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It's not that our leaders are uniquely bad (do you think the CCP leaders are better?) but that the incentives for that kind of economic development aren't there

It's not that our leaders are uniquely bad (do you think the CCP leaders are better?) but that the incentives for that kind of economic development aren't there. Largely due to, as you point out, special interests. EDIT: judging by the comments everyone here seems to love China

forgetfreeman 6mo ago
"do you think the CCP leaders are better?" Yes, unambiguously. They appear to be aggressively investing in collaborative foreign policy projects globally, have a stellar track record when it comes to not starting random wars around the world, and their economic planning and engagement with decarbonization efforts massively outshine the US.
- zdragnar 6mo ago
  You just need to stomach slavery, violent repression of political dissidents, live organ harvesting and a handful of other unpleasantries.
  - vondur 6mo ago
    Yeah, people here are insane to believe the CCP is some kind of technocratic benevolent autocracy.
    - asdfman123 6mo ago
      It helps that they spend billions to manipulate public perception on forums like this one
    - forgetfreeman 6mo ago
      The same can be said without irony about the current administration in the US so there is that. Anyway it's perfectly reasonable to point out the ways in which the CCP is outperforming western governments. If that bothers you then I'd say you may want to contact your representatives.
  - otterley 6mo ago
    I'm not an apologist for Chinese repression, but America still has or once had slavery, child labor, torture (Abu Ghraib), patent medicine and unsafe food, racist policies that prevent wealth accumulation (redlining), mass pollution, racism and mistrust of non-white-skinned people, a terrible healthcare system for most, and still debates over the utility of vaccines, has a poor K-12 education outcome, refuses to severely punish notorious white-collar criminals and make their victims whole, immunizes its law enforcement from prosecution when it violates others' civil rights, and vests the President with absolute immunity or a presumption of immunity in exercising its powers. And those are just the embarrassments and atrocities I can think of right now. We still have a lot to answer for.
    - asdfman123 6mo ago
      If it's already changed don't you think it's answered for? What level of performative apologetics will make it better in your estimation?
      - otterley 6mo ago
        I don't want performative apologetics; I want the still-existing problems to be remediated. I also want my fellow Americans not to deny our history and present reality. Recognition and apology are not identical.
        asdfman123 6mo ago
        You seem to be not distinguishing things that have happened hundreds of years ago with things that are present, exaggerating the scale of things that are still present, and not acknowledging that those things are widely recognized and even taught in American history classes.
        otterley 6mo ago
        I made clear that some of these were past (and they reverberate still today), and some are present: "America still has or once had" > exaggerating the scale of things that are still present What am I exaggerating, exactly? https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic... https://mappingpoliceviolence.org https://mappingpoliceviolence.org https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality... https://www.npr.org/2026/03/14/nx-s1-5734051/measles-outbreak-parents-south-carolina-vaccines https://www.npr.org/2026/03/14/nx-s1-5734051/measles-outbrea... > not acknowledging that those things are widely recognized and even taught in American history classes In some states, yes. In others, the content is being censored (another embarrassment for America, which once censored the teaching of evolution!). See, e.g.: https://pen.org/educational-censorship/index-of-educational-gag-orders/ https://pen.org/educational-censorship/index-of-educational-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_school_curricula_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_school_curricula... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-whats-behind-the-efforts-to-reshape-how-american-history-is-taught https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-whats-behind-the...
- pjc50 6mo ago
  There's an invisible tradeoff here. The US has an extremely expansive view of free speech, so you get a very noisy picture of its politics, half of which is Infowars-level insane lies. This is a large cause of its problems. China absolutely does not have free media, and if it did it wouldn't publish primarily in English, so its negatives are very hard to see. Even for Chinese speakers.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
janalsncm 6mo ago
At a 30,000 foot view the purpose of politics is to keep corrupt people and stupid people away from the levers of power. Voting is one possible way, fiat is another. Readers can assess for themselves the degree to which the U.S. government has done this, as well as the CCP. By the way Sortition, which is picking random people to run government for a period of time, would probably be better than what we have now in my opinion. We are worse than random.
- asdfman123 6mo ago
  What you want out of politics is not the purpose of politics. Politics is an emergent phenomenon that appears naturally within groups of people. People/groups engage in politics to exert control over the social environment.
  - janalsncm 6mo ago
    It’s not about what I want. The view I shared above was shared the Founding Fathers of the US, and the writers of its constitution. For example Federalist 57, 68, and 76. So I’m not talking about “politics” as an emergent social phenomenon I am talking about the deliberate process of setting up a government.
padjo 6mo ago
> do you think the CCP leaders are better? Based on their public statements and policy actions, absolutely. America these days sounds and behaves like a country being run by absolute cretins.
satvikpendem 6mo ago
CCP leaders are largely technocrats unlike in the US. There are many engineers and doctors in the upper ranks.
- robocat 6mo ago
  Many of us have personal experience watching good engineers become bad managers. Politics is harder than it looks. In theory an engineering background should help make better politicians. In practice it isn't the slamdunk you imply.
  - jqpabc123 6mo ago
    In practice it isn't the slamdunk you imply. In practice, China is very different from the USA. For example, China doesn't have open presidential elections.
  - satvikpendem 6mo ago
    My statement was descriptive not prescriptive. I make no claims about, in a vacuum or for all situations, whether a technocrat is better than one who is not, just that many of their government is made up of them and they seem to be doing well.
- resonancel 6mo ago
  Well, Xi Jinping and his lackeys are known for their poor educational background, maybe not quite well known in the West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSYQpaAI90A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSYQpaAI90A
anon291 6mo ago
I think phrases like 'love China' set this up as an emotional argument when it isn't one. I have no idea what China or Chinese leaders are like. I have no relation to China. However, I can say that their policy choices on these technical issues are better than ours. The only emotion I feel when saying this is disappointment in my own country, rather than pride in China. I wish America had more energy production. Almost all American problems are the result of lacking energy production capacity.
otterley 6mo ago
> judging by the comments everyone here seems to love China It is possible both to be impressed by China's accomplishments over the past 30 years while remaining critical about its imperfections (and America's as well). It's not about "loving China;" it's about being open-minded, objective, and thorough in considering the matter.

forgetfreeman 6mo ago

"do you think the CCP leaders are better?" Yes, unambiguously. They appear to be aggressively investing in collaborative foreign policy projects globally, have a stellar track record when it comes to not starting random wars around the world, and their economic planning and engagement with decarbonization efforts massively outshine the US.

zdragnar 6mo ago
You just need to stomach slavery, violent repression of political dissidents, live organ harvesting and a handful of other unpleasantries.
- vondur 6mo ago
  Yeah, people here are insane to believe the CCP is some kind of technocratic benevolent autocracy.
  - asdfman123 6mo ago
    It helps that they spend billions to manipulate public perception on forums like this one
  - forgetfreeman 6mo ago
    The same can be said without irony about the current administration in the US so there is that. Anyway it's perfectly reasonable to point out the ways in which the CCP is outperforming western governments. If that bothers you then I'd say you may want to contact your representatives.
- otterley 6mo ago
  I'm not an apologist for Chinese repression, but America still has or once had slavery, child labor, torture (Abu Ghraib), patent medicine and unsafe food, racist policies that prevent wealth accumulation (redlining), mass pollution, racism and mistrust of non-white-skinned people, a terrible healthcare system for most, and still debates over the utility of vaccines, has a poor K-12 education outcome, refuses to severely punish notorious white-collar criminals and make their victims whole, immunizes its law enforcement from prosecution when it violates others' civil rights, and vests the President with absolute immunity or a presumption of immunity in exercising its powers. And those are just the embarrassments and atrocities I can think of right now. We still have a lot to answer for.
  - asdfman123 6mo ago
    If it's already changed don't you think it's answered for? What level of performative apologetics will make it better in your estimation?
    - otterley 6mo ago
      I don't want performative apologetics; I want the still-existing problems to be remediated. I also want my fellow Americans not to deny our history and present reality. Recognition and apology are not identical.
      - asdfman123 6mo ago
        You seem to be not distinguishing things that have happened hundreds of years ago with things that are present, exaggerating the scale of things that are still present, and not acknowledging that those things are widely recognized and even taught in American history classes.
        otterley 6mo ago
        I made clear that some of these were past (and they reverberate still today), and some are present: "America still has or once had" > exaggerating the scale of things that are still present What am I exaggerating, exactly? https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic... https://mappingpoliceviolence.org https://mappingpoliceviolence.org https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality... https://www.npr.org/2026/03/14/nx-s1-5734051/measles-outbreak-parents-south-carolina-vaccines https://www.npr.org/2026/03/14/nx-s1-5734051/measles-outbrea... > not acknowledging that those things are widely recognized and even taught in American history classes In some states, yes. In others, the content is being censored (another embarrassment for America, which once censored the teaching of evolution!). See, e.g.: https://pen.org/educational-censorship/index-of-educational-gag-orders/ https://pen.org/educational-censorship/index-of-educational-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_school_curricula_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_school_curricula... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-whats-behind-the-efforts-to-reshape-how-american-history-is-taught https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-whats-behind-the...
pjc50 6mo ago
There's an invisible tradeoff here. The US has an extremely expansive view of free speech, so you get a very noisy picture of its politics, half of which is Infowars-level insane lies. This is a large cause of its problems. China absolutely does not have free media, and if it did it wouldn't publish primarily in English, so its negatives are very hard to see. Even for Chinese speakers.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

janalsncm 6mo ago

At a 30,000 foot view the purpose of politics is to keep corrupt people and stupid people away from the levers of power. Voting is one possible way, fiat is another. Readers can assess for themselves the degree to which the U.S. government has done this, as well as the CCP. By the way Sortition, which is picking random people to run government for a period of time, would probably be better than what we have now in my opinion. We are worse than random.

asdfman123 6mo ago
What you want out of politics is not the purpose of politics. Politics is an emergent phenomenon that appears naturally within groups of people. People/groups engage in politics to exert control over the social environment.
- janalsncm 6mo ago
  It’s not about what I want. The view I shared above was shared the Founding Fathers of the US, and the writers of its constitution. For example Federalist 57, 68, and 76. So I’m not talking about “politics” as an emergent social phenomenon I am talking about the deliberate process of setting up a government.

padjo 6mo ago

> do you think the CCP leaders are better? Based on their public statements and policy actions, absolutely. America these days sounds and behaves like a country being run by absolute cretins.

satvikpendem 6mo ago

CCP leaders are largely technocrats unlike in the US. There are many engineers and doctors in the upper ranks.

robocat 6mo ago
Many of us have personal experience watching good engineers become bad managers. Politics is harder than it looks. In theory an engineering background should help make better politicians. In practice it isn't the slamdunk you imply.
- jqpabc123 6mo ago
  In practice it isn't the slamdunk you imply. In practice, China is very different from the USA. For example, China doesn't have open presidential elections.
- satvikpendem 6mo ago
  My statement was descriptive not prescriptive. I make no claims about, in a vacuum or for all situations, whether a technocrat is better than one who is not, just that many of their government is made up of them and they seem to be doing well.
resonancel 6mo ago
Well, Xi Jinping and his lackeys are known for their poor educational background, maybe not quite well known in the West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSYQpaAI90A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSYQpaAI90A

anon291 6mo ago

I think phrases like 'love China' set this up as an emotional argument when it isn't one. I have no idea what China or Chinese leaders are like. I have no relation to China. However, I can say that their policy choices on these technical issues are better than ours. The only emotion I feel when saying this is disappointment in my own country, rather than pride in China. I wish America had more energy production. Almost all American problems are the result of lacking energy production capacity.

otterley 6mo ago

> judging by the comments everyone here seems to love China It is possible both to be impressed by China's accomplishments over the past 30 years while remaining critical about its imperfections (and America's as well). It's not about "loving China;" it's about being open-minded, objective, and thorough in considering the matter.