Authoritarianism - Economic Development's Secret Consort

Disclaimer: I'm as far as you could be from supporting authoritarianism, I think it is unethically aligned with maximizing economic development in a capitalist economy, both of which I believe to be unethical. 

At the crux of Sen's argument is that economic development is tied to freedom not merely financial metrics. While I sympathize in thinking economic development ought to develop freedoms, I'm skeptical that this occurs. Rather I believe one who maximizes economic development via maximizing economic measurements i.e. income, gdp etc. turns to an authoritarian model that is anti-freedoms, somewhat similar to what Sen calls "the Lee thesis". 

First is the empirics debate. I don't have the economics research on hand to decide one way or another, but as Sen admits, South Korea, China and Singapore have seen massive economic growth despite shifts towards authoritarianism in political liberties. I will add that Sen is also not wonderful on the empirics question. Rather he repeats in multiple places there there isn't strong evidence either way "there is little evidence that authoritarian politics actually helps economic growth. Indeed, the empirical I6 evidence very strongly suggests that economic growth is more a matter of a friendlier economic climate than of a harsher political system." ... “In fact, there is rather little general evidence that authoritarian governance and the suppression of political and civil rights are really beneficial in encouraging economic development. The statistical picture is much more complex. Systematic empirical studies give no real support to the claim that there is a general conflict between political freedoms and economic performance.4 The directional linkage seems to depend on many other circumstances, and while some statistical investigations note a weakly negative relation, others find a strongly positive one. On balance, the hypothesis that there is no relation between them in either direction is hard to reject. Since political liberty and freedom have importance of their own, the case for them remains unaffected.”

I fear this also repeats similar problems to what Blackburn found with traditional economists in a different way, of sliding between empirical and theoretical claims. Since the empirical evidence is a wash it seems worthwhile to turn to the theoretical considerations.

In theory it seems to me that the most economically efficient model has to deny freedoms, since freedoms and rights come into conflict with maximum financial efficiency. I would argue all successful capitalist economies are authoritarian, whether dominated by governments such as in China, South Korea, and Signapore, or what I will call 'privatized authoritarianism' through powerful firms such as Amazon having strong weight in the US. There is no democratic vote in the firm, amazon workers are put through cruel working conditons and actively discouraged to form unions develop workers rights and worker representation. As anderson argues that sounds like an authortiarian workplace/economy. Furhtermore it seems that as economic development has risen in places like the US, economic inequality and political inequality have correspondingly risen i.e. say in elections or in society has decreased for non-billionaires. My well-developed research papers published on regulation of social media has less impact on fake news regulations or media freedoms then Elon Musk yolo buying 9% of twitter, or Amazon buying the Washignton post. Sen's arguments on the theoretical front are also lacking:

“Quite often economic insecurity can relate to the lack of democratic rights and liberties. Indeed, the working of democracy and of political rights can even help to prevent famines and other economic disasters. Authoritarian rulers, who are themselves rarely affected by famines (or other such economic calamities), tend to lack the incentive to take timely preventive measures. Democratic governments, in contrast, have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentives to undertake measures to avert famines and other such catastrophes.”

I'm pretty sure this is not the case. The ruling class of democracies such as the US do not have to face common issues of their populous, i.e. wealthy elites profited off the 2008 financial crisis by buying up cheap real estate from middle class and poor Americans homes being foreclosed on. Politicians instantly getting covid-19 vaccines etc. 

“Famines have tended to occur in colonial territories governed by rulers from elsewhere (as in British India or in an Ireland administered by alienated English rulers),”

Its difficult to imagine famines occurring in wealthy nations not because they are democracies but as a byproduct of colonialism. Having control and over food supply chains across the world because of economic dominance via neocolonialism of course means when a countries' internal resources are lacking they can extract other countries' resources. There is no reason a 3^rd world country/colonially dominate democracy is any more insulated against natural disasters.

The closest Sen gets to justfying the effectiveness reason which is that: "achievement of development is thoroughly dependent on the free agency of people," is in the discussion of slavery. 

‘In fact, the praise of capitalism by Karl Marx (not a great admirer of capitalism in general) and his characterization (in Das Kapital) of the American Civil War as "the one great event of contemporary history" related directly to the importance of the freedom of labor contract as opposed to slavery and the enforced exclusion from the labor market.’ 

Obviously slavery was bad, but Sen is not identifying the right reasons. Slavery was not bad because it excluded slaves from the labor market as laborers, but because it denied their ability/freedom to refuse to participate in the labor market altogether. Granting that right to refusal as a granting of freedom to not economically development would have run contrary to economic development, meaning Slavery was not bad at economic development in fact the South's economy became heavily based on it. This illustrates my point that freedoms can run contrary to economic development in a traditional sense i.e. income, gdp etc. Now obviously Sen tries to abandon that traditional sense in their theoretical justification by moving to development as freedom, yet in their new model they still try to capture freedom as having the desirable empirical effects of the traditional model i.e. higher income/gdp etc. in ways that seem to be inconsistent jumps between theoretical and empirical like blackburn criticizes and often contradictory contrasting values (freedoms which go against economic development, like having lunch breaks and other workers' rights). Even if granting some freedoms does improve economic development i.e. because stress goes down, it seems inevitable that denying some freedoms also does.