The crux of his -- and mine -- argument is that while countries under US influence do not always economically prospered, the communist model consistently failed.
The democracy-capitalist combination allows those 'other socio-cultural' factors to influence the countries to the tune that some succeeded and some failed.
I take it that we both agree that being under US influence/democracy-capitalist model does not guarantee success but other key socio-cultural/historical factors are necessary for success.
I took it further and argued that the socio-culture/historical factors are what really mattered. Case in point: PRC economically flourishing without the democracy-capitalist combination. You might say that that model won't be sustainable, and many doomsday anti-PRC economists have argued the same for years, but we have yet to see it. So we'll have to leave this open for now.
The communist model removed those 'other socio-cultural' factors, as they are aberrant to the centralized control method of societal planning, so that under comparison to the democracy-capitalist model, communist countries have no choice but to fail.
I disagree with this. The Soviet Union or PRC during the cultural revolution did not tried to remove these socio-cultural factors and left a cultural vacuum. Rather, they were trying to impose a new social-cultural ethos onto their population that they believe would result in human flourishing, not just economically, but flourishing on every faucet of society.
Now I disagree with some of the social ethos that they were trying to impose (and it failed) . But I agree with them that having the "correct" socio-cultural ethos is necessary for human flourishing, including economic flourishing. You also agree that having the "right" socio-cultural factors are necessary for economic success no?
You may argue that an Authoritarian system inhibit this socio-cultural factors, but we already showed some counter-examples such as the early days of SK under state-directed capitalism.
The problem I see with fiscal right wingers is their emphasises of the democracy-capitalist model over other more important factors for success. I've already argued that the US influenced/democracy-capitalist model is neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success. I argued in another thread that the reason why right-wingers argued for their free-market model is because they are already in an advantage position and promoting their model elsewhere would only increase their advantages and not necessarily be an advantage for other people. And if we consider other aspect of society into the debate, we might see that the US model is demerital if everyone adopts it.
You know the argument by statisticians, that the earth will not have enough resources to sustain us all if every country is as developed as the US.
Do not take China's economic success as the middle-of-the-road or compromise between the two ends. The reality is that the democracy-capitalist model is the compromise while Marxism-communism is the extreme. If history is instructive in any way, the state directed capitalist method do not last long. The method produced a string of fast initial successes, but over the long term, the method is unsustainable as England and a host of Continental powers learned the hard way. Now we see Russia and China repeating the same mistakes.
I've never believed that there have existed a truly extreme right wing system. I argued elsewhere that most fiscal right wingers have double standard. That is, they argue for Authoritarian rule where it is necessary for their interest, such as external and internal security, Justice system, etc. But when it comes to trade and business (areas that they have an advantage) they become anti-authoritarian.
