broadsword
Brigadier
Wasn't it Blinken instead?
Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
Wasn't it Blinken instead?
Pretty sure they both did.
I bet Wang Yi won't be hearing anymore BS about mars rover or position of strength from the US anytime soon.
Last edited:
plawolf
Lieutenant General
With great retardation comes no responsibilities.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Time for a rant.
If you ever knew a landlord in your life, then you know exactly why the rightist hate those Liberals and hate state intervention.
It is due to state intervention that we, er, I mean, those landlords, cannot evict some deadbeat or problem tenants in a timely manner.
State intervention stops business. State intervention is evil as far as I am concerned, and only necessary in extreme circumstances.
So this is my rant. Extreme circumstances happen a lot more than you think, so state intervention is a part of life.
However, state intervention, should never be a blanket policy, because most of the time, it is evil.
The only way to do state intervention, is on a case by case basis.
You know who agrees with me?
The communist Chinese, they agree with me.
In the news the last couple of days, the bankrupt property developer with crooked management Evergrande was ordered to liquidate their remaining assets by a Hong Kong court.
The obvious question, is how come Everagrande never got bailed out?
The CCP would not bail out Evergrande, as that would be moral hazard, and it is a not blanket policy. State intervention is still done on a case by case basis even with Marxist Leninist, along with the capitalist roaders in the CCP.
You are right in general, but totally misunderstanding what state intervention is and how it should be done. Most of the time western capitalists create a complete ridiculous strawman of what state intervention is to seed disinformation and start brainwashing of the masses. Your obvious hatred of the very term shows it is clearly working.
Obviously you have first hand experience in what bad and perverted western state intervention is, which is why you hate it. But to hate the very idea of state intervention because of it is like someone hating all dogs because they got bit by one raised by a terrible owner.
At its most basic and theoretical level, state intervention is critically important to the efficient running of economies because of two factors and to address two market failures that always occur in an unregulated market.
1) Externalities.
Where there are positive externalities, the wider economy will benefit from the provision of a product or service that the provider will not be able to charge for. Meaning these services and products that will always be under provided for in a free market without state intervention. Think of street lights, roads, schools, police, fire. Basically all the things you pay taxes to provide for. The alternative is the Indian model, where you have almost nothing and everyone shits in the streets.
Negative externalities is the opposite where the provider causes damage to the wider environment and economy and profits personally. Without regulation, there will be way too much of this bullshit. Think of logging of public forests, polluting industries by rivers, crime. You need the government to step in and limit these sorts of activities. Think back to the old days in China with pollution everywhere and ask yourself was it better when the state laid back and did nothing, or is it better now that they are cracking down and improving environmental regulations? It’s not as straight forwards as there was a calculated trade-off back in the day to accept the pollution in order to uplift people’s living standards faster. But again just look at India to see what happens when the state doesn’t do what it is supposed to. Or America with its poisoned tap water and apocalyptic toxic smoke plumes when companies gets to ignore environmental regulations and basic common sense to ship dangerous chemicals on the cheap.
2) Creating and maintaining and level playing field.
The entire field of capitalist markets only works when some core fundamental assumptions and pre-requests are met. The most important one is a level playing field where everyone gets to compete fairly so that the best ideas and products ‘win’ so the economy can put its resources into making more of them for the betterment of all.
In China, while you might be able to bribe a low level official or officer to look the other way, the laws of the state are always set with fairness and equality in mind. In the west, you can legally bribe politicians to change the laws themselves to benefit you and hinder your competition.
This is the fundamental difference between how China and the west does state intervention, and this is why it works in China and doesn’t in the west.
One extremely striking thing I have noticed about a fundamental difference between Chinese and western laws is just how humane and fair Chinese laws are, whereas western laws almost always feel punitive if not outright cruel exploitative.
If you had a bad experience and hate western state intervention with a passion, that’s fair and reasonable. Just don’t fall for the old western propaganda trick of thinking the west is the best of everything, that if it’s bad in the west is far worse in the rest of the world. It’s usually the opposite these days, where things are done far better, fairer and more efficiently in China. Which is why western elites are so desperate to libel China at every turn, least their own subjects see the truth and ask why they can’t have better from their own leaders, laws and governments. Because if enough people in the west sees the truth, it’s revolution time!
Thanks for your post, it was well articulated, and that I appreciate.
State invention to me, in the West, has been totally abused, and it is just to rig the game, to put it mildly.
There is one point, in your post, that was not brought up.
And that is the reason why I am still against state intervention for the most part.
No one really knows anything about the future. No one knows what side effects of a policy would do.
We can talk about these externalities, but that has already been done ages ago. That is straight out of the textbook.
In the real world, state intervention seems brutal.
One good example, and I still do know if it was good or not, was the government taking action against Jack Ma Ant Financial. I would assume a lot of small timers, who had no access credit, who now had access to credit, no longer had access to credit.
Now we can say something that type of lending could cause externalities, or be a threat to the banking system, or being unregulated could be an unfair playing field, but that sounds more like excuses.
To this day, no one can prove conclusively in any way that the restrictions on Ant Financial were good or not.
Who was the state trying to protect in the case of Ant Financial? I don't know.
We heard theoretical answers in the past, but the world is real, a textbook answer does not cut it IMHO.
So, state intervention too many times just seems like heavy handiness of the state for no reason at all, other than being a nanny. To protect ourselves, from ourselves.
That is what I really do not like.
This idea of externalities, and Liberal ideology, has turbo charged the nanny state.
That is a real danger to China I feel.
You just do not want to go down that road. You just don't.
The US has to respond proportionally. Iranian backed groups killed American soldiers, but they're not following direct orders from Iran. Most likely there'll be some strikes on Iranian advisors to those groups or their supply lines for weapons.
But a direct attack by a nuclear power against a non nuclear power without sufficient provocation to warrant such an attack gives the victim of the attack the justification for building a nuclear weapon themselves. Any direct attack that just does a little damage, which will be repaired quickly, will lead to nuclearisation.
So there can't be limited attacks against Iran. It has to be either a symbolic strike on Iranian targets outside the country or a complete invasion to dismantle the nuclear program. Since they don't want to do an invasion, it seems highly unlikely that there'll be direct attacks on Iran.
Of course I might be wrong and then Iran will probably withdraw from the non proliferation treaty soon
"Chyna bad and Chyna evil becuz Chyna imprisoned me for spying on Chyna on Chynise soil!!!"
he comes second after Brett McGurk
Evergrande issued massive amounts of cash dividends to its shareholders when it was already heavily indebted but still had access to credit. The vast majority of Evergrande shares are owned by the founder and his relatives. Since shareholders are not liable when a company goes bankrupt, Evergrande basically scammed creditors by borrowing money and giving it to the founder and his relatives while leaving the liability for the debt with the company.
