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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

I think technocracy is really overrated: take a look at Mexico or Japan. (And believe me, when Japan was doing great MITI looked like crazy geniuses busy beating the pants off those Westerners and their chaotic, disorganized, inefficient market economy, and there were many people that said the US would either have to make a MITI or get bought lock stock and barrel. Have you heard anyone argue that recently?)

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Is it really? China has done pretty well with it over the last 25 years or so and it is possible that they are on the right track and can continue to improve the lives of their 1.3 billion nationals for the long term.

What would be the other options? A democracy where 700 million peasants are voting as a majority to elect a party that gives the best health care and farm subsidies? (instead of the best interests of the country)

In a booming economy, anyone with or without authority will look like a genius. I question whether we have seen effective choices made in the national interest or whether we are merely seeing extrinsic economic conditions too powerful for criminal mismanagement to squander... for the moment.

Could one not say the same for any government? Especially the USA?

Wars and huge government squandering TRILLIONS of the hard working American people's tax dollars. It is a shame isn't it? America was doing so well...

You make it sound like there's a choice between whether the country should be run by "ignorant peasants" or "smart people looking after everyone's interests".

Maybe it's not in the best interests of the country to have 700 million peasants? Most Western countries have about 2% of population employed in agriculture. Can China continue to keep its agricultural population politically stuck in the early 20th century?

This is a discussion about India and China, not the West and either.

So should India keep allowing expansion of their peasant classes / caste? Should the "untouchables" (lowest caste / class) continue to be allowed to have 7 or 8 kids in India? Is creating huge numbers of more poverty stricken people in the lowest caste, the best for India? Will they make it even up one caste level (let alone "middle class")?

Both countries are far from perfect, my point is that China has the upper hand over India.

Agreed -- honestly this is a topic of constant debate with regards to China and I think most can agree that things have improved significantly in the past decade. Sure 700 million peasants, but it was even more and as China continues its rapid industrialization, more will leave the farms for the cities. In fact that's already happening, so much so that the issue is primarily how to deal with population influx.

I mean if you look into American history it's a lot of repetition. Packingtown / chinese sweatshops. It's the same thing over again! Leaving the farm for the industrialized city...yeesh.

A choice between "ignorant peasants" or "smart people looking after everyone's interests" is simply irrelevant / nonexistent. The problem right now is developing infrastructure to modernize a country.

But the "ignorant peasants" are doing great in China. They are the first one who signed the contract with government to "rent the land" and do the agriculture themselves. They are the main forces of Chinese small businesses (Wenzhou is a great example) and they are the main work forces for outsourcing industry in China.

We shouldn't be blind by the elite-leading economy in China these days (the PE etc.). Actually, I am quite worried about these "smart people looking after everyone's interests".

If you looked at the past 2 decades or so in China, you will notice that all these "plans" were not work out very well. The reality is, the China's economy miracle was driven by millions of small businesses that desperately want to be rich (the comparison is known as Wenzhou form and Sunan form where as in Sunan, it is government-leading economy and Wenzhou, it is all small businesses).

Basically, the Communist Party's role in China's economy miracle is overrated. If you read the history, it was that people broke the law first and then Party just mend it and let it go. That's, the ad-hoc market economy after all.

The thing about MITI, though, is that they weren't very good at predicting the future, just at getting everyone on the same page. They initially tried to prevent Japanese car manufacturers from getting into the export business, and tried to prevent Sony from licencing the transistor. They reversed course quickly once it was obvious how the markets were responding, but its hard to call them crazy geniuses.

I think that's the point. No one, no matter how clever you are, can predict the future very well.

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