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Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by andrepd on Sunday September 22, 2024 @05:42AM (#41615905)
Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? It seems that the best predictor of whether a country is prosperous in 2024 is whether it was prosperous in 1724.

It's also easy to forget that Russia was quasi-medieval almost up to the 20th century.

Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by roenxi on Sunday September 22, 2024 @06:07AM (#41616011)
> Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation?

All the currently prosperous nations. Everyone started poor. Conditions in 1724 were those of global mass poverty. We basically saw conditions from then to now where everyone that got wealthier had to move the needle towards laissez-faire capitalism. All the attempts at alternatives failed.

The only real question along the way has been how much a country's leadership wants to limit their own people's prosperity. This hasn't been a subtle process.

Names like the UK, France, Germany, Russia, US, China, Japan, Korea and many others spring to mind.

Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by RandomLensman on Sunday September 22, 2024 @05:46AM (#41615923)
Germany? Didn't even exist in 1724 and the area was heavily destroyed by the 30 year war the century before. But depends what you mean by "laissez-faire capitalism".
Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by xenospn on Sunday September 22, 2024 @06:25AM (#41616071)
Singapore? Korea? Israel? Norway?
Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by andrepd on Sunday September 22, 2024 @07:46AM (#41616388)
Singapore is not a liberal democracy. Israel has a very particular situation which I'm not gonna get into. Norway might be the best example on that list, but it's also the flagship example of a mixed economy; hardly laissez-faire turbo capitalism.
Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by xenospn on Sunday September 22, 2024 @07:56AM (#41616425)
Literally every country has a “very particular situation”.
Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by ziggyzecat on Sunday September 22, 2024 @06:14AM (#41616035)
Singapore
Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by hatenberg on Sunday September 22, 2024 @06:27AM (#41616076)
Singapore has a great coat of paint over its economic system so westerners think it’s pure capitalism but that’s a mirage.

- The majority of locals work directly (PSD, Government, Education) or indirectly (Temasek / GIC owned entities like CapitalLand, Surbana, Singapore Airlines, the three local banks, etc.

- 80% of the property market is directly under government control (HDB), with 20% heavily regulated but “free”

I could go on, but Singapore works precisely because it’s not free for all capitalism but a tightly controlled economy that makes sure the country benefits

Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by orwin on Sunday September 22, 2024 @09:43AM (#41617022)
Singapore is like the 5th most communist country in the world.
Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by mopsi on Sunday September 22, 2024 @06:36AM (#41616105)
> Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation?

Most of Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, average wages were ~30 USD per month, that is, less than dollar a day. Now they are rapidly catching up with Western Europe.

Laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a choice, but the only responsible option left when you have no meaningful national economy. People were told that the state budget is empty and there's no money to hand out, and that they have to find a way to survive on their own. And they did.

Re:Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union To... by inglor_cz on Sunday September 22, 2024 @10:18AM (#41617248)
The countries that were prosperous in 1724 were the ones that had highly developed trade networks and a market full of not-very-constrained individual players.

It is precisely by mimicking them that capitalism spread into other nations and pushed out various previous feudal forms, even though the local nobles fought back against the tide for decades and centuries, sometimes managing to stop it for a while.

If you take a historical map of Europe in the 18th century and mark various instances of liberalizing legislation on it, you can see the spread quite nicely. It is almost like an ink blotch spreading on a table.

The places that resisted the new ideas the most (the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire) and managed to keep their old feudal norms deep into the 19th century were the ones that ended up on the bottom, and had to speedrun industrialization and development in the 20th century under top-down reformers like Lenin and Ataturk.