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The West thought once China is full of billionaires, the billionaires having all that wealth would then have the power to oppose and dissolve the CCP. Didn't g
by orange_tee 6y ago
The West thought once China is full of billionaires, the billionaires having all that wealth would then have the power to oppose and dissolve the CCP.
Didn't go as planned.
- bmitc 6y agoHow's it working in the U.S. where billionaires are dissolving the U.S. government?
- sidlls 6y agoWhy do they need to dissolve something they already control and/or own?
- dredmorbius 6y agoBecause all the billionaires aren't on the same team.
- orange_tee 6y agoYes, they thought China would turn into a plutocracy. Of course they were modeling after themselves.
- Shivetya 6y agoNo, what we have been shown in the US is that it takes a billionaire to challenge the two existing political parties. Parties who through laws and regulation pretty much isolated themselves from other means of being challenged and even go so far as to have us pay for their conventions and even security at times. The difference in the US is the billionaire was able to challenge the existing parties in control and beat them both, in China your wealth is pretty much meaningless unless you came upon it through your party affiliation; there of course is only one party that matters.
- KorematsuFred 6y agoIt is working well in my opinion. I would rather live in a world where billionaires are happy to dissolve a corrupt and disgusting politician than other way around.
- bmitc 6y agoYou’re assuming one came before the other. It is the corporations that corrupted the politicians, or at least catalyzed the process.
- rayiner 6y agoLol no. Countries with the least corporations have the most corrupt politicians.
- dredmorbius 6y agoCorp-to-population ratio suggests otherwise. Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Isle of Man, the Channel Islands including Guernsey and Jersey, Crete, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, and Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, Panama, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
- SkyMarshal 6y agoI wouldn’t. Billionaires can be corrupt and disgusting too, and unlike politicians, are unaccountable to the citizenry. Important difference.
- KorematsuFred 6y agoBillionaires can't take your money by force like government can. Government can not just take money by force (taxation), through indirect means (regulation) or by simply reducing its worth (inflation). And while they do that they make you stand in a line and clap for them. The only way Bezos makes money is if I chose to buy something on Amazon. Surely, billionaires are not angels and are just as corrupt as politicians and would love to force me to buy their stuff one way on another but in every single of those instance they use government as their partner. USA elected Trump, how much accountable was he to you ?
- jayd16 6y agoGuys, this is just flame bait. Don't bother engaging in this throw away comment.
- bmitc 6y agoMy comment isn’t throwaway. It was intended as a counterpoint. If you seek some clarification, then ask. My point is to paint the picture that leveraging extremes doesn’t work. It is often the case that the west, in particular the U.S., assumes their way is the best and that this way should be applied, forcefully if necessary, elsewhere. In reality, the world’s two most powerful nations, that is the U.S. and China, are at the extreme opposite ends of political and economical ideology. One has corporations controlling everything and the other has the government controlling everything. In both cases, it is an extreme but minority so-called elite group that controls the fate of the people. My lament is this scenario, because it is clear, at least to me, that the ideal is somewhere in between.
- ASalazarMX 6y agoUnless something debilitates the CCP first, this isn't going to happen soon. Maybe when Xi Jinping retires.
- whimsicalism 6y agoI have serious issues with China. But I also think that there are lessons to learn from many different models. The ability of the government to take on actors with vast amounts of private capital is, in my view, one of those things worth learning from.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoOur government has the ability to do the same in the US. What's lacking is not ability. It's lawfulness and a consensus of what the goal should be. In China there is little need for lawfulness and certainly much less need than in the U.S. for consensus.
- whimsicalism 6y agoI think you have a more constrained view of what is contained within the word "ability" than I do. The problem with the US is that the class interests of those whose consensus is important in lawmaking is aligned with the interests of the ultra-wealthy. Nor do I buy into the mythos that "lawfulness" is something universally applied in the United States. Laws, procedure, delay always play a large part when the interests of people with large capital are threatened, but lawlessness is the norm in many relations that impact ordinary people, like that weird clocking in rule that your boss at your retail job has instituted that is actually illegal under labor law or when the Federal gov't decides they will no longer enforce redlining law by going undercover to investigate racial discrimination.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoLawfulness can most often be found in the U.S. where both sides have vigorous legal representation. There are still miscarriages of justice in those cases, but it is not the norm. Of course, big corporations always have vigorous legal representation, so lawfulness is basically a given when it comes to legal disagreements between them and the government.
- ashleshbiradar 6y agoSure, once you master the art of eradicating ideas of basic human rights and using authoritarian methods to control an entire nation with literally no independent bodies to check the power. You control the banks, the businesses, the army, the judiciary, the media, the internet, literally every sphere of a society. It becomes an easy peasy thing to do what you say is worth learning.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ffggvv 6y agowe already knew it didn’t work considering Putin imprisoned the richest man in russia and nationalized his oil company. don’t think the US acrually expected the oligarchs to overthrow china as they are in bed with the ccp.
- caycep 6y agoturns out the billionaires love the CCP when that system/state sponsored companies is the source of their billions...
- notJim 6y agoWhy is it better for Chinese billionaires to run the country than the CCP? Seems like just trading one master for another.
- kinghajj 6y agoI'd guess that they (the "West" / US and its allies) hoped that Chinese billionaires would be more amenable to the "Washington consensus" / neoliberal policies than the CCP.
- echelon 6y agoThe thought was that billionaires would push for freedom and liberty (like Jack Ma). The CCP will not be opposed.
- aeternum 6y agoBillionaires can be held more accountable than government because they must continually compete for people's dollars. Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies and billionaires and can force a change in behavior quickly. There's no feedback loop like that with the CCP, and the US gives citizens more power but having to wait 4 years to vote on a change is a very slow feedback loop.
- throw_m239339 6y ago> Billionaires can be held more accountable than government because they must continually compete for people's dollars. I don't know what to answer that except that it's the quickest way to get a fascist regime that doesn't even try to hide it's fascist. Monopolies don't need to compete with people's dollars. > Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies None of these movements really hurt these respective companies.
- aeternum 6y agoWe can and should break up monopolies, or structure taxes and regulations to be unfavorable to monopolies. Current government policies favor large corporations due to both tax incentives and regulatory capture. Chick-Fil-A stopped donating to anti-LGBTQ groups. #deletefacebook did work but most users just switched to instagram so it had a minimal effect on revenue.
- Aunche 6y agoThat was the propaganda rationale used to justify opening up trade with China. The primary goals were to gain leverage over the Soviet Union and deescalate the Cold War.
- ndiscussion 6y agoNah, they just became landlords.
- loosescrews 6y agoOne thing Chinese billionaires have is the freedom to leave (at least until they get in trouble). This precedent seems to make it clear that once you have amassed that much power and wealth, it would be crazy to stay in China. Or maybe in order to archive such success in China one must have connections to people in high places and people with said connections can't imaging their connections turning on them.
- majani 6y agoThe one true power in the world is the ability to physically harm others. Therefore given how modern civilization is structured, a head of state with a loyal military and police is always the most powerful person in the country.