Comments by "Bob" (@bobs_toys) on "PolyMatter" channel.

  1. This is the thing with people who say they X socialist country was a success because it did well for a while. It doesn't count if it can't keep doing well. The USSR's 70 years seems like a good amount of time, until you realise it was less than a human lifetime.
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  2.  @MrRealpolitiks  check out China demographic predictions. A ratio of 2:1(or worse) workers to people who need to be supported is pretty horrible. The problem isn't the situation as it is now, the problem is the situation as lots retire from the workforce and not nearly enough enter the workforce to replace them. This shouldn't need to be explained, but then again, the PRC is a master at producing short sighted people.
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  3.  @MrRealpolitiks  The a one child policy leading to a sudden drop in working population, especially when sustained over multiple generations (and long enough to lead to cultural shift) combined with increased lifespans leading to a jump in the number of retirees is wishful thinking? Is that what you're saying? How so? Which of these is incorrect?
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  4. The CCP made it very clear that if a democratic system was introduced, they would invade. So not really a mistake so much as a least bad option.
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  5.  @jesselivermore8298  with the one child policy, you've got a crash in the worker to retiree ratio that'll doom China in the long term and ensure that the rapidly closing window for greatness will remain firmly shut. Under the CCP, China grew old before it grew rich.
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  6.  @matthewd759  so if they didn't do this thing that they did in response to the CCP's mismanagement (Mao encouraging the people to have more children) other areas the CCP has mismanaged would be even more mismanaged. Then they were geniuses for relaxing this response to their mismanagement far too late. Leading to even more problems (and a birth rate that's still declining) ... Yep, that sounds about right for the CCP. The communist party that needed to be saved by capitalism has a long history of failure and expecting glory for its inadequate attempts to fix its own failures.
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  7.  @ArawnOfAnnwn  I do like how you ignore the CCP's threats to invade Hong Kong if the British ever changed its colonial status by doing things such as introducing democracy. As was highlighted in my first response, which you undoubtedly read but ignored. Why do you feel the need to be dishonest?
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  8. This isn't a question of overall numbers, it's a question of ratios. The ratios in the PRC are completely screwed and don't look set to improve. At least not without mass murdering the elderly. As far as automating everything goes, there simply isn't enough money. The PRC isn't rich, it's just big. The ratio of wealth to people is still low. As far as immigration goes, you've got Two problems. 1. Getting the sheer numbers needed. 2. Getting the sort of people you need. In each case, you're competing with the West, which has a collective genius at creating the sort of countries people want to move to (don't believe me? Look at migration data) and for 2 in particular, because the PRC really doesn't have that much money per person, it's competing with the West which can offer far, far more. Also as a westerner who's living in (and about to leave)Hong Kong, I can tell you first hand how many of the people you really need feel about making the PRC its long term home. No. Hell no. The govt here is a genius at screwing things up.
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  9.  @willyang4487  you'd be surprised at how little effort it takes to do nothing. And that's all the barbarians in Beijing need to do to avoid a war. Nothing.
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  10.  @TheGatsby3000  you know you can't just turn the production of full grown adults on and off like a switch, right?
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  11.  @bobfty2680  As someone with a Chinese wife, it's a very good match all round.
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  12.  @raghuvenkatesan6792  you can say that about literally any problem.
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  13. It's easy to avoid. All the barbarians in Beijing need to do is accept that people in a country that owes them nothing don't want anything to do with them.
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  14.  @arminius6506  it's not the Americans you need to tell, it's the Chinese people. Birth rates are still unsustainably low. With a roughly 18 to 25 year delay before a newborn becomes useful to society. Edit: that you need to be told this says that despite your extensive personal experience, you're a very poor judge of stupidity.
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  15.  @questworldmatrix  you think society in the PRC is setup to allow this after two generations of both parents working and a one child policy? My society is setup to allow immigration to make up for the shortfall and has been for literal centuries (I'm Australian). Think you can say that about the PRC?
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  16.  @canto_v12  left to themselves, family sizes are normally determined by the size of the family people came from. If everyone grew up thinking that having one child was desirable, how many children do you think that they'll tend to have?
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  17.  @canto_v12  and who are in a far, far more competitive environment. I'm the youngest of four and a high school dropout who still went to university to do a STEM degree. No chance of that in China from any vaguely normal family.
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  18.  @sword7872  it was difficult, but in true CCP supporter fashion, your extra effort has somehow made a completely irrelevant response even less relevant. Congratulations. I don't know how you did it.
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  19. Low income A culture that's not used to dealing with foreigners. A language almost no-one outside of China speaks. And a problem that's simply massive.
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  20. What aspect of being an independent country is it missing? And as the usual thing to save time: 1. UN recognition has never been part of the criteria (if it has, please tell me what agreement made it a prerequisite) 2. Official American recognition has never been a prerequisite. Again, if you disagree, please give the date this happened. 3. The republic of China was founded almost forty years before the secessionist PRC was founded. It has never been part of the PRC. 4. The declarative theory doesn't require that any country recognise it as independent. It just needs to act as an independent country (again, what criteria is it missing?) 5. The constitutive theory only requires that one recognised country of why size (eg the Vatican) recognise it. There's no higher number. Again, though, if you disagree please give specifics and sources for these specifics
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  21. That's a very generic ramble. Is there anything concrete you'd like to point to that's incorrect?
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  22. Inner Mongolia isn't Mongolia
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  23. Why?
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  24. Parts were. Too much in one place doesn't change that there's too little in another.
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  25. An independent country.
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  26. >>I believe investing in housing is actually a clever way than putting money in stock markets. Because even the worst thing happens, you will always have a house under your name<< Which isn't overly useful if it's deteriorating, or in a place no-one wants to live. >>Many people do not understand the Chinese housing market. Unlike European or American buyers, Chinese always pay full price by purchasing. They don't raise debts.<< You think that people just happen to have the equivalent of a lifetime's earnings in their back pocket? Or to put it another way: Yes, they go into debt. I can't begin to believe why you'd think this was a believable claim. >>So even the worst happens, there will always be a house that could never be taken away. << Unless it's of shoddy construction, purchased for no better reason than the ironclad belief it would go up in value. >>But putting money in stock markets and when the worst happens, there will be nothing left over.<< If the worst happens to the extent that the value of stock markets is zero, there are bigger problems. >>So very likely the housing issue might just be another misunderstanding of China's business logic caused by using western perspective and bussiness logic.<< From your slightly insane representation of the situation, it doesn't look like a misunderstanding.
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  27. That's why I left and won't go near there. I was living in Hong Kong. That window of opportunity also means if a war is going to happen to give the CCP, say, Taiwan (which we can all agree they've been pretty open about wanting), it's going to happen soon. Because it has to happen soon. If the Ukraine invasion had been the easy victory that was expected, I'm convinced we'd already be at war. When it happens, I've got no desire to be a foreigner anywhere near there.
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  28.  @henkvandervossen6616  and then even if they manage it, after that, the problem of maintaining that position comes up.
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  29. The success of socialist economies in a nutshell. Can't raise retirement. Can lower life expectancy.
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  30. Japan's in a pretty dire situation. We can see this from your bar being so low as to say they're not extinct yet. The PRC, though, achieved a drop in birthrates in 3 years that took the Japanese 32 years.
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  31. It's not the American public, though, it's the public anywhere Three years ago, people genuinely didn't care about the PRC. Obviously a lot has happened there that has nothing to do with the media (If anything, the media has helped divert attention away from what the PRC has done to us) It doesn't really help that the same excuses were applied to HK, where the idea that the foreign media presence are greater than the CCP controlled media presence and propaganda efforts is simply laughable. Seriously, we're claiming that anything from a few hundred thousand USD to a few million USD has been, on its own, enough to turn an entire city of seven million against the CCP. An entity to which they have personal exposure to on a very regular basis. Anyway, your excuses don't matter. What matters is the result. The result is that in the past three years, the world has gone from not really caring about what's going on in the PRC to considering it a genuine enemy state. All the excuses and whines in the world about unfairness won't change that. And the wumao spreading their message is doing wonders to accellarate the process.
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  32. The real social danger is that. Dead people don't cause social instability. Living but unhappy people do.
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  33.  @sword7872  I'm not sure what in what I said that's meant to answer. Anything? Or is it just a pointless statement straight out of the standard script in a transparent attempt at diverting away from unwelcome questions?
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  34.  @KrazeDiamond  so what part of that is meant to change the upcoming demographic predictions? Btw, when it's applying to a group that's 90 percent of the population, saying "only" stretching the connotations of that word a little bit.
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  35. As I look through this thread, I see so many blatantly obvious things that shouldn't need to be explained. And yet here we are. It shouldn't need to be explained that this is a ratio thing, rather than a case of the country literally running out of people. It shouldn't need to be explained that it takes a long time for a newborn to become useful. To say nothing of the resources required to raise it. It shouldn't need to be explained that 10 million births is less than the 22 million who'll retire when they enter the workforce. It shouldn't need to be explained that it takes more than a change in law to get people producing children. And it shouldn't need to be explained that a poor homogenous country (per capita, the PRC is poor) of 1.4 billion people isn't going to attract the masses of immigrants it needs to keep the ratios good. Particularly when other non homogenous countries can offer multiple times the amount. And yet here we are. All of these need to be explained over and over and over again.
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  36. Yep. It takes extensive (not just as a short term tourist) experience to understand how sick a place it is.
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  37. Automation is painfully expensive and needs a huge amount of highly skilled (and globally in-demand) labour to implement it. It's not a magic wand. For the PRC in particular, it's a race against time against a problem that's truly massive in scale.
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  38.  @chenbayun9494  when did I say anything about the economy? Although there, what Hong Kong used to provide was the only part of the PRC the rest of the world trusted. Well... That's gone.
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  39.  @potatobutroasted4308  you won't get reform until the CCP is prepared to lose power. Up until then, the moment they feel threatened (or that it'll profit them) any reforms will vanish (as we've just seen) Xi isn't a problem, he's a symptom of a system of government that's designed to be abused. Up until then... The CCP has decided that massive bloodshed is ok as long as they stay in power. People who think that their priority is the PRC are simply wrong. If they decided otherwise, Hong Kong wouldn't have been crushed, it would have been used as an ideal testing ground for reforms that would expand out to the rest of the country.
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  40. ​ @JohnSmith-qk4rm  Mathieu's done a lovely job of responding to most of this. That you've resorted to whataboutism confirms this. (That bad things also happen in the US doesn't change that bad things are happening in the PRC. If anything, it makes it worse as it can lead to a weakness in demand for the PRC's export focused economy's products) A few things I'd add to this, though: 1. Even assuming what you said is just as you claimed (it isn't) you're talking about masses of elderly losing their retirement savings as if it's not a problem. It is a massive problem. Especially in a country with a state pension fund that's expected to be empty in about a decade. 2. That the stock market is viewed so negatively (this formed a part of your argument on why houses are better) is a sign of a sick economy. That lack of confidence is why we've got this massive real estate bubble in the first place. 3. We're on a video that looks to have made a highly accurate prediction about the PRC's real estate sector Now, going back to your whataboutism to finish this off: If the US economy does badly, the people in charge can be blamed and voted out peacefully. There'll be a few bad years, but they'll recover and move on. As happened in 2008. What happens when the PRC economy does badly? What peaceful means do you have of getting rid of the CCP (The people who oversaw the creation of this mess from beginning to end are the people the CCP very enthusiastically insisted be put in place. Their failure is the CCP's failure)
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  41. I'm in Australia. Our drinking water is very decent. If I drink straight from the reservoir, however, I'm going to have a bad time. In some parts of New Zealand, yeah, sure, but for untreated water to be drinkable to someone who isn't immune to whatever is in it is rare.
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  42. Last year, to maintain the worker dependent ratio, they needes 30 million immigrants of working age.
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  43.  @luizcastro5246  they hit the roof when some democratic changes were made before handover. What was there until they realised that if it was vaguely possible to lose an election, they would lose was a system they designed themselves that they didn't think they could ever lose.
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  44.  @Ashh1066  that's not exactly true. They can, but they have no right of abode (having no right of anything is pretty standard in the PRC though) and generally can't access a lot of the region they've gone to's services (including schooling) There's a lot more to it than this, check out the hukou system. I'd almost compare them with Mexicans who crossed illegally into the USA. Except that it's within their own country.
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  45. My job is automating stuff. Computer networks, which are easier to do (pure software) It's not easy. Takes a lot of very expensive manpower (the sort all countries are throwing money at). What you're describing will happen, but there's a lot to do and it needs to be done very quickly. As far as cloning goes, step 1 is cloning. Step 2 is everything else that goes into turning a baby into a useful member of society.
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  46. Sometimes it takes a dozen or so people, plus some black leather and a concerning amount of baby oil.
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  47.  @omgaclownmonkey1122  I'd agree. We're the world experts in integrating immigrants. Which is kind of why I find it funny when people go on about how racist western (particularly Anglosphere) countries are. There's basically no culture that has a stronger track record of welcoming immigrants. There's massive competition to get into these countries. Our biggest problem is making sure that those who come in are those we've decided we want.
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  48. If the seniors died, it would make things easier. Until the current generation decided to be angry the the CCP murdered their parents as well as their children
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  49. Russia has done wonders to make even that weak excuse as laughable as possible.
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  50. Just like Kherson?
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