¿Es mejor una dictadura que una oligarquía?

Va una de provocación. En varias ocasiones en este blog he argumentado que una cosa es el mercado bien entendido, y otra distinta el "capitalismo de amiguetes", la oligocracia que existe en unos cuantos sectores. Ante esta situación, algunos, y más últimamente, defienden que hay que volver al control por parte del gobierno de estos mercados...sin tener en cuenta que esos gobiernos también pueden estar controlados por élites, las mismas o distintas. Cambiamos de amiguetes, nada más. Y es que la clave por tanto no es mercado vs regulación, sino verdadera democracia vs control por parte de algunos, sean quienes sean. Milanovic nos recuerda que ya Adam Smith nos advertía contra esto:

But in a country where the government is in a great measure arbitrary, where it is usual for the magistrate to intermeddle even in the management of the private property of individuals, and to send them, perhaps, a lettre de cachet if they do not manage it according to his liking, it is much easier for him to give some protection to the slave; and common humanity naturally disposes him to do so. The protection of the magistrate renders the slave less contemptible in the eyes of his master, who is thereby induced to consider him with more regard, and to treat him with more gentleness. That the condition of a slave is better under an arbitrary than under a free government is, I believe, supported by the history of all ages and nations.

Esto lleva a Milanovic a concluir que no deberíamos ser simplistas, en la línea de lo que yo comentaba antes, y a provocar un poco diciendo que una dictadura podría incluso ser más igualitaria que una democracia:

An oligarchic democracy may be worse for the poor than an arbitrary government. A state, relatively autonomous from the elite, may care more about the “general interest” than an ostensibly democratic government that is in reality the government of the rich. Smith highlights, I think, in both his discussion of social cleavage in interests when it comes to colonies and in his discussion of slavery, the ambivalence of the connection between the state and class. In more democratic (but exclusivist) settings the state may be less autonomous and more directly “hitched” to the interests of the ruling class. In an autocracy, the state may be less subject to the power of moneyed interests, and more concerned with the position of the poor. Our facile and somewhat lazy approach that more democracy implies a greater concern or improvement for the poor is shown here, by the founder of political economy, to be possibly—at times—wrong.

Claro, la conclusión para mi no es que debemos volver a las dictaduras, sino que lo que hay que hacer es romper el control de las élites, para así poder aprovechar esa idea maravillosa que es el mercado, pero el de verdad.