I came upon this track of thought after a comment by u/Ethnocrat saying that state capitalism/socialism was superior to free market capitalism. This was in reference to me saying that a country could develop quickly if it let in NW euros en masse and had a laisse faire capitalism.

The thing is that socialism seemst to work well in some particular countries, like Germany, Sweden or Finland, where the population is high IQ, homogenous and high trust.

When applied properly, a state capitalist/socialist system is objectively superior to capitalism. It has less concentration of wealth, better life standards, less of a cosmopolitan vulture elite, greater regulation of vices and more sophisticated projects like eugenic breeding and national welfare services cna be undertaken.

But here's the catch, it can only work in countries like Finland, Japan, Korea or Germany.

If you were to apply socialism in a third world country, all you'd get is looting and corruption. India, the arab countries and Latin America are key examples of this. India for example was a de facto socialist state from 1948 to 1992. In this period Indian life standars fell from british times as population grew but GDP growth never exceeded 3%. It was derisively called the Hindu rate of growth.

State run industries were permanent loss ventures that sucked up taxpayer money. Unionized laboreres sat around and collected paychecks and rioted if ever asked to work. Most of the money for state projects went into the pockets of the political class and bureaucrats. It was impossible to start a business due to the license raj, that is the hassle of getting a permit from the state.

After the fall of the USSR, India faced a currency crisis and the IMF bailed them out in 1992 and forced them to make neoliberal reforms. Since then free enterprise was unshackled and India has grown at 6-7% annualy for 30 years.

There are similar stories for many developing countries ranging from Brazil to Chile to Mexico and many others.

Capitalism is the only form of economic system that works for these countries. Capitalism is essentially a conglomerate of mini dictatorships. A corporation is essentially a mini monarchy. Its headed by one strongman with a vision and near total power and he guides the corporation to success. He has an incentive to do so and is ruthless in dealing with ineffeciency and laziness. He has a natural incentive to pass down the company to his progeny, not unlike a monarchy where the King has an incentive to strengthen his country so that he could pass on a greater inheritance to his heirs.

All talks of based 3rd world socialist economic success is just fantasy, be it Myanmar, Iran or Cuba. They're all struggling economies with great poverty and are punching way below their economic weight.

However, more advanced races need not be shackled to Capitalism. Capitalism is a more primitive and anarchic system after all. Here, the people are shackled to the will of anarchic capital. People serve capitalism rather than the other way around.

You have little control over the destiny of your state as the demands of capital will dictate your future. And capital demands feminism, atomization, dislocation of populations, mass migration and the consumerist lifestyle.

A socialist state can be more controlled and the state can hold the rudder on the future of the society. Just look at the US today. Its run according to the will and demands of big capital. It cannot even compete with its rival China properly because American capital benefits too much from doing business with Beijing. It can't cut China off from US technology transfers, trade imbalances or offshoring.

In contrast, in controlled economies like Russia and China, the markets follow the will of the state, not the other way around. They have a handle on the future of their nations.

And socialism in my view can only be successful in high IQ, high conscientious societies. In countries where the people are wise and conscientious enough to understand that they can't sit around and collect paychecks. Where mass corruption and cronyism isn't accepted by the culture. Were people have a sense of honor and dignity is attached to honest labor.

These things can only work in a high IQ, high trust and high conscienctious society. Like Germany, Japan, Finland or Sweden. State capitalism/national socialism succeeded in Imperial and Nazi Germany, in imperial Japan and cold war Scandinavian countries. It succeeded in South Korea during the cold war and in Singapore.

These societies did not need to sic merchant capitalists on the population in order to get the economy to run. The people were high quality enough to do it on their own.

Imo, socialism can only work in a handful of countries today. It can work fine in the Germanic countries, South Korea and Japan. I'm not sure how well it can work in anglo-saxon countries considering their individualistic nature but Britain did prosper with a heavily socialist economy following ww2 upto the Thatcher era.

It would struggle to succeed in Italy, Spain, Eastern Europe and China. Though these populations have high IQs, they are not as conscientious and high trust. Thus, these countries have a lot of corruption despite having intelligence equal to NW euros.

Socialism however, would and has completely failed in the middle east and Latin America.

And as Sweden, America and Britain increasingly lose their Germanic demographic, their socialist systems are increasingly becoming dysfunctional as well. Socialism in a way, is the expression of a high civilization.