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Comment by holdenc | Hacker News Reader

Totalitarianism has its efficiencies.

Let's get excited about the efficiencies when the product is delivered on schedule, on budget, and with good quality. Governments the world over announce wondrous things like this all the time, but none of them have a lock on going over budget, over schedule, and with distinctly less quality than was promised.

(I'm not saying all government projects are failures; if you thought I said that, read more carefully please.)

oh, private companies and individuals do this all the time just as well :)

Totalitarianism is very efficient until the people realize material wealth without political freedom is hollow.

That's the standard line, but I'm not sure that it's as inevitable as that. It might well be that an efficient and well-run dictatorship or monarchy can compete with Western-style democracy (though I'm not sure China is "well-run" enough in this sense to be a good test case).

Singapore . . . is the example you were looking for I think.

Yeah, I did think about Singapore, but I don't know much about how it's set up politically, so I decided to stick with the case already on topic. :)

Political freedom as in the freedom to vote for a third party who will never make it to power ?

It may actually break down well before that. There is probably something akin to the Laffer curve for the power of the central government. I.e. at a certain point, making the government more powerful will make the country poorer.

Boy would I like to believe that. What is the evidence from China that this is true? Perhaps their history of paternalism meshes well with tolerating the yoke.

We'll see what happens when there is a real hiccup in the system. They've enjoyed huge growth for so many years.

Note that I'm saying you're wrong, and people will tolerate political oppression while they have increasing material wealth. When things go bad, they might go really bad.

China is not a totalitarian country (or at least not anymore so than post-New Deal U.S.). Authoritarian!=Totalitarian.

Point of fact . . .

It is actually Authoritarianism.

That said . . .

Yes, it is very efficient.

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