"Free enterprise and democracy are not necessarily the same thing. And they do not necessarily coexist."

Stuart Schneiderman writes,

...In a functioning democratic nation people live by the rule of law and respect the verdict of the ballot box. They treat each other with respect, courtesy and decorum. They do so every day. It takes more than a purple finger to create a functioning democracy.

One does well here to distinguish between the freedom to cast ballots and the freedom to function in the marketplace. They might seem to be the same, but they are not.

As agents working and consuming in a free market, individuals make free decisions all the time. Thereby they allow capital to be allocated more efficiently and more effectively than any central planner has ever been able to do. But, that is the rub. Free enterprise is the ultimate rebuke to central planners, but free enterprise and democracy are not necessarily the same thing. And they do not necessarily coexist.

...One notes with Hannan that the happiest countries are democratic. Among them are Norway, Australia and Switzerland. They are also relatively homogeneous. They are not brimming with diversity, as the saying goes.

And yet, China is today’s rising global superpower. Surely, it has become a model of free enterprise, but it has not allowed people very many democratic freedoms and human rights. When developing nations look around the world do they want to become more like China or more like America?

I do not know how well Chinese people rate on a happiness scale, but they have certainly, over the past 35 years, gained more confidence and more swagger. You might believe that they are miserable for having been deprived of their right to vote. Yet, many of them recall the Maoist past where millions of people starved to death and the rest lived in extreme poverty. And yet, the rulers of China turned it around without allowing anyone to vote.

When it comes to debates over democracy, China is the problem. Of course, China does not have a democratic tradition that goes back two millennia. It has no real notion of human rights. And yet, it allows the free market to function in a relatively unfettered fashion and has moved fromf extreme poverty to ascending world power.

But, China is run by an elite. It is run by leaders of what is still called a Communist party. Before it was run by a group that Mao called capitalist roaders, it was also run by an elite, by Mao and his henchmen. Today’s elite has allowed the people to make relatively free decisions as actors in the marketplace. Mao never imagined such a thing. When Deng Xiaoping and his band took over China in 1976 the first thing they did was to privatize agriculture, to roll back the central planners’ communized agricultural policy. They did not hand out ballots. They freed people to function in the market.

...Moreover, when the Chinese look to America and the West, they do not just see the glory of democracy. They see the madness that democracy can unleash. Do they really want to spend their time debating transgender restrooms? Do they really want to spend their time trying to integrate women into the combat infantry? Do they really want their people to be rioting in the streets, shooting the police and burning down their neighborhoods in the name of free expression?

And that's just America. What do they see when they look to democratic Europe. Do the Chinese want, out of an excessive concern for equal rights and for democratic freedoms, allow their nation to be overrun by refugees who will molest women and to rob, pillage and murder? How is democracy working out in Europe these days?

When members of its own Muslim population decided to try their hand at terrorism, the Chinese authorities cracked down on them, even to the point of suppressing their ability to practice their religion. Those who were deemed responsible for terrorism were not represented by an army of law professors. They were not sent to prison while their cases awaited appeal. They were put on trial, convicted and taken out and shot. China does not have a very significant terrorism problem these days.

...If democratic rights contribute to prosperity and social harmony, other peoples in other parts of the world might find them worth emulating. If they seem to be leading great nations to doom, other peoples will not.

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