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Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#61

Post by jariel »

suifbwish wrote: post #58
jariel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - while we have to be careful of making sure not to support the anti-mask/'covid is fake' hysteria because it really is a time to act in unison ... there is a 100% chance governments around the world are going to use this time to do things they might not otherwise do and we have to be careful. And I mean good and bad governments, with good and bad ideas. It's hard being in government, you never get to do the thin…

Allowing non citizens to own real estate in your country is a grave strategic error that has not yet revealed itself. In essence you open yourself up to foreign powers manipulating the price of your housing and industry markets and thus the rest of the economy as well. The fools!

I don't think that the people buying property in Van are at all interested in manipulating anything - they just want to get their money out and into a safe harbour.

It's a 'mistake' because of how it affects property prices.

There is a war between the middle class and the working class that nobody wants to talk about because it's ultra-unpopulist.

The middle class are the most likely to vote, but the working class deserve are sympathy?

Not at the cost of my massively increasing home!

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#62

Post by dismantlethesun »

rangibaby wrote: post #40
yongjik wrote: post #30

As a South Korean, I'm not sure covid has much to do with acceptance of "big government." Unlike most of the West, many Asians have lived under real dictators - some still do. We know what a dictatorship looks like, and we know how terrible your life can be when the government abandons its duty to protect people. To put it other way, "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's to…

> "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's too much power" What’s enough power? A government-mandated lockdown is legally impossible in Japan but they have managed to keep COVID cases within a number that can be handled by their medical system.

I feel that if you're an island like Japan, Singapore, or New Zealand, or effectively isolated like Korea (3 sea borders + 1 land border which is permanently closed, and land-mined) then maybe the amount of power your government has isn't the key factor in keeping your country safe from a pandemic.

The procedures used in NYC aren't drastically different from Singapores', but the key difference is that Manhattan cannot close its borders to the rest of the 50 US States.

When people ask for a strong government in the US, its' within that context. They want a government that could enforce quarantines between different states, locking people into one state or another till the virus burns itself out. That's the way it worked in China, but is legally impossible to do in the US.

The US can have minor quarantines (an apartment, a city block, etc.) but we can't legally quarantine a whole city, much less states.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#63

Post by 0max »

jameslk wrote: post #43
Cookingboy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job. I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's a catchy saying, but…

> I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job. Propaganda? What? > I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's…

At the same time, Prescott Bush (HW's Dad) was alleged to be involved in a Fascist backed "Business Plot" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush#Business_Plot

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#64

Post by solidsnack9000 »

yongjik wrote: post #30

As a South Korean, I'm not sure covid has much to do with acceptance of "big government." Unlike most of the West, many Asians have lived under real dictators - some still do. We know what a dictatorship looks like, and we know how terrible your life can be when the government abandons its duty to protect people. To put it other way, "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's to…

I think you are inferring too much from too short a period of history. Rhee's semi-monarchial military government ended only in 1960.

East Asians have long operated a comparatively strong state apparatus, a system borrowed from the Qin that goes back about 2200 years, which many scholars will argue is the first truly bureaucratic state. This is one of the central components of a developed country, and certainly of big government, but is no protection against dictators. It certainly never was for China or Japan (or Korea under Japanese rule).

Even the recent history of Korea puts your point about what happens when "...the government abandons its duty to protect people." in doubt, because Rhee was the government. What has tended to balance out the power of the state historically is (a) a sense of law as something independent of the government and binding on it and (b) mechanisms of accountability, like elections, that require large portions of the state apparatus to consider what they are doing in light of public approval.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#65

Post by 908B64B197 »

megous wrote: post #5
eunos wrote: post #2

The 1918 flu pandemic along with the end of World War I, introduced the roaring 20s, a period of economic prosperity, a new cultural idea and in some sense decadence. Will the idea of big spending government also delivers the same outcome? If yes, how do we manage those so that we will not arrive at the great depression of 1929?

What will happen is that people will just get poorer in general, than they would be without all this COVID mess. Where I live we get 10x the gov. budget deficit than the previous year and the government is reducing and eliminating taxes at the same time. So the "taxes" will come in the form of reduced value of money, or taxes in the future. Level of taxation is pretty much equivalent to the level of government spendi…

> But there are still wild swings of ~10% or so compared to USD or EUR.

Time so switch to a better currency!

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#66

Post by 908B64B197 »

jariel wrote: post #13
jameslk wrote: post #9

I don't usually go off on the deep end with conspiracies, and I don't believe COVID-19 was intentionally spread, but I do think the needed response to fully control the spread of a virus creates perverse incentives for governments. Especially governments that would like to disrupt other countries which have cultures that don't like to be told what to do by their own government. COVID-19 didn't cause such trouble, but…

Yes - while we have to be careful of making sure not to support the anti-mask/'covid is fake' hysteria because it really is a time to act in unison ... there is a 100% chance governments around the world are going to use this time to do things they might not otherwise do and we have to be careful. And I mean good and bad governments, with good and bad ideas. It's hard being in government, you never get to do the thin…

> In Canada, pre-covid, we saw the average house price increase in value more than the average wage in the country. That is point blank crazy. That is a weird financialisation of the economy that we don't yet understand - inflation in a fixed asset that doesn't increase productivity.

This is a result of an overly conservative investment landscape and out of control immigration quotas. Housing is used as a way to park money in a jurisdiction that has more predictable laws.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#67

Post by 908B64B197 »

suifbwish wrote: post #58
jariel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - while we have to be careful of making sure not to support the anti-mask/'covid is fake' hysteria because it really is a time to act in unison ... there is a 100% chance governments around the world are going to use this time to do things they might not otherwise do and we have to be careful. And I mean good and bad governments, with good and bad ideas. It's hard being in government, you never get to do the thin…

Allowing non citizens to own real estate in your country is a grave strategic error that has not yet revealed itself. In essence you open yourself up to foreign powers manipulating the price of your housing and industry markets and thus the rest of the economy as well. The fools!

> Allowing non citizens to own real estate in your country is a grave strategic error that has not yet revealed itself.

It's not so much owning real estate but real estate with the sole purpose of investing/using it as a way to park assets.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#68

Post by solidsnack9000 »

yongjik wrote: post #49
jameslk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job. Propaganda? What? > I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's…

Yet American colonists hanged witches all the same, and slavery persisted for much longer than in European kingdoms those colonists had fled from. Seems like the correct lesson to draw is that the size or power of government doesn't necessarily tell you how much systematic misery and injustice you will find there.

I worry about responses like yours because they are based on an impressionistic and ultimately incorrect understanding of western history. This way of approaching our history is frequently used in what is effectively woke propaganda, as well as propaganda in support of Chinese authoritarian style government.

Regarding your claims specifically:

Americans did not hang witches "all the time". Prosecutions for sorcery and witchcraft occurred in the USA in the late 1600s, that's true -- but they all occurred all over Europe into the late 1600s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_England

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_Netherland... (ended trials exceptionally early)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Finland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Denmark

In England, the last person prosecuted for witchcraft (thankfully not executed) was Helen Duncan in 1944:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan

Most European kingdoms did not have slavery in Europe; it's in the colonies where all of them established slavery. The US was such a colony. It's perhaps unusual in being a place where slavery was abolished as a result of a war between the ruling inhabitants, as opposed to a slave revolt or something like that. The British followed a more orderly process, though, abolishing slavery in the colonies and then compensating the slave owners out of the treasury.

Slavery was abolished in the English colonies in 1833. That's 32 years before it's abolition in the United States. That might not be the "much longer" that you had in mind.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#69

Post by solidsnack9000 »

It's sad to see such a history blind piece. Asian people have long accepted a strong state apparatus. The idea that this is something new for Asian people is pure propaganda. The current governments of Japan, Korea, China, &c were preceded by governments ultimately rooted in the Qin bureaucracy of 2200 years ago, which many scholars will argue is the first bureaucratic, impersonal state.

A strong state apparatus without accountability or a principle of transcendent law -- that is a far "bigger" government than any in Asia currently. Really, people in Asia are still getting used to a smaller government.

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