The False ‘Promise’ of ‘Efficiency’ in an Authoritarian Political System
and its implication for nations with democratic political processes
This world is in an increasingly chaotic state these days. Nations with liberty within the rule of law and democratic political processes are struggling to cope. Even people who would fight to defend those societal goods are heard to say that an authoritarian system of government would be more ‘efficient’.
Can such regimes effect choices for the community as a whole faster than democracies generally can? Yes. Does that make authoritarianism more efficient? That depends on what efficiency means in the context of society as whole.
Societal problems are usually optimality problems. Those are problems for which the solution is not either/or, but the best possible option.
It is not usually a matter of what the community should do so much as how to accomplish it: every community would opt for more prosperity, less poverty, lower taxes, better health, less crime, etc. Complicating the matter is the fact that such problems are often interrelated in complex ways that can involve trade-offs. Also, proposed solutions must be actually actionable, including being affordable. When such problems fester they can eventually eat away from within the cohesion of societies ruled by even the most oppressive regimes. They simply fall apart at some point, like the old Soviet Union did.
Here’s the thing: solving for optimality problems requires considering as wide a range of options as is feasible. The more authoritarian a regime is, the less likely that condition will be appreciated, much less met. For actually solving problems, then, nations with democratic political processes have a decisive advantage.
If such nations are failing to find optimal solutions to problems, it is because they too are failing to consider enough options. The primary problem in all democratic nations these days is that it is simply too difficult to get new ideas for solutions to problems into the public discourse of those nations.