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China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

economist.com

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Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#261

Post by endisneigh »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #259
endisneigh wrote: post #139

I wish we (the USA) would take this opportunity to recognize China does some things in certain circumstances better than us and capitalize on that. - Infrastructure (public transportation and high speed rail is far superior in China) - Reproductive rights for women (abortion is available for all women in China) There are others, but it doesn't need to be a battle. China has a ton of issues too (non-free media, Xinjia…

Reproductive rights? Funny. Yes, they can get an abortion. But there was a time, rather recently, when they literally did not have the right to reproduce.

I mean sure yes. There was also a time in the USA where Black people were not even considered a "full" human being.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#262

Post by vict7 »

throwaway20875 wrote: post #185
vict7 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I get the feeling that 'unpopular' is just a euphemism for 'racist' here. You're saying you want to cancel cancel culture? Like look, I'll give you that there exist an incredibly small fraction of people that actually embody the spectre you are trying to conjure here. We have so so many more pressing issues in this country than fear of wokeness--like the rise of domestic white-supremacist terrorism.

Can you share any data points on the rise of domestic white supremacist terrorism? I'm genuinely interested in what kind of threat this poses.

Here's two articles from within the last calendar year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/us/domestic-terrorist-gro...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#263

Post by rnd0 »

rafale wrote: post #15

The west is in decline because progressive values don't promote strength. They focus on class and are inherently divisive. Ironically, they only blossom in strong societies. The decline will allow other societies with a more conservative philosophy to take over and it will be their turn in a few centuries to succumb to the same tragedy. The baizuo tragedy.

Christ on toast! Is "baizuo" becoming the "SJW" for the 20's now? Ugh.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#264

Post by peter_retief »

I suspect that the Chinese Government are feeling increasingly vulnerable as their citizens become wealthier and begin to question the authority of the communist regime. The west is probably in the best shape it has ever been in if measured in prosperity, freedom and life expectancy.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#265

Post by remirk »

j_walter wrote: post #240
remirk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying you would like people to actually improve the country, but are saying defunding the police counters that. When people say they'll want to defund the police, they are not saying there should be no police. People want a different police. There are structural problems that are not easily fixed, as we have seen. Making a new police-like organisation from the ground up is a way to fix those structural probl…

Destroying inner cities is not helping. Pulling money away from the police in the middle of crime spiking and giving it to experimental task forces that have little in the way of experience is not a great idea. Portland just decided that to combat all of the shootings and crime happening in the city's parks they will add more unarmed park rangers. This should go well...

> Destroying inner cities is not helping.

I wholefully agree with you. That is harmful. Though, it is only a small subset of the people who are guilty of that. So we should speak to those people instead of the whole group that is critical of the current police force.

> Portland just decided that to combat all of the shootings and crime happening in the city's parks they will add more unarmed park rangers.

Well, you have got to start somewhere. That are structural problems in the police force which aren't going away anytime soon. We should do something about that. We've learned that arming police more certainly isn't helping.

I'll be surprised if, in 10 years, we wouldn't conclude that Portland's efforts were helpful to come to a solution to the problem. Solving problems, also what OP is talking about, is a long term effort.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#266

Post by Black101 »

Daho0n wrote: post #23

It's very hard to disagree IMO. The west is in decline and unless something catastrophic happens in PRC or war breaks out (also pretty catastrophic) I can't see any future where the PRC isn't going to at least become on par with the US soon but most likely it will succeed it as top dog. The only question in my mind is where do the EU end up in all this and if Russia will become closer with PRC or EU. IMO the biggest…

> US policy are mostly only until next election

And they often lie about what they will accomplish.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#267

Post by happytoexplain »

thepasswordis wrote: post #71

It's because we stopped focusing on creating things, and instead started laser focusing on making sure that everybody gets exactly the same amount of everything all the time. It's ridiculous. We are trust fund children who don't understand where the money came from, and it will be our undoing. Twitter, NYT, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and the like have monetized dividing us, and they have a multi-billion dollar a year budge…

>started laser focusing on making sure that everybody gets exactly the same amount of everything all the time. It's ridiculous.

>It's unbelievably, unbelievably sad.

I largely agree with you, but in my opinion, the position you're expressing in the former quote (specifically the extremity of the position, rather than its quality) contributes to existence of the latter. There are way too many absolutes in your complaint - you're exaggerating out of emotion.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#268

Post by MisterBastahrd »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #256
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military dominance is only insurmountable and complete when it's a credible threat, and ours hasn't actually won a war of note in over half a century. The best we've ever done in that timeframe has been to supplement military leadership that was already in place, and we've failed to even accomplish that half the time. The US military is a money pit.

Our military is absolutely a credible threat. We did not win those wars because we restrained ourselves. Iraq could have easily been turned into a wasteland of death and destruction, for example. We could have done like the Romans, implemented complete tyranny, and lined their streets with staked bodies as a reminder to not rebel. Harbor terrorists among civilians? Leveling the whole city would send a message that ha…

That's all really cute but it doesn't address the issue.

People who are living in their homelands are more willing to fight and more entrenched than foreign invaders, especially when they've been at war long enough that you can't simply target a couple of places to bring them to their knees. The US military is not a credible threat. They're simply another invader who will get tired of the conflict and go away.

We're not going to war with Russia or China. We didn't do it when Russia annexed Crimea, or when they targeted US troops in Syria, and we aren't going to do it when China puts its boot on the neck of Taiwan. It's a stupid political game to pretend otherwise.

Like I said, the military is a money pit.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#269

Post by starfallg »

Daho0n wrote: post #23

It's very hard to disagree IMO. The west is in decline and unless something catastrophic happens in PRC or war breaks out (also pretty catastrophic) I can't see any future where the PRC isn't going to at least become on par with the US soon but most likely it will succeed it as top dog. The only question in my mind is where do the EU end up in all this and if Russia will become closer with PRC or EU. IMO the biggest…

>IMO the biggest failure in all this is that the opposition to PRC's rise is the same old as we have seen before and it's very clear that it will fail. As an outsider to both the US and PRC it looks to me like the US does all it can to shoot itself in the foot continually for whatever reason while PRC is playing on a totally different level. Maybe because US policy are mostly only until next election?

I would say it's mainly because there is a sizeable number of people in the US that are benefiting from favourable trade relations with China to lobby for not rocking the boat (not to mention purposely scuttling long-term strategic programmes to isolate China like the TPP).

So the issue really is that there are bad actors that are putting their own private interests before that of the nation. Historically in China, this is also how many dynasties fell.

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