Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country?
drmoose@lemmy.world 4 days agoAnd lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
Democracy. I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest. Taiwan is richer and more free than China despite being democratic, so is Japan, South Korea - what now? Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?
Objection@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?
If you’re criticizing China’s policies, surely the point of that criticism is that you think different policies would have been more effective.
It’s also not entirely a counterfactual because we can examine every other political faction that had a reasonable chance of controlling China, and see what their leadership looked like in practice.
The Nationalists did absolutely nothing to help the rural poor, embezzled foreign aid, and were more preoccupied with hunting down their domestic enemies than repelling the genocidal fascist invaders. Chiang Kai-Shek was literally had to be captured by his own bodyguards to be pressured into defending the country. Life expectancy remained completely flat during his rule.
The fascist, genocidal Japanese invaders weren’t a good option for obvious reason.
How about having no centralized authority at all? That’s what they had during the warlord period, a time of chaos and conflict that left the country vulnerable and did nothing to improve things for anyone.
Before that, there was the Qing dynasty, an authoritarian monarchy which was so assured of its superiority that they completely failed to adapt to foreign innovations and technologies, out of pride, even when it was clear that those technologies were superior.
Then you have the various European powers, carving the country up to divy up the resources between each other, while getting half the country addicted to opium.
And, returning to how things played out historically, we have the one and only faction that had any intention whatsoever of helping the hundreds of millions of starving farmers, which doubled life expectancy within a generation and then adapted to changing conditions and enacted policies which, again, brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty.
I’m the one trying to avoid this pointless dick-measuring contest between countries with vastly different conditions, despite everyone else trying to draw me into it. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t know why we’re comparing countries. Why don’t you ask WoodScientist who’s dicks we measure, since he’s the one trying to measure dicks?
drmoose@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’m confused by your reply here. This is entirely limited to this scenario of false attribution. As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?
At the end of the day the historic justification magic doesn’t matter. I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you. Not having internet is my litmus test and China fails this, I don’t understand how can people justify this. And please don’t try to diminish the great firewall of China - it’s really fucking bad.
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
I’m so confused by this conversation. Let’s recap.
Originally, OP asked why China has billionaires if it’s aiming to be socialist. I replied that the reforms that allowed billionaires also resulted in 800 million people escaping extreme poverty. WoodScientist randomly started drawing comparisons between the PRC and Taiwan, and I said that it’s apples and oranges, and that I didn’t see the relevance to what I had said. Then you started providing even more reasons why the comparison isn’t really valid, acting as if that contradicted my position in some way, which was even more confusing. You added that you didn’t like looking at other possible routes China could have gone, because it’s untestable.
Now, having established that you don’t like comparing China to other countries (calling it “dick measuring”), and also that you don’t like comparing other historical possibilities (calling them “untestable”) you’re now accusing me of being unwilling to attribute failure to Chinese policy.
First of all, which failure are you talking about? There are plenty which I’m willing to acknowledge. But also, on what basis could you call any policy a success or failure? If we discount comparisons to other places, and also discount comparisons to other possibilities, then what can we look at to determine if a given policy was a success or failure?
Do you? What’s your point of reference for that?
drmoose@lemmy.world 3 days ago
All I did is call you out that you can’t draw conclusions from n=1 of a policy so you can’t attribute chinese authoritarian policy for “getting people out of poverty”. So your glazing of Chinese autocrats is exactly that - glazing.