Item — HN Reader

> It's practically a project of the Egyptian military who will mostly own the land

It's a public-private project with Gulf and Asian financing and execution.

Sisi is a dictator, but he can and does execute. Look at how Egypt's developmental indicators have shot up over the past decade - that was not guaranteed, and he deftly took advantage of non-Western partners to push the reforms Egypt needs.

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Which developmental indicators are you referring to? Almost all economical numbers mean nothing if the country is a dictatorship because the admin can straight up fabricate all of them. Administrations in democracies have to manipulate the numbers, introduce new ones, etc while dictatorships can just say "Nah, make that number 20% higher". You can look at the EGP exchange rate over the last 10 years and tell me if that chart looks organic to you.

That's not how it works. Egypt is not a closed country. International organizations can get in and get numbers.

It's also worth keeping in mind that many European countries, and every non-European country that's now developed, went through a phase of authoritarianism or one-party rule during which the organs of state developed. Germany's and Italy's modern democratic governments date to the end of WWII, and Spain and Greece's date only to the 1970s. By contrast, efforts to jump straight to multi-party democracy have largely failed.

Which european dictatorship left their country better off?

"Better off" is too vague a criterion because it suggests some comparison with a counter-factual hypothetical. Instead, I think it's important to observe that the modern organs of state, rule of law, etc., were developed under (pre-constitutional) monarchs and dictators in most western European countries. For example in Germany, much of the bureaucracy was developed by the Prussians and the court system was developed under the Kaiser. Germany's 1949 Basic Law did not create a state from scratch, but instead largely subjected pre-existing institutions to democratic rule.

Yeah, Frederick the Great is the closest thing I can think of to a European analogue to Lee Kwan Yew. Maybe Napoleon to a lesser extent.

Franco, at least in the sense of GDP per capita indicators and escaping WW2.

The UK for one. By the time it became a democracy, it was already stable, peaceful and the wealthiest country per capita that had ever existed.

It was a narrow miss. There was a time the crown wanted everyone farming cotton, but entrepreneurs pitched arbitrage instead.

Do you mean raising sheep for wool? The UK has never grown a significant amount of cotton.

> Which european dictatorship left their country better off?

If monarchs count as dictators, and monarchic states as dictatorship, then almost all economic progress in Europe upto the 1840s