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Post by Red Rackham on Oct 12, 2024 11:32:24 GMT
China is booming because it's a coal based economy. It aint rocket science. And because they have people working for slave wages. Nobody can compete with slave wages. They can't unionise because they'd be imprisoned or killed. It's a dictatorship. Couldn't agree more, China is a coal fuel dictatorship that is becoming increasingly powerful and will become the largest economy in the world. And some people think fitting Chinese made solar panels to the roofs of properties on a tiny rock in the north east Atlantic will somehow save the planet! Honestly, it beggars belief. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 12, 2024 11:43:04 GMT
Are you sure you are not stuck in a circular definition? People often say China is a dictatorship, as they define a dictatorship as a government system that does not employ a representative parliamentary democracy as we practice in Britain since we got it off the Greeks. A democracy literally means rule of the people, as in demos is the people and kratos means rule. The way China's system works is the primacy of the people is built into their constitution.
What the adversarial system appears to me to be is a like fighting for peace. The fighting is causing untold economic and social harm and is not really what the people need. We bash back and forth between one dictatorship and the other, and this uncertainty and forced change is a hit on our economy. Like HS 2: 1 government wants it and the other does not.
Hold on one moment. I'm not talking specifically about China or anywhere else. My point is simply one of definition - ie a very concise and efficient definition of a dictatorship is a social order in which disagreement is not allowed. It seems that it is not me who is calling China a dictatorship, it is indirectly yourself. Also, i made no claims about the value of dictatorship. I was not having a go at you, but trying to inpire some ideas. The problem with a lot of succinct definitions is they merely replace one word for another. Like say I'm driving a car with 3 others. The car goes where I dictate it to go, but I can ask the other passengers for their input. The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over. This is where the issue runs into problems. Will they, and what evedence do you have? Also perhaps they are more likely if they were themselves brought up in an adversarial system. |
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Post by Bentley on Oct 12, 2024 11:50:46 GMT
Hold on one moment. I'm not talking specifically about China or anywhere else. My point is simply one of definition - ie a very concise and efficient definition of a dictatorship is a social order in which disagreement is not allowed. It seems that it is not me who is calling China a dictatorship, it is indirectly yourself. Also, i made no claims about the value of dictatorship. I was not having a go at you, but trying to inpire some ideas. The problem with a lot of succinct definitions is they merely replace one word for another. Like say I'm driving a car with 3 others. The car goes where I dictate it to go, but I can ask the other passengers for their input. The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over. This is where the issue runs into problems. Will they, and what evedence do you have? Also perhaps they are more likely if they were themselves brought up in an adversarial system. “The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over.” Not always . Unions do and did cooperate with employers . Maybe the system you label ‘ adversarial’ is not always adversarial just as a dictatorship labelled as ‘ oppressive’ may not always oppress. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 12, 2024 11:51:32 GMT
And because they have people working for slave wages. Nobody can compete with slave wages. They can't unionise because they'd be imprisoned or killed. It's a dictatorship. Couldn't agree more, China is a coal fuel dictatorship that is becoming increasingly powerful and will become the largest economy in the world. And some people think fitting Chinese made solar panels to the roofs of properties on a tiny rock in the north east Atlantic will somehow save the planet! Honestly, it beggars belief. Cars take on a whole new meaning when you look at total cost of ownership. For decades the Brits have been scammed in every way imaginable, even the £50 tiny strip of plastic trim that can so easily fall off. Free petrol for life is not the solution to save the world, but it might just save you. |
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Post by Bentley on Oct 12, 2024 12:00:43 GMT
I don’t think anyone would dispute that China can make a lot of cheap stuff far cheaper than us.
In fact there is a lot of cheap stuff made in China that used to be expensive .
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 12, 2024 12:07:51 GMT
I was not having a go at you, but trying to inpire some ideas. The problem with a lot of succinct definitions is they merely replace one word for another. Like say I'm driving a car with 3 others. The car goes where I dictate it to go, but I can ask the other passengers for their input. The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over. This is where the issue runs into problems. Will they, and what evedence do you have? Also perhaps they are more likely if they were themselves brought up in an adversarial system. “The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over.” Not always . Unions do and did cooperate with employers . Maybe the system you label ‘ adversarial’ is not always adversarial just as a dictatorship labelled as ‘ oppressive’ may not always oppress. I have got a feeling you might find it was the Brits that invented much of this socialism in the first place. Go back to the times of Marx and try and get some first-hand primary accounts of what was going on in Manchester at the time. It was specific to the time and place. The factories owned all the slum accommodation, but there was something else going on in the form of the British East India Company, which was a giant state-backed industrial cartel monopoly. You could not manufacture without the raw materials and the huge market of the empire. Marx was your archetypal anti-establishment figure, already thrown out by the Germans. There was also John Stuart Mill who had a profound influence in that period.
Yes I'm aware some unions are pretty harmless and help keep the peace, but unions in the UK have amalgamated into a political force. The problem is the union bosses often come from the shop floor and the shop floor is not very well educated. Management have a hard enough time already as competition is fierce.
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Post by Orac on Oct 12, 2024 12:11:43 GMT
Hold on one moment. I'm not talking specifically about China or anywhere else. My point is simply one of definition - ie a very concise and efficient definition of a dictatorship is a social order in which disagreement is not allowed. It seems that it is not me who is calling China a dictatorship, it is indirectly yourself. Also, i made no claims about the value of dictatorship. I was not having a go at you, but trying to inpire some ideas. The problem with a lot of succinct definitions is they merely replace one word for another. Like say I'm driving a car with 3 others. The car goes where I dictate it to go, but I can ask the other passengers for their input. The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over. This is where the issue runs into problems. Will they, and what evedence do you have? Also perhaps they are more likely if they were themselves brought up in an adversarial system. I think you may be under-estimating the sophistication of the system you are critiquing. Here you suggest that your control of the car itself is a dictatorship, but this aspect of a car is analogous to the people, whose job it is to take instruction from the government, doing that job properly. This could be regarded as systemic competence - ie the government makes a decision and the people whose job it is to carry out orders, carry out those orders faithfully regardless of their personal opinions. Any society must work like this to a very large degree whether it is a dictatorship or not. A society will be a dictatorship when people are not allowed to argue or organise freely for some other decision to be made / government to be replaced by others. You also seem to miss the functional point of all this. The reason to have an argument and a vote is (to some degree) to dissolve the single point of control so that car journeys can happen without each one becoming a bloody fight for the driver's seat |
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Post by Bentley on Oct 12, 2024 12:22:30 GMT
“The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over.” Not always . Unions do and did cooperate with employers . Maybe the system you label ‘ adversarial’ is not always adversarial just as a dictatorship labelled as ‘ oppressive’ may not always oppress. I have got a feeling you might find it was the Brits that invented much of this socialism in the first place. Go back to the times of Marx and try and get some first-hand primary accounts of what was going on in Manchester at the time. It was specific to the time and place. The factories owned all the slum accommodation, but there was something else going on in the form of the British East India Company, which was a giant state-backed industrial cartel monopoly. You could not manufacture without the raw materials and the huge market of the empire. Marx was your archetypal anti-establishment figure, already thrown out by the Germans. There was also John Stuart Mill who had a profound influence in that period.
Yes I'm aware some unions are pretty harmless and help keep the peace, but unions in the UK have amalgamated into a political force. The problem is the union bosses often come from the shop floor and the shop floor is not very well educated. Management have a hard enough time already as competition is fierce.
Well if you are going to frame today’s unions around the adversities of yesterday then you must expect the lack of unions in China to be framed around communist oppression in the past. Yes unions did become a political force and still are but it could be said that the lack of independent representation of Chinese workers is a political tactic . Your comment about union bosses is spot on , at least in my experience. Union reps rarely came from skilled operatives unless the union only represented skilled operatives. Union bosses usually came from union reps who made their way up the ladder. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 12, 2024 14:17:52 GMT
I was not having a go at you, but trying to inpire some ideas. The problem with a lot of succinct definitions is they merely replace one word for another. Like say I'm driving a car with 3 others. The car goes where I dictate it to go, but I can ask the other passengers for their input. The adversarial system justification relies on the idea that unless you are consatantly fighting those in charge they will screw you over. This is where the issue runs into problems. Will they, and what evedence do you have? Also perhaps they are more likely if they were themselves brought up in an adversarial system. I think you may be under-estimating the sophistication of the system you are critiquing. Here you suggest that your control of the car itself is a dictatorship, but this aspect of a car is analogous to the people, whose job it is to take instruction from the government, doing that job properly. This could be regarded as systemic competence - ie the government makes a decision and the people whose job it is to carry out orders, carry out those orders faithfully regardless of their personal opinions. Any society must work like this to a very large degree whether it is a dictatorship or not. A society will be a dictatorship when people are not allowed to argue or organise freely for some other decision to be made / government to be replaced by others. You also seem to miss the functional point of all this. The reason to have an argument and a vote is (to some degree) to dissolve the single point of control so that car journeys can happen without each one becoming a bloody fight for the driver's seat A couple of differences between this country and China is firstly China found out the hard way what civil unrest feels like. The time of the anti-rightists was one very poinient moment where I'm sure everyone felt it really was not working. It was very frightening and caused great trouble. The other time was the other extreme where you had the cultral revolution. They also regret now the one child policy. Today's China is a China that has learnt from the past and adpated to a path where it is now a very harmonious society, where few argue or even feel like arguing. Everything improves so fast that no one really has any cause for complaint, except for a small continget of activists. Many have fled aboroad where China feels like good riddence.
So they are very wary of anything like that happening again, and in general you get few violent inncidnets in China. They are actually allowed to protest, but they do it politely. The Chinese government system is pretty complicated and I don't know it all, but I see the final result looks good. They are all getting richer and it's become more middle class. The Chinese take inspiration from all over the place and have often copied us British. That's the funny thing. Even though our politiicans hate the CPC, the CPC and their academics and all tend to respect Britain as a nation that got a lot of things right. Like for example the Victorians who created a health service. They have a comprehensive health sevice too. It's the idea odf continiually taking inspiration from what is good and rejecting the bad and redundent ways. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 12, 2024 14:20:10 GMT
I have got a feeling you might find it was the Brits that invented much of this socialism in the first place. Go back to the times of Marx and try and get some first-hand primary accounts of what was going on in Manchester at the time. It was specific to the time and place. The factories owned all the slum accommodation, but there was something else going on in the form of the British East India Company, which was a giant state-backed industrial cartel monopoly. You could not manufacture without the raw materials and the huge market of the empire. Marx was your archetypal anti-establishment figure, already thrown out by the Germans. There was also John Stuart Mill who had a profound influence in that period.
Yes I'm aware some unions are pretty harmless and help keep the peace, but unions in the UK have amalgamated into a political force. The problem is the union bosses often come from the shop floor and the shop floor is not very well educated. Management have a hard enough time already as competition is fierce.
Well if you are going to frame today’s unions around the adversities of yesterday then you must expect the lack of unions in China to be framed around communist oppression in the past. Yes unions did become a political force and still are but it could be said that the lack of independent representation of Chinese workers is a political tactic . Your comment about union bosses is spot on , at least in my experience. Union reps rarely came from skilled operatives unless the union only represented skilled operatives. Union bosses usually came from union reps who made their way up the ladder. I don't see any unions on strike now we have the Labour government. It was like a devil's pact. We unions will destroy the Tories and then you pay us off for getting you into power. |
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Post by Bentley on Oct 12, 2024 14:34:29 GMT
Well if you are going to frame today’s unions around the adversities of yesterday then you must expect the lack of unions in China to be framed around communist oppression in the past. Yes unions did become a political force and still are but it could be said that the lack of independent representation of Chinese workers is a political tactic . Your comment about union bosses is spot on , at least in my experience. Union reps rarely came from skilled operatives unless the union only represented skilled operatives. Union bosses usually came from union reps who made their way up the ladder. I don't see any unions on strike now we have the Labour government. It was like a devil's pact. We unions will destroy the Tories and then you pay us off for getting you into power. Unions shafted Callaghans Labour government. |
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Post by Orac on Oct 12, 2024 17:07:17 GMT
I think you may be under-estimating the sophistication of the system you are critiquing. Here you suggest that your control of the car itself is a dictatorship, but this aspect of a car is analogous to the people, whose job it is to take instruction from the government, doing that job properly. This could be regarded as systemic competence - ie the government makes a decision and the people whose job it is to carry out orders, carry out those orders faithfully regardless of their personal opinions. Any society must work like this to a very large degree whether it is a dictatorship or not. A society will be a dictatorship when people are not allowed to argue or organise freely for some other decision to be made / government to be replaced by others. You also seem to miss the functional point of all this. The reason to have an argument and a vote is (to some degree) to dissolve the single point of control so that car journeys can happen without each one becoming a bloody fight for the driver's seat A couple of differences between this country and China is firstly China found out the hard way what civil unrest feels like. The time of the anti-rightists was one very poinient moment where I'm sure everyone felt it really was not working. It was very frightening and caused great trouble. The other time was the other extreme where you had the cultral revolution. They also regret now the one child policy. Today's China is a China that has learnt from the past and adpated to a path where it is now a very harmonious society, where few argue or even feel like arguing. Everything improves so fast that no one really has any cause for complaint, except for a small continget of activists. Many have fled aboroad where China feels like good riddence.
So they are very wary of anything like that happening again, and in general you get few violent inncidnets in China. They are actually allowed to protest, but they do it politely. The Chinese government system is pretty complicated and I don't know it all, but I see the final result looks good. They are all getting richer and it's become more middle class. The Chinese take inspiration from all over the place and have often copied us British. That's the funny thing. Even though our politiicans hate the CPC, the CPC and their academics and all tend to respect Britain as a nation that got a lot of things right. Like for example the Victorians who created a health service. They have a comprehensive health sevice too. It's the idea odf continiually taking inspiration from what is good and rejecting the bad and redundent ways. I'm not sure what i'm supposed to conclude from this. I do agree we are going backwards while China is going forwards. However, we are (or were) several centuries of social development ahead of them. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 12, 2024 18:31:55 GMT
A couple of differences between this country and China is firstly China found out the hard way what civil unrest feels like. The time of the anti-rightists was one very poinient moment where I'm sure everyone felt it really was not working. It was very frightening and caused great trouble. The other time was the other extreme where you had the cultral revolution. They also regret now the one child policy. Today's China is a China that has learnt from the past and adpated to a path where it is now a very harmonious society, where few argue or even feel like arguing. Everything improves so fast that no one really has any cause for complaint, except for a small continget of activists. Many have fled aboroad where China feels like good riddence.
So they are very wary of anything like that happening again, and in general you get few violent inncidnets in China. They are actually allowed to protest, but they do it politely. The Chinese government system is pretty complicated and I don't know it all, but I see the final result looks good. They are all getting richer and it's become more middle class. The Chinese take inspiration from all over the place and have often copied us British. That's the funny thing. Even though our politiicans hate the CPC, the CPC and their academics and all tend to respect Britain as a nation that got a lot of things right. Like for example the Victorians who created a health service. They have a comprehensive health sevice too. It's the idea odf continiually taking inspiration from what is good and rejecting the bad and redundent ways. I'm not sure what i'm supposed to conclude from this. I do agree we are going backwards while China is going forwards. However, we are (or were) several centuries of social development ahead of them. They have just travelled down a different development path and adjusted things to suit their culture. There's another force though at work in China that westerners can really trip up on. You rememebr Mao's Little Red Book and how we took the piss out of it? Well one of the main things was each of the people is his own warrior, protecting China from the dreaded landlords(overlords). Today's China sees that very thing at work with the consumer and the firepower of collective consumer action. I recall a while back some huge global American clothing chain store that had countless high end mega shops in China in all the major cities did something political which was found out and considered an affront to China. It might have had something to do with US sanctions, but once fouind out, those stores were completely empty all across China. I find that quite amusing, but the point is any business could expereicne a boycott if they were say really mean to a worker and the story got out. Reputation is golden and as the owner of a factory, you have to have oyur wits about you. You are in effect a servant yourself. Serve well and you wil get rich. |
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Post by besoeker3 on Oct 12, 2024 20:09:57 GMT
If there isn’t a norm in China then the notion of no dress code isn’t a general rule . By your own admission this might be an anomaly . Quite so. I've seen other factories where every worker is in a uniform that looks like Mao's China, with the little Chinese caps and all. My expereicnes are more of the modern China and do a lot of business with Shenzhen in particular. It's probably one of the best places to live, but is known to be one of the msot expensive as well. I've seen Oxford postgrads there, which kind of shows you the wages can't be all that bad since an Oxford post grad stem can walk into any tech job anywhere in the world. They pay good money for brains. You brain is your wage level negotiator! When will you ever go there to see what it is really like? |
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Post by Orac on Oct 12, 2024 20:58:05 GMT
I'm not sure what i'm supposed to conclude from this. I do agree we are going backwards while China is going forwards. However, we are (or were) several centuries of social development ahead of them. They have just travelled down a different development path and adjusted things to suit their culture. I think this is likely true. You can't apply Chinese social standards to the uk. We are just different people in a deep, evolutionary sense. |
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