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I live in China, I think the best way to summarise everything we do at all level is: the end justifies the means. Need to seize power ? Murder all members of t
by secondaryacct 5y ago
I live in China, I think the best way to summarise everything we do at all level is: the end justifies the means.
Need to seize power ? Murder all members of the former power. Need to make poor peasants rich middle class ? Build entire cities, put them there, and done. Need to build a metro station ? Take the land, build it. Need to make Hong Kong a more physically integrated part of the country ? Build a gigantic bridge to Zuhai even if nobody actually need to use it.
The problem ofc is that sometimes the means is more costly than the benefit of the end result, and also that the goal of the end result is never debated, but I suppose that will change eventually, once we've incurred too high a cost for too little a benefit overall.
- downrightmike 5y ago
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
- SgtBastard 5y agoCitation extremely needed
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y agoHow about the Chief Prosecutor for two UN Criminal Tribunals? There are many more sources on the wikipedia page for "War Crimes in Kosovo" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Del_Ponte https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Del_Ponte
- deedree 5y agoThat says there’s no evidence. While it may still be true you can’t just state like it’s a well known and accepted fact. That is certainly not true. If you want to make controversial claims you’d better make sure you can back it up. Right now it does not add in a valuable way to the conversation.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y agoThe following wikipedia article contains hundreds of sources for war crimes committed on both sides (Yugoslav and KLA). KLA were officially NATO allies, and a lot of video evidence and official UN evidence exists regarding alleged locations, witness intimidation, and failure to prosecute KLA's top commanders. There is a 3 hour documentary produced about the whole war in which Carla Del Ponte was featured. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Kosovo_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Kosovo_War
- SgtBastard 5y agoYour first citation references a woman forcibly removed from her post and then goes on to make unorthodox claims about both the Yugoslav and Syrian wars, neither of which are supported by evidence. That was from your citation.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y agoThis article, from ABC News, reports in 2021 that senior KLA officials have pled guilty to witness intimidation. It also states that after 10,000 Albanians were killed, thousands of Serbs were victims of "revenge" attacks. Do you personally hold the belief that not a single Serb was harmed between 1992-2008? https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/wireStory/kosovo-war-veterans-plead-innocent-witness-intimidation-80451224 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/wireStory/kosovo-wa...
- SgtBastard 5y agoNow you’re moving the goalposts - I said a citation was needed that NATO was harvesting Serbian organs. You’ve yet to supply one and are apparently unable to do so.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y agoFrom the Wikipedia article I linked, here is just one of the sources which states that the EU issued a report stating that "organ trafficking did take place on a limited scale by a few individuals". I am not moving the goal posts. Hashim Thaci intimidated witnesses who were supposed to testify in the organ trafficking trial. How do you live with yourself knowing you are not debating in good faith? https://balkaninsight.com/2015/09/04/kosovo-organ-trafficking-how-the-claims-were-exposed-09-04-2015-1/ https://balkaninsight.com/2015/09/04/kosovo-organ-traffickin...
- jokethrowaway 5y agoI would hardly bring the Balkans as an example of "the West". That's a mix of Soviet / middle Eastern cultured countries. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to hear about racism, rape or organ trafficking in any war zone. No-one fighting a war is innocent, not even if you control the media like the West does. There was no evidence, only allegations brought up by the prosecutor you mentioned.
- unmole 5y ago> That's a mix of Soviet / middle Eastern cultured countries. I don't know. Everyone seems on board with Ukraine being considered a Western democracy.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y agoNATO and KLA were officially allies.
- cscurmudgeon 5y agoWhy did we shift from discussing the US to "the West"?
- secondaryacct 5y agoNeed to stop a student uprising ? Roll the tanks. Once I understood that about the country, I stopped discussing morals and instead focus on debating cost.
- mmaunder 5y agoIn China, authority overcomes any friction and drives a project forward. In the US there is no authority and there is no common purpose or enemy. So thousands of self interested parties abuse the system in a very time consuming way. If a major war was to break out, that would provide powerful common purpose and mountains would be moved in weeks, as history has shown. Same would apply in the case of a major environmental catastrophe. Encapsulating innovation inside a corporation is the one way in the US to create a common purpose and shield a group from bureaucratic capture.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoThe USA has an adversarial political system: half the people associate with Democrats, half associate with Republicans. But in China, you are either for or against the CPC, and being against it almost means being a traitor. The other political parties exist just for appearances. Unity then is just the default.
- a0-prw 5y agoIf a major war was to break out, the only mountains there would be, would be mountains of dead.
- nicbou 5y agoThe risk with the first method is that if the authority is wrong, no one can correct its course. One unlucky dice roll and you have 30 years of a dangerously incompetent maniac. Some will only judge such countries by their lucky rolls. While a war unites a nation, it’s offset by the waste and destruction it creates. The cold war didn’t build more school and hospitals. All those resources went elsewhere, with the occasional dividend for civilians. Mountains do get moved quickly when you sign blank cheques, but at a greater cost, with more waste and corruption. We put way too much faith in crash programs.
- karpierz 5y agoI think this is why authoritarian governments can be more effective at economic growth when they're behind; they just follow the path that a more economically advanced power did, but with more focus and less concern for individual welfare. Hence China's rapid industrialization. If that's true, then it'd fall apart when the central authority either becomes too inept or corrupt and the path to follow becomes less clear. Essentially, when the low hanging fruit is gone, the corruption/inepts of the authority would become clear.
- roenxi 5y agoIt isn't so much that I disagree as I think the frame is a bit skewed. When America is operating at its peak everyone has similar complaints (switching "end justifies the means" with "you can do whatever you like if you have money" because historically the US operates using money as a medium). Whenever anything happens people complain that some interests aren't represented or that resources aren't being used in the way they'd like. The point of the article is more that the US has systemically made it illegal to deploy resources quickly and effectively.
- taylorhou 5y agoMost people in general have a short term cost/benefit analysis period. What China seemingly does different is they have 10, 20, 50+ year plans which in the time horizon of their multi-thousand year history even seems short term. Your example of the bridge may seem like no one uses it today but most likely in the future, it will be used and the scale will tip towards it being vastly beneficial compared to its cost. When countries like the USA have an entire history (not including native americans) of ~300 years, planning anything for 30 years out seems relatively crazy in comparison. All about perspective.
- smallmind 5y agoIn this bridge example, not only did it cost $19 billion to build, but the tolls collected actually do not cover operating costs. Doubt their 20 year plan included having to dump more money into the bridge to just keep it working. There are a lot of Youtube videos about China's similar problems with their large high speed rail network.
- Closi 5y agoTo OPs point though, the goal wasn’t to pull a profit it was to build links between the two countries.
- whimsicalism 5y agoHong Kong isn't a separate country
- Closi 5y agoOk, special administrative region. It has its own laws, currency etc so I don’t think this changes the overall point.
- Aperocky 5y agoyou can say the same about most of China's vast highway network. When they were newly built, most of these didn't have the traffic needed. Now a few of them are constantly congested.
- caycep 5y agoI also somewhat worry the attention to safety standards make Aperture Science seem like a paragon of OSHA compliance....
- Yaina 5y agoRemember: Alert your supervisor! https://www.deviantart.com/orbital-vector/art/Portal-2-Remember-Alert-Your-Supervisor-Sign-857953438 https://www.deviantart.com/orbital-vector/art/Portal-2-Remem...
- throwusawayus 5y agoat all levels ? there must be limits to this approach right ??? otherwise this way of thinking gets terrifying fast and rapidly descends into conspiracy theory land example: "need to find a socially-acceptable solution to a demographic time bomb caused by decades of one child policy, while still maintaining ethnic homogeneity ? perform gain-of-function research to develop a vector that disproportionately harms the elderly" to be absolutely clear, I don't believe this was actually the case in 2019 at all - but as an no-limits "end justifies the means" thought exercise - it is easy to arrive at inhuman dystopian nightmares
- stathibus 5y agoIt should surprise nobody that an authoritarian, centrally planned, and massively resource-rich country can perform infrastructure miracles. You don't have to stoop to conspiracy theories to understand this.
- chii 5y ago> can perform infrastructure miracles. Some of the infrastructure has lead to extra economic benefit beyond just the infrastructure stimulus. But other infrastructure might not - and i would call them economic waste (but not political waste). Have a look at the train projects described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvXlax4ZXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvXlax4ZXk The building of those rail networks is meant to achieve a political purpose, rather than an actual productivity increase. Perhaps their leadership thought it was worth the spend, but this sort of spending would unlikely work in the US imho.
- lazide 5y agoWe literally did that with the US highway system, it was just right after WW2. Same goals, same trade offs, same sometimes major wins, sometimes pointless spending.
- ggm 5y agoRail > Road for freight, and efficiency. America underfunded rail and the Eisenhower highway initiative demanded it, to justify the investment. Chinese new year, more people travel in China than the whole of the USA, homecoming notwithstanding. It's mass transposition, there and back again. They need trains. I've used them shanghai to Beijing, great service. I wish I'd been able to use the maglev in shanghai
- phendrenad2 5y agoSomewhere between US stagnation and China/UAE building for the sake of building lies a happy medium.