thanks for your comments on the violation of the bill of rights. i especially agree with your description of the rape of the first amendment. i will respond to your question:
i am not sure what you mean by this [that free democracy and industrialization go hand in hand]
a point of clarification that may have gotten lost in the shuffle: i define free democracy to be a democracy where the citizens have basic freedoms, but more importantly are not supporting a large government. that is, they keep most of the fruits of their labor. i define a socialist democracy to be a government where you elect the officials, but the government intervenes significantly in your life.
a person will only invest in a business if he can reap the benefits of his risk. he reaps these benefits when two things occur: the government does not take them and barbarians or other invader does not take them. this only happens when there is a free democracy and a strong militia (or in the case of europe, a strong uncle to provide protection.)
i hope that clarifies what i mean. if not, let me go further. democracy in western civilization preceeded the industrial revolution. england was moving to a democracy with the signing of the magna carter in the 1200s i think. it had a strong militia (and had easily defendable borders). it benefited highly from the industrial revolution, and those who invested benefited extremely well. i can make the same comments about the united states -- except replace the magna carta part with the dec of indep.
the industrial revolution bypassed germany initially. germany was a very loose collection of between 370 and 38 monarchies (depending on the year) under an emperor. militia was handled by each king, and typically on a more granular entity than that. overall, the empire's militia was non-existent as each king was more interested in protecting his own fiefdoms. as a result, germany could rarely muster the troops to fight an invading force. as an example, from 1618 until 1648 the thirty years ravaged germany. the habsburgs, french, swedes, austrians and turkmen all waged war against each other on german soil. from 1648 to about 1800 the average GDP per person in germany was about one-third that of england. they were an economic backwater.
in the early 1800s prussia became a power in germany and unified the northern democratic monarchies. they did this with a strong militia. this was followed by capital investment which turned germany into an economic powerhouse. of course, in 1870 the rest of germany was included in the new state under a democracy.
finally, i would like to point out that in socialistic and communistic societies, the industrial revolution had little impact and the average person lived (lives) like a peasant.
in summary, the industrial revolution is (was) necessary to improve the human condition. it only occurs in an environment that allows those who invest to reap (keep) their rewards. this only happens in a free democracy with a strong militia.
side bar: germany went very quickly from free democracy to social democracy from the death of bismarck to the rise of hitler. many people lost their fortunes during this period, and in fact after WW2 many millions of people faced starvation. (again a strong uncle came to the rescue)
i will let you have the final thought
This notion that democracy is necessary for industrialisation is a myth; the exact opposite of the truth. I defy you to find a single example of a country which passed through the industrial revolution as a democracy. Britian did not. France did not. Germany did not. The US did not. Japan did not.
The same thing is true today. The countres which have modernized have done so as authoritarian dictatorships which respect the rule of law and economic freedom. Many have switched to democracy afterwards but, when democracy comes first, modernization does not happen. Hong Kong. Chile. Taiwan. South Korea.
It's obvious enough why this should be. Democracy is a form of socialism and socialism cannot survive unless the society in question is already rich enough to support the inevitable parasite.
a point of clarification that may have gotten lost in the shuffle: i define free democracy to be a democracy where the citizens have basic freedoms, but more importantly are not supporting a large government. that is, they keep most of the fruits of their labor. i define a socialist democracy to be a government where you elect the officials, but the government intervenes significantly in your life.Others on this thread have called what you refer to as "free democracy" a Republic and what you call a "socialist democracy" a Democracy. I think the latter form of government is in rather low regard here. The primary argument against the former is that it inevitably becomes the latter.
i hope that clarifies what i mean. if not, let me go further. democracy in western civilization preceeded the industrial revolution. england was moving to a democracy with the signing of the magna carter in the 1200s i think. it had a strong militia (and had easily defendable borders). it benefited highly from the industrial revolution, and those who invested benefited extremely well. i can make the same comments about the united states -- except replace the magna carta part with the dec of indep.
If we replace "free democracy" with Republic I agree, except in one regard. Were these countries economically free because of or in spite of their form of government?
the industrial revolution bypassed germany initially.
German government was fairly despotic. Bismarck's unification only stabilized the problem of foreign invasion and in that respect only did the German economy benefit. (Side note, some regions were already pretty stable and didn't benefit from Prussian military power. Bavaria in particular.)
Although we are using different terms, I think we're saying the same thing -- that economies only prosper in an environment where property is secure, respected and protected. The question then becomes, how best do we achieve this? I think we can agree that fascism and/or social democracy is marginally better than communism and that a republic ("true democracy") is better than a social democracy.
But how does monarchy measure up? From an economic standpoint, monarchy is almost never communistic and tends to have low taxes and a small bureaucracy. From a civil rights perspective, monarchies can be awful but a careful examination of history shows that for all the horrors inflicted by monarchs, most of this pales by comparison to say, the French Revolution.
Clearly there are good monarchies (I'll call them "polite monarchies") and bad monarchies ("absolute monarchies"). Britain up until the 19th century was a polite monarchy that became a republic in the early 19th century and then became a social democracy in the 20th century. Note that Britain's economic dominance ends pretty much in sync with its rejection of limited government.
In fact the emergence of industrialization amongst the English is clearly to due their rejection of absolute monarchy. Again, limited government is a product of culture rather than governmental stucture, per se.
Hoppe goes even further in his analysis and asks: What would be even more secure than monarchy?
His answer is to identify a natural social order stemming from the concepts of property and the market itself. Those governments that interfere with the market the least have the most prosperous and peaceful societies. So what if our legal system didn't intefere with the natural order at all? What if the idea of a monopoly legal system was rejected outright?
Anyway, food for thought . . .