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Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

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Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#91

Post by esailija »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #68

> 22-year-old motorbike courier Mr. Tang complains about the lack of medical insurance. “There’s nothing I can do about it if Meituan doesn’t pay for it,” he added. “The wealth gap between people in this society is too big”. People should stop calling China a communist state, when isn't. If they we are truly communist, not will be medical insurances or a "entrepreneur" driving it. It would have a public medical syste…

A communist state is merely a state that wishes to achieve communism, a stateless (classless) society.

There is no such thing as communist state that has achieved communism because at that point in the world states no longer exist because classes no longer exist. Such a world actually existed for hundreds of thousands of years as technology didn't allow one set of people to produce so much surplus so that another set of people could live without directly producing, a requirement for a state.

There are no known steps to "achieve communism", so there is no laundry list of requirements that make a communist state. In practice however some kind of liberal market is required because the world is currently dominated by capitalist ideology which will destroy any obviously communist state and a destroyed state cannot achieve communism.

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#92

Post by libertine »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

I can't imagine Xi is thrilled with this. More likely: zealous deputies, looking ahead to next year's National Party Conference, are looking to curry favor and build their resumes. When everyone is simultaneously dialing it to eleven in a zero-sum game, fuckups are almost assured.

Honestly I don't think they care, since they are playing the long term game (probably in decades, if not 100+ years). Not only that, but China just has too much momentum for any of this to make a big dent.

I think it was Warren Buffet that compared the US economy to a fast moving train, and that a stick or a stone in the rails won't make it derail. We also have to acknowledge that China is also a massive moving train at high speed, and it won't derail.

That's why they can make these decisions. Remember that companies are apologizing to China on a monthly basis, I haven't seen a single Chinese company issue apologies for anything related to offences to western countries.

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#93

Post by [deleted] »

reader_mode wrote: post #75
chii wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is the obvious example of something that should have been banned years ago (and all proof of work crypto) not that i would invest in bitcoins (or any crypto), but i don't see it as an obvious ban. The only reason i can deduce from your "obviousness" comment is that proof of works "wastes" energy. But then it is hypocritical to argue this when other modern conveniences also "waste" energy, and yet you don't…

What is the utility provided by crypto ? Money laundering, avoiding capital controls, financial speculation ? All while burning insane amount of energy and hoging up limited chip making supplies. It's clear cut that o the whole crypto is a huge negative for society.

[deleted]

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

esailija wrote: post #91
Zardoz84 wrote: post #68

> 22-year-old motorbike courier Mr. Tang complains about the lack of medical insurance. “There’s nothing I can do about it if Meituan doesn’t pay for it,” he added. “The wealth gap between people in this society is too big”. People should stop calling China a communist state, when isn't. If they we are truly communist, not will be medical insurances or a "entrepreneur" driving it. It would have a public medical syste…

A communist state is merely a state that wishes to achieve communism, a stateless (classless) society. There is no such thing as communist state that has achieved communism because at that point in the world states no longer exist because classes no longer exist. Such a world actually existed for hundreds of thousands of years as technology didn't allow one set of people to produce so much surplus so that another set…

> stateless (classless)

These, as each is usually understood, are not even approximately the same thing, and any theory which posits that they are identical has either adopted nonuseful definitions of at least one of them to make that true, or is simply logically wrong.

> Such a world actually existed for hundreds of thousands of years as technology didn't allow one set of people to produce so much surplus so that another set of people could live without directly producing

Sets of people that don't directly produce have existed throughout all of human existence.

> a requirement for a state.

It's a requirement for the continuation of the species; infants aren't direct producers. How many total (and total-equivalent composed of part-time slices of sometime-direct-producers) non-direct-producers a society supports is a product of productivity, sure.

But at almost any level of that where one can have continuity of the species one could also have (and, indeed, human societies have had) a state; agents and decisionmakers of the state can, after all, be direct producers as well, and historically largely have been.

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#95

Post by aliswe »

mettamage wrote: post #29

I feel a bit too far removed from this, so my comments might be a bit too curious without considering other perspectives (aka I am a bit naive on this topic). With that said: Global investors are getting squashed. But there must be global investors who shorted these stocks or bought put options. Why aren’t they covered in this article? I’m missing nuance on the investment side. From a political standpoint, I want to…

> But there must be global investors who shorted these stocks

Why would you short a tutoring stock, especially if whats publicly traded is an investment fund that only does it as a small part of their business?

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#96

Post by koonsolo »

reader_mode wrote: post #90
koonsolo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are computer games also a huge negative for society? With your reasoning, they provide no utility, waste an insane amount of energy, mostly involve violence, etc. I don't want to live in a country that starts banning things for those reasons. The utility of cryptocurrencies is not decided by governments, or companies, or you. The utility will be decided by reality. I like living in democracy and capitalism, but it se…

>The utility of cryptocurrencies is not decided by governments, or companies, or you. The utility will be decided by reality. No the utility is determined by you me and everyone else collectively. The problem is financial mechanisms that allow inflating these bubbles are not market driven, central banks are flooding the markets with low interest rates, if they want to direct the markets they need to react to negative…

> central banks are flooding the markets with low interest rates

Seems like a good reason to store your value in something else than central bank tokens.

You call it "inflating bubbles", I call it competition for something central banks have a monopoly on.

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#97

Post by NonContro »

asdfsfkwqe wrote: post #3

They failed to realize the root cause of all these after school tutoring. There are just not enough proper schools for them to attend. They have to compete for the spot to get an education. And all these elite colleges/high schools are located in Beijign, Shanghai, etc. They usually take in local students first. So you see the problem. They will always be some form of private tutoring as long as there are immensive c…

The gender imbalance is another problem.

China needs more young people to be happy to be factory workers forever, instead of seeking out white-collar jobs.

But many young men and their parents are convinced that a University degree is essential to find a wife.

If the situation reverses to more women than men, by simple microeconomics the dating standards of women will fall and more families and men will be content in lower-status (but economically important) roles.

China could incentivize more women being born by allowing 'bride prices', paid to the bride's family instead of just being used for the wedding. Another option could be to encourage excess males to emigrate, as seems to be occurring in India.

https://www.thinkchina.sg/no-bride-price-no-marriage-china

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#98

Post by kamaal »

MattGaiser wrote: post #14
howtofly wrote: post #9

In the era of wiki/scihub/libgen, the whole tutoring industry is worthless. They are just making easy money taking advantage of information asymmetry. Generally, easy money will not be allowed in China. Edited: I'm talking specifically about Chinese tutoring industry. One comment below gives a very detailed description, which perfectly explains why I think it's worthless. We are all in the process of a revolution ini…

If wikis were enough, the information asymmetry would not exist unless these people were unaware of wikis and other sources of information like textbooks, which I find unlikely.

Wikis are enough. They are just not enough to ace testing. The goal of testing here is not to check if a person knows/can do a thing. It's a gatekeeping mechanism to filter out people from entering a course/university.

Eventually this is a lazy mechanism to select prospective students to a course. The purpose of the course is to prepare people to build an air plane or be a good doctor, historian, architect, journalist or whatever. Not be good at exams and interviews.

When you make testing all about gatekeeping, wikis don't help, because the questions are not about test of knowledge of skill.

If you have a pervasive cram school culture in your country, eventually you have to import/buy from other people because your people are considered on-paper geniuses but are not good at any thing apart from acing testing.

I guess for where China stands now. Making chips, airplanes and space stations needs the real engineers not just the ones who can score well in exams.

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#99

Post by naveen99 »

Danieru wrote: post #81
naveen99 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something doesn’t add up. It’s not like there is a shortage of challenging material to learn and test on. I don’t know why tests are easy and then the people who can’t ace the watered down tests compete amongst themselves for the less less able titles. why don’t they just put some general relativity, quantum field theory, regular expressions, group theory, Elliptic curves, taxes, sec regulations, emacs, vim, options…

> I don’t know why tests are easy and then the people who can’t ace the watered down tests compete amongst themselves for the less less able titles The tests are not easy, and the "passing score" is set by the sum of competition. The techniques allowed to be taught, and which get tested are obtuse. Instead of allowing brilliant students to progress into more difficult subjects the tests funnel the entire country into…

That’s my point. Why not test the brilliant students (and optionally allow everyone) on the more difficult subjects to begin with ?

Re: Xi Jinping’s Capitalist Smackdown Sparks a $1T Reckoning

#100

Post by native_samples »

reader_mode wrote: post #73
roenxi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The governments of the world are one of the driving forces behind the pathologies. The reason asset prices are crazy is because the government has figured out that if they print money and give it to asset holders then they get stock market growth but are still able to call inflation low. If they didn't have their thumb on the scale, interest rates would be higher and boring, stodgy savers would be in control of the m…

I don't disagree, but I can see why they want high growth. But if you choose that path you need to actively manage the pathological cases, especially the ones you create.

The problem is, stock market and asset price bubbles aren't the right kind of growth.
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