Re: Why do educated and intelligent Pakistanis support dictatorship over democracy?
The reason so many millions of Pakistanis remember the first Bhutto era with nostalgia is that it saw many major projects launched. Nationalisation created many more jobs. While the sophisticated may argue that this was an economic disaster, the poor have a diametrically opposite view.
There is no doubt that nationalisation created many jobs. The problem is that under Bhutto's nationalisation program, companies took on so many employees that they were no longer profitable. State-owned companies had to be kept afloat with taxpayer money. Knowing that there would always be government bailouts, many of these companies then became poorly run (rendered worse by incompetent management being installed by the government as political payoffs).
Ultimately state owned companies become little more than a social welfare system, that stifle the environment for private competition that could provide better services for consumers.
Where private competition exists, state owned business lose consumers, and thus income, and thus become an even bigger burden on taxpayers.