Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "Why has CAPITALISM failed in RUSSIA? - VisualPolitik EN" video.
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@smith9824 Like I said, "To think otherwise is to oversimplify and misinterpret." Several of those democracies are also heavily state-controlled and not at all comparable to the stereotypical western example, and quite a few actually first developed under autocratic regimes (Ex: South Korea, Singapore, etc.). You're also mixing up politics and economics far more than is advisable, further muddying the waters. Not to mention both of those vary greatly - German democracy is NOTHING like American democracy, and the Korean or Japanese economies are NOTHING like the British one. That's a gross simplification. The Germans use an electoral system that would utterly transform the American political landscape were it implemented there, the Japanese feature one of the longest running political parties remaining in power continuously in the world despite regular elections, India is a democracy that actually voted in an autocrat years ago who enjoys massive popularity to this day but the country is still the fastest growing economy in the world, etc. Not to mention that many poor countries are also mixed up - some are autocracies, but others are democracies. Some have even been plunged into civil war (Ex: Ethiopia). Argentina today is a vibrant democracy, that has repeatedly landed itself into economic crisis after economic crisis, often due to highly populist policies. No, the world is not so simple. Democracy is no magic pill. Most of these examples are long-term btw.
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@smith9824 "Deng Xiaoping's reforms in the early 1980s which, to be short, brought democratic institutions into China, such as government - free enterprise, protections of private property, and foreign investment flowing from foreign investors independently" - this a ludicrous mix up of politics and economics. No wonder you're prone to this simplification. Those reforms are pretty much always described as MARKET or CAPITALIST policies - there's good reason why an ECONOMIC term is used to describe. You're just appropriating whatever policies you like and unilaterally declaring them political i.e. democratic. Politics affects economics and vice versa of course, but there's a reason the two are still studied as distinct. Deng did not turn China into a democracy, he shifted it from a fully state-managed economy to more market oriented. XI's most significant political, NOT economic, change has been to remove term limits, but other than that their politics isn't much changed from what Deng had. China is rightly described by everyone as having instituted economic reforms, NOT political ones as you're trying to pretend.
You also seem to have a very simplistic idea of what democracy even is - it isn't simply the state not having full control. An anarchist state also doesn't have full power, and so does a failed one (for instance, one in civil war). Democracy is a specific political system characterized by a certain set of rules - most notably an elected govt. - and even within that umbrella there are numerous variations (parliamentary versus presidential, plurality voting versus proportional representation, etc.). It can feature a large public sector, and even, to take one of your points, restrictions on the movement of foreign capital or investment. Most democracies also feature 'eminent domain' laws, which are explicit rights of the state to appropriate private property. Yes, even the US has such laws, and the US Supreme Court has consistently upheld it.
Not only is the world not so simple, but democracy, and for that matter also capitalism, is also not so simple. And those differences can't just be brushed aside.
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