An "Intellectual" Email Discussion

These days, most of the time I do not talk about anything more profound than when to sleep train a baby, when to start a baby on solid food, and what to do if a baby is teething. But occasionally, I would have an email exchange or two on something more complex. For example, a while ago, the husband of a very good friend of mine, had an email discussion with me. He’s a well-known academic and also advises the governments of several developing countries including China, where he and I came from originally. The discussion was started by my reading an interview that he gave on India versus China. My stand was that perhaps economic growth ought to happen first before one pushes really hard for democracy, as forcing a political democracy on a destitute country without any experience with democracy might be premature. I figure - if people were starving to death, perhaps they would want to be fed first before fighting for individual freedom. Certain poor countries that went straight for a one-size-fits-all democracy (such as India) did not turn out better than countries that emphasized growth first and gradually transitioned to democracy after they became economically prosperous(such as South Korea and Taiwan).

He wrote:
“I definitely agree with the view that growth will lead to democracy. In that exchange I was reacting to the view that democracy is necessarily anti-growth, a view I disagree with. But—this is the nuance part of the argument—it is not necessarily true that democracy is automatically pro-growth either, just as the case that one-party system is not automatically pro-growth. If I have a Mckinsey one sentence, then it is, “It depends.”

On your point on starvation and individual freedom, the evidence does not support your view. There have been far more people starved to death in authoritarian countries than in democratic countries (think of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China and as many 1/3 of the population of Cambodia was eliminated. I would have thought freedom meant a lot to those Cambodians). Many people have the view you gave, which is “why should I care about freedom if I starve?” but this view is actually a result of a huge selection bias, which is that people only look at successful authoritarian countries without realizing that there are other authoritarian countries that have produced utter economic and human disasters.

Even the experience of China itself does not support the view that authoritarianism supports growth. China today is still authoritarian but far less authoritarian than Maoist period when Chinese economy performed badly (against its peers and its own potentials). As a scientist, you understand this argument well—the dynamics argument, which emphasizes the direction and the rate of change, would support the view that freedom and growth are positively correlated (with the important caveat that all else is equal).”

Very rarely do I get a chance to have such intellectual exchanges with such an intellectual professor, so I wrote back with quite some vigor:

“I now understand (perhaps just a little better) that when people seem to disagree, it's often because their starting points are different - sometimes we think we are talking about the same topic, but we might actually not.

if our discussion is simply around "is democracy better or authoritarian dictatorship?" as if we were talking about a brand new country about to be set up , there is no question that everything else being equal, of course democracy is the way to go.

if our discussion is simply around "is authoritarianism good for economic growth?", there is again no question that everything else being equal, of course it's a bad idea.

if our discussion is simply around "in general are growth and freedom positively correlated?", there is again no question that everything else being equal, yes of course it is.

my stand is that the current china is "better" than maoist china, MORE due to economic policy change (controlled economy transitioning to more of a capitalist market-based economy) than political policy change. you might argue that a capitalist economy comes with more "political" freedom anyways, and that one always comes with the other.

likewise, the current russia is better than the old soviet union for sure, but is in my opinion WORSE than what it COULD HAVE BEEN - i am not saying that they should have kept stalinist government. I am simply saying that if there could be an equivalent of a savvy leader like deng xiaoping (who's ruthless but nonetheless extremely shrewd) in russia pursuing economic reforms ahead of the political reforms and this democracy "with russian flavors" (i think russian flavors essentially mean drunken corruption and reckless behaviors - that's my very biased opinions of the russians in general from movies and novels!), perhaps the russians would be slightly better off RIGHT NOW.

therefore, my view is more around what could be the "optimal" way for a sick and poor country with long history of authoritarian dictatorship, no experience of true democracy, diverse fractions and regions and still large percentage of poor population to transition into a free and prosperous society. are we better off with political reforms/revolution first, or economic reforms/gradual evolution?

granted, if i were 20 years old, i would advocate for absoluteness - a "free" government, an "ideal" society, a "just" system. but i am 38 years old now, and it is more important to me (as well as all the living population) that whatever transition will be the least chaotic and painful and as comfortable as it could be - we only have a few decades to live after all.

Indeed my view might be similar to many "ignorant" chinese people, likely because we think from the perspectives of the following practical questions:

- what do we want most today, given that there is a long list of things we want? if there has to be a trade-off, what would we choose?
- would we want to have gone the way russians did?
- sure we would want more freedom and a less corrupt government, but are we willing to sacrifice peace and prosperity in our lifetime to fight for that?

we think much less if at all from the perspective of correlation and cause/effect, because that's too theoretical and academic to be applied to our daily lives. on the other hand, you are a notable academic and you have to do that at your level (or else you will be as dumb as the rest of us!). Therefore, it is no wonder that when our starting basis is different (i.e. a different context in which we start our discussions/debates), you will be misunderstood/misinterpreted, and you will also find the rest of us hopelessly ill-informed and uneducated. The rest of us silly people (in chinese would be "yu min") might find you "too elite and out-of-touch" - you probably recognize this accusation as frequently the American people's accusation of the Democratic party or any politician that talks in complete sentences.

To be a bit facetious (I do acknowledge that I am a bit facetious here), it's very likely that given the current population of china, if there were an american style election, they would elect a government much dumber and more extreme than george w. bush, who in turn would never assemble sophisticated and leading advisors/consultants like you to help with policy, as they would assemble a group of "joe-the-six-packs" whom they can understand easily.

By the way, I just found a quote from Confucius that explains the difference between us, and why we can never convince each other:

"The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort." - hence our different opinions, because we think of different things first and foremost! We the common people do think of comfort most of the time as the premise..."

Maybe I am a stereotype of what Winston Churchill referred to - "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."