If Only The Romans

[abaris]

The Party will soon discover that there is no such thing as "a little freedom." They have unleashed forces that they cannot control.

Right now Corporatists all over the world cream their pants over China. No regards for human rights, no regards for working conditions and incomes as low as they get without outright slavery. And all combined in a neat little package of opression that makes protests impossible.

As long as the Dollar is rolling, the Chinese government won't change anything.

[Thumpalumpacus]

It's hard to expand freedoms by taking them away, as you seem to be arguing.

Religious cults are not about "freedom," Parker. They are about control. In fact, the communists are amateurs compared to religious cults when it comes to repression and longevity.

No. I can't work up any sympathy for assholes who insist their cult is being repressed by another cult. It's what cults do. And China seems to be moving in the right direction.

I'm not plumping for any sympathy to be shown to anyone. But I certainly disagree about "the right direction". Censoring those who disagree with you is not a mark of your own strength; it's a mark of your weakness.

Making thoughts criminal is not an advance for freedom. There's no rational argument for that proposition.

[Anomalocaris]

And China seems to be moving in the right direction.

China combines the worst of both worlds. Unchained capitalism with communist opression. It's hard to work up any sympathy for them, let alone claim, they're moving in the right direction.

They successfully lifted 800 million people from medieval poverty to something resembling modernity as well as freedom in the form of practical options in life in 35 years. That generated sympathy in me on a scale much larger than can possibly be engendered by any cultural, ideological or political-philosophical approval.

The right to eat, and the freedom of have options in life, for one, even one I may dislike, trumps the right to vote, speak or have freedom of conscience for a much larger number, even of my most favorite people.

In my opinion, through the economic growth and resulting widespread increase in standard of living which they made possible, the Chinese government in the last 35 years, however philosophically displeasing, successfully facilitated more good that really mattered in the long run than the rest of the world combined.

---

The Party will soon discover that there is no such thing as "a little freedom." They have unleashed forces that they cannot control.

Right now Corporatists all over the world cream their pants over China. No regards for human rights, no regards for working conditions and incomes as low as they get without outright slavery. And all combined in a neat little package of opression that makes protests impossible.

As long as the Dollar is rolling, the Chinese government won't change anything.

They needn't change because they can truthfully say the average worker is twice as well off today in terms of purchasing power as 7 years ago and convincingly promise that the average worker will be twice yet better off in ten years as today.. They can also make claims in the same direction, but of different magnitudes, in terms of leisure time, career options, realistic retirement ages, etc.

We are compelled to insist "better off" must mean something different from how the chinese would like it to mean because we don't want to feel too sad about the fact that our average workers are worse off today than 30 years ago and realistically will be still more worse off 30 year from now than today in terms of purchasing power, and probably the same in terms of leisure time, realistic retirement age, and other things that might otherwise be tempting to use as a measure of whether we are "better off".

[Lemonvariable72]

The Party will soon discover that there is no such thing as "a little freedom." They have unleashed forces that they cannot control.

Right now Corporatists all over the world cream their pants over China. No regards for human rights, no regards for working conditions and incomes as low as they get without outright slavery. And all combined in a neat little package of opression that makes protests impossible.

As long as the Dollar is rolling, the Chinese government won't change anything.

I think min is right. Revolutions happen when things are improving and people have a little more hope then they did in the past. As for their wages, they have steadily increasing. also bear in the mind the us is trying to undermine their system in a very subtle way. By educating Chinese youth in the us and Canada.

[Anomalocaris]

I think it is a fantasy to think western concept of democracy has intrinsic power of attraction that will enable it to naturally spread unless sUppressed in a forceful and unseemly way. I speak to many chinese students here. The overwhelming majority believes what they learn in America makes them more competitive in the system back home. They actually don't think they will do as well at home if the system at home was politically more like that in the US. Therefore they have no desire at all to change the system at home in any substantive way. In other words they believe those beneficial things which democracies are better at inventing than authoritarianism, once invented actually works better under authoritarianism than it would under democracy.
So they are here to learn what we can invent that they can't, so they can take it home to make the inventions work better there than we can here.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I don't think democracy has attraction to everyone.

I was espousing my own valuation of freedom of speech in the marketplace of ideas.

[Lek]

I don't think democracy has attraction to everyone.

I was espousing my own valuation of freedom of speech in the marketplace of ideas.

I'm happy that some of you think so highly of China which, in spite of persecution and suppression, has the fastest growing christian population in the world.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Right now Corporatists all over the world cream their pants over China. No regards for human rights, no regards for working conditions and incomes as low as they get without outright slavery. And all combined in a neat little package of opression that makes protests impossible.

As long as the Dollar is rolling, the Chinese government won't change anything.

I think min is right. Revolutions happen when things are improving and people have a little more hope then they did in the past. As for their wages, they have steadily increasing. also bear in the mind the us is trying to undermine their system in a very subtle way. By educating Chinese youth in the us and Canada.

You point about our educating their youth being subversive sounds right to me, but I'm not so sure that revolutions tend to arise in times of plenty; it seems to me that hard times produce them more regularly.

[ManMachine]

Freedom of conscience should not be abrogated.

Tell that to brain-anaesthetists on Madison Avenue.

MM

[Thumpalumpacus]

I don't think democracy has attraction to everyone.

I was espousing my own valuation of freedom of speech in the marketplace of ideas.

I'm happy that some of you think so highly of China which, in spite of persecution and suppression, has the fastest growing christian population in the world.

I'm not sure why you think I was writing about the Chinese population as a whole. Perhaps you'd quote with a link where I opined about them as a group?