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Generational Dynamics World View
(10-28-2017, 01:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:
(10-28-2017, 02:17 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   It is ironic that what was once one of the most radical parties of
>   its time (the Communist party of China) has become a conservative
>   (if undemocratic) party in all but name.

(10-27-2017, 03:13 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   Government spending as a percentage of GDP is a good measure, with
>   some allowance for price controls.  Government spending in the US
>   is a little under half the GDP, while in China it is a little over
>   a quarter, and price controls are largely limited to utilities in
>   both countries, so China is pretty clearly more
>   capitalist.

You two have gone completely off the rails.  Saying that America is
Socialist and China is Capitalist is about as moronic as anything I
can think of.

I did not say the China was democratic by any stretch of the imagination. It has a dictatorship, but one that allows a formal but powerless opposition. The normal civil liberties and political process of a liberal democracy do not exist in China. Workers have no rights to unions, let alone to strike. There is no real welfare state. But China has heavily privatized large sectors of the economy. There may still be iconic images of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao, but those are about as meaningful to the political reality now (the dictatorship, but no longer proletarian) as images of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, and Mantle are to the current New York Yankees baseball team.

If some evil people were to establish a dictatorship in America (essentially someone who believes much what Donald Trump does, only far more effective), then the opposition would be whittled away until it was visible but impotent. If conservative it would probably dismantle the welfare state and become a paradise for millionaires (but miserable for most people). China has a very high GINI coefficient. Images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR would remain -- but their meaning would be gutted. Gutting Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao is a very good thing. Gutting Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR would be horrible. Democrats might still be mayors of giant cities (think of "Red Budapest" run by Social Democrats under the Horthy dictatorship in interwar Hungary) and maybe governors of a couple of states, but very few states. Most state legislators would be fully owned and operated subsidiaries of lobbying firms (whoops! We are already there). Local political power would be gutted even though the formality of federalism might be kept for show. The dominant Party would call the shots. Of course it would be as plutocratic as the Communist Party of China has become in practice.

Quote:First off, GDP is not any sort of measure for comparing Socialism to
Capitalism, since the figures are open to lying.  To take one obvious
example, Obamacare is an extremely expensive government expense, but
my guess is that China calls all health care "private."  Also, the US
defense budget is all attributed to government expenditures, and we
know that China lies about its military spending.

The People's Liberation Army has real economic power with control of at the least entities connected to military procurement.
On the other side, it is hard to see how many of America's defense contractors would exist as profitable entities in a free market.


Quote:The point is that the International Criminal Nation of China, which is
building illegal massive military bases in the South China Sea and
lies about everything else, is certainly lying about how much of its
GDP is public vs private.

But GDP is irrelevant anyway.  Here's one obvious example: China has
clamped down on mobile phone apps in China to prevent any app that
could be used to criticize the government, or could be used to
communicate with the outside world (like VPNs).  This is the kind of
control that makes China a Socialist dictatorship.  Obviously, we have
no such restrictions in America, and that wouldn't appear in the GDP
at all.

...and there are people who would like to do much the same here in America, trading others' freedom for their gain, indulgence, and power. Some are already rich and powerful.


Quote:In America, the Justice Dept tried to get Apple to unlock an iphone so
that a criminal investigation could be pursued, and Apple refused.
Can you imagine what would happen to a Chinese exec who similarly
refused?  They'd be feeding his body to the fishes.  Once again, this
kind of Socialist government control is not reflected in the GDP.

We still have the formality of a search warrant, so a judge has some control against pointless searches and seizures.  Of course China has legal formalities different from ours, and the Chinese legal system is very efficient in turning a criminal suspect into a jailbird or a cadaver. China has a death penalty, applies it to offenses that are not capital in America (like drug trafficking, human trafficking, piracy, and various forms of economic corruption) and is more likely to sentence someone convicted of a capital crime to death. Chinese prisons are also to be avoided, and not only because poorer countries tend to have worse prisons.



Quote:China has horrific restrictions on what anyone can say online, and
everything is monitored.  The government deletes postings that don't
fit the party line, and anyone who criticizes the government risks
getting thrown into a bottomless pit.

Well documented and undeniable.


Quote:In America, people say that Trump is "Hitler," and they give as
reasons that he didn't remember some soldier's first name, or he
supposedly admires some foreign dictator, or whatever idiotic reason
du jour the liberals come up with.  But in America, Trump is
criticized and mocked by everyone, with one idiotic reason after
another, and nothing happens to those people.  They can simply go on,
day after day, giving more idiotic reasons.  In America, you're free
to criticize your leaders, without getting arrested.  So we don't have
any Hitlers in America.

We still have over 200 years of a Constitutional heritage without anything like Mao as a founding father. But this said, I see plenty wrong with Donald Trump and little right (unless 'right-wing'). There are plenty of reasons du jour to hold him in contempt because he seems to come up with a new one on the average of once a week. Yes, he is a pathological narcissist; he shows little empathy except among family members and close associates; he is reckless in his speech and his "tweets"; he says that there are good people on both sides when one of the sides is fascist (which is as absurd as saying that there are good people on both sides between armed robbers and the people that they rob); he uses regulations to circumvent Congress when legislation might do the job but not be as swift; he baits a dangerous and capricious foreign leader; he and his family suggest that profitable dealings with him are good for them if they want favors with the government; he brags about what a great job he is doing with hurricane relief in Puerto Rico before the job is done; and that is before I mention his campaign.

Yes, he is completely unsuited to be President, but people were foolish enough to vote for him.

I will concede that if his questionable behavior and dubious reasoning results from mental deterioration, then he might be excused. I can imagine this happening if Joe Biden had been elected President, as anyone over 55 has a chance of going senile and the possibility increases with every added year of age. Mental inadequacy due to insanity or low intelligence are mitigating factors. Senility? It's not so clear.


Quote:Hitler was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people,
and everyone on both the left and the right condemns Hitler and the
neo-nazis in the US and Europe.

But violence and dictatorships on the left?  Liberals LOVE those.  To
liberals, BLM is great! Who cares if a few white policemen are murdered?  And Antifa is great!  Who cares if a few free speech
advocates are bloodied and beaten?  Those white policemen and free
speech advocates deserve it, don't they?  Liberals LOVE that.

To endorse any dictatorship is illiberal, whether the dictator is a left-wing savage like Fidel Castro or a right-wing savage like Agosto Pinochet. It's hard to establish whether Saddam Hussein or Idi Amin was "left" or "right" -- whatever his place on the political spectrum, either is horrible. You tell me whether you think ISIS is "Left" or Right". The only good thing that I could say of a more clement dictator like Schuschnigg or Jaruzelski  is that he is better than some alternatives such as a full-blown Nazi or Stalinist. 

As for Black Lives Matter -- nobody thinks it OK to kill a cop. Anyone who pulls a gun on a cop, due to bullet-proof vests, can expect to die because the crook must point the gun at a vital organ not covered by the bullet-proof vest (head or neck) and the cop ca fire a lethal shot faster. Maybe the cops are more trigger-happy with black people under shaky circumstances. What do we do about that? Good question.


Quote:And Stalin and Mao were responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths
-- far more than Hitler.
 

Debatable about Stalin vs. Hitler on the body count. First, some of the body count involving Stalin was double-counting. A "bourgeois nationalist" might also have been an "enemy of the People" and thus counted twice .  Of course Stalin is still a large-scale killer even if the count is cut down by a thousand. Hitler wasn't much of a killer until 1939; Mussolini may have had more blood on his hands for the suppression of Libya and his murderous invasion of Ethiopia, and the Japanese militarists far exceeded the carnage of Hitler in the Massacre of Nanjing alone than Hitler did in Germany before he invaded Poland. But once Hitler invaded Poland there was no limit to the murder of Hitler except the six month window of time before he offed himself in the bunker. Add to that, Hitler was undeniably the chief aggressor in World War II, so he is responsible for war deaths from Belfast to Stalingrad and on the high seas around Europe. On the Baltic States, and eastern interwar Poland and eastern interwar northeastern Romania I split responsibility for the Stalinist crimes because Hitler dealt those territories to the Soviet Union contrary to any will of the peoples therein in full knowledge of what he would do. If you hand a child to a molester in knowledge that that person is a child molester, then you are guilty too.


Quote:But liberals LOVE Stalin and Mao.  "You have
to break a few eggs to make an omelet!"  Haha.


We do? I didn't know that.


Quote:Not to mention that liberals LOVED the fascist Benito Mussolini in the
30s.  "Hey!  He may be a dictator, but he keeps the trains running on
time!!"


I didn't know that. I also did not know that the Earth is flat and that fire-breathing dragons are real.


Quote:So contrast America to the farce at the People's Congress last week,
when Xi Jinping was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party
of China.  All 2,400 delegates voted yes.  The world watched on
television as they were asked if anyone was opposed, and not a single
person dared to raise his hand.  It looked like a pathetic joke.  In
America, anyone can vote against Trump, or mock and criticize Trump,
but China's government is so pathetic that not a single person dares
to oppose the leader.  The Chinese Communist Party is so fragile that
they're afraid that they'll fall apart if anyone is allowed to
criticize them.

I paid no attention. But I also recognize Donald Trump acting much like another sort of undemocratic leader, a bad feudal lord of the manor who can lash out when something doesn't go his way  -- and can make others hurt. He is by far the closest thing that America has had to a dictator. Sure, Lincoln and FDR regimented the economy during their wars, but that is understandable. So did Churchill, even more so. Donald Trump can give official pronouncements on scientific matters. Trofim Lysenko would feel right at home in Trump's America. Global warming isn't happening, coal can be 'clean', and pollution is a price of progress -- more pollution means more progress. Give me a break!


Quote:Then Xi introduced the Politburo Standing Committee: Comrade Li
Keqiang, Comrade Li Zhanshu, Comrade Wang Yang, Comrade Wang Huning,
Comrade Zhao Leji, and Comrade Han Zheng.

[Image: 69a00818-b951-11e7-affb-32c8d8b6484e_128...105624.jpg]

Watching these seven old men on stage, one can see that this is the
face of evil.

I don't recognize the faces. Not knowing who they are, they could as well be Hong Kong or even San Francisco (Chinatown) businessmen. OK, so I know the context. But there were plenty of baby-faced Nazis, too. Donald Trump is evil, and he looks benign, too. To be sure there are some well cultivated "I be bad" looks, usually on people that I know enough to avoid.


Quote:This cabal of Adolf Hitlers is going to bring the worst catastrophe in
world history to China and the rest of the world.

For now I am more concerned about the mad ruler, the King-in-all-but-name of North Korea. And, I regret to say, the current President of the United States.  Besides, so far as China is concerned, I can think of three calamities hard to top: the Mongol invasion, which killed 20 million people, about half of them in China, the Japanese invasion, and Mao's absurd and destructive Great Leap Forward.

Quote:So for you two guys to suggest that China is a modern, free,
capitalist society, while America is some kind of socialist
government-controlled state just shows the lengths of total idiocy to
which today's political discourse has gone.

The United States has Big Government, and much less economic competition than it used to have. Much of the economic choice by our politicians is dividing the marketplace.

If it takes Big Government to secure public safety and welfare or to protect the People from such calamities as invasions, then so be it. But if Big Government has less benign purposes like deciding who wins and who loses, then Big Government is not so benign. But that is how all technologies and other economic tools work -- is that controversial at all?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


Reply


Messages In This Thread
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-14-2016, 03:21 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-23-2016, 10:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 08-11-2016, 08:59 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 01-18-2017, 09:23 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 02-04-2017, 10:08 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 03-13-2017, 03:33 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 03-15-2017, 02:56 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 03-15-2017, 03:13 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 05-30-2017, 01:04 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 07-08-2017, 01:34 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-09-2017, 11:07 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-10-2017, 02:38 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 10-25-2017, 03:07 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by pbrower2a - 10-28-2017, 10:26 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by rds - 10-31-2017, 03:35 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by rds - 10-31-2017, 06:33 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by noway2 - 11-20-2017, 04:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-28-2017, 11:00 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-31-2017, 11:14 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 06-22-2018, 02:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:42 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-19-2018, 12:43 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-25-2018, 02:18 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:58 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-18-2018, 03:42 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-19-2018, 04:39 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 09-25-2019, 11:12 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-09-2020, 02:11 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Camz - 03-10-2020, 10:10 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 03-12-2020, 11:11 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-16-2020, 03:21 PM
RE: 58 year rule - by Tim Randal Walker - 04-01-2020, 11:17 AM
RE: 58 year rule - by John J. Xenakis - 04-02-2020, 12:25 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Isoko - 05-04-2020, 02:51 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 01-04-2021, 12:13 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by CH86 - 01-05-2021, 11:17 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-10-2021, 06:16 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-11-2021, 09:06 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-12-2021, 02:53 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-13-2021, 03:58 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-13-2021, 04:16 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-15-2021, 03:36 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 08-19-2021, 03:03 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 08-21-2021, 01:41 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-27-2022, 06:06 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-27-2022, 10:42 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-28-2022, 12:26 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-28-2022, 04:08 PM

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