I did not claim political regimes are inconsequential to development. I claimed that "democracy" and "autocracy" are way, way too course-grained to think about the ways political regimes are consequential to development. 1/

"Drugs are good for curing cancer" is a dumb, useless claim. Yet it is still true that certain particular chemotherapy agents are very good for curing certain particular cancers! So, the dumb, useless claim is true in a sense. It's still useless. Taking aspirin for your brain cancer won't help. /fin