Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "PolyMatter" channel.

@rffg781 No. It's not. Ultimately, every industry is run by people. You can have "laws" but realistically a personal connection gets you in the door regardless. You can't prove anything 90% of the time.
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Frankly that's about what you can ask for. Autocracy isn't naturally authoritarian and many Autocracies have some sort of counter-balancing force which prevents despotism and so can be fairly free (though I'm aware Singapore isn't).
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They kind of ARE nearing upheaval. Except for Spain they're kinda okayish. They have massive social tensions. But of course, the problem here is the lack of release valve.
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Honestly, the only reason I went to college was that I was indeed intellectually gifted. Even had a "gifted" program that meant nothing once you got to middle school and above. I'm studying to be a mechanical engineer, because I liked the idea and knew it'd make money. Figured it was the solution of best fit for me. Also helped that my state heavily subsidizes education to the point that my first year was free, and I would've gotten a fully free ride had I tried harder.
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4:05 This chart is actually a bit generous since both Vietnam and India are lukewarm at best and both have had talks of countering China.
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@reaperz5677 You're right. China is a capitalist country whose only current pretense to socialism is the government levers on the largest businesses in the country and a large. Unlike China, Europe is primarily socialist having the government actually run their economies as well as the expansive welfare systems where they provide for the populations.
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I don't think anyone accuses Greece of being that
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Hasn't been like that in the west for a few decades now either
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First off: We do actually have supporting documentation from the opening of the Soviet archives. Especially with how soviets were an explicitly atheist state. Secondly: The fact is simply that China has a university enrollment rate that's incredibly high just generally at roughly 60% while a country such as India has roughly 28%. Especially when it was facing a potential issue with students and youth unemployment, it's absolutely a solution. Of course, the alternative is just doing nothing at all, an action at odds with the government's desire for stability.
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Yeah no. The only countries with youth unemployment so high are countries like Spain or Sweden. Germany for example has 6%. The maximum in America is 13% and has an average of about 8.5%. Nothing like that.
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@TheAgentOfDeath California has i think around 12%. That's why i said the maximum as i meant the maximum in any state was around 13%. The average for America is about 8.5% as i said before.
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@miguelbaca8086 No. What i said was that we proved the soviets did in fact have these motivations when these things occurred. Secondly, the point isn't proven. The implication is that it's a false narrative. It's simply reality.
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@miguelbaca8086 Your point isn't proven if the proof was we found the motivations were correct
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Most of the "rare earth" metals aren't actually found in China so they Could be re-sourced
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 @momoware nope...
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Every job is.
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I just realized something incredibly important: Fertility rate is per woman. Usually this matters little especially since most countries have slightly more women. However for China... this isn't the case. What happens is that since there are 3 men for every 2 women, only 4 out of the 5 population are replaced and thus the population will shrink regardless. 1 man and 50 women and restart a civilization. 50 men and 1 women can only restart a family.
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Not really, unless they want the full Russian Empire experience.
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Also worth noting that's all Citizens not public servants which that formula doesn't apply to
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@testacals If that was the case I would've called China socialist for being a government that does stuff (they've been boosting their GDP via government funding of random useless infrastructure they can't afford to maintain). Europe is socialist not because of their welfare state, but because many of them make the majority of their economies via national industries controlled by the government and then subsidies to other industries.
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The US should follow that example
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Not quite. It's not so much that it's just unprofitable so much that it's just not useful. No-one there uses it, and so it's still largely disconnected from the east. Not to mention, if it truly wanted to connect it, traditional rail with less energy usage would've done the job fine. More than anything else, it's pride and for trying to keep up its economy through vast construction. Idle hands cause rebellion. It uses its state growth as ways to inflate their own statistics more than anything else. It's much like it's ghost cities which are used to keep afloat their housing bubble rather than it popping.
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@Emma aka VolVol The reason we try to keep things profitable is that even 1% profits means it can keep running without issue. Profits also mean you recoup the costs over time as if you never break even you'll never be able to do another. Once it goes into the red, it's a net loss and requires extra money forcefully taken from the people to keep it afloat. And if it's not providing a critical utility, you're effectively increasing people's burden by wasting their money making something more expensive than it needs to be and potentially preventing it from keeping itself afloat. Basically, unless it's critical to life in terms of staying alive or keeping people working, usually there's a reason for assessing whether or not it's profitable.
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@Luke Cheuk 800 million were brought out of poverty not by any specific policies of integration but instead just the phenomenon of industrialization which brings EVERYONE out of poverty. For China this is effectively their roaring twenties. You're trying to compare a country having already finished its process compared to a country which is on the tail end and has huge numbers simply due to population. Fundamentally, this is used more as economic stimulus by vast construction projects (as it's like 30% of their economy), and for pride more than anything else. The reason I can say this confidently is because normal rail and airport infrastructure could do much of this same work for integration with the rest of the country as HSR with likely far less cost.
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@Zeth You might need to redo your definition of western here. Not to mention... to list off: USA, France, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, UK, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Dermark, Belgium. Almost all of them have ethnic minorities with pockets to live in speaking only that minority language or are federations made of people who already speak different languages and have active protections for minority languages. And of course only 4 of them has English as a native language which means all of them you can be in without using English. Oh and if you really want to add we can go into the rest of the Americas and pull out all of the Spanish speaking countries there. Anyway your comment was effectively saying "tell me you know nothing about Europe without telling me you know nothing about Europe"
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@Frank Ng How accessible do you need to make it, though?? I'm sure there are a fair few different ways to connect to the outside provinces without HSR. They'd all be less expensive and do the job reasonably well. I'm more inclined to believe that this is more akin to economic stimulus and pride than actual economic utility given a few things: A: Chinese economy is like 30% kept up by construction which gives rise to ghost cities and projects like this (those ghost city houses are owned btw but they're an investment asset and not a place to live). B: HSR is kind of a meme in that it's kept alive by being "high speed" and extremely expensive with intense infrastructure upkeep making it a money sink for all but incredibly dense urban areas with no actual infrastructure for delivering the necessary business inputs like capital. C: My final point here is that in real terms, the same thing could be done with conventional rail and maybe an airport. Given the amount of people who will actually be traveling to these areas, air travel will be plenty fine for getting people quickly to and from and even conventional rail can deliver people as well as things. You'd reduce the cost on everyone and still accomplish the goal without much issue. You just wouldn't be able to call it HSR. On another note: you say this is something capital fundamentally cannot do. This is nonsense as this isn't even very difficult. All you need to do to make it profitable for a company is for a government to tell them they'll pay the people to build it and the government will continue to manage it. Profitability is a soft cap keeping people from making stupid economic decisions and over extending beyond what their finances can support. Profitable means it doesn't go under or pull hard on the population to support it. For anything other than critical inputs for life, this is incredibly important for staying within your own financial means and growing at a sustainable rate. Otherwise, what happens is you have to borrow and borrow a lot. Up until you can't borrow anymore, at which you have a collapse from going completely broke.
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@sumyamchi Okay well you've admitted yourself normal rail is in places where HSR can't be built but said isolated mountainous areas are the exact areas where it is difficult to build and having an extra few hours of travel isn't going to affect that much in terms of economic integration to such remote locations.
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This one is less obvious. The issues here are structural regarding the economy. On the one hand: the economic growth couldn't go on forever. In the other hand: the Chinese elite have tried their hardest to keep it up as long as possible. The fact that the underlying fundamentals to it were eroding wasn't a fight they could ever win, nor quite seemed to understand.
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@momoware I know. Even then. China is just That bad right now
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@Darkest_matter So are Thailand and Vietnam. Saudi Arabia and Qatar actually rather oppressive IIRC, but others like Bahrain seem to be on the better side. Range of oppression in autocratic societies is higher than in democratic ones, but it doesn't necessarily mean being really oppressive. And even that oppression doesn't normally reach a ton of people. Also monarchies are by definition autocracies so they do fit the bill.
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Is it still because of the private companies or has the government stepped in?
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it's still functional and also improving at the same time
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Yeah everyone says it's just utter crap in the comments section and everyone else saying it's bad, but the fact is that they have to consider that this is INDIA. The problems with much of the population including sewage is prevalent in many places and could possibly be less of a problem due to the proximity to the cleaner areas. And even with the fact that it's India it has still managed to somehow create at least pockets of really clean and comfortable living.
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they don't have enough lol
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First off: The largest reason for the lack of upheaval in developed countries is due to their comparative wealth of a golden age and unified elites for most of their post war history. Not to mention the demographic factor which means you don't have enough young people to do anything. Secondly: Yeah no China isn't getting to that 20k anytime soon. That's predicated on a higher economic growth then they have by official metrics. By unofficial metrics they're possibly 60% smaller.
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@JonTan-z3e You're right it's absolutely impressive. Though, it's closer to 10k in all likelihood due to the compounding effects of lying on GDP figures and using other ways to measure their economy such as overall night time light emissions. However... i don't think 40k is actually unobtainable. I think it's unobtainable within this generation. I think the central fundamentals of China are significantly below what they should be, and it has many factors which will lead to its own decline in terms of pure size later on. I think if it fixes its fundamentals, and gives it another go in a couple of generations, it could probably get way bigger, though it'll be with a much smaller population.
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I think the only thing is a question of if Europeans hear much about news outside of Europe. Or even the third world out of their geographic areas. Remember, the issue with the USA is that it's more of a continent of 50 related countries than much else. For everyone else, 300 miles is another country. For the US, you can still be in the same state. I think there is simply a "big country" problem for the largest powers.
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Honestly when it comes to India this is arguably not a new concept considering the initial way India came under the British authority
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@XxXVideoVeiwerXxX The best strategy is not to compete in a numbers fight but the issue is that the west can't compete in a materials fight either since they'll be raising factories from scratch having outsourced them all to China.
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@briansantos1700 It's also again becoming another big target. Hypersonic missiles are a big issue with little counter so far beyond sabatodging the complex kill chain required to use effectively. So right now the best defense is to just not be in range at all.
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@bramantios5797 Yeah it doesn't even need India for that. Any power looking for war can cut it off instantly. Honestly China's power protection is really about as good as any other's right now as they're too tied to the global economy which would of course tank in an actual conflict. So it would very much be a war of what you have. There would be no reinforcements, no production, just all of the assets that are already in service. Though in that aspect... China loses. No allies, enemies on all sides (yes, even Russia), and on a spot that can't secure its own production.
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At least the privately owned city isn't a company town lmao
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