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What really happened to Jack Ma?

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141–150 of 210 posts

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who spent years in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (or are still there, after 20 years, without being charged) might disagree with you on that.

> In the USA What the US does to non-citizens outside the USA is a messy area. Inside the USA? The rules are far more clear.

> The rules are far more clear.

Can you clarify this? As far as I'm aware, the US govt can dispute anyone's citizenship without recourse, even if you're holding e.g., a valid passport.

From 2016: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/22/504031635...

As far as I know, nothing in this article has changed.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#142
post #107
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>democracy has its good points That when billionaires become powerful enough to exert unchecked power we lavish praise instead of imprisoning them?

Would you rather billionaires exerting "unchecked power" or party officials exerting actual, unchecked, power? Because the unchecked power of the typical billionaire couldn't achieve what is being done to Jack Ma.

Agree, people often seem to downplay or ignore the power of incarceration.

It's a completely different type of power than ad tech and a myriad of other lesser powers, it is the most in need of thorough checks and balances.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#143
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarianism is possible with most types of government, but is necessary for communism. Most communists are well aware of the fact that an economic system with strict objectives requires a very powerful mechanism in order to accomplish this, and most of those understand that this mechanism is an authoritarian state, but there are obviously the delusional few that refer to the state by any other name (syndicates,…

I agree with everything you said, except for China not being communist. The CCP's take is "Mao was 70% right" and officially identifies as communist. Its stated end goal is a communist society. It is in service of this goal that they are taking a capitalistic / globalization route to expanding their Lebensraum. Whether CCP = China I guess is another discussion, but I don't have a strong view there.

Many communists assert that "state capitalism" is a step on the pathway to communism. From an outsider's perspective, we watched a failing communist state open up markets under Deng Xiaoping, and become the fastest rising capitalist power in the world. First, the thing that took the country from being a failed state to the fastest elimination of poverty the world has ever seen was specifically its rejection of communism, which is primarily an economic model. Secondly, there still remains no evidence that the country could ever go back in a communist direction and not lose all of the benefits incurred by a market economy.

They can call themselves communist all they want, but all they have in common with it is the authoritarianism.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think CCP would throw away billions of worth just because they dislike the man. Unlike the west, China is allowed to meddle into the affairs of any company, so it's not hard to imagine they are just profiting from him, like a shadow takeover. This explains why he is shown around from time to time: to calm down the investors. At some point this circus would be over, and the companies will collapse by themselve…

So, you could short the stock and make a killing? In around a year or two?

Shorting is about market timing. I wouldn't gamble on China not keeping the price high to save face. It could easily go the other way.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarianism is possible with most types of government, but is necessary for communism. Most communists are well aware of the fact that an economic system with strict objectives requires a very powerful mechanism in order to accomplish this, and most of those understand that this mechanism is an authoritarian state, but there are obviously the delusional few that refer to the state by any other name (syndicates,…

> Authoritarianism is possible with most types of government, but is necessary for communism. Only if the people aren't onboard. The whole idea of communism is with people being onboard (and running soviets, worker councils, etc). Some not being onboard is OK - communism is about majority rule, not what some person likes or dislikes. In that, it's like any other system. A modern democracy also doesn't care if somebod…

Majority rule is authoritarianism...

If you're gay and can't marry who you want because the majority says so, it doesn't matter if the dictator or your peers told you so.

What makes communism necessarily authoritarian, as compared to capitalism (which can be, but is not necessarily authoritarian), is that communism is a prescriptive ideology. It stipulates outcomes regarding distribution of resources, how hierarchies are manifested or not manifested, economic relationships, etc. Capitalism is an ideology of systems, unconcerned with outcomes. This is why communes can exist in capitalist countries, but private enterprises cannot exist in communist countries.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#146
post #74
post #5

One thing that you learn quickly when traveling the world is how easily one can go from having a good time with your friends, to being in a shitty prison without food, running water or a phone to let your family know if you are dead or alive. I have friends travel to interesting places during times of (relative) stability. To paraphrase one of the guys that I know: "When you travel in some of these places, you exist…

It's kind of intriguing to me because, as a member of a western society, I think we place largely the same expectations on people to conform, the only difference is in how the enforcement is applied. In many countries, cities, and neighbourhoods in "the west" if you aren't white you experience exactly the kind of insecurity you describe elsewhere. There are plenty of incidents where non-white residents are arrested w…

In many cases things are worse locally and they move because of it. The targetting in America is generally with black people. You rarely hear about the east Indian family being pulled. You often hear about people going out of their way to support immigrants (at least in Canada).

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. Same reason they shut down LGBTQ chat rooms. It will be very interesting to watch the trajectory of China vs the western model.

Can you elaborate? How are LGBTQ chatrooms a threat to the power and stability of the CCP leadership in a way comparable to Jack Ma? EDIT: I don't mean this critically, I'm actually quite interested. There seems to be a correlation between how repressive a government is and how nasty they are towards LGBTQetc people. I never considered this to be a causal relationship until your comment. Maybe somehow Putin and Orban…

Because they're both threats to their power. If Ma had gone public, he could have used the foreign money in the way that Whitey Bulger used the FBI to eliminate his rivals within his own organization and then in other gangs. It's the double agent game most spooks excel at, so the CCP saw it coming nipped it in the bud. (It's also why I think Ma's been dead for quite some time. A country with billion smartphones and not one picture from some random waitress? C'mon.)

The CCP are is obsessed with the relationship between demographics and war because it always thought that their extraordinary numbers would be their saving grace in WWIII. Now, for a lot of reasons, they're really not so certain.

If you're a CCP leader, gay men aren't the problem so much as it is lesbians. (I've never seen trans people enter into the debate at the policy level, even though all three are existential threats to Confucianism.) The gender imbalance caused by the one son policy really is a problem because it means you have tens of millions of unmarriageable single young men. Historically, the more unmarriageable single young men you have as a percentage of your total population, the more violent crime your society has. If you hit a certain point, revolutions become far more likely. Lesbians -- as well as Chinese women who prefer Western men, their careers, or anything else -- have to be stomped out by any means necessary because because they feel that they are uncomfortably close to that tipping point. It's why a lot of people think the campaign to denigrate leftover women ultimately came from the CCP.

Interestingly, its this demographic imbalance that is the reason for gay porn to still be somewhat tolerated, even if forums aren't. (Lesbian porn still isn't.) Chatrooms and forums are bad because they encourage solidarity and planning; porn is okay because you're just sitting in a room staring at a screen.

Edit: Am I the only one who's a little disturbed at how closely the English language media has followed the Chinese language media on this? And people wonder why I stopped using FB/Twitter/smartphones.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Medieval. The Crown accuses you of corruption/sedition/treachery, prosecutes you then confiscates your property as a fine. A bit like Henry 7th in England during his reign. Also a bit like Putin against any oligarchs who dared to oppose him. But then I suppose its a standard pattern of behaviour to give their actions the sheen of lawfulness.

I would say it's plain communism: nothing is yours, the state owns everything (including your life). But I guess the difference between crown and communism is best explained in Animal Farm.

I don’t really see the inequality of representation and taxation in capitalism as any less authoritarian.

If everything I do is being validated for value by management and bosses, and my buying power is managed by bankers who have inflationary powers to dilute my earnings, we’ve just made managed economy ephemeral. We’ve socially normalized grift and protection rackets.

Some estimates suggest up to 30% of inmates are innocent. And when plenty are in there for marijuana, that’s a bit more petty than a billionaire disrupting an entire society.

Rather than real prisons we let people die on the streets from preventable disease so we can say we didn’t force anyone into anything as if letting them rot is glass half full.

It’s a shame the “I am educated and worldly” community hasn’t put much though into the depth to which relativity applies to human existence.

If we’re going to intentionally avoid lifting people up at the cost of putting agency into propping up the already rich, well, the poor can never experience the alternative to form meta opinions.

This bantering in traditional political memes is patronizing and ignorant af given our scientific understanding of reality.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#150
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wishing for Xi Jinping to visit the Hague does as little to hinder China as much as sticking your head in the sand.

Better than welcoming them in through the front door like we have been doing until now. It’s come to the point where we need to have a constant and sustain vocalisation against the CCP and the dystopian future they are building. They represent an existential threat to anything that isn’t the CCP and they’ve been very successful in getting their hooks into western society and the world at large. You see it on Reddit a…

There are plenty of comments critical of the CCP like half the comments here. The difference is that they are actually relevant to the article, which has very little to do with Xi and has even less to do international law. This is probably why dang interpreted as flamebait.
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