Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "TLDR News Global"
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Been saying this in news of several nations, but worth repeating: democracy is the most fragile government system that we have, and it is nothing short of a miracle that we reached the current state. Which of course isn't perfect, but it's a very uniquely human outcome. One could say that this type of political system is what differentiate us the most from everything else. Collective and community power that compensates for the weaknesses of one another for the betterment of the whole is our reason to exist. It's why we left the caves.
It's thanks to the hard work of numerous people who worked selflessly, some for their entire lives. It comes at high costs, and for most nations it could only happen after one major or multiple major disastrous situations that ended tons of lives. After being ruled by totalitarian regimes, after being trampled over by wars, after having all human rights erased... that's usually when democracy happens. It's because we are seeking better lives for ourselves, happiness, peace and prosperity that we ended with democracies.
So it needs constant maintenance, constant dedication, and constant support from the people to keep going. It also needs firm and strong defense. Too many people confuse the defense of democracy to authoritarianism. The difference between those should be plenty clear - it's the difference between force and violence being used by the hands of a few to impose their will, amass more power, and warp justice for their own benefit, and force being used to protect a system.
Democracy is not a system that can remain the same for too long, it needs constant reforms to fix and patch holes that proto-dictators are constantly trying to exploit. Fascists, authoritarians, and proto-dictators needs to be taken down from power, need to be put in jail, and need to be fought against if we care about defending democracy. By legal means I mean, which the system needs to have mechanisms for, otherwise it will always crumble.
We can see the advances of far right politicians, parties and movements all over the world in a negative light, but it's also an opportunity and clear sign that we need a democratic overhaul. We need to strengthen justice, political institutions, monitoring bodies and systematic mechanisms to improve our democratic systems. We need to continue persisting in the separation of church and state. We need to reinforce that a democracy is a rule by and for the people, and so protecting human rights of everyone needs to be brought back as the one priority.
It's a cause and effect problem. People tend to elect authoritarians to power, because those are the most interested in amassing power indefinitely. They will go overboard to take power and remain in power because that's in their nature. And so the tendency of every political system in the world is towards autocracy, dictatorship, totalitarianism.
People willing to protect democratic regimes needs to be forever vigilant against electing, giving power and giving money for these sorts of people, parties and movements.
Complacency and lack of engagement is what leads to countries falling to authoritarian rule.
The worldwide far right movement is currently trying to exploit flaws in democratic systems all over the world. That's the true conspiracy of our times. People that are hungry for unlimited power and money, sociopathic figures all over the world, are coalescing into a power grabbing movement that exploits not only the weaknesses and flaws of political systems, but weaknesses and flaws of people themselves - prejudice, hatred, ignorance, intolerance, nationalism, racism, misogyny, jingoism, and so on. It's exploiting the core major psychological weaknesses of people to advance their agenda. Fear, uncertainty and doubt, cult of personality, faith, use of propaganda, hate speech, scamming and grifting, all these exploitive tactics and more are being used by far right nowadays to maintain and steal more power from people, from communities, from entire nations.
More people need to be aware of this, so that they can at least understand why current or near future tragedies happens, and work on how to prevent it. We're still not there, and we are wasting the hard work and suffering of our predecessors by inaction, or by falling into fascists trappings.
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Most democrats are not anti-Israel, they are anti-Netanyahu specifically.
I have nothing against Israel citizens, Jews, and I'm staunchly against anti-Semitism. From the beginning I have also been appalled by Hamas attack against Israel citizens.
That does not mean that I'm about to support a genocide against people living in Gaza, quite the opposite. It's because I'm against the widespread violence in the region that I'm against what Netanyahu is doing there, as many Israel citizens also are.
In fact, a whole ton of people in Israel have been protesting against Netanyahu exactly because of his authoritarian positioning. And the guy is so vile that he's spitting on the grave of victims of terrorism to advance his genocidal agenda.
Now, Biden has become accessory to Gaza genocide. Democrats should kick him out and chose someone else to be their candidate for presidency. In fact, I've been in favor of another democrat to be the party's candidate since before Biden became president, not because of his age, but because of his own policy contradictions. I don't consider him a democrat, he's just a centrist with a right leaning.
This time, it isn't Trump extremists that are endangering US democracy, it's Biden himself. I know this basically never happens in US political history, but I hope Democrats wake up to what is happening, stop Biden's bid for re-election, and put someone else to represent them.
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If people didn't know this was going to happen, they haven't been paying attention... it's basically the end for Argentina. From this point forwards, it's either revolution with a civil war there, or going back to a violent dictatorship. And yes, we'll have a calm before the real storm, because the strategy includes this from the very beginning.
Anyone who has ever seen his plan for the nation should know this, and those who voted for him also should know this, particularly those with veiled interests. Behind all the showmanship and theatrics, what Milei is doing is basically trying to auction Argentina to the highest bidder. Showmanship and theatrics are part of the game because he's trying to send a message to interested parties.
He'll likely get a ton of money for this, and then he'll either flee or try to stay in power indefinitely when things really go south. This will mostly depend on the population reaction when the situation suffers a complete collapse. Several nations, particularly in Europe, that are living under proto or de facto dictatorships went through similar dynamics in politics, but perhaps none have been this transparent about the general strategy. Milei basically said the quiet parts out loud, and still got elected.
It's often pretty hard to see the underlying strategy in countries that went this way, but Argentina will become an international macro scale economics 101 in history books in the future.
There are some statistics and numbers that will deceptively make his policies look good, because it is a very predictable effect of what he has announced.
I'll give you a few examples to understand what I mean - if you sell or privatize all state assets, cut a whole ton of governmental agencies responsible with monitoring and keeping up regulatory laws, cut off all sorts of social welfare programs, suppress every single addressing of social justice issues, use your currency solely as a tool to attract foreign investment ignoring every other role a currency might have, and push legislation through with decrees rather than a regular democratic process, this is a guaranteed way of causing a huge cash and power influx for government in the short term, at the cost of the livelihood of the middle to lower class.
It's not rocket science, it's simple logic. The objective is to turn government into an authoritarian power to control the masses, while capitalist actors sweep in to exploit the population. Removing all safeguards from the population so that it can be better exploited without regulatory obstacles.
For the short term, Argentina's economy will look like it's doing great, in the very same way that if you sold all your assets today like your home and car, letting go of your personal higiene, health and general care, you'd have money in the bank. The problem is what happens afterwards. Because as much as Milei voters and sympathizers will say Argentina was already in a complete crisis situation, there is nothing bad that cannot become much much worse. The people are basically the family member of the person who did all that, and the intention is to force the entire family to endure those conditions with their mouth shut or else...
For the long term, you can think of this as forcing Argentina to become a country like China was back in the 80s and 90s, and betting on the country going through similar transformations it did to become an industrial center of the world. Removing all sorts of potential regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles that international interests might have with the country, and putting a huge portion of the Argentinian population in absolute poverty conditions, so multinational corporations can flood in to exploit cheap labor at basically modern slavery conditions.
It is a huge risky bet that has huge chances of not working out. It's just not the right timing or right global conditions for something like this, Argentina cannot be forced to become a country like China back in the 80s, and this smells like looking at unique cases like China and ignoring all the other examples that failed and crashed hard following similar strategies, so chances are much higher that eventually Argentina will just crash and burn, becoming yet another failed state to be exploited by other nations.
With what Milei was clearly saying he was going to do before getting elected, to summarize things, it's a strategy to auction Argentina to the highest bidder. It's as neo-liberal and late stage capitalism as it can be. It's bound to make things look better (for the general country economy I mean) for a short period of time before Argentina falls into the real precipice that will be coming from all those changes. The economic wage/income gap is already going towards a chasm, but we're only at the very beginning of this effect. It'll probably come down to people dying of hunger with crime spiking insanely high before the country really entering a complete chaotic phase. But the whole thing is really transparent. People should take notes on it, we might not have anything similar to Argentina's case in the future.
But I've been saying this before he was even elected. You just have to think about the effects of his proposals carefully from a neutral stance. What good can come out of it, what is likely to go wrong, and what could be behind of it.
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Few things to point out from the outset:
Being popular doesn't automagically mean being fair, competent, or generally a good leader... it can be a positive indicator though, that needs to be considered among a whole list of other things. After all, being extremely unpopular means you just can't do anything in a democracy, so it's best to be around the split or upwards.
Impossible to have a common thread there as there are too many variables. Popularity ranges from cult of personality stuff, being the opposite of a very unpopular predecessor, the current state of politics in a nation, being very attuned to mainstream opinions, general charisma stuff, down to minute things like one major recent decision that gets the approval of the majority.
People just have to keep in mind that lots of decisions that politicians could make that will affect the future of a nation can be incredibly unpopular because it directly affects citizens... particularly when it comes to either boring stuff like infrastructure reforms, all the way to economic reforms that affects the entire population negatively but might be essencial to avoid a collapse, those leaders will be unpopular even if the measures are necessary. And then there are decisions that needs to be made because of external factors, like being part of an economic block, and stuff like that. The ill effects of some of those could be tackled against a leader simply because he or she would be the convenient target.
But we can look at extremes. I'm willing to bet that if an honest non-manipulated survey could be conducted in North Korea, with honest independent opinions not shaped by government, dear leader would still be extremely popular. Not because he's doing a great job as a leader, but because North Koreans grew up conditioned to see him as a living God on Earth. He's divinity to them, much like religious people see their own saints and Gods.
That is the extreme of cult of personality of course... people working to death, skin and bones from hunger, watching the country as it trails this route towards total and complete destruction by a future war, will still adore their leader because they don't think they are in a position to judge. Further, they don't even know what having other leaders would be like, there is no basis for comparison, and they usually don't know enough of what happens in leadership, in their own nation, or outside of it, to really tell things apart.
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This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's lipstick on a pig strategy.
I don't know exactly what people expected, but if I assume the leadership in any nation, cut off all government spending on social programs, education, and other sectors, announce that I'm going to privatize all public companies, and basically sell out all public assets to whoever gives me money, this will obviously fill government coffers, attract investment (particularly of the vulture kind), and make it look like the country is getting "better" by consequence of those.
See, it's no different to you as a person just selling away all your stuff and stop spending on everything. And other people might think you are getting richer and whatnot by that, plus all the vultures around you expecting you to sell them valuable assets and control parts of your life.
The problem with this sort of right wing neo-liberal politics isn't this sort of "reform", if you can even call it that, "working". The problem is the mid to long term consequences of doing all that. Because the social programs you had to work with core issues in your nation ceases to exist, the sellout of public companies means you will have a quick cash grab but then you'll stop having alternative sources for funding, it means government loses any control it might have had of the market with public companies, and next you'll become dependent on market woes and monopoly schemes dominating basic services and whatnot. You know this to be true because all developed western nations have problems with those.
You have a large portion of the population, and this is true for most developing nations, that now don't have any of the protection programs not to fall into debt, absolute poverty and whatnot, that for most people is what was preventing them to go into crime. Programs that were there to reduce historical problems with structural racism, sexism, homophobia and whatnot stops working, and so you can expect rises in hate crimes, in poor education, and in violence in general.
This is quite literally the calm before the storm. In Argentina's case it's more like they are just going through the eye of the hurricane. Country was bad before, it's going to get apparently better now because of the cash influx, but ultimately it'll crash as soon as that cash influx disappears and the exploitation by private companies and monopolies begin.
Make no mistake - Milei's reforms are meant to make the country look like it's recovering, particularly for international onlookers. But that's all that it really is. And Milei himself will get dirty rich for that, because he's selling out the nation for the highest bidder. But this strategy is nothing more than, again, lipstick on a pig, even if the lipstick costs the livelihoods of millions of Argentina's citizens. But it doesn't change the fact that it's a pig. It's not really solving any of the country's real issues. And make up, no matter how expensive it is, will fade away overtime.
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Great. If there is one thing that I truly hate about Japan, which is a country I love lots of things about, is politics.
The LDP ties with ultra nationalist groups and the Unification Church, which people should understand these are the so called "Moonies"... it's a church only in name, because really, it's a massive radical cult with all sorts of horrible scandals in it's history. If you ever watched a documentary about extreme religious cults, this cult was probably mentioned at some point for their extreme ultra conservative views.
But more than being against Kishida, what I'm really against is how permanent LDP in power has become. There is no democracy without a multi-party system. And the way the LDP became this undefined all powerful monster with factions that entirely contradicts the ideology and policy of other factions inside the same party means it has become a corrupted system. Transience of power is necessary for democracy, and it hasn't been observed in several decades for Japan.
Kinda contradictory and ironic given the philosophies that permeates Japanese culture such as wabi-sabi, mono no aware, and mujou.
And so it's not a surprise that it has corruption schemes going around, ties with radical religious cults, and all this crap that is showing up.
It's also a corrupt system that caused entire generations of Japanese people to become completely apathetic to politics, which is a huge danger to democracy.
This also has to do with cultural standards for sure, but the lack of activism, and how Japanese culture seems stuck in time in several topics, that's a problem with this stuck up politics that your usual Japanese citizen will tell you that they are not interested in participating because it's controlled by older generations - they don't have a voice in it, because they are a minority.
If you ever heard problems about lack of representation for women in politics, lack of policies on minorities, lack of policies on mental health, lack of LGBT specific rights, extremely stringent immigration laws, politicians trying to turn military from defense back towards regular military once again despite the vast majority of the population being against that, plus other nationalistic crap, history revisionism, and all this bs... it's because a conservative faction of the LDP has been in power for decades now.
Japan deserves a government better aligned with the sentiment of it's people. People who want equality, representation, peace and inclusiveness. I'm glad to hear that Kishida's government and LDP are going away. It's long past time already.
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There is no avoiding the low birth rates tied to modernization, urbanization, and the country getting richer in general, but there are major things that countries like Japan and South Korea can do - it just depends on how really desperate they are, because these are profound changes.
It's also something they don't currently do that I personally think is the key reason why the policies in these nations are so ineffective. They are not attacking the issue itself. Of course, giving money helps, but it's not the core issue in the matter.
First and foremost - put more women in power. It should be obvious to anyone that having politics and leadership in business positions filled with men that either don't care or don't understand how to deal with stuff like pregnancy and raising kids and can just brush off all the problems with parenthood after they themselves left their spouses to take care of the kids while they were or are absent fathers is not going to solve this issue.
You have the wrong people in positions of power to make the choices. It's self evident when all these governments seems to do is throw some spare change into the issue and think that's gonna solve it. Parenthood is not some slot machine you put some coins in and it works.
Then we can talk about changing workplace culture, laws and regulations to give and enforce less work hours. It's not just about people being too stressed to have kids and putting careers above family. It's also not only about yadda yadda the younger generations don't want to have kids. I think lots of people needs to look deeper into this, and perhaps they don't want to because they are afraid of what they might find. Older or younger generations, people are just people. If you ever said "younger generations don't want to have kids", let me suggest you to further think - why? The answer might surprise you. More often than not, it's not that they don't want to form a family and have kids - it's just that they cannot find time and place to do it.
It's about having time to even consider, discuss, and think about it. When you have an entire culture that educates you to put work above family and everything else, that working long hours is equivalent to high moral standards, that being the last to leave work is somehow inherently superior or worthy of praise, when you have vertically structured businesses where your boss is God above everything else, productivity is your religion, and you cannot have a say in any matter - that's not gonna work for individual choices of having kids.
People fundamentally needs space and time not only to have kids, but to form relationships outside work with proper time for it, which will then lead to healthy relationships, which then leads to having kids, nurturing a proper family structure, and setting and example to the next generation. It's not only going home after leaving work and making babies. You need a separate time, social circle and structure for the family. You need to be able to separate things, and to do that you need time out of work. It's kinda like a double life. If work doesn't provide you with it, then you cannot expect for it to happen. Work should not be all about money, promotions, status and whatnot. It should be about enabling you to have family and time to dedicate to it.
This is why you can't have an overworked society without negative birth rates. People have limited time, space in their heads, and amount of choices in their lives. If work takes all of it, it's obvious there will be no room left for family. Worse yet, the few families that have kids ends up dysfunctional, because there is no time for parenting, there is no time for family, there is no time to anything - it all gets delegated to third parties. Which then passes an impression to kids that having kids is not worth it. It's a vicious circle, and we're right about the moment in time when the second generation or third generation of this vicious cycle is coming about. Younger generations don't want to have kids anymore because this cycle started with their parents or grandparents.
Look, I know this is somewhat crass and the analogy really doesn't fit here, but just to step out of this discussion a bit. Think about pets, for instance. I personally don't want to have a pet if all I can do for it is leave it abandoned almost all day locked into some house or apartment, at most taking it to walk a few blocks at night to poop and exercise a bit. With that in mind, why would people rationally chose to have kids if all they can do for them is something analogous to that?
What you have today is whole generations of kids born "by accident" that fortunately some parents get over and don't regret, but a whole bunch of parents spend the rest of their lives regretting it, which is the sort of sentiment that inevitably passes on, which leads to younger generations being hesitant or straight out not wanting to have kids themselves, because they don't want to raise and treat kids the way they experienced it.
Parenting is hard work and it's a complete change in lifestyle, in culture, in habits, in everything. It's one of those major life decisions, when it can be a decision, that everyone will naturally have some hesitation towards. If governments wants to change this scenario, it's not just giving alms and throwing money at the problem - it's about cultural changes. You need to identify portions of the culture that gets in the way in a non-prejudicial manner, and make profound changes that will turn it around.
In modern affluent societies that don't have incentives for families to have throngs of kids anymore to put them to work at a farm or something like that, don't have lack of education or healthcare that leads to scenarios of women having kids because they don't use contraceptives, and don't have long term examples of parents and grandparents having multiple kids as the standard way of doing things, you gotta find some other way to incentivize it. We can't go back to old times, or rather we don't wish to go back to old times because we don't voluntarily want to go back to ignorance and hard labor with child labor in the mix... well, most of us don't. So what there needs to be is profound cultural, regulatory, and educational changes, all of which women who wants to have kids are in a better position to propose and do, so they need to be in positions of leadership to make those propositions and lead by example.
I can't see how conservative men led governments and leadership will do it. Not in South Korea nor Japan. There is a fundamental ignorance and conflict in objectives there. Symbology isn't everything, but it's part of it. Having actual mothers in those positions won't solve everything, but it's a start. Which means these countries haven't even started with solutions just yet. What they are currently doing is only making things worse, and time is limited.
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AI has almost f*ck all to do with the problem on Internet, social media and whatnot. AI is at most a new tool the real problem behind all of this will be using for future elections. It is exploitive, clickbait, and frankly stupid to classify things that way, and you guys know it.
It's the lack of regulation and control in the spread of lies and falsehoods that is the problem that is currently affecting democracies all around the world online, allied with a lack of willingness to classify a portion of the so called politicians and political parties for what they really are - organized crime using tactics from scammers, grifters, terrorist radical groups and religious extremist cults to get to power.
So, really, inside the Internet it's a lack of willingness to regulate it better, tied with unscrupulous criminals that use this fact to treat the Internet as their lawless playground, that is the point. This is directly tied to how much of people's daily lives have shifted towards the Internet, that is intrinsically tied to the last point.
I don't personally think there is a change in apathy towards authoritarianism, I think there is concerted effort by bad actors to disguise authoritarians for what they really are by manipulating information and creating bubbles around a fanatical base of followers so that they don't get information from outside the bubble.
As regimes takes over full control of information in their own nations and inside their own enclosed information bubbles, it's not that people become apathetic to authoritarianism, it's that through information manipulation and propaganda machine, the people cannot see the reality around them, they get a filtered version that does not let them see the authoritarian action happening.
It is true though that huge portions of ignorant populations confuse anti-establishment sentiment with authoritarianism, or are simply too ignorant to understand these concepts and the consequences of them.
But this is a problem that has always been there through our history. A portion of the population of all democracies will always be in favor of authoritarian regimes if it serves their purposes or matches their ideology or religion. What democracies have to worry about is not of their existence, but their influence in politics. Democracy is a system that was built to keep these people in check, but it's currently failing to do so, because it has not updated itself to face the fact that everything is migrating to an environment where law and regulations is having a hard time to keep up with. That's the key distortion and issue of modern democracies, and until it's addressed, we'll continue having problems.
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What matters here is this - it's an old man with memory issues, or a man with no memory issues willing to destroy democracy in the US.
I'll be honest here - I never thought Biden was the best that the Democrats could come up with, I could come up with an entire list of people who I think is better than Biden including his vice president, and I wish he wasn't the candidate for the party last time, and this time too. I have a whole ton of problems with his politics, several of his political positions, and several things he has done and not done during his term.
And I also kinda hate how tons of people need to keep trumpeting about his non-accomplishments during his term because, and this is a personal opinion, I don't see many of those as good things.
It does not attend my progressive position, I don't think it attends democracy well, and I think others would've done better.
But let's be very clear about this here - no matter how flawed I consider Biden's politics to be, there is still a miles long chasm between him and Trump. Trump, doesn't matter how old or not, how lucid or not, how better or not his mental state, health and condition is in comparison to Biden, that guy I wouldn't vote for even if he was at the top of his game. I would vote for a dog before voting for him. I'd rather see the US without a president at all rather than having him there. I truly believe US democracy would be better served without a president than with him there. Everything about Trump points out to being the worst possible candidate for presidency in a democracy. If people want a dictatorship or a completely disfuncional system, that's a whole other matter. But for a democracy, I cannot think of a worst type of attitude and candidate. And so it's better to operate without guidance in comparison to having a guide that is pointing straight into the abyss.
So, this question is clear to me. I don't care if it's old bad memory Biden, if democrats replace him before the election, or some other alternative - what US democracy needs is Trump and MAGA out of politics. Whatever it takes.
Because what people fail to understand, is that what Trump and MAGA truly are, is not politics, should not be considered opposition or politics, should not have room to grow inside a democracy - because it is anti-democratic.
This isn't about ideology, isn't about right wing or left wing, isn't about conservatism versus progressivism, about religious views or whatever. This is about democracy versus non democracy. Trump and MAGA are not political positions, they are a scam to take power and money from the people and system, at the cost of a democratic system.
What they do is not politics, it's crime, scam, grifting. It's treason and an abolition of a democratic state.
And until justice, politics and people do not understand this very clear and simple fact, you will continue being victims. There's no way around this. You either realize you are getting scammed, or you continue being a victim of it.
See that I don't have this same level of issue with regular republicans, right wing, conservatives and hardcore status quo defenders. Those are my political opponents, but it is their right to defend their positions inside a democracy. Trump and MAGA are just not that. They operate outside the scope of democracy. There is no argumentation or discussion to be had between a democratic party and these people. They don't want discussion, they want violence, war, and imposition of will by force. That's not democratic, that's authoritarianism. Totalitarianism even. Rule by theocratic mandate.
And the real problem US is having now is that politics, justice, democratic institutions and whatnot are failing to understand this. That justice system overzealousness, sluggishness to act, and lack of swiftness is acting against the best interests of the country. It is completely ridiculous to think the US will end up with a criminal president who pardons himself in order to take over democracy and promote his dictatorship in place. It is completely ridiculous to think he was already a president once, and that people still failed to understand the problem with that, and act in some way to stop this madness from happening.
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Heh, such a stupid move... and I used to think Democrats were going to put someone smarter than Trump on these matters.
Biden is still better than putting Trump back, but not by much given most of his policies coincide so well with Trump. Worse yet, it seems to be the ones that matter the most.
US has plenty of money to absorb the damages this trade war continues doing, but it's the American public that will pay for this. And that will become a very pressing issue overtime.
To be clear, the only reason why EVs are getting this sort of crazy tariffs is because for the most part - they don't matter. EVs failed to catch on, it remains a niche market, there will be no "we don't have enough to attend demand", so Biden can use this sort of measure to appease dumb local manufacturers, international brands, jingoists, and whatnot.
See, I don't care much about the next failures of "bringing jerbs back" and the absurd amounts of money US government is yet again sinking in industrial complexes and initiatives that will never go as well as idealists thinks it will. I guess the Trump era trade war crap wasn't enough of a lesson for people to learn, what with the failed Foxconn panel assembly plant and others, but sure, I guess the US can keep dreaming about becoming independent from exports and whatnot.
It'll be a costly lesson on how the US currently stands on global trades, it's own insatiable consumerism that's hard to be attended with different strategies other than what it already has, how diversifying sources with different nations will have it's own set of troubles sure to come soon enough, how US industries have become incapable and are completely outdated to compete in a global and even local scenario, and so on. Really, in technological terms, the US might as well start making pottery or oak barrels to compete with Chinese mass production.
The key issue I see there is that because all of this China anti-sentiment that I see pretty much everywhere in US society, including in democratic and progressive circles, needs addressing. Biden is worried about getting re-elected, but the strategy is a reflection of jingoism after all.
There is very little public understanding on how much the US market is highly dependent on Chinese exports, logistics, and general ability to mass produce enough products to attend demand in the US. Apple itself will be learning this soon enough with their industry diversification strategy. You'll see what I mean. It is not easy to find countries in conditions similar to China to work with worldwide. And if you spread around things too much into different nations, with different cultures, different politics, different starting points and whatnot - it's just that much harder to deal with.
There seems equally to be a very bad misunderstanding on how much Chinese money has already taken over parts of US businesses inside the US itself.
This is probably the main reason why China isn't strongly reacting to these trade war provocations just yet, as it didn't do much during the Trump era too. Trump and Biden might think they are doing much there, but ultimately it'll amount to nothing.
The other reason apparently is that China is just smarter than current US. It can't afford to lose it's main market as this would throw the country back years if development and progress. Difference is, China would likely still survive, with it's own internal market and International markets other than the US. The US itself is the one I'm not sure would survive. China would be losing a huge chunk of it's exports market, which is bad, so it'd have to lower production and try exporting more to other nations. The US would be losing it's source for a whole ton of stuff outright. That quite a different issue.
As much as people justify from whatever angle - spying, security, jerbs, blahblahblah poor quality Chinese products, and all these things that have cropped up over the years, none of this matters when you start looking at numbers, at the macro scale scenario.
Current China, like it or not, from a good and bad perspective, is a country with an authoritarian regime that was shaped, has developed, and raised from a poor nation, financed by developed nations businesses, exactly to be the perfect center for production to developed nations. Optimistic view, these countries helped each other one with money the other with production power. Pessimistic view, China rebuilt itself to be the dirty exploited backyard factory of developed nations.
I know lots of people will get angry with what I'm saying, it is a personal opinion and view, but that's the way I've come to see it after reading a lot on the subject. I'm oversimplifying here and it's a way more complex topic that deserves a deeper analysis, but we have to start from somewhere.
You see lots of Americans and international viewers criticizing China for a whole bunch of stuff, from human rights violations, poor environmental practices, stealing intellectual property, making cheap copies of stuff, and all this crap that has been done over the years, keeps doing it without realizing that all of this has been done in the name of exports to developed nations, at the behest of "beloved" western corporations. The line between what is the CCP's fault, and what was inherited from the demands of western corporations, is very very blurred.
Accepting shallow and biased explanations that a bunch of things happens because China has a communist totalitarian dictatorship is just as hare brained as accepting Apple's explanations for suicides in Foxconn factories. Oh, we keep an eye on it. It's not as bad as it looks. We care for our workers. Yadda yadda.
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I mean, really, where do people think this sort of late stage capitalism government subsidation strategy designed to choke international competition comes from? From communist ideals? Of course not. It comes from the place that seems to be complaining about it now, after having taught and exported it for decades.
In fact, this is what China did at US corporations orders against other nations for several decades now. China dominates in mass production of several products because American corporations leading factories there knew exactly what to do to kill competition coming from other nations.
But now that China learned how to do all of those things and are using the tactics to help themselves rather than obey master's commands, it suddenly is a problem.
Likewise, technology transfer and development, China having it's own brands and businesses most of which were raised from industrial complexes that were manufacturing everything for export, and some of them becoming more competent than it's US based counterparts - where do people think this comes from? And why, despite not presenting any proof, these companies keeps getting labeled as a security risk or spying risk, when there are so many other ways for the Chinese government or anyone else for that matter to get access to similar data without having to involve the private sector for it?
It's all a smearing campaign because the US is worried that, after years of using China and other nations as their factory backyards that used to operate in appalling industrial revolution conditions to attend the insatiable demands of US markets, now that they've taken all that to transform itself into an independent exporting nation, they fear that China doesn't need US interference anymore.
But you reap what you sow.
I'm not really saying that China is innocent in all of this, but people have to keep in mind the whole historical context here. And I think the problem with international relations and public opinion on these matters is exactly how ignorante average people are on this relationship. People should be a bit more aware how weird the situation is when politics keeps labeling another nation as an enemy or rogue state, at the exact same time you look around your home and 90% or more of stuff you have in there was made in China, or made in other Asian nations that are subsidiaries of a Chinese corporation. This weird incongruency points out to a very deep gap in understanding the reality of the situation. It should cause some extreme cognitive dissonance, but it has been so extremely normalized up to this point that no one is stopping to think about it.
There are some very simple exercises to think about where this trade war is leading to. Pick everything in your home that was made in China or made in other Asian nations by a Chinese company (pro-tip - if it comes anywhere from Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, and other developing or poor Asian nations, it's likely a Chinese company subsidiary), you pick those, box it, and try living your everyday life without using it. And I should say I'm probably cheating in your favor here because I'm not adding stuff that was made with China made industrial machines, I'm not including stuff that has components made in China, I'm not forcing it to be hard local with everything done only in western or allied nations. See if you can survive. Another pro-tip - this probably includes all electronics.
So, what would smart international politics look like in this sort of scenario, you may ask? Just plain diplomacy. Countries like the US, and several other developed western nations, have this complete discrepancy between trade volume and actual diplomatic relations. They are completely interdependent these days, but they don't talk much on a high politic level. And this is bad.
Closing doors and playing trade wars might look like it's attending voters best interests, but it's only attending prejudicial views based on historical ignorance. Leaders in these countries should've been in close talks for a way longer period of time up to today. Turning back to a strategy of isolationism is just purely regressive, if not basically suicidal. It's slow motion nuclear war.
But you know, humans gonna human. I'm not sure if there is an ideal solution for all of this, because even strategies with a wider outlook might backfire because of stupid people.
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In my country this phenomenon is likely even bigger, because the motivation is fairly obvious. It's obvious in the crime beat rather than being an ideological stance.
With the rise of the extreme right here, I think one of the most notorious side effects was an incredible rise in feminicide cases, domestic abuse cases, with several if not the absolute majority of notorious cases coming in homes that has adopted the extreme right ideology. You get hammered almost everyday with crime news that reinforces this.
So women here are liberal for their own survival, it's not a matter of politics or ideology anymore. Likewise, you have a whole ton of incels, sexists, cucks, and whatnot that falls straight into the extreme right rhetoric, because it works as a balm for their troubles, in the sense that they can shift blame of their failures straight towards women.
It's hard for women even with a conservative mentality to tolerate a situation like this. And in fact, we also had more than a few notorious cases with public figures where both the woman and the men were self declared extreme right, supporting extreme right politicians, having very harsh conservative and religious positions, that ended up in a very messy and very public case of domestic abuse. It became quite obvious how toxic the ideology and mentality is in the confines of a home. I'm saying this for my country's version of extreme right, just so you know... it can be different for other nations.
There is of course all the logic mentioned in the video, but it's just become more extreme and urgent.
We now have a liberal government, and from micro to macro, this logic is proven by fact. For instance, the current government proposed a law that brings wage equality in gender. Surprisingly, extreme right politicians that sell themselves as being for gender equality in politics voted against it with some bullshit excuse, including all the women in the party. The party actually fronted those women to justify voting against the bill, but the excuses were so crude and insincere that it became obvious that they were there as puppets to the majorly male dominated party.
Extreme right here is also very centered in "traditional family values" which is moonspeak for religious extremism, and other euphemistic terms like those which in practice means maintaining the paternalist male dominated status quo.
But the current government has shoved politics chock full of minorities, so it's becoming harder and harder for the extreme right to hide their implicit racism, homophobia, sexism, extreme religious views, and stuff like that.
Nowadays, particularly for younger generations, the only reason I see young women being in favor of conservative views would be either on the radical religious views side, on the radical ideological views side, second intentions related to power or money - status quo, or just complete ignorance on the news that are happening everyday.
Not a single day passes without a new senseless murder, violence case, domestic violence case, feminicide, domestic abuse, ranging from poor people to extremely rich people, that does not involve some sort of extreme right ideology. It has become patently obvious the correlation, which might sometimes not be causation per se, but very strong correlation to the point the link becomes inevitable.
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Mercosur is likely going nowhere, and your analysis is right - with the direction Argentina is currently taking with the new president, even if Argentina relents and decide to keep going with the block, the situation will be too unstable for any firm deal to happen. But the block will keep going, because even if Argentina got out completely, that does not change the core objective of Mercosur existing in the first place.
Argentina is in a bit worse situation than Brazil was in the past government. It becomes mainly a diplomatic and regional stability issue, no one wants to deal with aggressive nationalist crazy assholes, basically.
But Mercosur has small chances of deals with other big economic blocks anyways, because of all the conflicts of interest. France in particular keeps creating new excuses not to sit on the table because it's directly competing with commodity exports of both Brazil and Argentina.
Unless there is some drastic change on that front, France plus a few EU members will keep getting in the way of deals. Which is fine too, people gotta understand that the main objective of economic blocks such as Mercosur isn't to close deals with EU or whatever.
It's supposed to be a Latin American economic interests defense group. It's needed at least as a safety measure, but more largely to solve disputes and close deals between it's members. It needs to be there even in unstable government times because when individual nations solves it's own internal problems, the block is an easy path to mend diplomatic break ups.
It'd be great if Mercosur could close deals with other global economic blocks for global integration and more visibility of the global south, but while that doesn't happen it's like just more of the same old.
In practice, what you really have is lots of trade with countries like China, country to country, or via other economic blocks like the BRICS. In the case of BRICS, Argentina was one of the countries most likely to join the block but still wasn't in, and Milei already rejected the invitation, so it's already out.
BRICS is more about defense of economic interests of developing nations, but it has become more sparse as one can imagine having Russia in.
Paraguay and Uruguay position on the matter is understandable and one that most members have been at some point. Applying pressure for more visibility and active participation.
Of course we all want for the block to have more actual big deals, it was created with that objective in mind, but realistically, it's always been kind of a long shot. xD
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The reason why the government avoids saying "immigration" is because it's a conservative government, made of conservative people, elected by conservative people.
Their electorate ranges from moderate to ultra conservative, and that side of politics is also extremely nationalist, revisionist, and generally xenophobic.
Biden isn't exactly wrong if he's talking about the government itself, but this story kinda changes if you look at general opinion pools.
Public pools gives a different image because that's all people, much of which don't even vote or participate in politics.
Participating in politics in Japan is seen as something "for old people", so you don't really have a whole lot of young people participation. It's both because of the seniority vertically structured culture, and because of general disinterest in politics. People tend to not have strong political opinions too, because of the "nail that sticks out" culture. Which is to say, Japan still has a culture that is very much focused less on individuality, and more on community based thinking.
I think the average turnout in elections have been around the 50% mark for several years now, but it's very skewed... like 70 somethings per cent in the over 60 years old demographics, and 20-30% on the young adults portion. That's even worse if you think in raw numbers, considering the population pyramid graphics, as you have many more people above 50 than bellow.
So what the government says is tailored to their electors, not the general public.
Something that, to be clear, has been slowly changing over the years, and was very different in the past. Talking decades ago, there were some pretty violent student led protests back in the late 60s or so. Youth participation in politics used to be very prevalent and heated, but that's half a century ago already.
This goes hand in hand with the fact that yes, Japan is slowly broadening access to immigrants and foreigners, but in such a slow pace and coming from such an isolationist position that at this pace, it's unlikely to reach todays' US or Germany levels, even in several decades.
Though of course, with the aging crisis I think eventually Japan will have it's hand forced to change the tune more drastically.
I'm just not sure which side will break first - the side that maintains this vertical seniority based structure that ultimately contributes to negative birth rates, because it essentially takes out the voice of young people which also results in crazy work hours, unhealthy work-family balance, and whatnot.
Or if they'll try to keep this side of the culture and open up for immigration because they don't have enough people at working age to sustain the top. Something's gotta give.
Probably a mix of both. It also just so happens that with the kickback scandal and low approval rate of Kishida's government, there might be a movement to oust LDP from power once again, a rare occurrence. Only problem is, I don't think a change in which party is in power, even if it goes towards a more progressive party, really has the power to change things by much. It's just not typical for Japanese politics in general to go for drastic changes. It's still a constitutional monarchy after all.
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ROFL save... if Milei has his way he will completely destroy Argentina, far further than it already is destroyed. There is no situation bad enough that it can't get worse. That's gonna be the lesson.
I feel sorry for Argentinians, but it'll also be interesting to have a real world example on what libertarianism taken to it's absolute extremes, anarcho capitalism, let the market decide kinda thing, can do to a nation.
Perhaps Argentina gets first at the eat the rich stage of this, before the US? When people who are already poor starts starving, and people see an emergence of an ultra rich class that gets richer and richer by exploiting privatized essencial services, corporations having zero social responsibilities and turning to modern slave labor practices, the environment being completely destroyed due to lack of regulations, and all this type of thing... I wonder what will happen there.
It's one thing to have a failure of a system like this historically, but it's quite the different thing to introduce all those chances all at once completely changing everything in the country by a single president.
I mean, Milei already does not have a majority in congress there as I understand, but he'll likely be able to still do lots of damage.
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Yeah... it's hard to believe a common currency is going to happen given current situation and what is happening soon.
Brazilian politics is now, with Lula, extremely for Mercosul and general strengthening of Latin American partnerships, after several years of an almost complete cut of ties in Bolsonaro's term, but we are in a far more unequal and unstable situation today collectively when compared to when these relationships were formed in the past.
There's the election in Argentina which I'm not sure what side it'll be swinging at, but it seems a center-right party is ahead so far, so it doesn't seem it'll favor the deal.
There's also the fact that even if the current Brazilian president is bullish on Latin American aliances, anything that has to pass congress and depends on cooperation of governors, senators and whatnot, will get resistance because the president's party does not have a majority everywhere.
The other thing that will have to go through is also the reaction to other big economic partners of both nations... I'm not sure about Argentina, but here in Brazil, a major issue with strengthening economic relations in Latin America is that it might look bad for relationships Brazil has with countries like China, a major importer and exporter. It could be seen as good or as bad, it all depends. I imagine the government is waiting to see how other nations will interpret this.
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If the war on drugs becomes an actual war, the results will be the same, at the cost of even more lives.
It's because the source of the problem continues being ignored and is never targeted that got US to this point - it's an equality and health issue, not a production and distribution issue.
It doesn't matter if Mexico and China disappeared tomorrow, with all the cartels and drug traffickers. Operations would resume in other nations, or rather other nations would pick up the slack, because of course drugs don't really come only from those two nations. It comes from Mexico because Mexico is a developing nation with cheap labor sitting next to the US.
People don't cultivate drugs to target mid to high class American citizens, which are the only citizens US seems to care about - they do it because we live in a global capitalist system where profit is king, and illegal drugs are basically the most profitable commodity there is.
So, wherever you have an abundancy of cheap non qualified labor, drug production will be, because those financing operations are taking profits in the 1000% or more.
I will say more - if the US was the only country in the world, illegal drug production would be happening in all states with major agricultural production.
So, why Republicans are promoting war against Mexico? It's one of two options - because they are f*cking dumbasses who cannot see the problem beyond their nationalist racist supremacist superficial interpretations on the matter, or because their voters do. It's weaponized ignorance.
And this is why if those dumbasses put Trump in power once again, the US is just plain f*cked. It is already f*cked with politics locked into criminal investigations or disputes over theocratic laws, but it'll be even more f*cked becoming yet another rogue nation such as Russia or Israel are right now, with an illegal genocidal invasion in their hands.
It is again the case that the US isn't already in ruins because it has too much unfairly accumulated money and power, but the more radical the far right becomes and the more power is given to it, the more chances the US will end up in a civil war or even end up causing a third world war.
It's because of that sort of megalomaniac belligerent arrogant warmongering attitude that the current Republican party should be extinguished to save US' democracy, and in turn the rest of the world because everything is connected these days.
And this is in part the Democrat's party fault for choosing their candidate so poorly. Biden's time is over, it's time to put a real democrat in his place, clean up the house, and start showing why your country is "the best country in the world" once again, not this sad shit it has become.
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A trade war that is all for local environmentally conscious production, but let's be honest here, these people are fighting about a future that is not only far, but also uncertain.
There has been a whole ton of misplaced optimism and perhaps a bit of patriotism on Biden's plans, but I don't see US's situation changing a whole ton there.
There are a few major things that made China the industry of the world, and I don't see how a governmental act would put the US in the same page no matter how much money is thrown there, for short to mid term I mean. Long term who knows what the situation will be.
Some of them: infrastructure, logistics, labor size and costs, low internal consumption, and so on.
That amount of money is crazy high, almost impossible to understand, but when you are talking about things that needs crazy high almost impossible to understand amounts of money to fix or start from scratch, then it starts feeling too little too late.
The reason why it worked for China in a period of... around 3 decades or so is that developed nations and China basically had huge empty plots of land or stuff like fishing villages and whatnot to prop up entire cities around the idea of them becoming factory hubs for the world, the government also had unlimited power to just haze down and run over whatever was in the way to build infrastructure needed, could use large portions of the population as basically slave labor to make it happen, and so on.
This is far harder to pull in a developed nation, and the US government has already proven more than enough that it's not very good at doing it.
As is, most infrastructure is already crumbling... it's kinda hard to see how it's gonna get fixed, let alone be upgraded to sustain the logistics required to compete with China.
The US already does not have the labor force to produce enough even for the crazy consumption of it's internal market, let alone export and compete with other nations at reasonable prices, even with government subsidies considered. Perhaps if government suddenly opened up doors wide open for all the immigrants trying to enter the country, but that would create it's own set of problems.
Building up an industrial hub such as Shenzhen looks almost impossible to me in a developed nation... there are so many laws, regulations, and other things that would need to be changed that it really doesn't seen feasible to me. Again, government subsidies could perhaps help overcome some of that, but not all, and I can't even imagine the long chain or side effects and repercussions those would have.
And then, you also have the fact that over recent years, a whole lot of former Chinese production has already shifted towards poorer nations. So it isn't a matter of competing directly with China anymore, it's competing with Chinese corporations with factories all around the world in countries where production is already even cheaper than in China itself.
Here's the thing I find symbolic in all of this. There is one major production move that was attempted during Trump's administration that was mostly for show and that the trade war basically forced the company's hand to do. That Foxconn factory in Wisconsin. Supposed to produce panels for TVs. If you follow it's trajectory you start seeing all the problems the US would have in taking production back into the US.
Of course, what I see in all of this is a rush to prepare for a deeply divided world... it's better for the US to have already started doing something about it if it ever happens, a complete cut off between the west and China, rather than just having nothing in place. But it'll be catastrophic either way. The solution here is diplomacy, not hunkering down for what some are deeming inevitable. More importantly for the significance of this plan, I guarantee you that a world were the west and China become completely separated won't be a greener world, not by far. Much like the war in Ukraine put a whole ton of plans for sustainability and a cleaner future in the back of some drawer, a trade division would prioritize whatever is cheaper to prop up production back to past levels, and sustainability would take another hit back in the priority list.
This all just don't look good for me... global powers focusing on becoming independent from one another trying to claw back as much of the production chain they can because they predict the world will become much more divided in the future, when what we really need for sustainability and to solve climate change is to get together to work out a solution.
I'll tell you, it'll happen either way when Climate Change effects are so severe that almost any money a country makes ends up sunk into disaster relief and whatnot, but we keep ignoring this, and keep prioritizing other stuff instead.
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War cabinet about to collapse, yes. Civil war? US is as close, or perhaps closer to Civil War as Israel is, if that's the position you're going to adopt.
Which is very unlikely, though tensions are coming to it's peak. But there are far too many potential changes and blockages that politicians are holding on stubbornly to, that they'll let go before a Civil War scenario. There people either are stupid or play stupid to the ignorant crowds, but all in all they are not suicidal. Much to the contrary, if push comes to shove, they are the most coward type of politicians. They always step back when it looks like real consequences are coming. All of their aggressive remarks are just barking. They are spineless cowards pretending to be "strong man". They only go on the attack when they know there will be no consequences, or that the other side is at a disadvantage.
Ultimately, with the exception of a radical minority, most people living in affluent nations will just try everything before a Civil War, because in a Civil War scenario, there is no control, and you can only have losses. These spineless cowards are not interested in that.
Netanyahu's government itself only went on the offensive because they had no chances of losing there, and the far-right rhetoric and boot licking was the route Netanyahu had to power. It's all about him, not about ideological positions or politics. This is the basis of the far right movement.
And the guy is a psycho power hungry asshole. He'll do anything if it means he gets power. Close deals with far-right extremists, start a war, and keep the war going for as long as possible if ending it means he'll lose power.
But if Israel comes anywhere close to a Civil War, he'll just drop it, because it would mean that not only he would never have a chance to go back to power ever again, chances are he'd either end up detailed and dragged to an International court while trying to flee the country, or killed/lynched at home.
For power hungry politicians who are willing to do everything to get and stay in power, there is basically no worse option than a Civil War. Because a Civil War would set things in stone. An election loss might still have chances of reversal in the future. If you cause a Civil War to happen in your nation, even if your side wins, you'll eventually fall because of the responsibility of causing death and destruction in your own nation.
This of course is different for some countries still today, particularly poor nations already destroyed by corruption, where Civil Wars often look like the only sane option so bad the situation already is, plus in past histories of democracies worldwide.
But for a modern democracy? People would never forgive it.
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Saber rattling at it's stupidest. It makes the US look like a sociopath nation in a global scenario, deservedly.
I dunno how international politics in any nation can be dealt with so ignorantly, even though it frequently happens all around the world, but if the US is calling a country that basically provides huge portions of everything it consumes as part of the Axis of Evil, it's basically complaining about the food it's eating right now, but it still continues to consume more and more of it.
This is one among the things that I truly hate about Biden and it's administration. Sure, this is about a Republican speaker and several of it's stupid ilk, but Biden's international policy is just about the same on this particular matter. And it's driving the US towards a horrible global diplomatic position.
As for stupid nationalists who still believe Biden's protectionist and "bring jerbs back" moves will do anything to dent this reality - think again. It might seem bolder than Trump's, which isn't saying much, but the US will soon realize how much money they wasted on this charade, and it'll topple Biden over - that is if he even wins the next election. And Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves. Of course, if he loses, then all bets are off. I can't imagine Trump doing any better there. His erratic temperamental chaotic behavior is pretty much the worst thing that can ever happen for US international politics, as proved by his last term.
It's not multi billion dollars packages that will turn the US industry independent from supposed "Axis of Evil" nations. You don't have the manpower, the logistics, the infrastructure, the culture, the education, the knowledge base, the related capabilities, the resources, plus a whole ton of other parallel stuff needed to attend the ridiculous demands US consumerism currently has. The US will never become self sufficient without a major catastrophe or complete revolution, which includes the death of huge throngs of the population and complete cultural revolution. I don't think many Americans understand the dimension of the chasm we're talking about. And this is a huge portion of the whole problem.
China itself can only attend the insatiable demands of the US and other developed nations because it has over 4 times the population of the US, which adds up to almost 15% of the global population, and a huge portion of it working in factories. This allows for China to have a labor force that is above the total US population. You read that right. China has more people working in labor jobs than the US has people overall, even if it's "only" some 10th of the Chinese population.
The estimated labor force in China is around 400 million people, with total workforce being around 700 million (very rough estimates based on old statistics - so this number is probably higher today). The US population is 330 million. You get the problem there? Even with the US having one of the biggest workforces in the world, even if it has extremely low unemployment rates, even if you put as much people who can work behind factory jobs and whatnot - you can't win over basic math.
China exports somewhere around half a trillion dollars worth of products to the US every year. This is all fueled by the wage gap problem that US has that forces the vast majority of the population to rely on cheap imports, to the point it's a systemic problem. This is often disguised by US brands and corporations making all their stuff in China, but it should be clear by now how dependent everyone in the US is directly or indirectly of Chinese imports. And no, you buying a handcrafted tool or whatever MADE IN THE US, doesn't make a difference when almost everything else you spend money in has Chinese manufacturing or businesses involved in the mix.
If we had some magical situation where the US could make all of it's products stateside, this would immediately throw the majority of the US population into absolute poverty, because that population can't afford to pay the wages of all the people that would be working in factories to attend demand.
This is one thing that is guaranteed to happen with the chip plant stuff. Even if the US can find the labor to work on those plants, which I highly doubt it will, the wages needed to be paid in those will be so astronomically high in comparison to Taiwan or China or South Korea chip plants that it'll become an exercise in futility. So it's a Trump Foxconn charade, only with tons more money put into it.
In fact, I can't think of any nation in the world less likely to become independent of Chinese manufacturing and exports. The EU goes in second place, but a distant second place - as it imports from China just as much as a whole, but at least it exports more stuff directly to China.
So, all this saber rattling is just stupid. The US currently cannot live without China, and it's politicians have to wake the f*ck up and learn how to deal with that as adults that are representing a population whose reality is just that.
China would take a humongous hit if it lost it's main exporting nation, but much like Russia was able to go around western nation sanctions, China would likely also redirect it's trade towards other nations and keep things up somehow.
The US also tends to completely ignore continental Africa, South America, all of Asia other than China and Japan, and huge portions of those I highly doubt would side with the US in a global split.
The other three "Axis of Evil" nations might be less of a problem, but really, we're talking about nuclear weapon carrying nations here - all of them. So coming out this clear about your intentions when you don't really have any real solutions in place to solve the issues that would come from a global split is just baffling.
Honestly, I think the only thing that US politicians create when they say crap like that is reinforce the fame of being a stuck up egocentric nation filled with privileged people who don't understand the country's position in the world. It's isolationist rhetoric favors no one. And allied nations are becoming sick and tired of this.
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This video should serve as a reminder to anyone - China is not communist or socialist in regards to economy - only politics. It has strayed off the path of communist and socialist ideology long long ago, as many other self proclaimed communist regimes did.
And if we're talking about politics, China also isn't socialist nor communist - it's a dictatorship. Or an oligarchy, like Russia.
Reason why the entire talk just sounds like something out of western nations.
The graphics TLDR uses for analysis like these are often a bit misleading. They only take a handful of nations for comparison. Fact is, in most of those markers, several European nations are either close to or above China.
A pension crisis is coming for most developed and many developing nations. It's more a "problem" of people living longer, in such a way that existing policies and laws made in different times are not keeping up with that. A problem poor countries wishes they had perhaps?
While it is true that China, in comparison to developed nations, will have a harder time because it's GPD per capita isn't as high, that number can also be a bit misleading. Having a GDP per capita that is lower in comparison to other nations with currency exchange made to USD, doesn't take in consideration the cost of living there. The per capita dollar of a Chinese citizen gets them much more than the per capita dollar of an US, or European citizen on average.
Difference is still significant because of the magnitude in difference, but ultimately, it's comparable to most other developing nations anyways.
You want another relevant statistic on this, look for cost of living per country. That metric will give you in very approximate terms (because it's a fairly complex measure) the average cost of living including stuff like rent, utilities, food, hospital, etc etc - the bare minimum. With that you'll see that most developed nations have a cost of living that is 2 to 3x higher than developing nations.
So, weirdly enough, it's just not easy to really tell if China is in a worse position than say, the UK, Germany, France and others. The caste system in China that doesn't allow for someone from rural places to move fully to cities is a problem in itself, but you also need to consider that the reason why the pension is so different is because China is a country that has differences in cost of living internally that are like completely different nations. Beijing cost of living is closer to Japan, while rural areas are closer to poor nations.
So yeah... it is a very complex topic.
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So... the exact same reason why I've been saying so called "economists" are being fed a lie and eating it whole this entire time.
See, I'm getting tired of hearing analysts, economists, financial sector and other buffoons singing praise about Milei's strategy, pulling statistics and charts our of their asses to make it appear like so, while completely ignoring the devastating social effects his policies have been having on the grounds with Milei politics, because this is an extremely well understood with several historical counterparts, effect of basically cutting everything on social spending and selling out the nation to make an appearance of having an economic boom while the core is actually rotten.
I find it even funny that some economists even go as far as denouncing line goes up economics, and right after doing it are praising Milei's brand of it.
And of course all neo liberal right wing supporters of Milei are going to come here to complain about TLDR being leftist, left leaning, and "you don't understand" Milei at any sign of there being a criticism of results of his politics, because that's how political fanaticism and populism works. You're not allowed to talk about strikes, protests, the sectors that are being affected by Milei's measures, or anything like that, or you are against them.
But I said this was going to happen right after he was elected. The economy will seem to be booming, because of course it will when you start selling state assets, cutting down social programs, cutting down government roles, and leaving it all up "to the market". Anyone's numbers and money on the bank goes up if you just stop eating, sell everything you have, stop doing anything that costs money and is productive, stop taking care of your family, skirt all responsibilities, and leave it to private initiative or others to "take care of itself".
Everytime you have a government coming in with extreme neo liberal ideas like that, you are going to have a boom in economy because you are effectively cutting spending at the detriment of everything else.
But what this actually represents is that you are losing control. You are being paid to effectively let others dictate your life to you. The result of neo liberal minimal state economics is that the market will give, but the market will also take, and you have no say on it anymore. Because your sold that control to others.
The problems starts showing up later because all the people who depended on social programs and all the support that government used to give will eventually start not being able to fend for themselves, and then what you have is a delayed crash. The market will solve itself and minimal state interference, in a world that is trending towards line goes up late-stage capitalism can only end one way.
But people will continue being delusional that Milei is going to do some sort of miraculous recovery of the nation because they keep buying the same populist rhetoric over and over, no one wants to confront reality. This isn't based on what is happening, neither on statistics nor on reality grounds, because it's about fanaticism and cult of personality.
Live miserably and die happy, whilst dreaming with the capitalist utopia that never comes, because they don't understand this is a fixed status quo society. This sort of ideology feeds itself on the confirmation bias and positive reinforcement of the privileged few, whilst ignoring the whole. Who cares if there are throngs of people living in misery or permanent food insecurity status, if the wealth divide is getting bigger, if retirees are getting f*ck all, if essential services are going down the drain, and privatized industries and services are abusing their monopoly positions to exploit everyone, when you are high and above that situation anyways?
Supporters will keep repeating the mantra. Oh, it's not his fault. You don't get him. It was worse before. You don't get the plan. There's no way he could've predicted it. It's because of opposition interference. Yadda yadda yadda. It's ridiculous how people nowadays have been falling in the same trap that other nations have fallen in the past, no lessons learned.
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First of all, it's hilarious that the ones that created this so called overcapacity and overreliance on Chinese exports are now complaining about the Chinese government just... you know, continuing the strategy by itself.
It should be no secret to anyone that it was exactly developed nations' private corporations who offshored all industrial production to China because of cheap, largely unregulated labor and industrial practices, as a sort of modern continuation of industrial revolution era practices including modern slave labor, horrendous consequences for the environment, zero welfare and workers' rights, and all of that. If anyone is to blame for China becoming the industrial sector of the world, it's developed nations private companies and general demand/consumerism.
It has only become a problem now because China wised up and is building it's own corporations and using that industrial capability to produce their own stuff instead of generating profits only to developed nations multinationals. Curious how this was never a worry when Foxconn was scaling up massively to attend the demands of foreign nations, with even notorious cases of child labor being employed and a string of suicides over poor job conditions, but now that you have Chinese companies like Huawei almost overtaking Samsung and Apple, plus other Chinese companies that overtook western companies on certain tech areas such as DJI with drones, it's only now a problem, right? It's not like China's internal market being smaller with production going mostly for exports has ever been a problem from the time China became an industrial powerhouse. This isn't anything new. The situation was entirely created by US, EU and other developed nations.
In fact, it seems you have truckloads of smartasses and armchair warriors complaining about Chinese product quality, and with the bring jerbs back jingoistic rhetoric, plus complaints about Chinese coal power plants and how it pollutes the entire regions, and a whole ton of other tone deaf complaints that do not understand this simple fact. Today's China is largely a product of developed nations influences and demands. Every single one of those complaints traces directly back to policies enforced by developed nations corporations who took their industries into the country for the cheapest production possible.
Second... about not wanting to overstate the whole thing - it's also valid for most developing nations cited, and even several of the developed ones.
I'll give some background for people to understand this better. In Brazil, protectionist importation taxes have been a reality since forever. And they are once again mistakenly being raised in a few areas because of the absurd notion that this would boost/raise our internal industries somehow. I'm saying absurd because Brazil has had a close to 100% importation tax over several decades now on several types of products (not only coming from China, but coming from outside in general), and the only effect it had was to keep the country late behind in production and consumption of several technological products, left behind in several areas, in a constant state of brain drain, and no real local industry was born from it. None. All industries we had got left behind, became assembly plants for foreign companies, and shut doors because they couldn't compete with superior tech from other nations.
We have continued importing everything with the importation taxes, or via grey and black markets, because what stupid protectionist taxes really do is block access to products for the vast majority of people including those who could study products coming from the outside and starting their own companies, businesses or industrial production to compete. Electronics that several nations consider essential or commonplace these days are luxuries here because of the taxes, this climate does not incentivize local production of anything, it just makes access to those harder, which kills demand, which disincentives local production of anything, which keeps Brazil in a permanent banana republic state. There is a reason why throughout the entire history of Brazil, despite having some notorious outliers when it comes to tech and creativity, remaining a country that only exports commodities and primary goods. And it has nothing to do with protectionist measures, it has to do with being submissive to developed nations demands, and not investing in education and science. And this is something that apparently neither side of politics get. You cannot compete in a global scenario by shutting doors and hoping your internal industry will sprout out of nothing. What generates local industries is investment in education, research and science, not trying burry your head in the sand while coming up with ways to shield your local production from the realities of the global market.
But also, I'm saying it's overstated mainly because it's on a very short list of things, it's not really considering trade volume and deals. If you take higher taxes for some primary goods such as steel, you should also take in consideration how two major Chinese EV makers are opening local car production plants too. How trade volume only increased over the years.
Or deals on a higher level such as BRICS nations trying to come up with or use a common currency detached from the US dollar. I'll just come out say that it's a straight lie that China is falling out with Brazil, at the very least. I dunno about other "global South" nations, I suspect it's more or less the same thing, but it simply isn't true that China is falling out with Brazil. Brazil has not only been importing more and more year over year from China, but also exporting more and more too. And this is besides Brazil's previous far right president being an anti-China guy himself, which the current left wing president absolutely isn't.
Brazil is a rare case of trade surplus with China. You can look it up. It's much more likely that Brazil will have a fallout with the US and EU rather than China, which is also unlikely, just to be clear.
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Just to stamp on the lies of Russo bots and ignorants in general, the problems in the region didn't start when USSR dissolved, and being part of USSR was not voluntary nor good for people in the region.
In fact, both countries had purges of resistance groups, after wars against Soviet take over and rule.
So no, it was not a "peaceful" area during USSR rule... it was an actively dominated and suppressed by force area, with purges of any groups that were for independence.
And then, in a way, the reason why there are so many conflicts in countries that became independent after USSR fell are majorly closely related to the history of USSR taking over these regions.
This is both because of the way these independent nations were divided, and also because of how the Russian empire took these territories in the first place, which everyone knows how it works, because it's similar to what Putin does.
First, there is an influx of Russians into a territory, which later on triggers a separatist movement, which Russia then uses as excuse to invade the region, and then take over it.
So, that's more or less it from historical perspective. And now you understand how most modern Russian invasions also worked.
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Not falling out, it's just the usual problem of Trump being an asshole - which everyone already saw in his first term.
And it's not only with Japan too, it's with all nations. The only ones that get to benefit from Trump being in power are the "strong men" he admires, and even then it can quickly backfire putting too much faith in that - reason why everyone will be on edge with the convicted felon.
In other words, when it comes to diplomacy, Trump is the equivalent of a fickle petty man child. People who like him are the ones who either see themselves in a mirror, or think they can use his personality for their own gains.
There will be lots more problems this time because there is no one left to stop Trump's impulses in government or justice anymore, and patience of some global leaders is obviously running low. You can see this with China ramping up direct responses to US sanctions. On Trump's first term China didn't respond this directly to bans, like the Huawei ban, plus a few other stuff Trump said publicly. This time with Biden's final days and looming Trump government, China already started going tit-for-tat in the trade war.
For Japan specifically, things are less likely to go as smoothly too as the LDP is losing power, which is a different situation compared to when Abe and Kishida were in power. Japanese conservatism is quite different in comparison to the US, being closer to old Republicans, but they do have some common points.
With Ishiba in a hung parliament and minority coalition government, it's just not as simple as when LPD had total control.
All in all, I don't think there is a real diplomatic risk to entirely cut ties. But it will be fraught.
Which isn't really a surprise. Trump is already getting at odds with UK, EU, Canada, Denmark, Mexico and several other nations. He has the tact, with that stupid ass Musk behind him, of a LEGO piece lying on the carpet. People who saw his first term through know pretty well how much of a great diplomatic figure he is.
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