throwawayepgpp

Don't forget the ludicrous gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement ("anti-fraud") laws.

Off-topic, but the title (Bézier moi) sounds like "Baisez-moi", which in French pretty much means "Fuck me". Seeing how most people involved in the article are French I assume the title was chosen on purpose, in case any reader was wondering about it.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have a notable underclass that's pretty much for all intents and purpose slave labor. Russia's living conditions improved but you're still in for a big surprise once you step outside of Moscow or St-Petersburg. The average (or more accurately, median) Russian or Chinese is not an affluent middle-class urban dweller posting loftily about the downfall of the West, they're a rural worker living under what would be considered miserable conditions in any Western country.

It's almost as if authoritarian rule was inefficient and wasteful in resources due to having to spend most of its energy staying in power and favoring corruption and political favoritism at the expense of good policies. Sure you may offset that with incredible amounts of natural resources (oil and large territory) but inequality does not go away. Also, sooner or later natural resources run out.

China is doing well, really? Are you ignoring the literal billion of people living below the most abject standards for poverty in the West, or do you just think people outside cities don't exist?