Comments by "Alan Friesen" (@alanfriesen9837) on "Intelligence Squared" channel.

  1. Sir Malcolm states that China presents its political model as an alternative to the Western Democratic model. I've never seen a Chinese suggest that other countries should adopt their model, at least not since the seventies. My observation is that China doesn't really care what the political model of other countries are and only insists on its model within what it considers to be part of China, and even in that case they've accepted postponement. His assertion that other Chinese societies have been more successful with Western models is also questionable. Taiwan and Singapore both blossomed from highly authoritarian seeds. Hong Kong had never been democratic before 1997 and has lost relative standing ever since. All three have benefited from Cold-War anticommunist investment that the Peoples' Republic could never have gotten. In fact, if China had not "fallen to the communists" in 1949 then none of east Asia would have had the support and investment that helped build up the capitalist economies from Singapore all the way to Japan.
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  2. I've spent time arguing with incels. Many of them are just frustrated young men who can't get it through their head that not getting laid is neither abnormal nor permanent so long as you display a little normalcy. I've commented to some about how many women also face an unfair lack of affection and I've talked a lot about how regardless of the pain and trauma that unrequited love and rejection inflict on us that no one should be forced to provide affection to someone for whom they have no attraction and that that goes both directions protecting both those women not attracted to them and them regarding women they're not attracted to either. I don't know that I've changed anybody else's mind, but I've tried. I definitely agree that those men who have accosted women, especially those who have physically or sexually attacked women are every bit as terroristic as any other hate-filled assailants, and I am very concerned about the atmosphere of fear that women have to navigate because of this. I do think it is important to address this and to make serious efforts to negate this toxic environment. Full disclosure, when I was a frustrated teenager I followed around the first girl who rejected me in a way that I don't think anyone could deny was stalking. I'm really glad there was no incel movement at the time, I might very well have found the emotional support irresistible. I'm not going to argue for or against any of the other comments made by the participants here except to say that whether it is paranoid or not, I too am very nervous about sharing space with a woman in which there is no provable deniability of misbehavior. I do not think that there are very many women who would accuse me or any other man of misbehavior that I (or any other man) are not guilty of, but I don't believe that number is zero. And frankly, I'm more worried about having my reputation destroyed than I am about being killed. I'm perfectly willing to admit that my fear is unreasonable, but it's also unshakable, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. To the extent that women suffer for my paranoia and that of those who feel the way I do, perhaps there should be some compensation. I don't think women are liars any more than men are. Conversely, as a group, I don't think they are more honest either. I don't think that they should miss out on opportunities and where it is inevitable there has to be some sort of balancing mechanism. As long as the philosophy de jour is that women need to be believed over the men denying their claims though, than men are going to be paranoid about being in potentially compromising positions. This is not a suggestion that men should be believed over women in this circumstance, as I believe that that would make women more paranoid about being alone and unmonitored with a man, which I don't think is a better condition either. Unfortunately gender interaction is fraught with vulnerability and paranoia. Nonetheless, I very much prefer mixed company. People are a whole lot more civilized when folks of every race and gender are present, and I'm much more comfortable in that environment. You all are probably tired of reading this by now. I'm afraid I'm a bit of rambler. So long.
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  3. I don't think Tom Tugendhat's version of reality matches actual reality. His description of Beijing does not match at all my experience of three years ago. I think he's projecting a dystopian fantasy that may have been correct half a century ago, but has since died at the hands of competence, hope, vision, and opportunity.
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  4. Iran is not our enemy, but we are Iran's enemy.
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  5. I think Mr. Andrews understanding of China is a bit out of date. It's probably been a more than a decade since China had four hundred million people in poverty. And while China certainly is looking to Africa for opportunities of obtaining resources, at least at this point it doesn't seem to be as coercive a relationship as that between the Western colonial powers and Africa. Though to be fair, the same could probably be said of the Portuguese when they first started establishing themselves on the continent. We'll know more in a century or two.
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  6.  @lukebruce5234  I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. Not getting laid is neither abnormal, nor my problem. What I'm discussing is the feeling of vulnerability to accusations of inappropriate behavior. But more than that, the lack of sympathy between men and women towards each others' positions of vulnerability and the dismissiveness of those feelings and the destructive effect that I think it is having on intergender relations and the social and political ramifications.
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  7.  @ivantsl3496  I'm totally cool with it. I'm an imperialist by nature. What I don't care for is nationalism.
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  8. What a beautiful quote. I always liked Adams, a truly underappreciated American president.
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  9. Ahh, whataboutism. Fine, African countries who participated in the slave trade should compensate their victims as well.
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  10.  @AtheistEve  Allegations are evidence and they definitely should be taken seriously. Witness testimony is proving to be pretty malleable the more its researched but of course some witness testimony is more reliable than other witness testimony. But our back and forth here is a demonstration of perceived vulnerabilities. If I'm correct in assuming that you are female, you likely feel vulnerability to potential attack and to not being taken seriously, two very reasonable fears. As a male I fear accusation and ostracization, two much less reasonable fears that nevertheless are much more likely to happen to me than sexual assault (or so I perceive). I know you are more vulnerable to what you fear than I am to what I fear, and I support you because of that awareness. But my feeling of vulnerability is not going away, and neither is the bias that comes with it.
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  11.  @measl  This isn't about racism, it's about compensation for legitimate victims. Also, as a white American I've seen black and white racism in my country. White racism is much worse, both in scale and in influence.
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  12.  @danielwebb8402  China didn't copy capitalism, they deployed it. It's one factor of the poverty alleviation program (primarily the funding engine), which is a state-controlled targeted social management program.
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  13.  @AtheistEve  I think your interpretation of "believe the victim" is totally correct. The dismissal of women claiming to have been raped or assaulted was epidemic and it really needed to change. Unfortunately that very necessary change ran against the foundational concept of "guilty until proven innocent". As you can see I have a lot of inner turmoil inside my head. Don't worry I don't expect anyone's sympathy. One thing I am sure about is that I have no intention of overcoming that phobia because I genuinely feel that it could make me vulnerable to my greatest fear. Sorry.
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  14. China is an empire, as are the United States and Russia.
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  15.  grimm reaper  Oh, we definitely have our nationalists here in America, and they're pretty scary. As for love of country, it's patriotic if it's inclusive, whether it's Chinese, Americans or any other group of countrymen. In order to be patriotic the love of country has to include everybody else that calls that country home or who aspires to and the call for defense of the country needs to include everyone inside of it who's not fighting to undermine it. It becomes nationalism when it becomes exclusive. Nationalism can be saying that people don't belong for one reason or another or trying to keep "the wrong sort" out, or it can be dehumanizing or suppressing those that can be identified as an "other". I've seen a little Chinese nationalism targeted at the Japanese and justified by the atrocities perpetrated on China during the Japanese war and occupation seventy years ago, but I haven't seen much beyond that outside of comment board trolls. I have seen a lot of American nationalism. Our last hundred years of history is littered with minority oppression, immigrant restriction and ghettoization—racist policies justified by nationalist arguments. Some of those nationalist arguments are in full view today and driving things like the current immigration debate. There's also a touch of nationalist ideology in Western foreign policy in which non-liberal-democracies are instinctively viewed as non-legitimate governments. It's this nationalist point of view that has determined that China cannot be allowed to equal the United States in global power or influence.
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  16. @Herman Menderchuck I don't get why people think that because some Africans are guilty of involvement in the transatlantic slave trade that European and American involvement is less heinous. It doesn't matter what someone else did; it matters what we did. African involvement is a different debate. It's worth having on it's own merits, but it doesn't effect western culpability in the slightest.
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  17.    We've had degrees in Black studies since the sixties. We also have degrees in Hispanic Studies and Asian Studies and, oh my God, Western Studies. How did that get in there?.
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  18.  @measl  I don't know the percentage. My recollection is that black Americans make up about 12.5% of the population. I would suspect that the vast majority of Black Americans can trace an ancestral line back to a slave, but I don't know for certain. I don't really think that matters. If someone can than they should be entitled; if they can't than they shouldn't be entitled. Slave ownership in the antebellum United States was something that anyone with enough money could participate in. This included mostly white folks, but also Native American and black freemen, and probably others as well. Again, this doesn't really matter. As Americans we need to redress this wrong, and this includes all Americans, black, white and other. While there are currently no sanctioned slaves in the United States, the legacy of slavery is still felt and compensation is still warranted. Frankly, the sooner we get it out of the way, the better. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but if your looking to do what's right on this issue, this is what's right. That's irrespective of what other countries do or have done, how many people are affected, whether or not they are black or white. The United participated in and promoted racial chattel slavery and the abduction and forced relocation of millions of people for that purpose. That is unconscionable, particularly for a country built on the concept of and self-declared champion of personal liberty and equality of all men. For the damage inflicted on American slaves the United States is liable, and for that reason, reparations are the appropriate remedy. And to your last point, any country currently allowing the practice of slavery should be forced to stop it, and its victims should likewise be compensated by those states.
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  19.  @measl  I have no problem with the fact that I'm white. I have no personal guilt for anything, except that which I caused or allowed to cause. There is nothing wrong with being a white person. Likewise there is nothing wrong with desiring to see an old injustice redressed, and frankly I'm blown away by the sheer volume of posters here are comfortable with the thought of perpetuating that injustice.
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  20. The West has dominated technology and cultural pretension across all the world for two centuries. Any society that progresses forward at this point is going to have to be undeniably influenced by the West. Non-Western societies that want to be relevant in the modern world are going to struggle with how much of today's reality is Western rather than just modern, and how much they can embrace without selling out their own culture. It doesn't mean that a country like China has to consider itself to be Western in order to be advanced. It can chart its own course, but it would be foolish to try to do so without taking advantage of the advances developed during the time of Western global dominance.
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  21. His answers are more realpolitik, something that is out of favor in the west's, particularly in the United States', foreign policy repartee. We haven't had a good realpolitik Secretary of State since Kissinger.
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  22.  @bobbarkeriii2597  China is benevolent if it wants to be. Power gives a country the option to choose. I'm glad that so far China seems to be relatively averse to conflict, at least if you're not claiming atolls in the South China Sea. I hope China stays benevolent, but there is no guarantee that that will be the case indefinitely.
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  23. @Herman Menderchuck As villainous? Yes. More villainous? No. Every entity involved was responsible and every one of them should be held to account.
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  24.  @j2174  I don't think China has pushed its political model since the days of Mao. The political model that existed at that time is no longer followed in China. If I'm mistaken, please let me know. I'm not sure what context you're referring to here. It's not that I doubt you; there is a lot of information I didn't provide.
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  25.  @Oshin-en8nb  I don't hate Iran. I admire Iran. I wish we would leave them alone so that they could live up to their potential without our thumb on the back of their neck.
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  26.  @michaelpoplett2745  The Dalai Lama's regime in Dharamshala claims 1.2 million Tibetans dead and 6,000 monasteries destroyed. I'm having an awful time verifying those numbers. I'm not sure who all that includes. I did get a number of 87,000 casualties in the 1959 uprising but even that's a little sketchy. I don't believe the Dalai Lama's numbers. I don't believe that China has systematically liquidated Tibetans. I know there were times in the history of the PRC when political chaos cost millions of Chinese their lives and this would have, of course, included Tibetans. That Cultural Revolution also resulted in the destruction of ancient buildings across the country, including, I'm sure, Tibetan monasteries. I think China bears historical responsibility for all of that but that was half a century ago and it is not the China of today. Today, China is actively preserving Tibetan culture while integrating and improving the lives of modern-day Tibetans, much more so than the Dharamshala regime.
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  27.  @MsBloodyFox  China uses aspects of market capitalism, some of which has western origins. Market economics goes back to the beginnings of civilization though—I'm not sure how truly western it is. It has been codified in the west and liberal market economics has been raised to the level of philosophy in the west, but in practice it's timeless and placeless. What China has done is to harness the revenue that derives from market economics and combine it with state-identified goals and projects and an Orwellian anti-corruption campaign to produce an effective practice of anti-poverty which appears to be the most effective the world has ever seen. We can quibble about how much of this is "western" and how much of this is "Chinese". As connected as the world is at this point, I don't think it really matters. It happened in China and it was administered by Chinese people. The rest of the world can learn from it if they choose to, or they can spend their energy whining about how it's not really a Chinese success after all.
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  28.  @AtheistEve  I appreciate that.
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  29.  @AtheistEve  I'm comfortable enough, and I thank you for your concern. I very much prefer a work environment in which women are present and treated with respect and equality. Fortunately, my work environment is such. I do avoid one-on-ones with no witness present, which fortunately for me is not a frequent circumstance. I do not think that I would avoid it to the point of knowingly suppressing a colleague's career options unless there was some kind of red flag that I noticed, but the possibility of unwarranted repercussion is still ever-present in my little box of paranoia. By the way I'm glad you're comfortable in your environment. Sometimes I wonder how a woman can be with all the violence aimed in their direction. I worry for my own daughters who, to the best of my knowledge, never have faced any of that.
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  30. @You need magnesium. Gee, thanks.
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  31. @mysticalrestroom You seem to be pretty judgmental. How would you describe yourself?
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  32.  @zantecarroll4448  That's a very kind comment. Thank you very much. I would also like to thank you for your thoughtful comments throughout this conversation. This is a very difficult conversation and I enter it on eggshells. You've been very respectful to me throughout though and you've made very good points that I think are correct. I do hope that as a society we can progress on my point to some degree, but on your points most definitely—I do think they are more urgent. Thanks again.
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  33.  @measl  Your refusal to see it doesn't negate its existence. I'll heed your request. So long.
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  34. @Herman Menderchuck Okay, everybody whose participated in the slave trade is wrong and culpable. Go after all of them. Let's start here.
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  35. Wow! What an amazing buy-in to ideological propaganda.
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  36. The major difference between the slavery of the early New World and that of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean basin is the lack of a respected local agricultural society. The Caribbean and the northern coast of South America were industrialized by plantation agriculture. These were industrial sugar farms operated by European outsiders who did not consider those lands to be their homes. Any local agriculture was buried under the plantations so that this lucrative cash crop could be cultivated almost exclusively. The local populace was enslaved to concentrate their labor on cultivation and those that weren't worked to death or killed by their own in an effort to escape such a life were destroyed by Old-World diseases. Slavery in Africa and South Asia was not on such an industrial scale. Slaves were often captured in raids in order to boost the prestige and productivity of relatively small family units or to fill the ranks of royal retainers. It was still slavery; it was still bad, but wasn't such an integral driver of the economy until the trans-Atlantic slave trade made slaves such a lucrative commodity that coastal kingdoms in Africa began focusing on large-scale slave acquisition. What dynamized the Western world was the sugar trade, which led to the slave trade, as well as the gold and silver mines of South America. Later, coffee, cotton and tobacco (all slave-based industries) sustained the Atlantic trade network. The skirmishes fought to obtain the fruits of these developments as well as the wars related to the Reformation, accelerated the military technology of the West. Agriculture in Africa and South Asia was performed by local farmers who, at least in good years, reaped the benefits of their own labor. The farmers may have been tied to the land, but they weren't imported in as labor for large scale plantations, at least not until Western colonialism brought those practices. So while these other civilizations were built with slavery, slavery was a much lesser factor because they never developed slave-dependent industrial agriculture to the degree that they did in the imperial periphery of the West. Eventually a sector of the slave-owner population in the New World began to more resemble that of the old. In North America in the nineteenth century most slave owners owned one or two slaves who were more-or-less considered part of the family. However most slaves were still owned by a small group of plantation owners and considered more like faceless planting and harvesting tools. The former group generally fared better than the latter, but they were still owned and had no recognized rights or control over their future or that of their spouses or children.
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  37.  @mogznwaz  There is truth in your reaction. Of course technology is blind and unfeeling. The benefits of technology are not bequeathed by technology itself, but by those who control it. The descendants of slaves, as well as the descendants of communities of colonial oppression, have obviously benefitted less from these technologies than others, but they still have benefitted to some extent. The real benefits that these groups have realized compared to others have come from their political allies and from themselves once allowed into political life, though it's been a constant struggle and I would argue that the struggle continues.
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  38.  @meganh9460  Oh there's probably the odd booster here or there. It's nothing like the western insistence on liberal democracy that borders on political evangelism though. I don't know the tone of your quote, but I don't see it as necessarily insistent.
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  39.  @dixonpinfold2582  "I can't tell which of my posts you meant." I think your prudence and patience argument is a good one. I think you can tell by my posts that I'm a sinophile but I'm not too starry-eyed in that respect. I know that China is perfectly willing to flex if it thinks that it's in their interests and as it becomes stronger and more influential it will flex more and more as it pushes back against the aspects of the current world order that it finds disagreeable. I still have hope that this won't lead to a terrible global conflict but rather to concert of great powers including Europe, Russia and Persia that can work together to keep the world relatively peaceful so we can all hold hands and sing kumbaya. I also respect how well thought out your response to Megan H was overall. I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the power of Chinese tycoons. One area I really think the Chinese have an advantage in is the relationships between government and business. My perception is that in China government tells business what to do. As an American I sometimes feel like business tells government what to do here. While both of these relationships can be problematic, at least the mission of government is to take care of the people. That being said, it is possible that the influence of wealthy Chinese individuals and families may eventually overcome the government. There is certainly precedent for this in Chinese imperial history.
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  40.  @MsBloodyFox  I think your view of modern China is off the mark. I've been there a few a times and I don't think it's nearly as repressive there as you're making it out to be.
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  41.  @MsBloodyFox  No, the Great Firewall of China is very real. I don't know anyone that claims that it is a myth. But it's also kind of voluntary. From what I understand, it's easy to scale and there is no real consequence for doing so. What the Great Firewall accomplishes is that it keeps information that the government distrusts out of view of Chinese citizens who don't care enough to take their research to the next level. If you're a huge free speech advocate, as I suspect you are, then this will be highly disagreeable to you. I get that. But frankly the unregulated information that has so poisoned the environment here in the west is only tolerable to the extent that it is Constitutionally protected and may be more dangerous to reign in than to allow because of the consequences of disregarding such a foundational piece of our legal and popular identity.
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  42.  @zantecarroll4448  I think you are misunderstanding my point. I have no doubt that the likelihood of a woman getting raped is higher, and probably considerably higher, than the odds of a man getting falsely accused of it. I'm not saying or suggesting that it's worse for men. What I am suggesting is that the possibility of being accused exists, however remotely, and it is terrifying. I think that women's fears regarding rape are more justified than men's fears regarding false accusation, but the fear is real and, if it did occur, then the perceived consequences are life-ruining. I am confident that you are correct that women that accuse their rapist, especially if their rapist is influential, face a real potential of debilitating loss of reputation. I totally sympathize with that, but there are men out there that don't (and some women who fear for the reputations of the men in their lives as well) because of fears like the one I've been discussing in this thread. My argument has never been that men have a more difficult situation than women. My point is that fear of false accusation by men is real, and many, if not most, if not all, men have that fear. The reason I started this thread is because I see a tendency among advocates in this field to dismiss this fear and to hold it against us. This is not without reason. Social interaction plays a huge role in professional opportunity and when women don't have access to influential men because some of those men are afraid to be alone with them, that is a problem. But that problem doesn't make the fear unreasonable. The fear is real and it's compounded every time a rape or harassment allegation becomes known that could conceivably be false. For men, whose only measure of success is career-wise (which is the case for men), the loss of trust that an allegation of sexual misconduct brings is frightening and eliminating that possibility by avoiding potentially compromising circumstances is logical and frankly advisable. This is a man's perspective that I feel tends to be overlooked and dismissed in this argument. I am not trying to minimize the concerns that women have of dealing with sexual harassment and the possibility of sexual assault. I'm not saying that the challenges are equal. I marvel at what women overcome and I agree that the problems we have in our society that hurt women physically, reputationally, and emotionally and the tendency to blow them off need to be recognized and addressed. I feel strongly that men, especially those in positions of power, have been too unsympathetic to the concerns of women in the past (and to some degree in the present), but I think that right now most women, or at least the more vocal advocates of women's rights, are too unsympathetic towards this particular concern of men.
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  43.  @zantecarroll4448  Well, I don't think I want to go back to the caves but it goes to show that everyone knows something worth learning. I hope your book does well.
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  44.  @zantecarroll4448  Yeah, no kidding.
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  45. @hjki hd While I understand your frustrations with the process, I think you are underestimating the difficulties women have attracting the men that they desire. Looking pretty, (the female dating equivalent of being rich), is not enough for most guys, especially guys who are worth having a relationship with. Kindness, intelligence, social awareness, and class are all key features of attractiveness that have to accompany beauty in order to date successfully, and some of these traits require a lot of work and maintenance, including beauty. As a man myself, I find approaching women to be prohibitively terrifying. Women, on the other hand, have the problem of being expected to wait until they are approached. So they have to figure out how to attract the guy they're interested in without attracting the guy they're not interested in. It's a bit like threading a needle. And if the guy they are interested in is someone like me, then everybody's frustrated. Lastly I'd say, don't underestimate the challenge of being pretty. While many women are natural beauties, there are many more who can only pull it off with a lot of hard work. On top of that there are a substantial number of women who cannot "look pretty" no matter what they do and they are just as frustrated with the dating scene as you and the incels are. Time generally works in a man's favor. As you get older you tend to become more financially stable, you learn how to better interact with people, you start bathing more and you start wearing higher quality clothes that don't scream "hipster". For women that "looking pretty" thing gets harder and harder to replicate. So while in the early twenties it might indeed be easier for pretty women, by your mid-thirties it's pretty easy for a stable guy so long as he's not fixated on youthful beauty, or deathly afraid of asking.
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  46.  @ActiveAussie2024  Not all evidence is conclusive or even accurate. Anything that suggests, accurately or not, that an event happened or didn't happen is evidence. Shoddy evidence can and should be dismissed. Unsupported, or insufficiently supported evidence, should not be relied on to the point of conviction, but it is still evidence. I'm sorry about your experience. Taking you at your word—I'm glad you were able to extricate yourself from that situation.
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  47.  @ActiveAussie2024  Nobody is entitled to anybody. It's all about attraction, and it sucks, but that's life.
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  48. The most common debate tactic.
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  49.  Mahesh Shende  As an American I'd be shocked if China started taking over my territory. That's not to say it couldn't happen, but I probably wouldn't see it coming. I'm not completely insensitive to the plight of people over whom empires encroach especially those who live through the process, but historically people have had more peaceful, comfortable and prosperous lives within the fold of powerful empires than they have outside of them. That's not to say there haven't been some examples of terrible treatment of groups of people within empires, but it's usually those on the outside who really suffer.
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  50.  @aksbeixhev  China's relationship with the Uighurs varies from Uighur to Uighur, and frankly I have some concerns on that point. China is hostile to Falun Gong as it should be considering that Falun Gong is actively trying to destroy the current Chinese government. China is not kind to human rights activists, nor are human rights advocates kind to China. What I've heard of organ harvesting has been from the mouth of Falun Gong. I know China used to use the organs of executed criminals for transplants but I don't think that is the case anymore. And while I strongly suspect that there were incidences of Falun Gong members dying in custody early in the conflict at the hands of overzealous local officials it is my understanding that it was never official policy to kill them, and I don't believe there has been a credible accusation of such for a very long time. As for Tienanmen Square, that was over thirty years ago. An awful lot has changed since then. China is authoritarian and it is Orwellian to the extant that party members are frequently given nearly impossible tasks in order to maintain their standing within the party. This hypercompetition leads to exceptionally talented leaders, but it also can lead to corruption and to humiliation of those caught being corrupt. It has led to incredible improvements in the lives of average Chinese however, the vast majority of whom trust their government and have no desire to change the system.
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