If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.
We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.
Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy.
Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.
What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy.
Of course democracy is good, but it is a process, not a prescription.
Advertising is the very essence of democracy.
I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.
I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.
Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.