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It's interesting to contrast China's approach of not allowing business to operate within the plane of power in which the government does, vs. the United States,

It's interesting to contrast China's approach of not allowing business to operate within the plane of power in which the government does, vs. the United States, which has companies whose power is certainly on the level of many state governments.

duxup 4y ago
To me the complicating factor is “why”. I’m not sure why China as a government makes the calls it does. It’s not clear to me that those aren’t just as self serving as say a big company in the us operating freely and so on.
- re-thc 4y ago
  China can't print money and go in infinite debt mode like the US does? The government needs to recover from COVID. Perspective: As leader the in control, I see there's a company that has the largest payment network in the country. Well that can't happen. I need a slice of it. So let's "regulate" it.
  - fortuna86 4y ago
    China's public debt exceeds the US in several areas, private debt lags behind but is still substantial.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      It isn’t clear if SOE debt should be considered public or private debt. On the one hand, these are often publicly traded companies, in the other hand everyone assumes their debt is implicitly guaranteed by the government. Localities will often load up local SOEs with debt when they need to do something for public interest, like build a subway or road. So China’s public debt situation is really murky.
      - re-thc 4y ago
        Debt can only be debt if you believe there exists profits. There are companies that buy and sell off each other to produce "income". A lot of the numbers are inflated or completely cooked.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    why can't that happen? why do you need a slice of it?
    - re-thc 4y ago
      There's no point printing something useless? USD is the central currency. > why do you need a slice of it? Greed!
- SllX 4y ago
  The PRC as a government makes the calls that it does because it is one of the vehicles of power by which the CCP operates. Remember that constitutionally the CCP is above the government, the law and the PLA and therefore the highest offices of power within mainland China are not any of the Executive offices of government but the political offices (General Secretary of the CCP, the Politburo and the members of the standing committee). The People’s Liberation Army, People’s Armed Police and Militia answer to the Central Military Commission which is subordinate directly to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It isn’t like the United States or Europe or even Japan or Korea. Your basic assumptions vis a vis how we work and therefore how they must work will never work when trying to serve as a proper lens for interpreting the PRC because the PRC is itself an institution subordinate to a Party which considers all aspects of Chinese society both public and private subordinate to the Party including State, Religion and the activities families and businesses of their subjects which in their eyes doesn’t stop at the border if you are of Chinese descent. So if a business like Alibaba or a businessman like Jack Ma is challenging anything about that framework, or the laws of the PRC and policies of the CCP, they can’t afford to let that stand because the most important thing to them is maintaining their internal cohesion and power. Everything else is secondary or tertiary.
poszlem 4y ago
I came across a comment that resonated with me and seems relevant in this context, so I saved it. It says: "The arc of communism is long and it leans towards oppressing the fuck out of people. It’s a tendency of all governmental systems. Communism rests most of its power in the hands of government without a moneyed elite to oppose them, so it tends to move to authoritarianism faster and with less resistance."
- pfisherman 4y ago
  Please excuse my naïveté here, but communism is an economic system and not a form of government, no? My understanding is that economics and governance are largely - though not completely - orthogonal.
  - fnovd 4y ago
    Marxist theory says that the separation between economic and state power is illusory at best and intentionally deceptive at worst. So a communist isn't going to think it possible to separate economic and state power, whereas that concept of that separation of powers is a foundational component of modern liberalism. It's why the two camps have a such a hard time talking to each other; they really don't see things the same way.
  - mongol 4y ago
    I don't see how they can be kept separate. Governance is to a large degree the creation of policies for managing of resources, and managing resources is what economics is about.
  - livelielife 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - barrysteve 4y ago
      Communism was a political and economic system. When stalin and hitler dipping their toes in faith/religion/belief it all went wrong and collapsed-in on itself. Ancient Rome had government and politics before religion. The last two thousand years had state religions at some points and the churches have their beliefs on governance, which they do internally and influence the world externally to some degree. They are separate concepts and communism never reached the level of an effective religion. It's not easy to wash away the distinction between concepts.
kobalsky 4y ago
the US senate blocks mergers left and right.
- eppp 4y ago
  Not nearly enough of them especially in the tech sector. Look at all of the damage google did when buying youtube and facebook buying instagram. Competition and innovation are supposed to be good things.
pmoriarty 4y ago
There's no bright, clear separation between governments and corporations in America. Corporate execs regularly get jobs in government, and often wind up "regulating" the very industries/companies they came from. It's also an open secret in Washington that when politicians retire they often get cushy, high paying jobs in the very companies they regulated or provided government contracts to. It's a revolving door between corporations and governments, and it's misleading to think the one is truly separate from the other. A better model is to look at the corporate-government interaction as competing elites vying with one another for money, power, and influence, and just as often collaborating with each other on shared interests.
- samstave 4y ago
  Dont forget the revolving door with intelligence agencies and social media... Recall the FB head of security that was walked out of the building at MPW for sexually harrasing/inappropriate actions Or the other head of security who came from NSA, then left FB to go back to NSA, to leave NSA and go back to FB? Or the time that FB built a 'government liason office' in DC? Or the time that zuck employed ex SS agents as his personal guard? Or the time CNN admitted to having CIA handlers on the editing staff (remember the quashing of the epstein story by media, because the CIA told them to) Or the time when Maxwell, who was media heiress' daughter of double mossad agent was convicted of trafficking kids to REDACTED Or the time it was reported that the FBI and twitter had an open channel on what, who, when to censor information? Or when Cisco was required by the NSA to incorporate backdoors in all routing devices for them... Or when the CIA intercepted CISCO devices en-route to [FOREIGN ADVERSARY] to install physical back-doors into said routers? (mid 1990s) Or when AT&T was required to install carnivore in SF IDF on Folsom (same building that served the nascient startup 'Twitter') Or when NSA required Intel to install certain security instruction sets for monitoring code/exploits Or when it was announced that Twitter had a 'firehose' of all tweets to the library of congress (NSA) for sentiment mining... Or the time when the most public pedo, aside from BBC's Saville, MITs big donor Epstein was called out for having Marvin FN Minsky in his clientelle - and the fact that a podcast revealed the big BDSM culture of MIT. (I cant find this video for some reason) Or the time that a c-founder of reddit was suicided for allegedly stealing reasearch papers, but really was going to reveal the ties to pedo elite via the grift at MIT... Or the time that every session on netflix/prime is a PR campaign for how bad-ass and rogue an ex CIA/NSA/COP can be when he is pursuing the current narrative and constant movies about clandestine operations is made to emotionally drive you to sympathizing with our good looking, adept, secret agents who are saving society from raving lunatics... literally 50% of movies/shows on these platforms are pushing the PR narrative of just how bad-ass a single CIA/NSA/COP agent can be.... else, watch many of the shows that are literally called lucifer... so many weird evil shows.... Or the time when CERBERUS investment group bought MAE-WEST (1st street san jose) and forced them to install carnivor to monitor internet traffic Or when they sold it after install Or when they bought PAIX (the Palo Alto Internet Exchange) which convenietly routed all network traffic through that facility AND also had international fiber terminated there AND AND also was the primary IX on the west coast (not MAE-WEST) as it had international and secret lab traffic - so they monitored all out of Stanford... There are so many data points, and if like data, then pay attention to the points that matter, such as the above. Yeah - corp-gov is so intertwined in the US its nuts. Actually insane - as its a third-rail to even discuss in media. https://www.wired.com/2006/04/whistle-blower-outs-nsa-spy-room-2/ https://www.wired.com/2006/04/whistle-blower-outs-nsa-spy-ro...
seydor 4y ago
It's 2 different takes on Power. The US ensures its continuation and longevity via the small group of Elite families and new wealth that is continuously being generated. They control the media and so many more, which keeps populism at bay. If democratic forces were left on their own, it would have reached the state of decline that happened to many e.g. social democratic states. China guards the power so that it stays with the Party, and imprisons Wealth when it becomes threatening
- megaman821 4y ago
  Your premise doesn't even hold for the short time period of 40 years. Who are the elite families that controlled the US in the early 80s and still control it now?

duxup 4y ago

To me the complicating factor is “why”. I’m not sure why China as a government makes the calls it does. It’s not clear to me that those aren’t just as self serving as say a big company in the us operating freely and so on.

re-thc 4y ago
China can't print money and go in infinite debt mode like the US does? The government needs to recover from COVID. Perspective: As leader the in control, I see there's a company that has the largest payment network in the country. Well that can't happen. I need a slice of it. So let's "regulate" it.
- fortuna86 4y ago
  China's public debt exceeds the US in several areas, private debt lags behind but is still substantial.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    It isn’t clear if SOE debt should be considered public or private debt. On the one hand, these are often publicly traded companies, in the other hand everyone assumes their debt is implicitly guaranteed by the government. Localities will often load up local SOEs with debt when they need to do something for public interest, like build a subway or road. So China’s public debt situation is really murky.
    - re-thc 4y ago
      Debt can only be debt if you believe there exists profits. There are companies that buy and sell off each other to produce "income". A lot of the numbers are inflated or completely cooked.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  why can't that happen? why do you need a slice of it?
  - re-thc 4y ago
    There's no point printing something useless? USD is the central currency. > why do you need a slice of it? Greed!
SllX 4y ago
The PRC as a government makes the calls that it does because it is one of the vehicles of power by which the CCP operates. Remember that constitutionally the CCP is above the government, the law and the PLA and therefore the highest offices of power within mainland China are not any of the Executive offices of government but the political offices (General Secretary of the CCP, the Politburo and the members of the standing committee). The People’s Liberation Army, People’s Armed Police and Militia answer to the Central Military Commission which is subordinate directly to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It isn’t like the United States or Europe or even Japan or Korea. Your basic assumptions vis a vis how we work and therefore how they must work will never work when trying to serve as a proper lens for interpreting the PRC because the PRC is itself an institution subordinate to a Party which considers all aspects of Chinese society both public and private subordinate to the Party including State, Religion and the activities families and businesses of their subjects which in their eyes doesn’t stop at the border if you are of Chinese descent. So if a business like Alibaba or a businessman like Jack Ma is challenging anything about that framework, or the laws of the PRC and policies of the CCP, they can’t afford to let that stand because the most important thing to them is maintaining their internal cohesion and power. Everything else is secondary or tertiary.

poszlem 4y ago

I came across a comment that resonated with me and seems relevant in this context, so I saved it. It says: "The arc of communism is long and it leans towards oppressing the fuck out of people. It’s a tendency of all governmental systems. Communism rests most of its power in the hands of government without a moneyed elite to oppose them, so it tends to move to authoritarianism faster and with less resistance."

pfisherman 4y ago
Please excuse my naïveté here, but communism is an economic system and not a form of government, no? My understanding is that economics and governance are largely - though not completely - orthogonal.
- fnovd 4y ago
  Marxist theory says that the separation between economic and state power is illusory at best and intentionally deceptive at worst. So a communist isn't going to think it possible to separate economic and state power, whereas that concept of that separation of powers is a foundational component of modern liberalism. It's why the two camps have a such a hard time talking to each other; they really don't see things the same way.
- mongol 4y ago
  I don't see how they can be kept separate. Governance is to a large degree the creation of policies for managing of resources, and managing resources is what economics is about.
- livelielife 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - barrysteve 4y ago
    Communism was a political and economic system. When stalin and hitler dipping their toes in faith/religion/belief it all went wrong and collapsed-in on itself. Ancient Rome had government and politics before religion. The last two thousand years had state religions at some points and the churches have their beliefs on governance, which they do internally and influence the world externally to some degree. They are separate concepts and communism never reached the level of an effective religion. It's not easy to wash away the distinction between concepts.

kobalsky 4y ago

the US senate blocks mergers left and right.

eppp 4y ago
Not nearly enough of them especially in the tech sector. Look at all of the damage google did when buying youtube and facebook buying instagram. Competition and innovation are supposed to be good things.

pmoriarty 4y ago

There's no bright, clear separation between governments and corporations in America. Corporate execs regularly get jobs in government, and often wind up "regulating" the very industries/companies they came from. It's also an open secret in Washington that when politicians retire they often get cushy, high paying jobs in the very companies they regulated or provided government contracts to. It's a revolving door between corporations and governments, and it's misleading to think the one is truly separate from the other. A better model is to look at the corporate-government interaction as competing elites vying with one another for money, power, and influence, and just as often collaborating with each other on shared interests.

samstave 4y ago
Dont forget the revolving door with intelligence agencies and social media... Recall the FB head of security that was walked out of the building at MPW for sexually harrasing/inappropriate actions Or the other head of security who came from NSA, then left FB to go back to NSA, to leave NSA and go back to FB? Or the time that FB built a 'government liason office' in DC? Or the time that zuck employed ex SS agents as his personal guard? Or the time CNN admitted to having CIA handlers on the editing staff (remember the quashing of the epstein story by media, because the CIA told them to) Or the time when Maxwell, who was media heiress' daughter of double mossad agent was convicted of trafficking kids to REDACTED Or the time it was reported that the FBI and twitter had an open channel on what, who, when to censor information? Or when Cisco was required by the NSA to incorporate backdoors in all routing devices for them... Or when the CIA intercepted CISCO devices en-route to [FOREIGN ADVERSARY] to install physical back-doors into said routers? (mid 1990s) Or when AT&T was required to install carnivore in SF IDF on Folsom (same building that served the nascient startup 'Twitter') Or when NSA required Intel to install certain security instruction sets for monitoring code/exploits Or when it was announced that Twitter had a 'firehose' of all tweets to the library of congress (NSA) for sentiment mining... Or the time when the most public pedo, aside from BBC's Saville, MITs big donor Epstein was called out for having Marvin FN Minsky in his clientelle - and the fact that a podcast revealed the big BDSM culture of MIT. (I cant find this video for some reason) Or the time that a c-founder of reddit was suicided for allegedly stealing reasearch papers, but really was going to reveal the ties to pedo elite via the grift at MIT... Or the time that every session on netflix/prime is a PR campaign for how bad-ass and rogue an ex CIA/NSA/COP can be when he is pursuing the current narrative and constant movies about clandestine operations is made to emotionally drive you to sympathizing with our good looking, adept, secret agents who are saving society from raving lunatics... literally 50% of movies/shows on these platforms are pushing the PR narrative of just how bad-ass a single CIA/NSA/COP agent can be.... else, watch many of the shows that are literally called lucifer... so many weird evil shows.... Or the time when CERBERUS investment group bought MAE-WEST (1st street san jose) and forced them to install carnivor to monitor internet traffic Or when they sold it after install Or when they bought PAIX (the Palo Alto Internet Exchange) which convenietly routed all network traffic through that facility AND also had international fiber terminated there AND AND also was the primary IX on the west coast (not MAE-WEST) as it had international and secret lab traffic - so they monitored all out of Stanford... There are so many data points, and if like data, then pay attention to the points that matter, such as the above. Yeah - corp-gov is so intertwined in the US its nuts. Actually insane - as its a third-rail to even discuss in media. https://www.wired.com/2006/04/whistle-blower-outs-nsa-spy-room-2/ https://www.wired.com/2006/04/whistle-blower-outs-nsa-spy-ro...

seydor 4y ago

It's 2 different takes on Power. The US ensures its continuation and longevity via the small group of Elite families and new wealth that is continuously being generated. They control the media and so many more, which keeps populism at bay. If democratic forces were left on their own, it would have reached the state of decline that happened to many e.g. social democratic states. China guards the power so that it stays with the Party, and imprisons Wealth when it becomes threatening

megaman821 4y ago
Your premise doesn't even hold for the short time period of 40 years. Who are the elite families that controlled the US in the early 80s and still control it now?