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Is there any indication that the opposition is any more competent and less corrupt?
This is an important point. Live long enough and you grow to become very skeptical of the Western narrative that different leaders will create different outcomes. People cheered when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and became leader of Burma. They jeered when she went on to persecute the Rohingya Muslims. The Arab Spring told a similar story. As did the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Simply adding Western democratic mores to a third world country doesn't seem to change much.
There is, however, one type of leader who tends to create long-term positive impacts for a country. And that is a benevolent dictator, or dictator-lite. Examples of leaders in this mold are Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Perhaps the most salient current example is President Bukele of El Salvador who has already achieved massive quality of life gains for his citizens by declaring martial law and throwing all the gang members in jail.
While these leaders improve their countries and achieve huge popularity, they are not cheered by Western governments and NGOs, who tend to favor untested opposition groups who inevitably become corrupt the moment they are handed real power.
That list is tiny, and you might have to drop a few if you consider whether they have successfully locked in their gains and had an orderly succession to a still flourishing system.
Nobody has any idea how to make Lee Kuan Yews or General Parks*, or they'd make a dozen of them. Often people act enlightened to fool the West and then do whatever (Obama used to think Erdogan was that guy) Which is why a lot of people default to "get a democracy going".
TBH there is no "Western narrative" - there's many. Even in the same government you'll find people supporting democracy and change until they turn around and support the only strongman on the grounds that they're the ones who can keep the state running or, at least, do what the US wants (basically Obama's relationship with Egypt after the Arab Spring).
(I don't think you're wrong about Western NGO-types framing people like Bukele as autocrats for violating "civil rights" but that just makes me skeptical that he is autocrat, as opposed to proving he's a successful one)
* This being The Motte, someone might also remark on it being a strange coincidence that the examples that immediately come to mind are East Asian...
Very true. We don't have a model for how to bring a country like El Salvador or Rwanda up to 1st world level. This also being the Motte, I think we need to accept that this is likely impossible due to HBD.
So what Bukele is doing in El Salvador is really terrific. Going from murderous shithole to, let's say, Mexico level would be the likely maximum of what's possible. But people will criticize him for anything short of Nordic-level democracy.
Why do you believe that HBD is the limiting factor, and not geopolitics, geography, or just self-reinforcing systems? For that matter, how do you judge the “maximum of what’s possible” for a given country? I am confident that Mexico does not represent the peak of Hispanic achievement.
People will criticize Bukele as long as his policy looks suspiciously beneficial to him, personally. As a distant second, they may criticize the human right violations inherent to his chosen approach. But the important thing is that locking up everyone who might stop you is the oldest trick in the autocrat’s playbook, other than killing the outright. Whether or not it is also effective, that’s the main source of criticism.
‘Hispanic’ is a broad and extremely diverse category. It’s entirely consistent to think that Mexico-level prosperity is towards the top of what’s possible for El Salvador(Mexicans seem to think this is well out of reach) while acknowledging that, say, Costa Rica can be much richer.
Obviously you can also think that El Salvador can achieve much higher than Mexico currently does. But El Salvador, Mexico, and Costa Rica are three very different countries that happen to speak (different dialects of)the same language. It’s not unreasonable to expect them to have different futures.
That’s pretty much exactly why I objected to the OP. Saying that El Salvador can’t do better than Mexico does right now is…bizarre. Since he led with “because HBD,” I assumed he was painting them with the same brush.
It’s worth noting that Mexico has a much, much better hbd situation than El Salvador from the perspective of ‘what percentage of the population is above 95 IQ’, because in large parts of Mexico the average person is phenotypically Spanish and that presumably extends to IQ.
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