Response to those who say democracy is needed for economic growth

I don’t see that democracy is a necessary part of this equation: It is really about the combination of ‘security’ and ‘property rights’. Democracy is a useful means to an end, though not the only possible means. It’s merely convenient that democracy may impose some restraints on the government that enhance the security of property rights from the government---though this can happen without democracy, which I think is the story of East Asia during the second half of the 20th century. In small groups, humans WILL cooperate. It may be said that this is to a large part out of their control—it’s our biological nature to cooperate. Even under extreme circumstances, we will cooperate with kin. Security enables cooperation on larger scales, both in geographic terms and in terms of extended, non-kin social networks. Property rights, however, may be necessary to motivate cooperation at these scales. In kin relationships, or small groups, basic human sociality has mechanisms for incentivizing cooperation and disincentivizing freeriding. On a large scale, however, these mechanisms break down and profit takes over as the motivator of cooperation.