July 03, 2005

Freedom vs. Democracy

Dean's heart is in the right place, but he's a little off about the importance of democracy to fighting African poverty. He writes,

After decade upon decade, and hundreds of billions in aide money, you'd think someone would have noticed by now that throwing more money at unelected tyrants in Africa is not very helpful. Unless the governments there are accountable--not just to us, but to their own people--giving those governments money isn't just a waste, it's downright criminal.

Take me as a literalist, but I don't care so much about democracy as I do about limited government. Ancient Athens had a democracy, but it didn't survive. The greatest democracy of our age, the United States, has a track record of not being the most democratic, yet it is an economic powerhouse. Hong Kong wasn't a democracy under British rule, yet she still was considered one of the most free economies on earth. If I had a choice between democracy and freedom I'd choose the latter. I see the former only as a means (one of many) of achieving freedom. A democracy doesn't assure freedom. Such a form of government must be restricted or it will turn into populist authoritarianism.

So if Zimbabwe replaced the authoritarian Mugabe with a benevolent dictatorship that protected property and economic rights and would be transparent enough to see that aid was effective I would send them aid. As Milton Friedman put it so well in Capitalism and Freedom you can't have political freedom without economic freedom.

"No Democracy? No Money."