3 ms·

> Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Is it possible though? I’m really not so sure.

jerf 6y ago
A 100% boycott of China is difficult, especially if you were to try to boycott things that were made elsewhere but have a lot of Chinese stuff in their supply chain. But even just boycotting what you can is a positive step. You can also support political action that takes concrete steps against China for these atrocities, rather than supporting them. There are real differences in political stances here. You don't need to feel utterly powerless because you can't solve the problem 100%. That's always true anyhow, but especially true of something of this magnitude. It's OK; literally nobody expects that. You can take what steps you can. You are being joined by many other people. I often think about it that way; if I'm moved enough to action because of this particular belief, then the odds are pretty good that many other people are as well. It is the actions of that group that will matter. If that group all individually concludes that their individual actions are meaningless, then the whole group will do nothing. So I choose not to act on the belief that my individual actions are meaningless. (Essentially an argument based on superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality It is obviously false that the rest of the world is entirely superrational... but it is also false that they are 0% superrational. Often too much time is spent on the irrationality of human beings... a lot of people seem to have a model of them in which they are insane crazies who never make a sane decision, but if you take that model seriously everyone covered by it would just die. Humans are often quite rational. They just really, deeply suck at explaining why they are doing what they are doing, but the actual actions are often quite rational when understood in the correct context.)

jerf 6y ago

A 100% boycott of China is difficult, especially if you were to try to boycott things that were made elsewhere but have a lot of Chinese stuff in their supply chain. But even just boycotting what you can is a positive step. You can also support political action that takes concrete steps against China for these atrocities, rather than supporting them. There are real differences in political stances here. You don't need to feel utterly powerless because you can't solve the problem 100%. That's always true anyhow, but especially true of something of this magnitude. It's OK; literally nobody expects that. You can take what steps you can. You are being joined by many other people. I often think about it that way; if I'm moved enough to action because of this particular belief, then the odds are pretty good that many other people are as well. It is the actions of that group that will matter. If that group all individually concludes that their individual actions are meaningless, then the whole group will do nothing. So I choose not to act on the belief that my individual actions are meaningless. (Essentially an argument based on superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality It is obviously false that the rest of the world is entirely superrational... but it is also false that they are 0% superrational. Often too much time is spent on the irrationality of human beings... a lot of people seem to have a model of them in which they are insane crazies who never make a sane decision, but if you take that model seriously everyone covered by it would just die. Humans are often quite rational. They just really, deeply suck at explaining why they are doing what they are doing, but the actual actions are often quite rational when understood in the correct context.)