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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Despite the US’s economic success, income inequality remains breathtaking. But this is no glitch – it’s the system
The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago.
The data is not super consistent with the narrative of the US’s inexorable success. Sure, American productivity has zoomed ahead of that of its European peers. Only a handful of countries manage to produce more stuff per hour of work. And artificial intelligence now promises to put the United States that much further ahead.
This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government, for its repression of minorities or for the iron fist it deploys against any form of dissent. But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
Any government that relies on individuals to uncorruptly weild concentrated power… is the problem. Society and human nature will see it abused every time.
If your system relies on being run by exceptional people. Success itself is the exception.
I want to agree, but at the same time i feel the concentrated power at the top is very similar in both countries. The one party system in China is very different to the two party system in the US, but I don’t think that is what makes the difference. I think China genuinely wants the poor to be less poor and the US genuinely want the rich more rich. Different goals obviously lead to different results.
But I do agree the system shouldn’t allow room for power to be abused. The checks and balances system is definitely broken.
Agree or disagree, it’s just a fact.
If China genuinely wanted the poor to be less so. They wouldn’t have allowed the wealth disparity. Industrialization has lifted the base standard of living in every country its happened in. China, England, Russia, the US, currently in India. The problem, is that it has always benefited the owners far more. There’s always a strong plateau to the benefit of the social base in these systems. And no one has managed to fix it long term, not China or anyone else.
In fact, China’s youth right now are facing conditions surprisingly similar to those in the United States and elsewhere. With little economic opportunity for their futures, often jobless. Getting ready to grapple with a level of automation that other countries haven’t even come to terms with yet. It’s infinitely more likely that the next couple of decades will see massive social struggle and over there long before they will ever see communism.
All governments rely on uncorruptible civil servants to some degree. Nobody seems to know what the threshold for “concentrated power” actually is.
But the Chinese system has this pernacious habit of benefiting domestic Chinese residents. That’s the “corruption” westerners can’t stand. That’s the concentration of authority they object to.
If the Chinese economy was run out of a board room at JP Morgan or through a series is military based commanded by NATO Generals or via a client state like Israel or Japan, we wouldn’t hear any complaints
This is flat-out false. Systems like anarchism explicitly expect it,and structured accordingly.
Tanky say what?! Go ask the Uyghurs or the Tibetans or the Hong Kongers or any non-han ethnic group. It’s not an east west thing. It’s a “western nations did identical things to my family that China is doing over there. And I’m not an immature ideology blinded campist” thing. It’s a don’t be a hypocrite thing. But name a more iconic strawman for an ML than not just bigotedly lumping an entire ethnic group, but vast diverse groups as one. Just because they loosely share geopolitical ties.
You’re literally projecting. Because I’m here to tell you that’s just as bad. Fuck that shit whoever is doing it. Grow up and stop being an enabling hypocrite.
Speak specifically. Which anarchist government are you referring to?
Because I can point to plenty of anarchist communities - from Chaz in Seattle to the 1930s Spanish Anarchists - who were as plagued with corruption and abuse of authority.
Never even mind the Anarcho-Capitalists that have been central to the modern era of human trafficking, war profiteering, and environmental pillaging.
Michelle Bachelet got screamed at by the NatSec crowd when she came back from her tour of China and failed to find the litany of atrocities that Christian Nationalists in the NATO block had alleged
Something of a joke over the last few years that the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the civil war in South Sudan has eclipsed the UN’s attention, in large part because the “anti-genocide” voices on China have had to rapidly pivot to being genocide-denialist across North Africa and the Middle East.
If you can find me the equivalent of hospitals being bombed, populations starved into submission, and children with brains blown out by sniper fire as they were carried by terrified parents, I’d be genuinely curious to see it.
That’s always the game isn’t it? “How dare you defy my political orthodoxy! You’re the real criminal here!”
You can’t stomach the most tepid opposition. The slightest whisper of defiance to the fascist narrative sends you into spirals of invective. When you’re presented with a simple request for clarification, all you can do is scream Red Scare tropes and pound the downvote button.
I never said it eliminated it. Just that it accounted for it. Keeping governance flat and small. So it doesn’t produce corruption on a national level. Or export it.
And in the end, what does it matter. Every ML government has been corrupted and pushed it’s corruption at a much larger scale. That’s the point. The scale and mass of those
And as to your linked investigation, that’s not particularly convincing one way or the other. If China was good as you pretend, they would have a free press. Instead they repress. Foreign press have where they can go severely restricted often accompanied by minders to make sure they don’t get close to what they’re looking for. And finally, it’s very common for those that are abused to deny their abuse as long as they are vulnerable to their abuser. Here’s a link to an interview. Where at one point family and activists confront a CCP rep about the disappearance of their friends and family. Where he convincingly screeches “OnE cHiNa!!!” In response to not having the power to disappear. I know you deny these peoples existence. I bet you’ll even resort to old trusty. CIA or NATO conspiracy!
But the fact is secrecy and suppression is not the hallmark of the innocent.The leaders of ML governments are human just like everyone else. They aren’t divine or infallible. No matter how much ideology blinded campists like yourself, claim otherwise.
Government isn’t a pancake, its a series of publicly administered institutions. “We just need to keep things small” isn’t a meaningful or tangible policy, as evidenced by the catastrophe that’s been DOGE.
When “corruption” in the western lexicon translates to “Poor people getting nice things from the state”, I guess they’re guilty as charged.
Then why advocate for closed-off privatized institutions to manage your economy and your polity?
Western markets would still be overrun by cheap products (partly because of subsidies and partly because forced labour), Chinese residents would still be supressed by heavy surveillance, Taiwan would still be threatened, Russia would still be supplied with technology to invade Ukraine.
Until 15 years ago China wasn’t considered a hostile state, just an increasingly powerful competitor. All nations benefit their fomestic residents, or at least their domestic corporations.
The real situation in which there wouldn’t be complaints would be when the Chinese benefitted their residents while at the same time didn’t do anything the west didn’t like. But since they’ve become pwerful, they can now do whatever they want (just like other powerful countries) - and some of the stuff they want, is bad for the west.
Well…
The War on Terror set our efforts to crank up hostility against China back by a decade.
American politicians made a big show of hating Japan during the 90s for “stealing our jobs” during their economic boom. Being a lapdog of the West didn’t save them from sanctions or racial animus or unfounded accusations of market manipulation.
If China was treating the west back then like it does now, it would definitely not have been as desirable to move production there. Afaik there hasn’t been a single event that changed everything, so the number 15 is a bit random; but the attitude of the west towards China and vice versa definitely shifted. Also Russia was for a short moment not seen as an enemy state (although Russia might have considered the west as their enemy all along)
Japan is a good example of how this doesn’t have to be a two way street. Could also be that US and Europe (where I’m from) don’t always have the same perception, so could be i wrote the west where Europe would’ve been more accurate.
Sounds like we shouldn’t have a government then.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/donald-rooum-and-freedom-press-ed-what-is-anarchism-an-introduction
Well, anarchism isn’t the absence of governance. It’s the answerability of governance. We need to abolish unanswerable calcified institutions of power. We can still have governments as long as they are smaller and answerable to the individual’s they govern.