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super.bueno: In order to oppose inheritance you have to oppose donations, and in order to oppose donations, you have to oppose trade. This is basically the same as communism. You keep focusing on the right of the individuals who inherited the money to get it, and while I would absolutely defend their right to claim what was rightfully given to them, and oppose your trying to get in the way (the same way that I defend the right of the charity recipient to receive charity that was legitimately given to them); what about the right of those who accumulated the fortunes to give them to whomever they wish, and name who their heirs will be? Furthermore, building a large fortune in order to have your heirs live a better life is one of the main drivers of capital accumulation, as the planning for it extends past one's lifetime. By banning inheritance and just stealing everything from someone who died, what you will accomplish is that there will be a tendency for wealthy folks to start consuming all their fortunes as they reach old age. With this, the overall capital accumulation in the economy will be much reduced, and so will the productivity and standards of living. Furthermore, the drive to become very wealthy in the first place will also be greatly reduced, so the number of people who will accumulate such massive fortunes to begin with will be diminished. With these realizations, it is easy to see how the inheritance tax is the worst and most destructive of all taxes that the State engages in. What you're proposing here is basically a 100% inheritance tax. Also, why does it matter to you what the difference between the rich and the poor is? There is only one thing that can drive such a sentiment: envy. Would you prefer a situation where the difference in wealth between the very rich and the very poor is 10 million to 1, and everybody's standard of living is at a minimum of 5, with a mean of 8, or a situation where the difference is 20 to 1, but everybody's standard of living is at a minimum of 2, with a mean of 5?

I watched the whole clip. His whole argument can be accurately reduced to: "3.7 trillion of additional money printing didn't cause inflation..." (which is false, but he thinks it's true because inflation measures that govt agencies publish such as the CPI have not gone too much) "...so why not do another 200 billion in order to drastically increase foreign aid?" Of course, besides the monetary problems, he's assuming that doing more foreign aid is a good thing, and that everybody agrees with him. His program suggests making the central bank match any foreign aid spending of the federal govt by 100%. So if the State spends 200 billion in foreign aid, the central bank must match that with a further 200 billion which it just prints and spends. You know, to "encourage the government to give"... No perverse incentives there.

Josh, please post this in the other thread so I can reply there (the one I linked to in this thread already), as this is really off-topic here, plus I already made a post addressing this in the other thread, but I'll be happy to expand on it.

I already explained to you and others in the other thread, why I'm concerned with Bitcoin, it actually baffles me that you can't understand my motivations or that you wouldn't share them if you shared my views on the future inevitable collapse of Bitcoin. In any case, this thread isn't about that, it's just about figuring out how a particular form of money is affected by being made illegal by the State.For the purposes of this thread, it makes no difference if the item we're talking about is Bitcoin, gold, or something else. Gold hasn't gone up in value since it has been made illegal to use it for transfers, in fact it has gone down in real value. You can claim that this is because it's easier to control gold than something like bitcoin, but then you're really just talking about a matter of degree. To expect that bitcoin will be affected in the opposite way that gold was affected by the same State intrusions is not reasonable, and you will see that in this I'm in total agreement with weenie, who is a supporter of bitcoin. This thread is about enhancing the understanding of monetary theory.

James, I don't think he is claiming that growth happens at a constant rate. I think he's saying that it happens on occasions. I don't really understand his theory much. I think it has something to do with molten lava coming out of the planet's core and forming new surface area rather than simply compressing the surface area that already exists. "You are asked to believe that the continents swim or drift about willy-nilly, bumping and crashing as if they were on a greased skillet." I noticed this, and to be honest I had a similar impression when I was taught in school about how continents move. I passed the exams, but it never made sense to me.

That's pretty impressive.

In this presentation, Neal Adams argues that the upper tectonic plates fit together perfectly in the Pacific Ocean as well as in the Atlantic Ocean, and he argues that geologists know this but are silent about it because of the repercussions that this realization would bring. He argues that because of this, the Earth must be growing. He also argues that continents do not move or rotate as geologists think, but that they stay in their place above their plates, they are just moving away from each other because the planet is growing. I first watched this 3 years ago, and I still find it interesting, but I haven't done any research on the topic to be able to form a strong opinion either way. I have basically zero knowledge in the area of geology and I haven't done any research into this guy's claim. Also, I am not quite sure of what this would imply if it was true. I'd like to know your thoughts. Here's the link:

Pipeline is absolutely right. Appealing to consensus does nothing, even if the consensus happens to be right. That's not to say that you should not appeal to consensus when making up your own mind or making important decisions in your life. If you have no idea about a topic, it's perfectly sensible to appeal to the consensus until you can reasonably question it. But that should be strictly personal, it's not something that you should bring up during an argument, especially with someone who is quite aware that they are questioning the consensus in the first place.

I use open office. I like it better than regular office and it's fully compatible.

So before, you didn't say that he shouldn't talk about it, but that's exactly what you're saying now? I see.

ccuthbert,I'm sorry that all your posts are getting negative ratings by default now, and are thus hidden from view. I find them interesting and thought provoking.Why are random point mutations always lost in the gene pool? It is conceivable that a mutation would arise where the "gene" is still viable, and is passed on from one generation to the next. If this mutation happened to be beneficial, it would have a greater chance to be passed on further, and spread out through the gene pool. Is this incorrect?And, why is it that point mutations can't create complex system changes, by the addition of "incremental steps", where each mutation only makes the organism a little bit more fit (on average) than the rest of the competing genes; and then it takes many more small mutations like this in order to add up to a complex system change? Couldn't one species slowly change over time, through the abovementioned small steps? About the grains, I read what you posted. It isn't clear to me what you are trying to say. Where do you think that these came from?Also, does the fact that it is a mystery how a wild plant could turn into a domesticated one, invalidate the idea that it happened in this way? In other words, do we need to always be able to tell what the wild ancestor was and how it was changed into it's more modern form, in order to theorize that a plant that didn't seem to exist until it was domesticated, was probably domesticated from a wild ancestor? Is hybridization necessary here? Couldn't incremental changes over a long period of time have achieved the same thing? Is there proof that the domestic plant species were hybridized from two or more separate wild ancestors? But there is a difference between what can be achieved in a lifetime, and what can be achieved through many generations of artificial selection. Also, did Gregor Mendel intend to create plants that produced something other than peas? If he was just selecting for height and colors, that would probably not be a strong enough selective pressure for the plant to start producing something other than peas. People eat things like quinoa today. Those are pretty small too. And through soaking and/or cooking, maybe humans managed to deal with the chemistry part. They could have incrementally bred the bigger, softer, more nutritious varieties; over many generations. I think selective breeding would be enough, no need for selective crossbreeding. However you do have a point in that selectively breeding from seeds that are very small could be a challenge. I'm not sure why this is an issue. I was under the impression that alterations to the chromosomal structure of organisms within a species are a relatively common sort of mutation. I'm not sure they would say this. I certainly don't agree that this must always be the case. Well again, in the fruit fly experiment, the groups weren't small, yet they were able to speciate from the other group through genetic isolation. And in the case of anagenesis, a whole species can change simultaneously (over time) through the spread over the gene pool of a series of mutations.

I'm not following this. Why would the mining pools dry up? Money laundering in this sense is a consumer service. How does this relate to the example of BTC being made illegal? But you're confusing the producer with the product. When prohibition kicked in, whiskey company stocks collapsed, but the price of whiskey did not collapse. In fact the price of whiskey went through the roof! Ok, so you're saying that the price will collapse to near zero and then slowly come back up? But how does that justify that at the end of this adjustment, the Bitcoins will be worth more because of the ban? This doesn't necessarily create scarcity. It will create a larger spread between the buy and sell price for BTC (whether expressed in other forms of money or in goods or services), but the same amount of BTC will be available. But holding, mining and trading all have very different effects on the market value of bitcoin. Holding and mining clearly have the opposite effect in their relationship to price. The less mining there is, the more the value goes up, but the less holding there is, the more the value goes down. But with heroin, all the heroin that is produced, distributed and sold is consumed. The heroin users aren't just acquiring the heroin so they can trade it for other things. Also, if the State cracks down on a heroin dealer, they will work their way up the production line until they find the producers, and shut them down. They're unlikely to be shutting down bitcoin miners. And even if they did, over half of the bitcoins that will ever be created, have already been created, so the most they could do is reduce the total supply by the few percentage points that it grows every year.However, there could be another way to reduce the supply, and that's by expropriating Bitcoins and destroying them. But I don't know if they would do that. They might find they have a lot more to gain by dumping them on the market to make the value go down.

If you're referring to me, I already explained in this thread and elsewhere, the reasons why I have these pressing concerns and why I feel it's very important to share them with others in this community.In any case, I can't believe you're honestly accusing someone of defending the Status quo and attacking freedom by using Mises's theories.Regarding your comment about the voluntary nature of BTC: just because something is voluntary doesn't mean it's good. People engage in all sorts of things voluntarily that can be detrimental for them. Voluntarily chosen abusive relationships, pyramid schemes, BDSM, prostitution, self-cutting and mutilation, etc. In most of these cases, however, the people who engage in these acts are not trying to convince everybody else to also join in and participate and telling them that it's the best thing since sliced bread. And more importantly, the participation and support for these things is not tied to a community which I hold dear and fundamental to the future of civilization. So for me, talking about BTC, especially with other libertarians/anarcho-capitalists/voluntaryists is more important than all these other things I mentioned. And it is particularly important in FDR because FDR is the only large community of this type that I'm aware of, that also addresses psychology and parenting, which are essential; and it has generally very good views on these matters.And if you were talking about me in that last sentence I quoted, why would you say that I'm ignoring everyone's arguments, while I'm actually addressing every one and have always done this in the discussions you've seen me participate in about this topic? No. Massive monetary inflation usually goes hand-in-hand with using a form of money which has no intrinsic value, because it's the sole purpose to force people to use this as a money. And it does accelerate the process. But ultimately it doesn't matter because once the money collapses, it doesn't matter how many zeros it has written on it, it will still be worthless. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of austrian monetary theory that many people have. Even if the US Dollar money supply stays frozen for several generations, it will still become worthless eventually. Of course, if the money supply increases at an accelerating rate as it has been doing, it will become worthless much sooner than if the supply staid frozen. How do you make this determination? If everybody realized that in the long term it will be worth nothing, then why wouldn't that affect the current value in the same way that the futures market affects the spot price for a commodity or a stock? I'm not sure what you mean. Of course I'm not supporting US dollars or saying that they are a sound form of money.

No. Conch Shells were (and still are) used as ornaments. When they were used as money, there were still people using them as ornaments. Saying something trades "for more than it's intrinsic value" when at the same time many people are paying the going rate in order to consume the item is a wrong statement. It's like people who say that "gold is valued at more than it's intrinsic value". No. Many people still pay the average market price of gold in order to consume it. This means that at the going average market price, there is still significant consumption demand. US Dollars are a special example because they were redeemable in gold up until 1971, and since then they have lost over 97% of their value. The main reason they are still valuable is because everybody in the US is forced to use them, and many people around the world are also forced to use it to settle international trade. Furthermore, many governments around the world tax their citizens in order to buy US Dollars, thus propping up it's value. Other fiat currencies are under a similar predicament, except it's usually only people inside the individual country or union (such as the EU) who are forced to use them. Like I said, it's complex and many people misunderstand. I'll try and get you a quote later. But you do realize that once BTC holders at large realize this, it becomes a race to the bottom? It's about who can get rid of theirs before everyone else wises up; and who gets stuck holding the bag.

Weenie, your argument was great, but the claim that the evidence presented disproves Stef's theory is only a suggestion at best. Economic theory can't be used to predict short-term fluctuations in price with accuracy, and likewise, short-term fluctuations in price can't accurately prove or disprove the validness of an economic theory. Especially with something that fluctuates as wildly as Bitcoin.

Check this other thread going on right now in this same forum: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38337-bitcoin-intrinsic-value-and-mises-regression-theorem/

I agree, weenie. Under prohibition of drugs, governments go after producers, and only target consumers by association. The policy is mainly damaging the supply side, but keeping demand somewhat constant. As such, the price goes up. If governments ban Bitcoins, they are very unlikely to go after miners. Instead they will go after the exchange platforms, and businesses who accept them. Thus they will be mainly damaging the demand side, while keeping supply somewhat constant. Another thing that would happen due to the targeting of the exchanges, is that the spread would grow larger. Nevertheless, I don't think this makes a big difference, because I think Bitcoins will lose all their value regardless of whether governments ban them or not.

No, this is where a lot of people get the Regression Theorem wrong. If that original reason is no longer present, then sooner or later people will realize that what they're using as money is not a good store of value, and will begin getting rid of it at a faster pace, which is a reduction in the monetary demand (also expressed as an increase in money velocity), and the value of the money drops, which feeds back into the mentality that the money is not a good store of value (which it isn't), the demand for it goes down again, which drives the value even lower, and so on and so forth until there is no value left. Or until the value is so low that a demand arises again for the original purpose (in this case, this supposed demand to collect them, which I don't really think is real, but I grant it that there is a possibility that it could have existed at one point) Another way to express this is that money enters the market through production (in the case of gold, mining), and it exits the market when it is demanded by individuals who will consume it, or use it in the production of other consumer items [in the case of gold, the exits would be the demand coming from all the non-monetary uses of gold (it's not necessary that the money is destroyed when it exits the market, only that it is demanded largely because of a non-monetary value which it provides.)]. A sound money is used as a medium of exchange only in the middle of a chain of exchanges which flow from the production, to the consumption. Because a good money is also durable, it can be stored, so that it can be consumed at a much later point in the future. While it is stored, it can be used for monetary purposes, serving to settle transactions as well as being used to accumulate savings and make loans. This is what is meant by austrians when we say that a sound money needs to be a good store of value. If at any point the money finds no exit, then there is a perfectly reasonable expectation that the value will drop until it reaches the point at which it will find an exit. If no value would be low enough for an exit to emerge in the market, then the reasonable expectation is that all the value will disappear. If there is no consumption demand (and especially if there can never be any in the future), then the chain of exchanges no longer flows from production to consumption, it simply goes around in circles until, a few people at a time, everybody eventually realizes that all the value left is empty speculation, because it will never be realized. Bitcoins are very durable, so they can be stored, but they're not a good store of value because, since they will never be demanded for consumption or production purposes, you can't store them in order for that consumption/production value (also called intrinsic value) to be realized in the future. It will never be realized, because it was never there in the first place. The only reason why Bitcoins have value is because of empty speculation. They have value right now, but there is no guarantee that they will have any in the future. There's not even a reasonable expectation they will have value in the future. In fact, the reasonable expectation is that at some point in the not too distant future, they will be worthless. This realization has implications that people in FDR should be very concerned with. Not only will a lot of good people lose a lot of wealth when this happens, but most libertarians (especially of the anarcho-capitalist brand) will lose a lot of credibility in the eyes of the public when Bitcoins go bust. In particular, Stef has been one of the most ardent proponents of BTC. It really worries me to think of what will happen to the world of economic and political ideas when Bitcoins die.

The main method by which the State drives more people into mega urban cities than would otherwise be there is by taxing everyone in the country, and then spending a lot more in the cities. Then in the natural process of people seeking profits and larger incomes, they move into the cities more, chasing all that tax money, often without even noticing it (because there's more money circulating in cities thanks to the State) The State in turn benefits because when people are concentrated in a metropolitan area, it's easier to keep tabs on them, keep them under control, and tax them. I think without the State, cities would definitely still exist, but there would be a lot more people spread out in different towns, etc.

No, The Regression Theorem shows how only something that had non-monetary value can become a money. But this is a circular argument. You can only buy and sell things with BTC if it first has value. It doesn't answer the fundamental question of why they have value in the first place. Saying "it has value because you can exchange it for other things of value" is circular. It's like saying "pizzas have value because people pay for pizzas". Yes, of course, but why do they pay for pizzas? Because they derive value from eating the pizzas, or because they sell them to customers who do. Why would someone pay for a Bitcoin in the first place? Because they think it will go up. I really don't think that's the case. Bitcoins are fundamentally nothing but numbers on a computer screen. You can't even play a game with them, the way you can with World of Warcraft Gold Coins or Second Life's Linden Dollars.And even if this was how they first became of value, it's no longer of any substance. How much are these collectors willing to pay to collect bitcoins, if you combine all the collectors in the world? I hardly doubt that would justify a price of even one penny per BTC.

Hey dragonfish. I missed this when you posted it. I'm the one who called in that show about bitcoins. I'm not sure why Stef didn't mention Mises' regression theorem, but this theorem is quite complex to understand, even if you think you get it, I think often you don't. I prefer Rothbard's explanation because it's simpler. And even to that of Rothbard, I prefer my own explanation, because I think my understanding of austrian monetary theory is slightly different (and in some ways slightly more advanced). This is why I didn't use the term "commodity" at all, even though you are quite right in that Mises (and Rothbard, too, btw) said that a money can *only* arise if it has first been a commodity. In the show I tried to mention some ideas that I had at the time about how services could be used to provide intrinsic value to cryptocurrencies , but there was no opportunity for that. In either case, since then I have come to the realization that services probably can't be used as a form of money because you can't store them. The idea was that the processing power and/or internet bandwidth necessary to run the cryptocurrency transfer service could also be used to provide services which the coins are redeemable in (and I had some ideas about particular services that could be provided with these mining resources). While this would be a lot better than bitcoin (where these resources are wasted and there is no redeemability at all), the problem remains that this system wouldn't allow for fluctuations in the supply of and demand for this service, whatever the service may be. If at one point there is a lot of production of the service, the only way to increase demand is for the price of the coin (and therefore, the service) to go down. If the demand for the service goes up, so will the price of the coins, and that will bring forth more production which will again drive down prices. So far so good. But the problem becomes that with money, you need the ability to store value. While it's true that the service could be just as valuable in the future, you can't actually "store" value in a digital coin in this way. Because whatever services are produced right now, must be consumed right now, in this very moment. So what you need is not only for the service in question to be wanted by others in the future, but also to continually be produced in the future, at a similar rate (always higher to that of the consumption demand, i.e. the redemption). If too many people want to redeem too many coins at the same time, the service collapses. An increase in price can alter consumers into redeeming less coins, and producers into producing more of the service, but this adjustment takes some time. It isn't instantaneous. This would create wild fluctuations in the value of the coins, regardless of speculation (which is what drives bitcoins' fluctuations) and it would mean that the service could not be reliable. Sometimes it'd work fine, sometimes (during times of high demand), it wouldn't. Maybe I'm wrong about this though, I don't know. I haven't had enough time to process it, this realization only came to me about two weeks ago, while discussing the issue with a couple of friends. Until then I was a supporter of the idea of service-backed cryptocurrencies, even though I saw lots of difficulties with implementation and had never been able to come up with a plan that would work on my own; only ideas that needed more work. I have to run right now, but I will have more to say on this topic tomorrow, and I'll also respond to your post, ribuck.

5. The evidence can be found and is pointed out (as it already has been to some degree), but people like you disagree in that it shows that the attacks happened. Then we go on for another 300 posts without getting anywhere.

You should go back and reread the post he was responding to. I don't believe that personal attacks are something that distresses you a lot. I think when the attack is made towards someone you disagree with, you don't even register it as an attack. Seriously, I can see how you can miss it the first time you read the post he was responding to, but to miss it even after he made the comment, and to go from there to suggesting that he was the one making the attack, is something I can't explain in any other way. But then again, I've already seen how you interact in the bitcoin threads and chat. So it doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that you continue to push the issue and pretend like this is very important to you. If it was up to me, I'd just stick to the topic at hand (Darwinism), which is why I ignored your other post. But I felt I had to respond now, even if I prefer that we drop this issue because I don't think any progress will be made in this regard. This is the science subforum. There used to be a religion subforum, but it's gone now. Either way, your complaint is quite meaningless because with that logic, you shouldn't talk about anything here. Since whatever topic that is discussed in the FDR forums is also discussed in other more specific forums for the particular topic. First off, it's not either/or. You can talk about something in many forums at the same time. Second, it's a matter of community. ccuthbert probably feels like it's more important to him to generate good and interesting discussion here than in some other forum that exclusively deals with biology. Third, as he explained, most biology forums would crucify him for saying these things, and the personal attacks he'd receive would be much more numerous and nasty. ----------------------------------------------------- ccuthbert, could you expand on your objections to the idea that incremental steps caused by mutations + natural selection, over a long period of time, could have caused speciation?And, are you saying that anagenesis doesn't happen because of the regression to the mean and/or diluting and eventual elimination of the mutations over the general population?Are you also saying that cladogenesis does happen, and that it is the only process that generates speciation, but that it requires significant genetic isolation to take place?In either case, how do the incremental steps play or not play a role here? It seems to me that however you look at it, incremental steps would be necessary for speciation.Also, what did you mean when you said we should think about the development of grains as a food source for humans?

Hey ccuthbert. I'm sorry for all the attacks you've suffered in this thread. Unfortunately it is too often the case that when people disagree, they will attack, even in a place like FDR. Being someone who is always questioning the status quo of things, I often find myself in this situation. I don't like to say it, but you do get used to it. I agree with you that many sciences have been corrupted by the State to the point where they get many or even most things wrong, to varying degrees. From my own research I can include here the sciences of economics, psychology, parenting/education, archeology, medicine and climatology; and I have questions about many others, such as physics (think: quantum mechanics). I often doubt the validity of fossil records. It often seems to me like they might just be sculpting a stone into looking like a fossil, or finding a rock with particular attributes that make it look like what they're trying to find. Likewise I question the reliability of radiocarbon dating. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the decay will be exactly the same over 100 million years as it can be observed in a few years in a lab. And where did they come with this "margin of error" for it? Either way, I don't think any of that is necessary to recognize the implications of the Theory Of Evolution By Natural Selection. Even if the Earth is very young, and even if none of the fossils we've found are real; once you agree that mutations happen, that they can sometimes be passed on from one generation to the next, and that certain mutations will be more or less fit to the environment, you have evolution. Species, in sexually reproducing organisms, are classified mainly by the ability of a male to produce fertile offspring with a female. So a horse and a donkey are a different species because they will only be able to produce non-fertile offspring, a mule (or a hinny). Mules or hinnys can't produce offspring with any other animals, even with other mules or hinnys. The reason we say all mules are the same species as other mules is because they all have this similarity, and look the same (without getting to the DNA level). A horse and a lion are different species because they can't produce any offspring at all. The genetic difference between a horse and a donkey is much smaller than between a horse and a lion, but in both cases they are different species. This leads to interesting experiments. For instance, there was this experiment I read about where they fed two groups of fruit flies different diets. I think one of the groups had fruits, and the other had honey, or something like that. Either way, after a few generations (which with fruit flies only takes a short period of time), the flies from one group were no longer able to produce fertile offspring with flies from the other group. However, they were both still able to produce fertile offspring with fruit flies found in the wild. Here you have an example where A and B are different species, but C is the same species as both A and B. If the fruit flies from the experiment were to be released in the wild, they would soon mix with the wild population until the genetic differences would dilute enough for them to all become the same species again. But if they are kept in isolation, there will be no genetic mixing between the two groups, and each will follow a different evolutionary path. So when you ask "how did species arise", the answer I would give is that species evolve. If what you're asking is how did life first arise, that's another question. But once you have lifeforms, the development of different species is simply a matter of genetic mutation + selective pressure (either natural selection or artificial selection), for the transformation of one species into another, and in particular, the addition of genetic isolation (which may or may not include physical isolation), for the splitting of one species into two or more different ones. Different races or breeds (race is natural, breed is artificial) of the same species have genetic differences, but because they're still able to produce fertile offspring with each other, they are able to dilute these differences if the genetic isolation is removed (and a significant degree of genetic isolation is required to produce different races or breeds). The process by which a single species can get different races or breeds, when taken to a larger level, produces different species.

Democracy is the worst possible form of government. An Absolute Monarchy (not a Constitutional Monarchy) is the least bad (obviously, not having a State is better than monarchy). Contrary to popular belief, Europe was much more free under the rule of Absolute Monarchs, especially in the time ranging from the 15th to the latter 19th centuries. With tax rates rarely if ever exceeding 5 to 10%, in most cases averaging about 8%. And that's the total tax burden, not just income taxes. Similarly, there was no such thing as compulsory public education; welfare did not exist, and legislation (rulers creating new laws) happened mostly only once every few generations or so. Likewise the inflation rate of the money supply was much lower and often did not exceed the production of precious metal entering the market. National debts were small (since the King knew that they would have to pay it back themselves, or have their heirs pay it back), and they paid a higher interest than private debt (because of course, without the ability to monetize debt, everybody realized that the King may not pay back). In the same way, wars were royal wars, involving only two opposing private-royal armies which did not engage in widespread massacres as they do today. I made a post almost two years ago summarizing some of the reasons why this happens, but didn't get any replies, here: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/32990-democracy-an-improvement-over-what-came-before/ It was the development of technology and the accumulation of capital brought about by the industrial revolution that allowed democracy to spread and be maintained, not the other way around. If you go country by country today and look at their level of freedom versus statism, there is a clear tendency for countries with more democratic elements to be more statist, and those with more restrictions on democracy to be less statist. What the mainstream politicians often do is try to reverse this tendency by pretending that the more democratic countries are actually less democratic, and vice-versa. But few would deny that countries such as Liechtenstein, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Chile, are far less democratic than Cuba, Venezuela, The United States, South Africa and France. So what they try to do in these cases is to pretend that the less democratic countries are worse off, even though their economic growth and level of freedom is clearly larger than in the more democratic countries. For more on this, read Democracy: The God That Failed, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. There's also these two lectures by him that you can listen to online: http://mises.org/media/1070 (also available for download as mp3) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1GjHpOtcgk (ignore the picture, just listen to the audio)