Member-only story
Determining the true “best” economic system in the world is an impossible question given the inherent subjectivity in defining what exactly best means combined with variability of performance as a constant, especially considering regular black swan events on a global and per-country scale.
One could certainly argue for the absolute superiority of an economic system with a constrained timespan and a specific goal for the existence of that system: most experts would agree, for example, that the economic system of the United States in World War II was the best in that over the course of the war it proved most successful in enabling itself and its allies to win the war, or that the incorporation of free-market practices into China’s economic system has objectively improved it throughout the past forty-odd years.
Today, the discussion over what economic system is the best is marred by disagreement over such constraints: each side advocates for the metrics that make it look best over the timeframe that makes it look best. China, for example, highlights its incredible growth and top-line GDP while ignoring its per-capita weakness and balloon-like valuations. The United States claims it remains its post-cold war hegemonic self on the basis of its scale, technology, and dominance over the world banking system while ignoring strengthening rivals, rampant poverty, and increasing instability. Denmark is known as “the happiest country on earth” while remaining a tiny homogenous nonplayer on the global economic chessboard.
In making these points, the declared subtitle of this reading is perhaps impaired in theoretical terms given endless arbitrary bounds which generally serve the purpose of those who create them. However, to provide the most objective analysis possible on a given timespan, the assimilation of a wide variety of relevant datasets is truer to the question at hand than not.
It must finally be noted that the major windfalls present in those approaching this question are twofold: one, working backward from an eminently constrained and erroneously subjective definition of what metrics define the “best” economic system, and two, following it up with a small sample set of observations about a country — for example, settling upon per-capita GDP as a metric…
