Dec 31, 2019, 4:52 PM
—“Between the US, the EU, Russia, and China, what do you think is the most capitalist society?”—
The Capitalism vs Communism dichotomy is a fabrication of the Marxists to distract from the reality that:
(a) all states must practice mixed economies, with state centralization solving market limitations at the cost of poor capital efficiency and high corruption, until private capital can decentralize production and increase capital efficiency and decrease corruption; Advanced economies must innovate and require markets (private sector) majority production, and backward economies must catch up and create markets by state (public sector) majority production.
(b) all states capable of collecting revenues either by investment and returns, taxation, interest collection, profiting from direct management, or all of the above, can choose whether to spend the income on consumption (redistribution) or production( further investment). Those states that are unable to collect revenues can militarize the population (as did the soviets) and minimize wages so that the maximum resources can be directed to production of commons.
(c) the question is whether one operates by rule of law that naturally produces markets, rule by legislation negotiated between classes, or rule by regulation by monopoly bureaucracy, or rule by command (discretion) by dictator.
ANGLOSPHERE countries are by far – without even a close competitor – dependent upon rule of law, rule by legislation, and state funding basic research, but almost no state involvement in production – why? Because judges were always independent professionals and less subject to corruption.
Mixed Economy, Favoring Private Sector, and Rule of Law.
CONTINENTAL – countries practice the napoleonic law of rule by legislation and rule by regulation. Why? Because french judges were appointed or purchased their positions and napoleon could not trust them to refrain from discretionary rulings (making up law).
Mixed Economy, Favoring mixed public private sectors, and Rule of Legislation.
POST SOVIET – Countries are cripple by soviet legal codes, but while russia and ukraine have reformed their laws (ukrainian law is quite good really), the problem in both countries has been reducing corruption that was endemic under the soviets in all walks of life. Although we must compliment Putin on tripling the number of cases in in the courts, even if he has not succeeded in preventing coercive thefts of businesses by state members (I could not find a single company to buy in Moscow because they must keep ‘fake’ books in order to prevent people in the government from conspiring to take over the business by confiscatory corruption.)
Mixed economy, Both Heavy public and Private sectors, and rule by legislation and rule by Regulation
INDIA. Indian law is fine. Like everything else in india, the engine of indian order is not the government but culture, tradition, and the family. Russia crosses eleven time zones but it’s still a country. America is an empire and each state or region a different country. Europe is trying and failing to repeat the american experiment and failing at the same time america is failing. India likewise is a continent and an empire not a country. India is unable to devote sufficient resources (for reasons we do not understand) to either providing speedy (timely) justice, or to producing sufficient infrastructure, given her people’s rates of reproduction. India lacks china’s authoritarianism and remains familialism which is both beautiful on the one hand but slows her rate of adaptation. Long term india will do wonderfully.
Mixed Economy, Favoring Private Sector, Rule by Legislation
CHINA has never practiced any semblance of law in the western sense, and instead has practiced arbitrary rule: Rule by Command, and Rule by Regulation and this seems to be the preference of the chinese people. China was a very poor (still is) backward country having made the mistake to reject modernity, then to embrace communism in order to prevent the south from seceding, leaving beijing in the north to rule poverty, and the commercial south to separate and join modernity. Mao would not tolerate this. After the failure of communism China saw the failure of the Soviets, and then the american defeat of the Iraqis, and this combination created today’s Chinese strategy of restoring her traditional position as the central power in east asia – despite all her neighbors fearing that china will also return to violence. Unlike india, china has a long history of monopoly authoritarian rule, and even more so, has the power of the Red Army (which really governs china’s factions). The chinese have a long history of pragmatism and reason – and almost no sense of the value of human life, and nothing approaching indian or european ethics. Secondly the chinese people are rather industrious and hard-working. So between authoritarian hierarchy, a means of enforcing political will with the army, a literate and intelligent hard working workforce, an endless supply of cheap labor, and endless debt capacity, and willingness to have an economic crash, china has been able to maximize state investment, migration of people into the workforce, and expansion of the military, and then to clamp down in response to an end to the boom. There is no question that for china, this is the optimum method of ‘catching up from behind’.
Mixed Economy, Heavily Favoring State Sector, Rule by Command
The most capitalist countries are those with the most rule of law and the most private sector. (anglosphere)
The Most** mixed economies** are those with rule of legislation, a mix of private and state sector, (continental)
The most **command economies **are those with the least rule of law and the most state sector (china)
China has more successfully used debt capacity than any country in the world. This does not mean it is capitalist, since capitalism means bias to the private sector and minimizing the state sector.