴[] No.23833787[source]
How is democracy working out in Arab spring countries or Eastern European countries? Most westerners have it wrong where they think Democracy --> Economic prosperity, where in fact it's quite the opposite. Economic prosperity --> Strong government --> Democracy. If you don't have a strong state, Democracy (or any political system) just leads to widespread corruption.

If you're interested in learning more about how China, America, UK, etc were able to rise to power, I recommend checking out this paper: https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2015/2015-00...

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3. mlindner ◴[] No.23836381{3}[source]
You've got it completely backwards. Strong government leads to the corruption of society and a reduction in freedom. If you have weaker government then there is more freedom for everyone and greater economic prosperity.
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4. yushuf ◴[] No.23840214{4}[source]
I'd recommend reading the paper I linked. If you disagree with what the paper says, I'd be happy to discuss!