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Konkvistador comments on Politics Discussion Thread February 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The problem with that talking point is that Zimbabwe isn't a liberal democracy, and neither are most third world countries. If you want an example of a third world country that is plausibly a liberal democracy, India comes to mind. And in this case at least, the country's economy has performed much better post-independence than it did under colonial occupation. It's true that India's growth in the first three decades after independence (the 50s through the 70s) wasn't particularly impressive, but it was still significantly better than its pre-independence record, which was positively dismal.
As Amartya Sen has pointed out, India hasn't experienced a famine resulting in massive loss of life since its transition to liberal democracy. Under British rule, famines occured at regular intervals, with the last major one in 1943 involving 1.5 million starvation deaths. In contrast, the closest India has come to famine conditions since independence was in 1966, and the death toll was only about 2500. According to Sen, the institutions of liberal democracy, particularly a free press, guard against the kind of government inattention that turns a drought into a massive famine.
Even in Africa, the countries that perform the worst (and are clearly worse off than they were under colonialism) are not the ones that we would describe as liberal democracies. The uncontroversial liberal democracies in Africa are countries like Botswana, Ghana, Namibia and South Africa (I'm sure there are more I'm missing), and these are countries that do relatively well compared to their neighbors. Botswana is an even better example than India of a country that performed dismally under colonialism and has done well since then. Its per capita GDP (in PPP terms) increased from around $90 in 1966 (when it became independent) to about $16,000 today. It's also one of the few African countries that has remained a liberal democracy consistently since its independence.
Three links on that country
Responsible government at its finest.
Note what Namibia and Botswana have in common besides being nice places to live in Africa and being considered "liberal democracies". Note where they tend to land on this list and how their economies tend to be strongly tied to resource extraction.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to glean from those links. It's true that the current president of Botswana is the son of the first president, but Botswana is hardly alone in this kind of dynastic succession. I can name a few first-world democracies where multiple members of the same family have been elected heads of state.
And yes, Botswana is overly dependent on the diamond trade, and De Beers is a very shady company. The forced relocation of the San bushmen was an atrocity. Also, the country has a huge HIV/AIDS epidemic. But I wasn't holding up Botswana as a shining exemplar of all that is good in this world. I was saying that it is, overall, a much better place to live in than it was before independence. Do you disagree?
Zimbabwe also has a low population density and an economy strongly tied to resource extraction, so those two factors by themselves don't fully account for the relative prosperity of Botswana and Namibia.
Of course and a monarchist would expect such things to generally work out quite well on average. My point was that first president was royalty, his family had strong enough social capital to reach for power once more decades later which suggests strong background influence during the presidencies of Quett Masire and Festus Mogae. Note how the former of those was Vice-president under Seretse Khama and how Ian Khama served as Vice-president under the latter. If that family does not consider the country as something like a family business I don't know which one does.
Also that the De Beers company likely has quite a strong role in the governance of the country it doesn't need to share with many other corporate interests possibly approaching the United Fruit model, if this is so this is a very well run instance of that.
Moldbug's theory of government in action? He seems to think so.
Ah, I see. Sorry, I misunderstood the point you were trying to make.
No its ok I should have given more context but was in a hurry.
Of course not, but I'm saying they help. Note how low density countries tend to be either horrible (West Africa) or wonderful (Iceland) places to live.