Youtube comments of M0ebius (@M0ebius).
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As a 40 year old father of three I will say this: what Alexander is experiencing is real, but it’s also just a phase given that he just had a daughter. Male testosterone already naturally decline with age, but particularly around the time when you have young children your T-levels become especially suppressed. Evolutionarily this makes perfect sense — you take less risks, your sex drive is lowered and therefore you are less likely to leave and more likely to stick around, your feminine nurturing qualities start coming through, so on and so forth. You get more comfortable, more pudgy, more soft, have less sexual desires, so on.
However around the time that my youngest daughter was 4-5ish and my wife and I were done having kids, and coinciding with the pandemic quarantines making health a priority and I began eating clean, I can feel my T-level return with a vengeance. I had to urge to lift heavy again, to compete in pickup games and in rec leagues against other men again, my mind became more focused, my head clear, and my sex drive went through the roof. It’s obviously not as strong as when I was 25, but stronger than it had ever been while my children were toddlers. And with the sex drive also came viewing other women as potential sexual partners again, which ebbs and flows and I deal with it through the occasional porn when the urge is particularly strong.
And it’s not just what’s happening internally but also externally to my environment. I started getting alot of female attention again, and have younger women approaching me in public (which used to happen frequently in my 20s but much less so in my 30s). It’s like women can smell it on you when your biochemistry is back on point.
Most importantly though, seeing my changes lit a fire under my wife’s ass and now she is in better shape than she has been since before we got married, initiates sex constantly, and is always vigorous and enthusiastic in bed. It really made me realize how much I’ve taken my masculinity for granted back when it was just overflowing, and I’m looking forward to synthesizing it with things I’ve learned while raising children and through life experiences in general, and hopefully someday I can distill it into actionable wisdom I can pass on to my son.
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Other than skin tone, which is probably a product of culture, everything else is basically universal across cultures. Slim waist, wide hips, straight shoulders, clear smooth skin, small symmetrical face, big eyes, small nose, etc etc. Everything that makes you look young, healthy, and fertile.
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flamefilmpro Is it though? There are tons of studies on the universality of attractiveness based on evolutionary biology. For women for instance, qualities that indicates health, youthfulness, and fertility, are universally considered attractive. Things like clear skin, hip-waist ratio, symmetry, proportionally bigger eyes, small chin, so on and so forth.
There are outliers of course, so I am generalizing.
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I lifted when I was younger just to gain bulk. But in terms of full body control and mind-muscle connection I recommend calisthenics, supplemented by yoga and kettlebells/sandbags work. In terms of sports, I think basketball is a great choice combining many movement patterns with hand-eye coordination, footwork, rhythm, and timing, as well as being physical yet not overly rough. I also really like ultimate frisbee for working on sprints, jumping, coordination, and timing, but it’s a much less popular sport. As far as martial arts goes, I think a good starting point would be a grappling arts such as jiujitsu/judo/wrestling, coupled with a striking art like boxing/kickboxing/muythai.
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Avison Charm That's kind of a disingeneous response. No matter where you are from, marriage represents a far greater investment of resources, be it social, financial, or temporal, than casual dating.
It's not just that you can theoretically back out of it, it's the potential ramifications and the associated costs.
Anyway the point of casual dating is that it's voluntary. And if arranged marriages are too, then great. But if it's based on force, coercion, or societal pressure, then it becomes a problem.
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It isn't a paradox that men are choosers. East or West, women will only marry up. They want men that are taller, wealthier, and more educated than themselves. And in a society that is increasingly equal in terms of gender, it ends up being all the women chasing the top 5-10% of men who are tall, handsome, and well-to-do.
Bottomline is women, and particularly Chinese women, are trapped by their own inherent sexism. Personally I think if the goal is just to get the women married, a simple solution would be to bring back polygamy. As long as it is voluntary and consentual, I don't see what the problem is.
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PuzzleMessage The West literally refers to Europe. Western culture = European culture. Europeans = Caucasian = White. Regardless, my point was that not all "Western" cultures are the same, specifically in the context of gender roles. Now give me a convincing counter-argument on why I am wrong rather than just saying so.
Now regarding your revised point. I don't want to simply say that you are generalizing, because any discussion regarding culture requires some degree of generalization. But would it be fair to say that while not rare for women to make the first move, European women GENERALLY prefer to be approached men? Do European women GENERALLY prefer assertive, well-to-do, high status men? And European men, do they GENERALLY prefer to be the primary breadwinner? I mean, just generally speaking.
As for personal experience, I don't know if you have ever lived in or visited in Asia. Myself, I've not been in Japan. But I have been approached by women in Korea, China, Taiwan, as well as America. And by men too on a couple of occasions. It's not like it doesn't happen. And men that are intimidated by strong women exist in all cultures. So to say shit like "Japan feels 20-30 years behind the West" is, again, condescending.
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@cakeyummy2401 At the founding the US population was 2.5 million in 1776, and in 1790 the US had about 700,000 slaves. So I would guesstimate that about 1 in 4 person in the US was a slave at the time of founding. So yes, the US economy was propped up on the backs of slaves at that time. The slavery driven economy persisted until industrialization, when machines became more economical than hereditary slavery.
Did other cultures have slaves? Absolutely. But I would say that slaves existing doesn’t necessarily make for a slavery driven society. The worse slavers in recorded history were probably the ancient Greeks, where over 50% of the population were slaves. For Spartans in particular it was something like 3 to 1 slaves to citizens. The next worse were the Romans. Other old civilizations such as the Egyptian, the Chinese, or the Persians had slaves, but their economy were driven almost entirely by the peasant class. India is kinda of a grey area since they had a hereditary caste system. Ancient China did have a slavery culture from what we know today, but it was about 1500-2000 years and a dozen dynasties ago.
Anyway whether other cultures have slaves doesn’t really change my original statement. In terms of small pox, it was well documented that the US government and the European settlers before them systematically gave the natives small pox tainted goods. And following the decimation of the native population the US systematically exterminated or forcibly removed the native population during westward expansion. So yes you’re right it wasn’t one big genocide, but I would argue it was a series of small ones over the course of a century. Like I said, you can argue the nuances, but it isn’t a stretch to say that this is the darkside of how the US was founded.
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Alex M Your question sort of presents a false dichotomy. Everything matters, but to different degrees to different people at different stages of their life. For me personally, my wife’s vagina feels different after three kids and nearing 40. But on the other hand she’s loyal, beautiful, a great mother, good with money, and she stays fit and maintain a tight body. Most importantly she gets me and is my best friend, partner, and confidant. So yeah it’s too bad she’s not as tight and wet as she once was, but she makes it up in other ways, including in bed. Now, if I was 60+, I’d imagine it’d probably wouldn’t matter that much anymore, And when I’m 80, probaby not at all. So like I said it depends.
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@bunnyboo6295 My point isn’t that lust and love are the same. It’s that they are not mutually exclusive, and are in fact intertwined and both are needed in a healthy relationship. I love my wife, but I also lust after her body, and the two aspects create a positive feedback loop that strengths our relationship. Can you have one without the other? I suppose, but it is likely very rare in a long term relationship. If for whatever reason I no longer find my wife sexually attractive what so ever, like for instance if she willfully let herself go and gained 50lbs or whatever, I would probably still love her in some ways but it would certainly severely damage the relationship. It may even become irreparable at some point if it seems like a life long issue.
As an aside, I don’t personally think that love blinds you to problems. It just gives you an incentive to work through/accept/compromise despite those problems. Take for instance the above example of the wife gaining a massive amount of weight — with love instead of dumping her or cheating, the husband may instead choose to be supportive and exercise together and cook healthy meals, ideally nursing her back to a healthy weight. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem, or that the husband is somehow blind to the wife’s ballooning weight.
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Rex Nain 1. The South Korean government owns large shares of Samsung -- it operates very much like a state-owned company. 2. The US economy has grown none-stop since WW2. Is that a miracle or just that the rules are different when you are the largest economy in the world? Well China is the second largest, so again, time will tell. 3. No, exchanging natural resources for money won't last forever. But the West has transitioned out of that phase, so why can't China? And finally, you are equivocating people in the three, five, ten million dollar range, which can be done simply by running small factories, owning franchises, and trading stocks and real estates, with the political elites that get fat off of the state-run companies. Yes, once you've made it, you need to have political connections. But you don't necessarily need connections to make it in the first place. Look at the top 10 richest Chinese and you'll see that about half of them are self-made.
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Skylar Knight Dude I am not equating those things to slavery so don’t make a strawman out of it. The guy said Asians were never harrassed or stolen from, and I am merely showing that he was wrong.
Indentured servitude doesn’t work the same way with Asians as with Whites crossing the Atlantic. The Asian coolies were what the Whites used to replace slaves after slavery was outlawed in Britain. Many were given misleading contracts, kidnapped, or captured, then traded like slaves.
In the case of Japanese internment, having everything you own from land to property stolen from you by the government, only to get $20K if you happen to survive 60 years later, is a big part of the reason why I think reparations don’t work. And at least in those cases you are talking about compensating people who were directly involved. In the case of slavery, we are talking about reparation for something that ended 150 years ago where neither the victims nor the perpetrators are alive, and paid for by many whose ancestors weren’t even here during that time! It makes zero sense to me.
And finally, I’m not sure how you quantify how positive or negative a race’s stereotypes are in its totality through history. But if we are just basing it on feelings, then I would guess it’s the fact that Asians began to become more educated and wealthier than Whites through visible hard work that led to the perception change.
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Daniel Bollich If we are being honest, the optimal mating strategy for women is to secure a monogamous relationship with a reliable provider while simultaneously acquiring the highest quality sperm she can, after adjusting for the risk of disclosure. There aren’t much data on this strategy for obvious reasons, but from what is available it is probably practiced far more than we think.
As far as Peterson’s point on the actual podcast, I honestly think he overestimates how much women value an intimate one-on-one relationship, particularly if the man is average to below average, if (young) children aren’t involved, if the woman is attractive, and/or if the woman has an income near or over the man’s. It’s obvious that he is approaching the issue from a traditional male-dominated perspective, but in the context of a modern American society where women are better educated than men and rapidly filling many high-end jobs, some of his underlying assumptions seem out-dated.
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@allrounderal2958 Just to clarify, you are wrong. Non-hispanic white in America is like 60.7%, and America is projected to be a majority minority (less than 50% white) nation within 20 years. Meanwhile Singapore is 75% Chinese descent, Malaysia is 69% Malay. I’m less familiar with Indonesia, although I have visited there and while they certainly seem culturally diverse, ethnically they seem to be primarily genetically adjacent versions of South East Asians, mixed with East Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islanders. So no, they are NOT as diverse as the US both in terms of culture nor in terms of genetics. In terms of politics I have no idea, but that isn’t what I was discussing.
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Eagle 367 It’s hard to have a honest discussion when you keep moving the goal post. And taking your own arguments to its logical conclusion is not a strawman. You said criminal history shouldn’t be a barrier to jobs, and a sex offender has a criminal history and childcare is a job. Are you now backtracking and saying that a sex offender is not included in your ideal world? If so why? And should that be applied to other crimes too?
Also I AM addressing the specifics of your argument, which is the enforcement mechanism. In your post you simultaenously said the government CAN enforce no discrimination, and a couple of sentences later you said the government doesn’t have to enforce anything. Well which is it? It’s not me gaslighting you, you’re contradicting yourself all on your own. I mean, what are you saying? That people should just think the right thing to begin with so the government wouldn’t have to force them to comply? Like I said, your ideal world sounds either like a hellish authoritarian state or some sort of magical fairy land.
You also cannot seem to grasp that YOUR ideal world is not MY ideal world. I want business owners to choose who they want to work in their business, I want workers to be able to choose whether they want to work for that business, and I want consumers to judge for themselves whether they like the product and the business model. I want people to make their own choices, and then to live with those choices. Allowing the government more and more power to dictate how we make choices and decide which choices are the politically correct choices seem far more insane to me. Instead of forcing people to accept accents (which doesn’t actually make them accept accents, you’re just coercing them), I want the person with the accent to have the choice to either work elsewhere or get a phonics coach, and let the consumer to have the choice on whether the care about that or not. By the way, this is where the part where having guaranteed food/shelter/healthcare/education comes in — you are not beholden to a job for survival, and therefore you can choose to learn new skills, such as how to fix your accent, or learn another skill that doesn’t care about accents. I think there is a vast space between dystopian corporate indentured servitude and full-on communist commune, and it isn’t a binary choice.
Anyway I think I’ve said all that I want to say. We all want a better world, that’s not the childish part. We just have different ideas on what that looks like and how to get there. Just remember that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.
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Eagle 367 Besides calling something stupid, do you actually have anything akin to logic to back up your reasonings? And the fact that you’ve dodged this question four times now tells me you have no actual answer or even a coherent idea. I’ll give you one more chance — if not force via government, what is your proposed mechanism for ensuring compliance? It’s not by force, it’s not by magic, so WHAT IS IT?
Also you seem to think companies like Amazon or Google just popped into existence as an unstoppable monopoly, and therefore have always had an unlimited amount of money. I’m sorry but I’m old enough to remember when Amazon was just an online bookstore and there were a dozen search engines bigger than Google. You think Steve Jobs had billions of dollars when he started Apple in his garage? Never had to take out loans or court investors? Like I said you clearly have no understanding of entreneurship what-so-ever even as you criticize it from a place of utter ignorance. No, I don’t think monopolies are good for competition, but that is an issue with the rules we set up, not with the players.
Not all entrepreneurs are motivated by profit? Are you kidding me? Entrepreneurship BY DEFINITION is an activity motivated by profit. Hell, what is the point of even a co-op? That’s right, profit. Like I said, the more you talk the more you expose yourself as a child with no clue what he’s talking about. Sorry, being the captain of the hopscotch team or whatever does not make you an actual leader, responsible for the well-being or livelihood of people besides yourself. You can either get off your ass and get some real world experience or you can continue to sit on your couch and indulge in these virtue signalling masturbatory fantasies. I consider myself a left-leaning progressive in terms of policies I support, but people like you are exactly the reason why I loathe to admit it.
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@ Modern Chinese and ancient Chinese arent identical, but there is an unbroken and traceable line in terms of linguistic evolution in both spoken and written forms. French might be more similar to Vulgar Latin, but English has a separate origin that just happens to have a large amount of loan words. It is no more of Roman descent than Korean or Japanese is to Chinese. And neither the French nor the English are descendants of the Roman people.
Chinese religious practices were never organized the way the Abrahamic religions were, but various forms of its practice persists strongly into modern day, particularly traditions like ancestral worship. A huge number of temples dedicated to various Chinese dieties remain across the sinosphere.
Christianity was created in Judea, not Rome, and it was not the dominant religion until roughly a thousand years into the founding of Rome. The rule of law goes back much further to at least several centuries before the Code of Hammurabi. You can make an argument for “Roman style” laws, or for that matter “Roman style” system of government, but it would be an arbitrary distinction. Furthermore all that says is cherry picked ideas were drawn from earlier civilizations, and does not make the EU a direct descendant of Rome (whether culturally or genetically).
Finally it’s true that the Chinese civilization is the result of a multi-millennial process in assimilation, which is in fact built into the Chinese identity itself from its inception. I’m not sure why that makes it less legitimate, as it was always outside populations joining the Chinese identity and not the other way around, even for groups such as the Mongols and the Manchus.
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@ Firstly, English is a Germanic language and not a Romance language. That is a fact, do not bullshit. Yes it has a ton of loan words, but its no more Roman than Japanese is Chinese. Even for actual Romantic languages, they are entirely distinct languages from Latin as well as from each other. When it comes to Chinese, modern speakers can still easily read and understand calligraphy and poetry from the Han dynasty. And before that the scripts might have some differences but the contents of historic texts are identical and still read today. This is not at all the same as how in the west even Medieval Europeans were piecing together what Rome was like from bits and pieces of surviving text, oftentimes from Arabic or even Irish sources.
It also means very little that Judea was a Roman province, given that the overwhelming majority of people in Roman provinces were not Roman citizens and had no rights. All it means to be a Roman province was that you were a conquered people and peregrini in your own land.
From Constantine’s conversion to Christianity to the sack of Rome it was only about 150 years, which to me marks the end of the classical Roman period. I wont argue whether the Byzantine Empire was truly Rome (IMO it technically is), but it was not the Roman Empire as we know it.
I dont disagree about the influence of “Roman style” law or Roman influence in general on Europe and by extension modernity. My point is that in no way makes those who practice it Roman, anymore than the Chinese taking up communism somehow make them Russian. The Chinese on the other hand are an unbroken line of succession both culturally and genetically, thus not at all analogous.
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Prince Revolver Yes I want emotional support from my father, but in the sense of approval/acceptance/being proud of me, not in the sense of consoling me. My dad is an alpha self-made multi-millionaire type who at one point was also the mayor of my town. I do okay for myself but nowhere near the standards he sets, and he can be really toxic about it sometimes. He was also never around much when I was growing up, was sometimes mentally abusive when he was around, and sent me away for schooling when I was 12.
That said I’m at the point in my life where I’m raising my own children, and I can see from my father’s perspective what he was trying to do and why he was the way he was. He grew up with a chip on his shoulder in a hyper-competitive household with a manipulative mother that plays the siblings against each other, has an obsessive need prove himself and dominate people and situations, and is incapable of finding the off-switch. I wasted a long time in my teens and early 20s trying to be the opposite of what he is, but after I met my wife I started embracing his qualities that made himself success within myself, and try to ignore the toxic parts and learn from him as much as I can.
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I have an undergrad degree in Economics and am now 39. To be honest it hasn’t really helped me much in life directly, but it did change the way I fundamentally view the world, as well as gave me a basis for further educating myself as I have gotten older. I would say that unless you are planning to go all the way as an economist, the degree itself probably isn’t worth it on its own, but it is very valuable to have as a double major or a minor.
As for some further context, I worked as a stockbroker and almost nothing I learned in school applied to the real world market, hated the job but learned a ton about trading on my own time, turned a 60k account into 500k between 2007-2008, lost about half during the following crash, quit the job and started my own business with that money, and have been investing in stocks/funds/realestate on the side since then. I would say I did okay and currently have a mid 7-digit networth, and most of what is useful I’ve learned on my own. However my econ degree as well as all the 100 level courses I took in bio/chem/compsci/philosophy/polisci/psychology did gave me a foundation for doing my own research across different fields and indirectly helped me in life.
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Halcyon When we are talking about generational attitudes/values, it’s not just about whether the person in question came from impoverished backgrounds, but also where his parents came from, and where his grandparents came from. Hong Kong has tons of people that snuck in from China during and after the cultural revolution, and even the people that pre-date often worked menial jobs growing up during the 60s and the 70s.
Also, I’m sure alot of people around the world wish Americans would do more to stop their government from perpetual war, drone strikes, the killing of civilians, selling weapons to enable genocides, propping up dictators, and funding coups around the world too. But it is what it is and most people are generally more concerned with their day-to-day lives.
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As an Asian 95% of the time when I encounter racists, the accent is what they use to make their racist attacks. That’s why that accent stuff is offensive AF — because we deal with that shit constantly in real life. Italians and blacks aren’t being attacked on accents all the freaking time, so it’s not the same, especially when you’re quoting Rocky and Denzel.
And this is also why I’ve gotten this crap from white people, from black people, but never from Hispanic people. They get how annoying the accent shit is, or being told to speak English or go back to your own country, even when you are born in the USA and speak perfect English.
So there if you’re asking why this accent is specifically offensive, this is why. If an Asian comedian is using it to be self-deprecating, fine. If a white guy is just tossing out casual racism, I really don’t give AF if it was hateful or not it pisses me off.
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@shill1444 Again, the difference is the Asian accent (and Asian language sounds etc) is like the go-to tool that actual racists use to put down, belittle, and otherize Asians in the US. Virtually every Asian I know, certainly most Asian dudes, have encountered this one way or another at some point in their lives. That’s why that shit is offensive and pisses me off, and I wish more of my fellow Asians would vocally make a stand on.
Ancient Chinese secret on the other hand? That’s pretty obviously neutral and not something that is constantly used to put down Asians. This sports announcer on the other hand? There is no other way to interpret what he said other than as a racist joke meant to belittle and put-down Shohei Ohtani, who is literally the face of MLB right now having arguably the best season of any player EVER in baseball history.
Now a bunch of white ppl in the comments seem to think that since it’s not outright hostile and hateful, we should let it go. But the thing is anti-Asian racism comes in many forms, and marginalization and otherization is probably the biggest problem we face aside from outright violence. And this incident is precisely that. And it rubs me the wrong way how a bunch of supposedly progressive white people are pre-emptively giving the guy a pass seemingly with no clue on the Asian American perspective. Like I mean, would this audience react the same way if the announcer made a “not hateful” joke about, I dunno, ghetto culture or something directed at a black player? I bet we wouldn’t even be having a debate on whether the guy should be fired.
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@Joser167 Well fundamentally this wave is driven by an enormous amount of cheap money being pumped into the system, and naturally money seeks returns. At the start it was driven by stocks directly related to the pandemic, and then the money moved into companies that are unaffected or indirectly benefitting from the pandemic. And then China basically fully recovered (people can believe what they want about China but money doesn’t lie) and the hot money spilled into shipping, followed by raw materials (steel, copper, aluminum, etc). Now my thinking is that once raw material prices begin to rise, that’s when the average consumer will start to feel the burden of this historic asset inflation. The US in particular printed more money than just about anyone else, and when you increase the supply of money it is inevitably going to lead to a devaluation of the US dollar (which we are already seeing), which in turn will drive money into areas of the global economy where they hedge against this devaluation.
So the question is, where will this money go? In my opinion gold is the traditional commodity for hedging against currency devaluation, and bitcoin and other crypto currencies are the new school commodities that can potentially be used for this purpose. But the size of those markets aren’t enough to handle the amount of money that’s out there. So that sort of leaves just the emerging markets. And of all the emerging markets, who is big enough to absorb that amount of cash and also has a domestic economy robust enough to absorb a potential global downturn, has a government that is at least aware enough of the fact that we are all on top of an enormous bubble, and also has a stock market that is not currently at the historic heights that the western markets currently sits? Well to me that only really leaves China, and by extension economies closely tied to China (ie places like Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore). So taking it one step at a time, right now I’m in the process of cleaning out my portfolio of most US stocks (which I think most of us can agree is completely detached from the real economy and propped up entirely by the fed), and moving it into gold, bitcoin, and China.
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@craigo2656 Economic/currency grift, weaponry proliferation, war mongering, nuclear arsenal, environmental destruction particularly emission on a per capita basis, corporate greed and runaway consumerism, neo-colonial resource extraction via military invasion and/or political destabilization... There are many reasons, and in aggregate I think America is objectively the most dangerous to the world at large.
But don’t get me wrong, I think many of the best things about our world also comes from America in terms of innovation and technology. I just think America is a double-edged sword and both actively doing and can potentially do the most harm. For instance for all the “expansionist China” talk that the western media continually pump out, China hasn’t invaded a single country since like the Qing dynasty. Meanwhile US has invaded multiple countries and killed the most civilians by far than anyone else while selling weapons to every corner of the globe. Now, imagine that you aren’t a white person living in the west with preconceived ideas about American righteousness and just look at it as if you are an alien from space observing Earth. Who do you think is the most dangerous?
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priqq ** I buy and sell recyclables. This outbreak effects my business directly so I’ve been tracking it closely. And yes I agree there are propaganda on both sides. I looked into the US military claims, and I think while unsubstantiated, I don’t think it’s completely baseless, BUT it is definitely being used as propaganda within China. Ultimately I don’t think it really matters where the pandemic start, more how you deal with it, and objectively speaking I think China did well given the resources they had, when contrasted with how Europe and the US has dealt with the issue. There is a propaganda war happening that’s layered on top of the pandemic crisis right now, so generally I cross-reference news from different national outlets before I decide how factual it is.
I think it would totally make sense for western companies to diversify out of China, but frankly they’ve already been doing during the last decade. But moving from China to Vietnam or Cambodia doesn’t solve the fundamental problem this crisis exposed, which is that some level of domestic manufacturing is needed for a country to be truly resilient in the current situation.
I also think it makes no sense to blame China for a pandemic outbreak, since pandemics can start anywhere — for instance H1N1 began in America, and we were just lucky it wasn’t as severe as Covid19. China’s response actually bought the world about a month to prepare (mid January to late Februaray), it’s just that most countries squandered that time and instead thought that it was just a Chinese/Asian problem. The places that actually had plans in place and took it seriously, such as Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, actually had this thing under control at a much faster rate and with minimal damage. So in a sense I actually somewhat agree with Chinese netizens that there is definitely a double standard at play here for the blame game. For instance in 2008 when US basically started a global financial crisis by exporting debt all around the world, the G20 nations worked together to clean up the mess that Americans made — and that was a man-made crisis with a clear culprit with malicious intent. Was America or even just Wall Street asked to pay the price? Nope, they got a giant bailout, no one went to jail, and life went on. Which brings us back to why China is so proactively trying to help the western countries (particularly the worst hit European countries) with dealing with this pandemic, and also why the US is desperately trying to smear China because America has nothing else to offer its allies. It’s a world wide war of public opinion, and one that China can actually score serious points in backed by their manufacturing capacity at a time where the US economy is melting down.
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destrukt ix I don’t think open war is an option in the nuclear age. If anything, this is the beginning of a second Cold War, except this time China has a much bigger stack to play with than USSR.
And you’re right, most people don’t trust China. But if you think from an international perspective, most countries don’t trust the US either, especially with Trump breaking deals and flip flopping on a daily basis. And again trying to think as an objective outside observer, it would be hypocritical of the US to criticize China for monitoring its citizens or human rights violations considering we already know what the NSA is doing to the American public and the ICE is doing to refugees. You may have your own opinions on those subjects, but consider how it looks to other countries. In a Cold War framework, the US need allies, and right now our foreign policies is alienating a lot of them.
Finally, I think ultimately the path that the US must take is to strengthen ourselves from within, first and foremost. I do worry about Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy and consider that his biggest weakness, but I totally agree with him that we need healthcare for all Americans, reform our education system, and make corporations pay their fair share and redistribute that toward the middle class. And most importantly I think the US need to cut corporate interests out of our political system, so that our laws actually reflect the will of the people.
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destrukt ix It is always nice to hear other people’s opinions. I live and work overseas and it has been really interesting, enlightening even, to hear what the educated people in other countries think about US-China relations, among other things. In the US it’s very easy to fall into a America-centric mindset because our media doesn’t really cover international news much, almost never in-depth, and often from a one-sided perspective.
I must say though, there is really no such thing as neutral countries. Everyone is thinking about what’s best for themselves, as they should be. It’s pretty clear to me that unlike the US whose policies change every 4-8 years, China is playing the long game following a carefully thought out plan. While the West is pointing out the obvious flaws in their system, many developing nations are admiring the fact that they’ve brought over a billion people out of poverty in a single generation and looking at them as a better model for moving forward than the Western model. China in turn is heavily investing into these emerging economies, loaning large sums of money to them, building their infrastructure, connecting their roads and rails, and cultivating their market. Later on these investments will likely pay huge dividends when Chinese firms move in to serve those consumers.
The US very well could be doing the same thing in the Americas, but instead we are busy trying to keep the brown people out. What if instead of building a wall we invested into Mexico, take advantage of the cheap labor right next door? Or what if we focus our resources internally, connect our country with high speed rails, allowing goods and people to move where the job is, live where housing is cheap, and cut down on communte times? These are all things that China is doing, and they might be behind the US right now, but if they got where they are in 30 years, what will happen in another 30?
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Sometimes I honestly think it's just human nature to funnel resources to the strong and away from the weak. Certainly from an evolutionary standpoint it makes sense, culling the weak and all that. The disconnect is that once upon a time strength was defined by things like physicality, mental acuity, sociability, and attractiveness, and resources defined by food, shelter, and reproduction, nowadays both things are defined by money.
So having money makes you strong, and in return the society funnels more money to you. Round and round we go until we realize our collective folly and reset the system, usually via violent means.
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Adder. I think you are the one missing the point, as you are posing what amounts to a strawman argument. The problem with AA is it specifically targets RACE, thereby taking spots away from more qualified applicants based solely on their appearance. Legacies and wealthy donors can be of any race, and they take away spots from the entire pool, whether you are black, white, Asian, or Latino.
As a tangent, legacies and donors contribute arguably far more financially to most elite schools than student athletes, depending on the school and the sport. Those money in turn benefits the student body equally, irregardless of race.
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collegekrebs It’s weird responding to you because you’re not the OP and you just dropped a page of text on what you think I meant and what you think the OP meant. I’m not going to say that you are in turn strawmanning me because you are extrapolating from two sentences, so I will instead expound on my meaning.
My argument, simply put, is that the root cause of the education disparity is cultural rather than racial, as seen by the sucess of African immigrants and to a certain extent Asian Americans. This is not to say that systemic racism doesn’t exist, but simply that it can be systematically overcome via a shift in cultural emphasis, ideally starting from the foundational family unit. After all, this is a strategy that has been proven to work even for those that share the racial phenotypes of the disadvantaged minorities in the US.
Now what hasn’t been proven is whether affirmative action works at all. And part of the problem is that the intent and the objective target are both unclear, and the underlying assumptions are lacking empyrical backup and objective standards. It isn’t at all clear to me that the melanin in your skin necessarily dictate a different world view or life experience. There seems to be far more diversity between say the children of a Vietnamnese refugee and a Taiwanese engineer, than say the children of a Black American dentist and a White American insurance salesman. Yet when you use race as a crude tool to parse out how “diverse” a student body is, those not so subtle differences gets swept under the rug.
Now I understand that this isn’t exact what Harvard say their methods are, though this is how many Asian Americans perceive it to be, and certainly what the empyrical evidence seem to suggest. Since you seem so interested in representing what others mean, I will elucidate it for you here as to minimize time wasted talking past each other.
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Master Smith Right this is roughly how humans have been. I did some digging and even among hunter-gatherer societies it works out to roughly 80% of women being in monogamous relationships, which inversely means (I’m assuming) that 20% of remaining women are in polygamous relationships with dominant males (weird how the 80:20 ratios keep popping up).
What I find more interesting is where we’re heading. 1) It seems obvious to me that resources today are continually aggregating towards to top of the pyramid. 2) There is an increasing number of men that are becoming societally useless due to technological advancement (and thereby making them unattractive mating choices). 3) An increasing number of women are becoming high achievers both educationally and financially, and yet because of hypergamy instincts simply will not date down even if it means not reproducing at all. It seems completely unsustainable to me and must mean that we are in the midst of a transition period toward some sort of societal reorganization. The question is whether it will simply be a societal collapse followed by resource redistribution along the same old patterns, or if it will be something radically new, and how technology will play into what’s coming (specifically AI, robotics, and genetically engineering, but also things like longer life span, decreased aging, frozen eggs, artificial womb, designer babies, so on and so forth, as well as the accessibility of those technologies).
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u235u235u235 You keep saying its a CCP plot, but with little evidence to back it up. Yes China has its issues, I’m not defending that. But having actually been to China, it’s not anywhere close to being as tightly controlled as Westerners seem to believe. You are bringing up a slew of issues that has nothing to do with the topic on hand, and I don’t want the conversation to devolve into back-and-forth what aboutism. Suffice to say that I too wish China was more free, but they have very good reasons for protecting their domestic markets while they develop their infrastructure, and it’s tough to argue with their results.
I have family in Hong Kong, and you are absolutely wrong that they were another country pre-97. Almost all Hong Kong people consider themselves unequivocally Chinese, whether or not they take issues with the CCP. For generations they did not have democracy under British rule either, and whatever you may think of their current election system it is more than they’ve ever gotten from the Brits. Many of the protesters today are very young, but the older Hong Kong folks will remember similar protests against British rule. Except I guess since it was ruled bt a Western nation there was never any cries for HK freedom in international media.
Finally, we are already IN the Thycydides Trap. There’s a reason why anti-China sentiment didn’t become a thing until today when they’ve solidified themselves as the second largest economy in the world. Yes, the US is bigger and stronger both in terms of the military and economy. But consider that the US has had a 200 year head start and China went from a 3rd world country to Super Power in roughly three decades, if we are projecting the future one generation from now it’s natural for the US to feel threatened. And honestly if you know anything about the Cold War, there will not be an actual winner in the event of an open war with China, given that they are a nuclear power with mach 10 ICBMs that are virtually impossible to intercept with our current missile defense technology. It won’t be a war of occupation, it would be a war of mutual destruction. The correct path should be one of cooperation and mutual respect, and we are heading in the opposite direction right now.
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Eagle 367 Growing wealth and making society better are not mutually exclusive. That said, I don’t know why you seem to think it’s my job to dedicate my life to fixing the world. I enjoy helping people around me, family, friends, and neighbors. Beyond that, I’ll exercise my vote and maybe donate to a campaign or two, but that’s the extent of my interests. After all, there is more to life than politics.
And speaking of politics, I think we’d agree on many of the big policies, but we have some fundamental philosophical differences. Yes I want everyone to meet their basic needs, food/shelter/healthcare/education, and I would go beyond and say transportation and internet access too, and more distantly clean energy. I want the country to continuously raise its floor. Beyond that though, I’m not too interested in equity, since there is virtually an infinite number of vectors that differentiate one human from another, and I find arbitrarily picking certain traits to fix is not only pointless but counter-productive to the species as a whole, as it is often our struggles and shortcomings that breeds innovation and progress, let alone provide the motivation. I honestly think true equity would doom our race.
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Eagle 367 So I’m just going to ask very simply, what exactly is your enforcement mechanism if not force via government? Or do people magically stop being racist, sexist, agist, fatist, ablist, or whatever ist, because I dunno, magic? Because they work on totally non-communist co-ops?
Speaking of which, have you ever started a business? What is the role of an entrepreneur in that setup? I come up with the idea, develop the business plan, line up the funds, setup distribution, take on all the risks, and then I hand it all to my workers? Because as far as I can tell all the functional co-ops basically just buy an existing and already sustainable business from an OWNER who is retiring or whatever, then run it themselves. They do not create the actual business. If all companies are co-ops, there is no incentive for entrepreneurs to ever set up new businesses.
Everything you say just sound like the ravings of a child who has never done anything or built anything, and has never taken a leadership position or ran an operation ever in his life.
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@charlybone5219 I see. So what you’re saying is you don’t understand what liquid assets are. Liquid assets does not mean cash sitting in a bank. Yes cash is one form of liquid asset, but so is money market instruments and securities. The reason liquid assets are more important than say, the house you are living in, is because you can quickly take advantage of opportunities and rapidly expand your networth. For me personally, in 2007-2008 at 25 years old, I turned a 50k account into about 600k in under 8 months (and to be fair during the crash lost about 200k in three weeks). Then I spent some years using a divident investing strategy to accrue positive cashflow to supplement my income. Then this past year when I immediately realized the government is doing nothing about Covid I cashed out between February and March and started buying back in from April through May. Even being much more conservative now with a wife and three kids and not using leverages, I 2.5x my networth by December and then another 30% as of this year (was 50% but the market has been tanking). Meanwhile if you are paying down a house, your house might be worth a bit more, but you likely won’t enjoy any of it until maybe retirement or at least until your kids turn 18, since if you cash out you’d just have to buy another home at inflated prices. Of course if you own properties beyond your home, that’s a different story because then it would at least bring in positive cashflow, but I would still prefer liquid assets that I can easily manage and immediately convert to cash when things are not looking good.
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Angry Kittens lol okay buddy if you are Filipino I feel bad for you. The US never threatened the Phillippines with war? They already fought you and won in 1902 and owned you until 1946, killing hundreds of thousands and by some estimate up to a million Filipino civilians in the process. Colonialism may have supposedly ended, but remind me again how many US soldiers and weapons are in Phillippines right now? Meanwhile China is disputing what? Some unmanned islands and reefs in the sea? Talk about a false equivalence.
And yes I looked at the last decade for GDP, because the last decade is when China and Asia as a whole took off. The Phillippines had the same growth rate? Funnily enough, guess who the number one foreign investor and the number one export destination for the Phillippines is? Hint: it’s not the United States.
Does China have a poor record regarding human rights? Yes, absolutely. But I dont think it’s necessarily for me to list all civilians the US has killed world-wide post WW2, let alone the genocide and slavery that the nation is built on. No I’m not saying both sides are the same, but it’s not clear to me which side is worse. Even as we speak the US is providing the weapons used by the Saudis to perform genocide in Yemen, and running drone missions that kill hundreds of thousand civilians every year.
Finally, no, China cant do anything about Filipino corruption. No outside country can. That part you have to do for yourselves. Look bottom line is I wish Phillippines the best, and Im not advocating for you to bow to anyone. But outside of war, the only way to grow your country and improve your standard of living is through trade. Mao’s China was a very different country than today’s China, and one belt one road is nothing like Greater Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Right now there is only one country that is forcing everyone to choose sides, and it ain’t China. But do what you think is best for your country, because ultimately you’re the one that has to live in it.
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@kevinwijaya9613 I’m not sure you understand. Min is Fujian, and a majority of Taiwanese are descended from Southern Fujian. The people of Fujian are Han, and therefore most Taiwanese people are Han descendants. For our national census, we refer to all people of Chinese descent as Han (97%), followed by the indigenous people of Taiwan (2%), then by immigrants (<1%) that are mostly from South East Asia. Also all Taiwanese people speak mandarin as the primary language, and all our written text and primary education are in mandarin. The min dialect is the most commonly spoken dialect behind mandarin, followed by Hakka, then by various indigenous languages. My family pre-dates KMT by 2-3 generations and is also from Fujian, as is written on my ancestral shrine, along with some hakka and indigenous female ancestors and oddly one Dutch from the colonnial era.
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super duper what is there to deal with? What exactly is the end game condition that you are expecting? At this point China is a nuclear power, so open war is out of the question. They also have an enormous domestic market now and they are not reliant on the US to move their products. They are deeply integrated into Asia and Africa, and parts of South America, and have been investing into countries there for over two decades, that they are set on the export side.
That really just leaves Europe and the UK sphere as our only allies if we want to start shit with China, and the only thing the US can do is a trade war. And guess what? We already did that and nothing came out of it. Don’t forget China is a country that 30 years ago was still a third world backwater — their people have a far higher tolerance for pain than we do. Meanwhile all of our Western allies are completely reliant on Chinese manufacturing, and when we began the trade war we didn’t just do it against China, we did it against many countries including Europe. Judging from how UK basically ignored the American plead to ban Huawei and how closely tied London is with Hong Kong financially, and how China is strategically pumping all these resources into Europe for the viral outbreak while America does nothing, I would say support for an economic war against China from our allies is up in the air. After all it’s every country for themselves and what would they gain?
I wish it ain’t so but the US is rapidly losing its Superpower status. Obviously China has a long way to go to catch up, but they have a long term plan that they are systemically executing. Meanwhile America is a shit show with the country divided and the economy hollowed out and run by megacorps. One viral outbreak and all the fragility and brittleness of our system gets exposed. And it isn’t a foregone conclusion that the rest of the Western countries feel the same way about China as the US does, and almost certainly not at the level of leadership. Can the US nevertheless seriously damage China on our own? Yes, almost certainly, because whatever else happens the US is the most powerful country in himan history by far. But we can’t do it without enormous costs to ourselves, when the opportunity cost of such a conflict is taking those same resources and investing in our own people. Think about it — warring against a bunch of tribal people in Afganistan costs us a trillion dollars over 20 years. What would an economic war against the second largest economy in the world cost? Especially when there is a non-zero chance of a nuclear war?
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Maxime Pivot No I am an American working in Asia with a degree in economics. You need to update your reality — yes 20 years ago China was making cheap goods, but today China can manufacture any level of consumer goods from Apple/Gucci down to Walmart. And they can do it cheaply not just because of labor cost, which isn’t nearly as low as it used to be, but because their infrastructure is set up with ultra-efficiency — you can source the raw material, build the parts, assemble and deliver, all within the same industrial park, with no time lost due to transportation. If you’ve ever visited China’s tier 1 cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen, you will see that their civil infrastructure is much more advanced than American cities like NY or LA, simply because most are built this century rather than the last.
Look man, I want America to be strong as much as the next guy. But that doesn’t mean ignoring the reality. American manufacturing is expensive, and if you’ve ever been in an American textile or apparel factory, inside you will find that it’s full of Asian workers that immigrated from China anyway. No American kid grow up thinking that he’s going to work in an assembly line or operate an industrial sewing machine no matter the pay, and our education system produce more liberal arts majors than skilled labor. It’s not impossible to bring manufacturing back to America — it’ll just happen when corporations can replace humans with 3D printers and robots. Take it from someone who has seen it with his own eyes, that’s the reality.
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@ironcurtainsteve I mean, I agree that any categorization inherently has an arbitrary component. I also agree that at the extreme ends of humanity there are biological outliers. I just think the biological gender is the simplest and easiest way to cover the most amount of people.
Also in terms of hormones — first of it is costly and highly variable day to day. You would have to track an athlete and perform interval blood tests to establish a rough base line of hormone levels, and make a categorization that is just as arbitrary. Not to mention the fact that even if the athlete is currently within the accepted range in terms of hormone levels, if she spent a majority of her life basking in testosterone, it would have already made a permenant and significant difference in her muscle mass, skeletal density, tendon strength, bodily proportions, and any number of advantages that comes from having had a male physiology for an extended period of time.
Personally I think athletes have a right to choose who they want to compete against. So just make a biological women category and an all women category and let things sort itself out. If you think trans athletes don’t have an inherent biological advantage, or that advantage does not supercede other forms of biological advantage, then you can choose to compete in that category. If you disagree, then choose biological women.
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I actually live in Taiwan, and I would say overall we did well, but it’s not quite as seamless as you seem to think. Social distancing is still an issue and very difficult in practice, and almost impossible with school children and certain professions. In fact many doctors think social distancing is pointless and we should focus mainly on masks and handwashing. Speaking of masks, the production only just recently caught on somewhat, and for about a month it has been rationed and were nowhere near enough. For awhile it was impossible to get, then it was one piece every other day if you wait in line (1 hour each time in my area and alot of time wasted), then it was three pieces per person per week, and now 10 pieces for children every two weeks and 9 for adults. All that is fine, trying times and all, but the biggest fuck up was the Taiwan government banning all travel to and from China but did not do the same to Europe and America. Furthermore, even after the government restricted travel to those areas (far too late), all returning Taiwanese nationals were allowed voluntary home quarantine instead of centralized government quarantine like with those returning from China. The result is an overwhelming number of cases in Taiwan were imported from western countries, numbering in the hundreds at this point, whereas cases originating in China numbers less than 50 and all in the initial two weeks of the outbreak.
All that brings me back to China. Whether or not the Chinese numbers are 100% factual, the general consensus from most Taiwanese working abroad in China is the situation is under control there. The fact is if some of the most draconian quarantine rules combined with widespread high tech surveillance and fervant nationalism backed social compliance can’t stop the outbreak, then nothing can. Maybe the damage was greater than China let on, but at this point all major cities are mostly operating normally. China is definitely at the tail end of this first wave of the pandemic, whereas the US has only just begun.
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TheBenchPressMan Yeah, Mao will be a footnote, if it isn’t already. Same with things like the Holocaust or the Japanese atrocities during WW2.
And no, a country having a form of government you disagree with is not grounds for invasion. And let’s be real, there are tons of despots in the world right now. The US doesn’t give AF about despots, only the US interests. Otherwise we ought to be invading Saudi Arabia instead of selling them weapons. And this is before we even get into all the democratically elected leaders that the US has deposed and the authoritarian governments that the US help install in many 3rd world countries. So before you give me the moral high ground argument, please learn your history.
To be clear, I don’t hate the West. I hate hypocrisy and double standards. I know many Chinese people, and frankly whatever you think their lives are like, a majority prefer what they have now to the 3rd world existence they had 3-4 decades ago. The hold that the Chinese government have over its people does not stem from authoritarianism, but from the drastic improvements it has achieved in standards of living. And now China is exporting that same wealth and expertise to other 3rd world countries in the form of loan interest loans, corporate investments, and infrastructure projects, specifically to South East Asia and Africa, which accounts for their support in those areas. Now to be fair, they certainly aren’t doing it for altruistic reasons, but rather they are doing it to cultivate future markets for Chinese goods, as well as developing allies on the international stage. But from a global perspective (ie non-Western), this is a far better path than the colonialistic and imperialistic way that the West has traditionally handled 3rd world countries.
Now I’m not saying China couldn’t or shouldn’t do better. They definitely have a lot of things to work out. I just think that as a country with 1.4 billion people that 30 years ago were still living in poverty, they are doing fine and improving at a steady pace. In many ways you can even say that it is miraculous, the lengths they’ve come. I strive to look at things from a broader lens, and a lot of what is happening right now can be summed up as we are entering an age where the US influence is waning while China is nowhere near strong enough to take its place, and meanwhile Europe is too fragmented and reluctant to step up despite its position as the thought leader in global modernity. And this power vaccum will likely remain until the next stage of technological evolution comes along and proclaim a new world order, assuming an open (nuclear) war doesn’t happen first.
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TheBenchPressMan I don’t agree without many of what you said. China held a protectionist policy in the 1800s precisely because of the threat of colonialism. The ROC was then founded based on the ideals of a social democracy, which was then supplanted by the PRC who promised equality to the masses. So in a sense, the whole point of the PRC is to increase standards of living for its people, and undeniably they have indeed done so successfully. This didn’t just happen coincidentally or incidentally, and yes Deng was the original architect, but he was also the leader of the PRC, so I don’t see how you’re just skipping over that fact. I would actually give even more credit to Jiang Zemin, who simultaneously built the infrastructures that laid the foundation for what China is today, and pursued softer and more peaceful foreign policy based on reason. It was also under Jiang that the miraculous economic growth of China truly blossomed.
Also, China is an ethnostate in the sense that any racially homogenized country is an ethnostate. You speak as if the Hans are a small population, when in fact they are 92-95% of China’s population and amounts to roughly 1.3 billion people just in China, and probably over 1.5 billion world wide if you factor in the overseas Chinese population in the diaspora. The reason for China’s insistence on controlling areas like Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia are in fact geopolitical and militaristic, as without those areas acting as buffers, any land power can easily drive into the heart of China with little time to react. Now, I agree that China’s methods for obtaining this control might be controvertial and antithema to Western sensibilities, but as you admitted yourself they are working against a time restraint to prevent themselves from being boxed in. This is also evident in their aggressive pursuit of the new silk road/belt and road initiative — it’s a response to the geopolitical pressures being exerted on China, and they are trying to ensure that they are so integrated into their neighbors that the flow of trade become impossible to disrupt.
At this same time, you’re absolutely right that hard power is required to truly cement your status as a global superpower, and that is clearly what Xi has been working on — building up naval presence in the Pacific and South China Sea, developing nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles, building new generation fighter jets independent of US and Soviet technology, and covering the orbit with Chinese satellites with an independently developed GPS system. They’re clearly nowhere near the US in terms of hard power currently, but it is enough to secure their end of the globe.
I also have a lot to say on colonialism and Kissinger-style policies, but this is already getting to be a long post. In short, the results of colonialism depend largely on the European power that did the colonizing. Some indeed built infrastructures, while others were far more brutal and amounts to nothing more than systemic armed robbery. And Kissinger’s policies are precisely why America is viewed with contempt and considered a hypocrite in the non-Western spheres, and the man himself is often rightfully referred to as a war criminal. However I do think that applying a moral framework on the actions of superpowers is rather pointless, but that to me applies to China’s actions as well. Might makes right in international politics, and moral grandstanding generally amounts to nothing more than weaponized propaganda.
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TheBenchPressMan I have been thinking a lot about whether democracy is necessarily the best system, or whether it is suitable for every country in any stage of its development. I think China has proven so far that even an authoritarian socialist system with a planned economy is capable of achieving economic prosperity, and if I was in leadership from another developing country, I would at the very least look very closely at what they are doing right. The easiest contrast to make is India, which has a democracy but with a huge number of poor uneducated populace, and for them nothing gets done and they continue to be mired in pollution and poverty since they gained their independence from the Brits. China chose to build their economy and infrastructure first, which to me looks like the correct decision. As their population mature and integrates with the world, will they need to at some point give the people more political freedom? I think absolutely, but we’re talking in generational terms, maybe another two decades down the line. And in that time, many things will change, and not just in terms of geopolitics but also science and technology. Soon they will hit a fork in the road, but I think it should be China that decides which path they take.
In terms of wealth disparity, I think that is a global problem rather than a Chinese problem. In the US the disparity is worse than it has ever been in the past 50 years, and it looks like it will only worsen. At least with China there is a reasonable social safety net, not nearly as strong as Europe but certainly a far better one than the non-existent one in the US. This pandemic in particular has utterly exposed the US vulnerabilities in this regard, but with the current administration I see no end in sight.
In terms of trade, every national bank in the world manipulates their currency to some degree. But if you objectively look at recent history, the biggest culprit is in fact the United States, and yet this is rarely discussed in Western media. 2008 was a prime example of how the US exported its systemic risks worldwide, and when the house of cards came crashing down, the we basically asked for a worldwide manipulation in currency which we called Quantitative Easing, which in turn is what caused the worldwide explosion in wealth disparity over the past decade. And now the US is basically just printing money and pumping it into the stock market, which no other country can do without causing massive inflation. And the only reason the US can do this is on the strength of the petro-dollar — forcing all energy trades worldwide to be done in US dollars, holding everyone hostage and forcing them to pick up the tab. This is also the real reason why the US is constantly mired in Middle Eastern affairs and why we give Saudi Arabia anything and everything they want, despite the Saudis being everything you claim to despise, a despotic dictatorship with an extra side of religious fundamentalism. Hell most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi, yet the media rarely brought this up or question the alliance. In many ways, the US is a far bigger problem to the world than China.
Finally, on the point of Kissinger and his school of maintaining US hegemony at all costs. I think it really isn’t that subtle, and it’s pretty overtly what the US position is and has been post World War II. Yes, the US built up the Japanese economy, but in many ways US was also the one that blew up the Japanese economy in the 90s when they began overtaking the US in many industries. We forced Japan to artificially double their exchange rate against the dollar overnight in the Plaza Accord, causing an asset bubble that when it popped sent Japan into a three decade long recession. That is EXACTLY the reason why China is weary of US interference into the RMB, and to me it is completely justified. Which brings us back to this point in time, where the US influence is rapidly waning and its credibility shrinking, yet still remain the most powerful country on Earth, while a rising China despite its growth is nowhere near powerful enough to take on a worldwide leadership position. Yet if we step back and take a broader meta-historical view, I don’t even know if it is necessarily better for the human species overall that America should remain the dominant superpower. As you admitted yourself, the American MO the past century has been to continuously build up its enemy and then tearing them down, reaping the spoils of war in the process. Meanwhile the Chinese MO historically has been that when it is the region superpower, rather than colonization and imperialistic aggression, it exports culture, technology, and infrastructure in exchange for fealty and respect. So yes, there IS a cultural difference, but it isn’t clear to me that the Western model is superior when we are talking a century down the line.
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Guachum Do I care? I mean it happened a couple of hundred years ago, so I guess I care in a historical context, but not that much in modern context.
I’m not black nor white, and I come from an immigrant family that arrived dirt poor but has since put all their kids through college with six figure jobs, so for me I guess it’s just about trying to understand the black perspective. I totally get that African Americans were the tip of the spear during the civil rights movement which benefitted all minorities, but to me it’s about honoring those who actually fought during that time, not that I owe anything to every black person today. I believe in equality of opportunity, so funding public schools, free college, medicare for all, public housing, things like that highly interest me as it benefits all people. Race-based affirmative action type government initiatives on the other hand raises red flags for me. Reparation for slavery is something that I’m willing to keep an open mind about if someone can actually make a specific case with actual numbers. But just understand that that’s something everyone pays for, not just whites or descendants of slave owners, and soon America will be a majority minority country. If it’s framed as helping the dispossessed, that’s more palatable to me than the argument that I owe all black people today for something their ancestors went through or fought for.
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@Joyness333 But, as David touched on briefly, what we are looking for is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. My fear is that government policies based on racial identity targetting solely at achieving racial quotas will have unintended and unjust consequence. Take Affirmative Action for instance — it’s not that it’s not enough, it’s that it simply doesn’t work. It ends up punishing other minorities such as Asians for playing by the rules, and does a disservice to the underqualified black students by saddling them with unnecessary debt given the high rate of dropouts. It doesn’t addressed the real issue, which is the lack of resources for low income individuals during the early stages of their development. Busing at least in some way addresses this, and I do agree that more resources could be spent for better academic and psychological support systems for those kids.
The bottomline is I’m not saying nothing should be done, just that racially targetted policies such as Affirmative Action or reparation is a bad idea. I understand that these kind of thinking may be expedient, and will seem attractive to a certain portion of the Left, but to me it is ultimately lazy and will serve to further divide the country when integration ought to be the goal.
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Kate 2 Create Covid19 was identified in China in December, and the US was informed in January. Then it was March by the time the US outbreak happened. So America had TWO MONTHS to prepare and did absolutely nothing, and I’m pretty sure if America had known earlier we STILL would have done nothing. And I was in Asia in December, and news was already circulating about this disease, there’s NO WAY the CDC didn’t know, it’s just that they thought it was just a Chinese/Asian problem not worthy of attention.
And yes orders flooded into China for medical supplies AFTER the pandemic. But they don’t OWE anyone to make things for them. Their manufacturing capacity was under water, and whatever they had left was used within their country. ANY COUNTRY would have done the same thing. The issue exposed here is that America has a hollowed out economy with no domestic manufacturing capacity, and not that if we throw money at someone they are supposed to automatically do your biddings when their house was on fire.
Look, bottomline is almost all of the data on the virus and all the containment protocols we are using basically came from China, as well as most of the medical equipment and supplies. I am NOT saying people need to be grateful, I’m saying people need to be objective. We can disagree, these are just my opinions.
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Kate 2 Create Dr Li is a hero, and yes I totally agree there was a cover up at the start of the outbreak — by the local Hibei government. Then within a week the central government took over, and the case numbers doubled overnight. Personally, I trust the data the came after that point, and frankly most governments are using those data in their decision making process because that was all we had. And compared to the data we have now from countries like Italy, most medical consensus I’ve read is also that it corresponds with the Chinese data. From a logical perspective, I also think once the disease was in full outbreak mode, there is no longer a reason for China to hide the data, and it is in fact better for them to showcase the full severity in order to gain compliance from the domestic population. The World Military Games I think is an interesting theory that is unsubstantiated but not entirely baseless, although it is definitely used heavily for propaganda purposes in China, and likely will never find confirmation one way or another. In any case this is my interpretation, we can agree to disagree.
However, I do agree with you that we need to have at least some level of domestic manufacturing capacities. But that requires a fundamental shift in our system — simply moving production from China to Vietnam or Cambodia is not enough. And to be honest I don’t think Trump will make those changes. In fact from Trump’s response so far, I think it’s pretty clear that he values the stock market and megacorps ahead of human life. Also I’m glad to hear that you prepared ahead of time — most people I know did not because the news they were getting at the start of March was that this disease was no big deal, straight from Trump’s mouth. I on the other hand dumped my entire stock portfolio and I’m sitting on all cash right now, waiting to get back in once this whole thing blows over.
And to be clear, I want America to get through this and come out stronger. But at the same time I don’t have total faith, since a lot of my family and friends practice medicine in the US and the stories they are telling me is one of utter incompetent in the handling of the situation. Time will tell.
And finally, I don’t consider this an argument, as I’m genuinely curious about other people’s perspectives even if I disagree. I know my opinion isn’t a popular one and I don’t expect to change anybody’s mind, but it is genuine. I think there are things to be learned from every country’s actions, what they did right and whst they did wrong, even if you consider them an enemy state.
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Kate 2 Create Haha. I don’t make the rules, but I WILL play the game to the best of my abilities for me and mine, and take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. If the president is going to put trillions into the stockmarket over propping up the average American, then I will adjust accordingly. And thank you for your concern about my measley job, but fear not, I’m at a point where I can live modestly indefinitely without a job. I’m just looking to build a cushy retirement with enough left for my kids. If that’s greed, I dunno what to tell ya, ‘cause that’s the ethos of our nation.
And you are getting mad at the wrong person. I don’t disagree that the US needs to de-couple from China and build a robust and resilient manufacturing based domestic economy back from scratch. In fact I’ve said that that’s the primary lesson of this pandemic, that we need to ability to make stuff instead of this hollowed out service economy we’ve got where 75% of people exist to serve people wealthier than them. It’s just that it’s not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future, and certainly not under this president. And let me tell you, the borderline monopolies ALREADY took over, this is just clearing the field of any and all potential competition. I don’t wish this, that’s the world we live in. Hopefully by then I will be comfortably retired.
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Kate 2 Create I buy and sell stuff whereever they are, I don’t set up factories and produce goods. Like I said you are directing your anger toward the wrong person. And Trump says one thing, but what he does is quite another. He haven’t moved anything back to the US, his family continues to manufacture products in China, and his trade war clearly accomplished absolutely nothing. What he DID do was give a $2Trillion tax cut to corporations, and now is giving trillions more in bailout money. Those same companies took the same tax cut money and bought back their own stock instead of investing in the American people or hire American workers, inflated the market, and now is primed to straight up buy out their competitors. I know because it’s part of my job to know, and you need to open your eyes and see what he’s actually doing instead of being fooled by his rhetorics.
And you can blame China all you want, I don’t see anything fundamentally changing. They have a sustainable domestic market that is no longer reliant on western markets, and they’ve spent the last 20 years developing the economy of Southeast Asia and Africa, investing in their infrastructures and grooming them to become new viable markets for Chinese goods. They are operating with a long term master plan and spreading their wealth and influence to under-developed countries, while America cannot get its own house in order, let alone investing in other countries, even the ones we call “allies”. You think it’s an accident that the other six countries in the G7 basically ignored Pompeo’s China bashing and refused to put out a joint statement for the first time ever? That UK basically opened their market to Huawei despite American warnings? Or that UN’s WHO is openly crediting China for their efforts in containing the disease? “The West” is not a monolith, and Trump and by extension America’s influence is rapidly waning under this America First directive. Things are happening right now that the American media is barely talking about. For other countries, it’s not about what you’ve done for them, but what have you done for them lately. And right now America is not doing jackshit.
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J T Look, I don’t think China is as closed off as Westerners seems to think, and I understand the reasonings for running things this way — cultivate a domestic market run by domestic businesses, limiting Western cultural influence, and maintaining stability with controlled economic growth. And you can’t argue with the results, as China has taken a billion and a half people out of poverty in under four decades.
I genuinely want more freedom of information and the right to criticize the government for Chinese people, but as long as China is heading in the right direction I think it should be the Chinese that decides their pace. Having freedom and democracy without first having wealth, education, and robust infrastructure and you get India.
This video was posted at the start of the protest. Since then I have seen a lot of hypocritical double standards from the Western media (for example look at how Catalonia is reported in Western news), as well as how the Hong Kong protest has since devolved into just violent riots (American cops would DEFINITELY kill anyone that throws gas bombs). And you know what? State control is probably preferrable to what’s happening to Hong Kong for the average citizen. Not to mention that China has be really restrained in their response so far, basically letting the Hong Kong government solve their own problem. Comparatively American democracy looks like a joke right now, and is just bungling international affairs left and right. This has really challenged my views, and right now my stance is as long as China remains peaceful to its neighboring countries, just let them run at their own pace — they clearly have a plan and they are executing it, and the world might be better off for it.
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@hugocheng6243 The 10% number is from 2018 China Times where they cited 2 million, which they in turn cite the 2016年10月兩岸和平發展論壇. The 400k number is the official ministry of economics number for those that permenantly work in China, and NOT including their family members. I’ve also seen 800k to 900k from other sources. The numbers vary because they differ in definitions and methodology, and because of the lack of data base integration in Taiwan. And none of those include students. If I had to narrow it down, I’d give it a range of between 5-10%. My lived experience, for what it’s worth, is that almost everybody here knows someone who work or have worked in China.
As for the independence number, there are tons of polls done every single year here in Taiwan on that topic. The 30% I cited is already the high end, with most polls being closer to the mid-teens, specifically regarding whether or not Taiwan should declare independence. Certainly if the poll question was whether or not Taiwan is a country, I’d imagine the number would be much higher. I would say the general sentiment is yes we are a country (Republic of China) with our own system of government, no we are not pro-unification (about 5-6% from most polls I see), but nor do we want to declare independence, with the majority wanting the status quo in terms of cross-strait relations, and 90+% preferring peaceful co-existence.
I hope that’s more clear. There are alot of available poll data online but most of them in Chinese, and I’m too lazy to link every single one.
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