Comment by petrocrat
5 years ago
Quite a straw man you put forward here.
First of all, You seem to be confused because you are mistaking what happens in Russia, Venezuela and China for actual elections. Whatever happens in those places is certainly not what I meant by the term "elections."
Second, You point to "three" (or are those 3 things really the same thing?) successes in competition, each of which were aided by investment authorized by elected legislators. Then you point to one failure of elections and proceed to conclude that competition is the better of the two. It doesn't follow, I'm afraid.
As for Trump, yes, that was the elections mechanism failing. I never said it was perfect. But the Market competition mechanism fails more often, in my estimation. Neither is perfect, but competition seems to create much higher probability for imperfection, abuse, flaws, and suffering.
Russia, Venezuela and USA all had actual democratic elections at some point. But they elected dictators which took power and never let go. The results were horrifying: imprisoned people, children in concentration camps and death, countless deaths. Destroying a country's economy leads to famine and, yes, death.
The effects of free market "failures" are comparatively laughable and always corrected by the free market itself sooner or later.
There is no contest which one is graver. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality and evidence all around us.