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"I think today the world is asking for a real alternative. Would you like to live in a world where the only alternative is either anglo-saxon neoliberalism or C

by wz1000 9y ago

"I think today the world is asking for a real alternative. Would you like to live in a world where the only alternative is either anglo-saxon neoliberalism or Chinese-Singaporean capitalism with Asian values? I claim if we do nothing we will gradually approach a kind of a new type of authoritarian society. Here I see the world historical importance of what is happening today in China. Until now there was one good argument for capitalism: sooner or later it brought a demand for democracy... What I'm afraid of is with this capitalism with Asian values, we get a capitalism much more efficient and dynamic than our western capitalism. But I don't share the hope of my liberal friends - give them ten years, [and there will be] another Tiananmen Square demonstration - no, the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over." - Slavoj Zizek

oh-kumudo 9y ago
Truth is, China/Singapore/South Korea/Japan will all run into severe population problem. And those societies all have homogeneous ethnical profile, that it is impossible to use immigration to solve this problem. What is so good about those Asian capitalism that those countries, after adopting this model, are all on course of their national suicide? It is clearly this model cannot even sustain itself, the prosperity it demonstrates is probably just a intermediate state before impending, pro-longed decline.
ekianjo 9y ago
> one good argument for capitalism: sooner or later it brought a demand for democracy... Nope, capitalism is an economic system, not to be confounded with other types of Freedom. Capitalism is the ability of freely trade private property, among other things. In the West we tend to think it goes hand in hand with Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press and other liberties, but it does not have to. However, if Individual Freedom is the goal of your political system, then you will have Capitalism as well (the US is a good case since the constitution is clearly about the ultimate protection of individual liberties, even before the State).
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Nope, capitalism is an economic system, not to be confounded with other types of Freedom. Capitalism is the ability of freely trade private property, among other things. In the West we tend to think it goes hand in hand with Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press and other liberties, but it does not have to. Exactly -- and all this obscures how those things came to be: with fierce struggle from the lower classes (workers, women, blacks, etc.) in most cases, handed over to the patricians of the state in others (e.g. US Declaration of Independence and so on) and spread more widely later. Not from the system for running the economy. Heck, Hayek, for one, a champion of capitalism, was in bed with Pinochet. And one of the things western countries did when they entered capitalism, was to conquer and enslave 2/3rds of the world in their colonies. So much for democracy.
  - scythe 9y ago
    Hayek was practically senile by 1973. It does not make sense to critique the legacy of someone who is mostly known for his work in the 1920s-40s with some of his more outlandish ideas many decades later.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      That sounds dubious that he was senile in 1973 when he wrote this in 1980: > Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.
      - 9y ago
sn41 9y ago
What about a multicultural, pluralistic, democratic, socialist society like India or South Africa which is slow and lumbering, but in the right direction? (A recent talk of land appropriation in S.A. makes me apprehensive about it.) These countries still have a version of capitalism that is not as aggressive as the Anglo-Saxon model, and a democracy that is far more permissive than the East Asian (barring Japan) model. Indian or South African growth may not be glamorous, but it might be sustainable. (And the population growth in both places is far less alarming than generally thought.)
- smithmayowa 9y ago
  Why exactly does land appropriation in south Africa make you apprehensive of its future.
  - sn41 9y ago
    I hope it does not end up like Zimbabwe. From what I understand, some demagogues are demanding that white farmers' land must be taken over by the state and redistributed to blacks. This is exactly where things started going wrong with Mugabe.
    - smithmayowa 9y ago
      yep that would be disastrous, but then I do hope they find a way to mediate the two extreme factions, one that wants the white to pay for some past sin, and one that does not believe they did any thing wrong to the blacks, as S.A future depends on this.
      - Hasknewbie 9y ago
        Namibia has a "if you sell land, the government has the option of being the first buyer [to redistribute it afterward]". Not ideal, but way better than Zimbabwe. They probably looked at Mugabe's results and thought "thanks but no thanks". Not sure this would work for ZA though. Namibia is only 2M people, it's not the same scale.
      - 9y ago
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
It will be interesting to see what happens when there is a strong downturn in the economy, it's easy to cary people along when the economy is growing, not so much when they are hungry.
- DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
  That's what policy makers need repressive surveillance tech for (not just in China). You can maintain this level of control only via an Orwellien thought police & intrusive surveillance and SmartCities¹ tech. ¹ https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/969494698619531264 https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/96949469861953126...
- mistermann 9y ago
  I have a feeling you have China and its citizens in mind when making this comment, but an equally plausible scenario is when Western economies begin to fail due to China's dominance of every industry and it is the West who's citizens are hungry. I wonder if maybe the prospect of joining the Chinese family might look very attractive at that point....sure, you'd have to give up just a few minor freedoms, but in exchange for peace and prosperity as citizens of China enjoy. And that is how China can take over the world without firing a single shot. Laugh now, but let's revisit this idea ten years from now and see if you're still laughing.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    Democratic countries have an escape valve, we can vote in another government, and we almost always do after a crisis. Democracies don't have famines.
AndrewOMartin 9y ago
That was Slavoj Žižek in "Living in the End Times", published in 2010. He may still be right, but time is running out.
- thomasz 9y ago
  I think you misunderstood him: HE well be right in 2020, not his liberal friends, because there will be no democratization. That's his entire point: Capitalism has gotten a divorce from Democracy.
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    That being said, and not being troll-y, the has already happened - in a different way - in the USA. The democracy part is mostly myth at this point. The capitalism part, the same. Both are facades that are propped up with propaganda and ignorance. The question is, how long can that ruse continue. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america... Yes. The source is left-leaning. None the less, plenty of smoke to ID a fire.
    - mercutio2 9y ago
      I’m pretty darn leftist, but splitting hairs over the US being a republic which routinely follows the will of the electorate using consistent rules, just not some people’s preferred system, vs Chinese communist party rule where the dictator just removed term limits from himself is pretty absurd.
      - chiefalchemist 9y ago
        So a ruse is ok? Given the blah blah blah about freedom, liberty, democracy, etc. I don't think so. At least the communists are honest. Regardless, the point isn't what some other gov does or doesn't do. The point is the US is being sold snake oil. That doesn't need any comparison. BS is alway BS. Lip stick doesn't make it any less so.
dalbasal 9y ago
Capitalism is such a tricky word to use. On one hand, we have Marx' definition, characteristics of an economy and polity: urbanism, bourgeois elites, private property, wage labour. It was good foresight. The world he described di more or less come about. More than at any other time we work in companies, for wages, in cities. Most of the important property is privately owned. On the other hand, we have anglo-american ideological "capitalism." It's a variant of liberalism. The emphasis is on free markets, and a confidence that these produce an efficient self organizing market. But, the ideals (at least of the philosophers they refer to) are a little bit of awkward fit in 20th & 21st century settings, where the economy is made up of massive companies. Adam Smith, the American founders, Locke, Hume... and others that form the basis of ideological capitalism... they idealized independent people, usually farmers. Entrepreneurs, maybe 10 person tin factories. Facebook or Unilever... Idk if an economy of mostly these is all that capitalist, by the proponents' definition. Anyway, I think the ideological lens (neoliberalism, asian-capitalism) might be more obscuring than clarifying. In practice, the economic systems are the same. The ideological differences between the US & China do not impact the stucture of the economies more than (for example) geography or local cultural norms do. The Soviet centralised economies were different, but I'm not really sure how related that is to ideological communism. It's just what they did when all those commune projects failed. ..The actual differences are more in the legal systems and the political norms (which in China are still extremely strict). Here I think we agree.
- fallingfrog 9y ago
  The definition of capitalism that makes the most sense to me is that capitalism is the separation of ownership of businesses from employment in the business, i.e. The joint stock corporation. As opposed to all businesses being run directly by their owner, or being family businesses, etc. The big idea behind the joint stock corporation is that the son of the previous owner might not be the best person to run the business when the previous owner passes on, and if you want to unlock the wealth and resources of the aristocracy you need a way for them to invest in a business and have a permanent stake rather than just give a loan. But then to make that work you need to take the legal and ideological stance that businesses should be optimized to benefit the owners of them - the owners of the capital. From that point of view, markets and a currency and banking system- the "free market"- can exist without capitalism. For instance, if all companies were employee owned, there would be no stock market, and no class of people whose role was to own stock and collect the profits. Capitalism was a great idea, and produced a huge surge in investment, but freedom for the people who don't own capital is neither necessary or helpful to make it work.
e3b0c 9y ago
China's economic success began with the transition to market economy, not the other way around. Edit: Also, China is a very capitalist country compared with, say, EU.
- Hasknewbie 9y ago
  > China is a very capitalist country compared with, say, EU. That is patently false. In China it is impossible for foreign companies to compete on a level playing field. There is a huge amount of protectionism and anti-competitive practices, the currency is manipulated to favor exports, and it's basically impossible to make it big without ties to the CCP.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Capitalism 2.0, now performs 10 times faster.
  - richardknop 9y ago
    It’s kind of similar though in Europe. France, Italy, Germany and other European nations are very protectionist. Hell, entire EU is basically a protectionist conglomerate of nations so they can protect their economy against competition from emerging markets, Asia, South America etc. Chinese companies trying to have any meaningful presence in Europe also have to be in bed with local politicians and ruling class.
    - Hasknewbie 9y ago
      You are missing the point. Yes there is protectionism in the EU, but the claim was: China is very capitalistic compared to the EU. That is just false. In the EU you can start your business wherever you are a legal resident, the regulations are a known quantity and essentially you just have to mind your own business. This is not so in mainland China, your applications can be arbitrarily denied, and if your business does too well, you will get a knock on the door asking if you are a "good comrade". All big businesses there are tied to the CCP one way or another.
  - 9y ago
neves 9y ago
Hypocrisy. The west does not welcome China to make it become a democratic society. The West welcome because of its cheap workforce.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  And, more importantly, minimal (environmental) regulations. Cheap labour is great. But not having to worry about the disposal of waste, or the air pollution you generate is even better. When China has smog issue many in the West point and wave fingers. The truth is, that pollution is The West's. We're just too naive to admit it.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    If we cut off China from world trade in order to reduce Chinese smog, we'd be condemning factory workers to go back to subsistence farming and a worse life overall.
    - chiefalchemist 9y ago
      I'm not even close to suggesting that. I'm only pointing out that the conventional wisdom is biz goes to China for cheap labor. That's barely half of it. It's the lack of reg - esp environmental - that's the draw. The "bonus" is, politicians in the West can claim they cleaned things up at home. Lol. Oh hell no. When the jobs left, so did the (direct) pollution.
  - astine 9y ago
    By that logic, pollution in the US is also the property of all the countries that the US sells to. That pollution in Flint Michigan is the rest of the world's fault because they buy US cars.
    - chiefalchemist 9y ago
      Fault? That's not the right word. Regardless, the point is, China's env regs are MUCH more lax. So chances are good Product X made in the USA was made with less pollution than the same product made in China. Yes, pollution is a shared "resources." But some countries are less concerned than others. China is one of those coutries.
igorkraw 9y ago
See: Rhine Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
api 9y ago
> Until now there was one good argument for capitalism: sooner or later it brought a demand for democracy... A lot of the rhetoric in the past went the other way: freedom is good because capitalism requires it. As a former and still sometimes libertarian who once read a lot of Ayn Rand and still thinks she made some good points, I personally get a big case of the "flying saucers didn't come blues" from this. Freedom and free enterprise were supposed to go together. Then Singapore and China proved that you don't need freedom for capitalism and that it might even be a liability. Markets love a kind of pragmatic totalitarianism that acts proactively to restrain any genuine "disruption" and much more importantly to prevent panic selling and crashes. Investors can feel confident in the market if there's a totalitarian backstop in place that will spring into action to prevent a market panic. Markets work great if they're just not allowed to go down. Controlled societies are great for capitalism. Real freedom means the freedom to do things that do not increase GDP and behave in ways that disrupt or distract from corporate culture. Turn the world into an office park. We can see this mentality spreading to the West. The lower classes can safely be ignored, drugged/entertained, or distracted by pitting different races and cultural identities against each other. If the upper classes (upper middle class, technicians, academics, the "lower rich") get politically uppity or have moral reservations you can just flatter their sense of superiority and entitlement. Make them think they've been brought into the fold. Invite them to rub shoulders with the real elite. Give them a false sense of freedom through consumer choice and BoBo pop libertine indulgence. Take the hedonism pioneered by the counterculture and strip it of its rebellious and spiritual undercurrents. Tinder is a great example: a meat market night club without the music, dancing, or art. Create pseudo-free gated enclaves where the upper middle classes and the rich can enjoy custom tailored lifestyles optimized for the consumption of high-end goods and the production of intellectual capital that ultimately benefits the real aristocracy. Edit: To all the leftists and anarchists right now who are wagging their fingers at us libertarians saying "we told you so," please hold back a little on the schadenfreude. This future is absolutely not what we had in mind. Edit #2: In all seriousness though... independent of whether or not capitalism or markets are good things I think it's important to advocate freedom in and of itself as an independent moral, ethical, and political goal. Freedom is not good because it makes this or that work better. Freedom is good because human beings must be treated with dignity and deserve personal autonomy.
cm2187 9y ago
Are dictatorship and censorship asian values?
- barrkel 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values - what's usually meant is filial piety or loyalty towards the family, corporation, and nation; the forgoing of personal freedom for the sake of society's stability and prosperity; the pursuit of academic and technological excellence; and, a strong work ethic together with thrift Filial piety followed through to its logical conclusion as the leader being the father of the nation, risking dictatorship, while forgoing personal freedom for the sake of society leads to censorship.
anthonyleecook 9y ago
A reddit post from a student in China. “ It's been 4 days now. I look around, everything looks the same, but I know, it's not the same world anymore. He choose to become a dictator officially maybe means nothing to most foreigners, but as a Chinese born and raised in this land, I know it's just the beginning of a series following "1984" episodes, and maybe even worse: Cultural Revolution 2.0. This may not happend in 10 years, but I live here, we live here, someday, something very bad is gonna happen again, and I can't do anything to stop or evade it. A lot people around me seems calm and quite. Maybe they already learned to "shut up and having fun while you still can", or, maybe they are just like me: too shocked and depressed to think of anything to comment. I feel so helpless and scaried, it's like, how do I put this? sitting in a biulding which is on fire, you watch the black smokes and red flame coming from the bottom, but you can't find a way out of your room, there isn't any extinguisher in the room neither. All you can do is just sitting in the corner, hugging yourself tight, waiting for that momnent to come, in despair and silence. sorry my English sucks, I tried my best to write in English. As a native Chinese, I can't stop to feel pessimistic about the future, hell, now I know we are doomed, it'll be easier to suffer if just push me off the building instead of letting me watch it burning for decades.“ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/80xttj/silence_this_despairing_silence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/80xttj/silence_this_... And another one post from a student in China "I’m studying in a university in China rn and holy fuck I thought I entered an alternate reality, my classmates were all talking and worrying about the issue on the internet few days ago before they were censored out but after that , no one dares to talk about it in the campus , it’s dead silence , I KNOW everyone cares but everyone is just so afraid , this is pretty much a 1984 scenario in real life and I don’t know what else can we do. I guess they have already won in this point . :("
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Few years ago I talked on people on omegle. Chinese girl pops up. We talk, like many many Chinese, she asks quickly what I think about China. I grew up fond of Asia: Martial Arts, Bruce Lee, asian food, spiritual ideas, that simplicity in art, architecture, clothing; Japanese culture too.. anyway I was very very positive about her culture. She responded right away: cool but well you know.. it's not all rose here; with a few mild comments about economy and politics. Then a long silence, followed by panick-ish excuses around the fact that she shouldn't have said this and she disconnected. Note that this was about the big firewall thing. Surely it didn't help for paranoia. Still it was the first time I ever talked to someone scared about her country as a whole. ---- Recently with the growth of international chinese tech brands, some news about raising wages, using robots instead of armies of exploited people .. I thought China would get a stable and peaceful rise. I did not envision this.
yazan94 9y ago
Well at this point, the world's main alternative's are those. We live in a world with a handful of superpowers that are able to demonstrably project power and influence, arguably mainly China, Russia, and the USA. We already don't have too many choices. Also the article, while well written, takes a very naive view of China's use of hard and soft power, which was very irritating. The USA constantly uses it's economic and military power in countries to ensure an 'America First' direction. On the front page of HN today, America accused a Latvian bank of money laundering and bypassing American sanctions so it shut it out of the FedWire service which eventually killed the bank within a matter of weeks [1]. Also see America's economic embargo of Cuba, invasion and occupation of Iraq, NATO's no fly zone over Libya in 2011, etc. All countries with enough power use it for their own benefit. This is neither a China-only nor a USA-only issue. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495387
zombieprocesses 9y ago
> What I'm afraid of is with this capitalism with Asian values What's "asian values". > But I don't share the hope of my liberal friends - give them ten years, [and there will be] another Tiananmen Square demonstration It's been 30 years since tiannamen square demonstrations. There won't be another tiannamen square unless there is economic issues within china. And the same applies not just to china or "asia", but everywhere. Economic stress is what drives protests and societal chaos. > no, the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over. When was there ever any marriage between capitalism and democracy? One isn't linked with the other. Democracy precedes capitalism by millenia. You can have democracy and no capitalism. You can have capitalism and no democracy. You can have both or neither. The quote appears to say a lot but says nothing. It makes a host of false assumptions and runs with it.

by wz1000 9y ago

oh-kumudo 9y ago

Truth is, China/Singapore/South Korea/Japan will all run into severe population problem. And those societies all have homogeneous ethnical profile, that it is impossible to use immigration to solve this problem. What is so good about those Asian capitalism that those countries, after adopting this model, are all on course of their national suicide? It is clearly this model cannot even sustain itself, the prosperity it demonstrates is probably just a intermediate state before impending, pro-longed decline.

ekianjo 9y ago

> one good argument for capitalism: sooner or later it brought a demand for democracy... Nope, capitalism is an economic system, not to be confounded with other types of Freedom. Capitalism is the ability of freely trade private property, among other things. In the West we tend to think it goes hand in hand with Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press and other liberties, but it does not have to. However, if Individual Freedom is the goal of your political system, then you will have Capitalism as well (the US is a good case since the constitution is clearly about the ultimate protection of individual liberties, even before the State).

coldtea 9y ago
>Nope, capitalism is an economic system, not to be confounded with other types of Freedom. Capitalism is the ability of freely trade private property, among other things. In the West we tend to think it goes hand in hand with Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press and other liberties, but it does not have to. Exactly -- and all this obscures how those things came to be: with fierce struggle from the lower classes (workers, women, blacks, etc.) in most cases, handed over to the patricians of the state in others (e.g. US Declaration of Independence and so on) and spread more widely later. Not from the system for running the economy. Heck, Hayek, for one, a champion of capitalism, was in bed with Pinochet. And one of the things western countries did when they entered capitalism, was to conquer and enslave 2/3rds of the world in their colonies. So much for democracy.
- scythe 9y ago
  Hayek was practically senile by 1973. It does not make sense to critique the legacy of someone who is mostly known for his work in the 1920s-40s with some of his more outlandish ideas many decades later.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    That sounds dubious that he was senile in 1973 when he wrote this in 1980: > Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.
    - 9y ago

sn41 9y ago

What about a multicultural, pluralistic, democratic, socialist society like India or South Africa which is slow and lumbering, but in the right direction? (A recent talk of land appropriation in S.A. makes me apprehensive about it.) These countries still have a version of capitalism that is not as aggressive as the Anglo-Saxon model, and a democracy that is far more permissive than the East Asian (barring Japan) model. Indian or South African growth may not be glamorous, but it might be sustainable. (And the population growth in both places is far less alarming than generally thought.)

smithmayowa 9y ago
Why exactly does land appropriation in south Africa make you apprehensive of its future.
- sn41 9y ago
  I hope it does not end up like Zimbabwe. From what I understand, some demagogues are demanding that white farmers' land must be taken over by the state and redistributed to blacks. This is exactly where things started going wrong with Mugabe.
  - smithmayowa 9y ago
    yep that would be disastrous, but then I do hope they find a way to mediate the two extreme factions, one that wants the white to pay for some past sin, and one that does not believe they did any thing wrong to the blacks, as S.A future depends on this.
    - Hasknewbie 9y ago
      Namibia has a "if you sell land, the government has the option of being the first buyer [to redistribute it afterward]". Not ideal, but way better than Zimbabwe. They probably looked at Mugabe's results and thought "thanks but no thanks". Not sure this would work for ZA though. Namibia is only 2M people, it's not the same scale.
    - 9y ago

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

It will be interesting to see what happens when there is a strong downturn in the economy, it's easy to cary people along when the economy is growing, not so much when they are hungry.

DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
That's what policy makers need repressive surveillance tech for (not just in China). You can maintain this level of control only via an Orwellien thought police & intrusive surveillance and SmartCities¹ tech. ¹ https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/969494698619531264 https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/96949469861953126...
mistermann 9y ago
I have a feeling you have China and its citizens in mind when making this comment, but an equally plausible scenario is when Western economies begin to fail due to China's dominance of every industry and it is the West who's citizens are hungry. I wonder if maybe the prospect of joining the Chinese family might look very attractive at that point....sure, you'd have to give up just a few minor freedoms, but in exchange for peace and prosperity as citizens of China enjoy. And that is how China can take over the world without firing a single shot. Laugh now, but let's revisit this idea ten years from now and see if you're still laughing.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Democratic countries have an escape valve, we can vote in another government, and we almost always do after a crisis. Democracies don't have famines.

AndrewOMartin 9y ago

That was Slavoj Žižek in "Living in the End Times", published in 2010. He may still be right, but time is running out.

thomasz 9y ago
I think you misunderstood him: HE well be right in 2020, not his liberal friends, because there will be no democratization. That's his entire point: Capitalism has gotten a divorce from Democracy.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  That being said, and not being troll-y, the has already happened - in a different way - in the USA. The democracy part is mostly myth at this point. The capitalism part, the same. Both are facades that are propped up with propaganda and ignorance. The question is, how long can that ruse continue. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america... Yes. The source is left-leaning. None the less, plenty of smoke to ID a fire.
  - mercutio2 9y ago
    I’m pretty darn leftist, but splitting hairs over the US being a republic which routinely follows the will of the electorate using consistent rules, just not some people’s preferred system, vs Chinese communist party rule where the dictator just removed term limits from himself is pretty absurd.
    - chiefalchemist 9y ago
      So a ruse is ok? Given the blah blah blah about freedom, liberty, democracy, etc. I don't think so. At least the communists are honest. Regardless, the point isn't what some other gov does or doesn't do. The point is the US is being sold snake oil. That doesn't need any comparison. BS is alway BS. Lip stick doesn't make it any less so.

dalbasal 9y ago

Capitalism is such a tricky word to use. On one hand, we have Marx' definition, characteristics of an economy and polity: urbanism, bourgeois elites, private property, wage labour. It was good foresight. The world he described di more or less come about. More than at any other time we work in companies, for wages, in cities. Most of the important property is privately owned. On the other hand, we have anglo-american ideological "capitalism." It's a variant of liberalism. The emphasis is on free markets, and a confidence that these produce an efficient self organizing market. But, the ideals (at least of the philosophers they refer to) are a little bit of awkward fit in 20th & 21st century settings, where the economy is made up of massive companies. Adam Smith, the American founders, Locke, Hume... and others that form the basis of ideological capitalism... they idealized independent people, usually farmers. Entrepreneurs, maybe 10 person tin factories. Facebook or Unilever... Idk if an economy of mostly these is all that capitalist, by the proponents' definition. Anyway, I think the ideological lens (neoliberalism, asian-capitalism) might be more obscuring than clarifying. In practice, the economic systems are the same. The ideological differences between the US & China do not impact the stucture of the economies more than (for example) geography or local cultural norms do. The Soviet centralised economies were different, but I'm not really sure how related that is to ideological communism. It's just what they did when all those commune projects failed. ..The actual differences are more in the legal systems and the political norms (which in China are still extremely strict). Here I think we agree.

fallingfrog 9y ago
The definition of capitalism that makes the most sense to me is that capitalism is the separation of ownership of businesses from employment in the business, i.e. The joint stock corporation. As opposed to all businesses being run directly by their owner, or being family businesses, etc. The big idea behind the joint stock corporation is that the son of the previous owner might not be the best person to run the business when the previous owner passes on, and if you want to unlock the wealth and resources of the aristocracy you need a way for them to invest in a business and have a permanent stake rather than just give a loan. But then to make that work you need to take the legal and ideological stance that businesses should be optimized to benefit the owners of them - the owners of the capital. From that point of view, markets and a currency and banking system- the "free market"- can exist without capitalism. For instance, if all companies were employee owned, there would be no stock market, and no class of people whose role was to own stock and collect the profits. Capitalism was a great idea, and produced a huge surge in investment, but freedom for the people who don't own capital is neither necessary or helpful to make it work.

e3b0c 9y ago

China's economic success began with the transition to market economy, not the other way around. Edit: Also, China is a very capitalist country compared with, say, EU.

Hasknewbie 9y ago
> China is a very capitalist country compared with, say, EU. That is patently false. In China it is impossible for foreign companies to compete on a level playing field. There is a huge amount of protectionism and anti-competitive practices, the currency is manipulated to favor exports, and it's basically impossible to make it big without ties to the CCP.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Capitalism 2.0, now performs 10 times faster.
- richardknop 9y ago
  It’s kind of similar though in Europe. France, Italy, Germany and other European nations are very protectionist. Hell, entire EU is basically a protectionist conglomerate of nations so they can protect their economy against competition from emerging markets, Asia, South America etc. Chinese companies trying to have any meaningful presence in Europe also have to be in bed with local politicians and ruling class.
  - Hasknewbie 9y ago
    You are missing the point. Yes there is protectionism in the EU, but the claim was: China is very capitalistic compared to the EU. That is just false. In the EU you can start your business wherever you are a legal resident, the regulations are a known quantity and essentially you just have to mind your own business. This is not so in mainland China, your applications can be arbitrarily denied, and if your business does too well, you will get a knock on the door asking if you are a "good comrade". All big businesses there are tied to the CCP one way or another.
- 9y ago

neves 9y ago

Hypocrisy. The west does not welcome China to make it become a democratic society. The West welcome because of its cheap workforce.

chiefalchemist 9y ago
And, more importantly, minimal (environmental) regulations. Cheap labour is great. But not having to worry about the disposal of waste, or the air pollution you generate is even better. When China has smog issue many in the West point and wave fingers. The truth is, that pollution is The West's. We're just too naive to admit it.
- barrkel 9y ago
  If we cut off China from world trade in order to reduce Chinese smog, we'd be condemning factory workers to go back to subsistence farming and a worse life overall.
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    I'm not even close to suggesting that. I'm only pointing out that the conventional wisdom is biz goes to China for cheap labor. That's barely half of it. It's the lack of reg - esp environmental - that's the draw. The "bonus" is, politicians in the West can claim they cleaned things up at home. Lol. Oh hell no. When the jobs left, so did the (direct) pollution.
- astine 9y ago
  By that logic, pollution in the US is also the property of all the countries that the US sells to. That pollution in Flint Michigan is the rest of the world's fault because they buy US cars.
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    Fault? That's not the right word. Regardless, the point is, China's env regs are MUCH more lax. So chances are good Product X made in the USA was made with less pollution than the same product made in China. Yes, pollution is a shared "resources." But some countries are less concerned than others. China is one of those coutries.

igorkraw 9y ago

See: Rhine Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

api 9y ago

> Until now there was one good argument for capitalism: sooner or later it brought a demand for democracy... A lot of the rhetoric in the past went the other way: freedom is good because capitalism requires it. As a former and still sometimes libertarian who once read a lot of Ayn Rand and still thinks she made some good points, I personally get a big case of the "flying saucers didn't come blues" from this. Freedom and free enterprise were supposed to go together. Then Singapore and China proved that you don't need freedom for capitalism and that it might even be a liability. Markets love a kind of pragmatic totalitarianism that acts proactively to restrain any genuine "disruption" and much more importantly to prevent panic selling and crashes. Investors can feel confident in the market if there's a totalitarian backstop in place that will spring into action to prevent a market panic. Markets work great if they're just not allowed to go down. Controlled societies are great for capitalism. Real freedom means the freedom to do things that do not increase GDP and behave in ways that disrupt or distract from corporate culture. Turn the world into an office park. We can see this mentality spreading to the West. The lower classes can safely be ignored, drugged/entertained, or distracted by pitting different races and cultural identities against each other. If the upper classes (upper middle class, technicians, academics, the "lower rich") get politically uppity or have moral reservations you can just flatter their sense of superiority and entitlement. Make them think they've been brought into the fold. Invite them to rub shoulders with the real elite. Give them a false sense of freedom through consumer choice and BoBo pop libertine indulgence. Take the hedonism pioneered by the counterculture and strip it of its rebellious and spiritual undercurrents. Tinder is a great example: a meat market night club without the music, dancing, or art. Create pseudo-free gated enclaves where the upper middle classes and the rich can enjoy custom tailored lifestyles optimized for the consumption of high-end goods and the production of intellectual capital that ultimately benefits the real aristocracy. Edit: To all the leftists and anarchists right now who are wagging their fingers at us libertarians saying "we told you so," please hold back a little on the schadenfreude. This future is absolutely not what we had in mind. Edit #2: In all seriousness though... independent of whether or not capitalism or markets are good things I think it's important to advocate freedom in and of itself as an independent moral, ethical, and political goal. Freedom is not good because it makes this or that work better. Freedom is good because human beings must be treated with dignity and deserve personal autonomy.

cm2187 9y ago

Are dictatorship and censorship asian values?

barrkel 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values - what's usually meant is filial piety or loyalty towards the family, corporation, and nation; the forgoing of personal freedom for the sake of society's stability and prosperity; the pursuit of academic and technological excellence; and, a strong work ethic together with thrift Filial piety followed through to its logical conclusion as the leader being the father of the nation, risking dictatorship, while forgoing personal freedom for the sake of society leads to censorship.

anthonyleecook 9y ago

A reddit post from a student in China. “ It's been 4 days now. I look around, everything looks the same, but I know, it's not the same world anymore. He choose to become a dictator officially maybe means nothing to most foreigners, but as a Chinese born and raised in this land, I know it's just the beginning of a series following "1984" episodes, and maybe even worse: Cultural Revolution 2.0. This may not happend in 10 years, but I live here, we live here, someday, something very bad is gonna happen again, and I can't do anything to stop or evade it. A lot people around me seems calm and quite. Maybe they already learned to "shut up and having fun while you still can", or, maybe they are just like me: too shocked and depressed to think of anything to comment. I feel so helpless and scaried, it's like, how do I put this? sitting in a biulding which is on fire, you watch the black smokes and red flame coming from the bottom, but you can't find a way out of your room, there isn't any extinguisher in the room neither. All you can do is just sitting in the corner, hugging yourself tight, waiting for that momnent to come, in despair and silence. sorry my English sucks, I tried my best to write in English. As a native Chinese, I can't stop to feel pessimistic about the future, hell, now I know we are doomed, it'll be easier to suffer if just push me off the building instead of letting me watch it burning for decades.“ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/80xttj/silence_this_despairing_silence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/80xttj/silence_this_... And another one post from a student in China "I’m studying in a university in China rn and holy fuck I thought I entered an alternate reality, my classmates were all talking and worrying about the issue on the internet few days ago before they were censored out but after that , no one dares to talk about it in the campus , it’s dead silence , I KNOW everyone cares but everyone is just so afraid , this is pretty much a 1984 scenario in real life and I don’t know what else can we do. I guess they have already won in this point . :("

agumonkey 9y ago
Few years ago I talked on people on omegle. Chinese girl pops up. We talk, like many many Chinese, she asks quickly what I think about China. I grew up fond of Asia: Martial Arts, Bruce Lee, asian food, spiritual ideas, that simplicity in art, architecture, clothing; Japanese culture too.. anyway I was very very positive about her culture. She responded right away: cool but well you know.. it's not all rose here; with a few mild comments about economy and politics. Then a long silence, followed by panick-ish excuses around the fact that she shouldn't have said this and she disconnected. Note that this was about the big firewall thing. Surely it didn't help for paranoia. Still it was the first time I ever talked to someone scared about her country as a whole. ---- Recently with the growth of international chinese tech brands, some news about raising wages, using robots instead of armies of exploited people .. I thought China would get a stable and peaceful rise. I did not envision this.

yazan94 9y ago

Well at this point, the world's main alternative's are those. We live in a world with a handful of superpowers that are able to demonstrably project power and influence, arguably mainly China, Russia, and the USA. We already don't have too many choices. Also the article, while well written, takes a very naive view of China's use of hard and soft power, which was very irritating. The USA constantly uses it's economic and military power in countries to ensure an 'America First' direction. On the front page of HN today, America accused a Latvian bank of money laundering and bypassing American sanctions so it shut it out of the FedWire service which eventually killed the bank within a matter of weeks [1]. Also see America's economic embargo of Cuba, invasion and occupation of Iraq, NATO's no fly zone over Libya in 2011, etc. All countries with enough power use it for their own benefit. This is neither a China-only nor a USA-only issue. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495387

zombieprocesses 9y ago

> What I'm afraid of is with this capitalism with Asian values What's "asian values". > But I don't share the hope of my liberal friends - give them ten years, [and there will be] another Tiananmen Square demonstration It's been 30 years since tiannamen square demonstrations. There won't be another tiannamen square unless there is economic issues within china. And the same applies not just to china or "asia", but everywhere. Economic stress is what drives protests and societal chaos. > no, the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over. When was there ever any marriage between capitalism and democracy? One isn't linked with the other. Democracy precedes capitalism by millenia. You can have democracy and no capitalism. You can have capitalism and no democracy. You can have both or neither. The quote appears to say a lot but says nothing. It makes a host of false assumptions and runs with it.