How Free Trade Can Combat Authoritarianism

Posted by omnipotentsandwich

1 Comment

  1. >The data backs this idea

    The study does not correct for the fact that high trade high border-y countries were extremely skewed toward Western European democracies in the postwar era.
    Also excluding the first half of the 20th century feels weird.

    >Second, military expansion can also provide concentrated income gains to these groups by enlarging a protected domestic market

    Is there a significant postcolonial example of this? The Chaco War? But the Chaco was an unpopulated savannah.

    >authoritarian groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda can’t really gain members

    Interesting given that Bin Laden was a Saudi.

    >In other words, an economically independent people who don’t need to depend on the government for their needs

    Large corporations are large bureaucracies by necessity and can act as tool of the state power. The more a country is rich, the less of autonomous workers it has and the higher the percentage of large corp workers.
    I don’t think that one can clearly say that a market economy is a less controllable space than a less capitalistic place.

    Moreover, free-ish market authoritarianisms like Russia are clearly far more resilient to economic shocks than orthodox marxist countries and can leverage economic growth to stabilize consensus.

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