> As long as we're playing whataboutism...
I'd prefer not to.
> Without looking up data, I think it's safe to assume Europe's economies contracted substantially during WWII as well... At best, one might argue that the US recovered from WWII faster, because it was the only major nation left undamaged.
I'd argue you can't compare Great Leap Forward with WWII. The GLF was domestic policy (like Holodomer) and ultimately the responsibility of the government at the time. WWII was an international war, which definitionally is not domestic policy. Europe indeed did experience contraction coincident with WWII [0]. The United States had a surge of economic activity at this time, nearly doubling GDP during the war [1].
> As for the argument about the impact of concentration camps... the US currently has 2.3M people incarcerated with a third the population of China.
You're not comparing similar categories here. US prisons hold people convicted of crimes as determined by a constitutional judicial process. More than 50% of the prisoners were sentenced due to commission of a violent crime [2]. Yes, the prison system needs substantial reform, but I find it hard to believe that ~1mm convictions are illegitimate. Meanwhile, concentration camps imprison people without charges filed or intent to file charges (a violation of Article 9 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights). I'm not comfortable drawing an equivalence between a legal process and a clear breach of human rights.
> If you're arguing that this is somehow economically relevant
I never made such a claim. You requested "a measurable scale" of human capital and rights violations, so I attempted to quantify it with the number of lives impacted.
> I don't think the argument that "Countries with better infrastructure, physical, legal, and otherwise, should enjoy higher rates of growth" goes where you want it to go. Just about any "developing country" has a far higher rate of growth than the mature western nations with the best infrastructure.
My statement should have included the phrase "ceteris paribus". This paper [3] has been cited ~450 times, so I assume it reflects mainstream economic thought.
"The paper finds that IPRs affect economic growth indirectly by stimulating the accumulation of factor inputs like R&D and physical capital. The positive effects of IPRs on factor accumulation, particularly of R&D capital, are present even when the analysis controls for a more general measure of property rights"
> Speaking of developing nations, Argentina is not the example you want it to be, either.
Are you referring to this page [4] which states the following?
"Beginning in the 1930s, however, the Argentine economy deteriorated notably. The single most important factor in this decline has been political instability since 1930, when a military junta took power, ending seven decades of civilian constitutional government. In macroeconomic terms, Argentina was one of the most stable and conservative countries until the Great Depression, after which it turned into one of the most unstable. Despite this, up until 1962 the Argentine per capita GDP was higher than of Austria, Italy, Japan and of its former colonial master, Spain."
The source confirms that Argentina has a long history of economic difficulty and points to a chaotic legal infrastructure as an origin. Comparing the GDP per capita to other nations is valuable, as it indicates 1. the early strength of the Argentinian economy; 2. the length of time it took war ravaged nations to recover. However, we should also consider the 'missing' economic growth. Had Argentina enjoyed greater levels of political stability would the economy have maintained its trajectory? If so, Argentinians today enjoy less consumption than they would have otherwise.
> As an aside, in Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshal argues that Argentina and other South American nations are ultimately limited...
Without having read the book, it sounds reasonable. Along those lines, there's a claimed relationship between a nation's natural resources known as the resource curse [5]. Perhaps this, too, has contributed to Argentina's economic woes?
> Western technology, moreso than western values, has led to the rise of not only China, but dozens of other nations as well... The technological acceleration of the past two centuries has been widespread, with widespread impacts.
I think we agree on this, but we don't see eye to eye on the origins of this acceleration. My understanding is that the acceleration in growth rates originated in Western Europe as a result of the Enlightenment [7]. Could the economic acceleration have occurred in other ways? Certainly it's conceivable, but in millennia of history it didn't happen any of those ways. So what were the values of the Enlightenment?
"In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church." [6]
Those appear to be the values you identified earlier. As for capitalism, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations helped formalize the understanding of free markets. China, itself, implements a form of capitalism [8].
> But the "western values" I started with were democracy and free market capitalism
To quote you they were "Western-style democracy, capitalism, and individualism". If you believe China has been the beneficiary of Western technology, then it logically follows that China's prosperity stems from those values.
[0] https://www.quora.com/How-did-WWII-affect-European-GDP
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor...
[2] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/04/how-to-cut-the...
[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-7287....
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Argentina
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
[7] https://is.cuni.cz/studium/predmety/index.php?do=download&di...
[8] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-went-from-communis...