freagle

It’s not like before a.i. the US was held responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of children.

Thanks for sharing your interpretation. The intent is not to justify current behavior, it’s to condemn selective outrage and selective enforcement.

When the police pull over more black people for taillights being out than white people, and send more black people to jail for the same crimes, and kill more black people for the same behaviors, we call that selective enforcement.

So when we have dubious claims of genocide in Xinjiang based on satellite analysis of a German Christian Nationalist who believes birth control is equivalent to murdering babies and should be banned, and then we see people say this is atrocious and no one should be entertaining trade with China, we COULD just take that at face value. But when we seat it in context, we see that they demand no such thing when we have open direct access to literal ongoing genocides we see no such calls for changes in behavior.

Why is that? Why should we embargo Cuba and kill their sick, elderly, and infants but it’s OK to support Israel? Obviously you don’t believe that we should support Israel, but I am asking about these think-tanks, government officials, parties, and other powerful parties who justify mass murder by referring to “crimes and evils” that are either tiny, specious, or both when compared to their own crimes and evils.

I propose we prioritize intervention into evils based on scale. We can get to Xinjiang when it comes up on the list ordered by the scale of the problem, urgency of irreparable harm, robustness of evidence, and structural relevancy to systemic evil.

And since embargos by the US and EU cause more deaths than literally all wars in the same period, the first priority would be stopping the genocide in Gaza, the second would be to declare all unilateral sanctions illegal and unenforceable and to enforce that ruling with a global military coalition, and the third would be shutting down the US military and limiting them to being only a defensive force of their mainland. Next priorities would be the decolonization of all European-held territories and the establishment of an international protection force for the indigenous peoples everywhere. Then we can send yet another contingent of international observers to Xinjiang to see if this time they can find evidence of a genocide, because the last dozen times no one has found evidence of a genocide and in fact the population in Uyghur population in Xinjiang increased.

But no problem with the Tibetan monarchy torturing and enslaving the masses? No problem with the KMT running an openly fascist dictatorship for 40 years in Taiwan killing and torturing anyone who disagreed with them?

No problem with the US and UK protecting the KMT while they prosecuted the White Terror? No problem with the US training terrorists and airlifting them into Tibet to kill and maim and destroy?

No problem with the US program of terrorism that resulted in the high rate of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang? No consideration of the claims that China’s program that violated human rights have resulted in an incredible reduction of terrorist attacks in the Xinjiang, increased women’s autonomy, increased income, reduced economic precarity, and maintained cultural autonomy and vibrancy?

The idea that countries are appeasing China is a drop of water in an ocean of appeasement for the US and Western Europe.

Nope. Think of it like a trolley problem.

86 year old AND 2 subsequent generations of his bloodline - his daughter and his granddaughter

Absolute comedy gold

I’m not angry, Lu. I’m just disappointed

Oh hey, I got you mad enough to chase me around now, eh? Welcome! I like that your primary beef with me is that you think I can’t read but then you post this particular link. Very well done! Do continue, please.

You do realize that the border is with Tibet, right? An autonomous region within China that has never been recognized as a state with firm boundaries in all of human history. The border is contentious because borders are contentious. As much as you might not like border disputes, there is nothing socialist or anti-socialist about having border disputes. Nepal doesn’t want to make a big diplomatic stink over the situation. You want to psychologize them as fearful of China and therefore China isn’t socialist?

You’re not making any sense. China is not engaged in imperial capitalist expansion simply because there’s a few hundred acres being built on by the TAR along their own border in ways that violate the border. That’s a resolvable tension and doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Yeah a border dispute over a few hundred acres. Please don’t use words like “territorial expansion” when discussing a few hundred acres along a contentious border that has historically been undefined and only in modern times have there been an attempt to make them fixed.

I find it hard to believe that China is engaged in territorial expansion when it hasn’t dropped a single bomb in 35 years

Or do mean the border dispute with India? Because that’s an artifact of the British drawing shitty borders and imposing them on subjugated people and those people have not established an effective framework for redressing the problem yet

Sorry!

They live in India

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/menace-of-our-time/9781978841833

Here’s a good book about the topic

This is inaccurate. Let’s break it down.

Generally speaking, communism usually starts off great for the majority of people

Generally speaking, the movement for communism reaches revolutionary potential during the absolute worst times for the majority of people. The movement for communism, helmed by a communist party, pushes to organize the masses during times of deep desperation and then applies revolution to the entire society, starting with the government and the military. During this time, the society is the most authoritarian it can ever be as the revolutionaries and the existing government, as well as other groups, all attempt to establish control over the society by imposing their authority.

If the communists succeed, it gets better from there, not worse. You can see this in literally every single communist project in modern history.

Brings people out of poverty and whatnot. Very, very bad for the rich and upper middle classes but overall the public benefits.

This is pretty handwavy of the massive amount of effort and complexity required to solve mass poverty. In the USSR and China, both countries had centuries of cyclic famines that caused the masses to suffer and die off while the rich hoarded everything they needed to survive and maintain their power. It takes years of huge effort to modernize an entire country’s agricultural sector to end the cycle of famines, and modernizing agriculture means modernizing a lot of other things - chemical production for fertilizer, machine factories, internal combustion engines, steel foundries, etc. It’s a gargantuan effort.

The sense in which it’s very very bad for the rich is the sense that the royal family doesn’t get to keep their palace and their jewels, the aristocracy don’t get to keep charging rent to indentured servants and peasants on the farm land they own (usually the majority of farmland in the country), etc. It’s “bad” in the sense that they no longer have the ability to be billionaires and luxuries stop getting produced. They lose the caviar and the jewelry and the palaces but they get the same benefits as everyone else - an end to the famine cycle, an end to homelessness, major improvements to the medical system, the sanitation systems, etc.

Then authoritarianism kicks in and everything goes to shit really fast

So we’ve established why the authoritarianism is worst at the beginning of the revolutionary moment. So let’s talk about the history that supports your position.

In the USSR, the revolution of 1917 was quickly followed by an invasion of Russia by Western Europe and the US in 1918. War always results in authoritarian social controls. By 1925, Hitler had published Mein Kampf which clearly stated that this intention was invade Russia, destroy the USSR, and enslave the population. During this time, the USSR was busy trying to stop the endless cycle of famines and it was experiencing internal resistance from the petit bourgeois farm owners. Authoritarian social control was applied both to force the change in the agriculture sector to finally be able to feed everyone, but also in ensuring society against those that agreed with the West and particular were willing to collaborate with the Third Reich.

By the time the Nazis invaded, Stalin had spent years using authoritarianism to force the country to prepare for war when many people didn’t believe there would be a war and even among those that did didn’t believe the doomsday scenarios that Stalin was driven by. Again, authoritarianism applied, this time in the industrial sectors to drive the preparations for war and in the political sector to ensure the war preparations would continue.

We know that these were limited applications of authority, no matter how egregious, because the masses of the population were in love with Stalin. He was from an ethnic minority, he had zero personal wealth, he was committed entirely to the masses and was willing to use authority on their behalf, and then after the USSR not only survived the onslaught but marched all the way through Berlin and liberated the concentration camps, the masses support for Stalin was incredible.

So, despite the initial revolutionary period being the most authoritarian, it is also true that the authoritarianism that followed after the initial revolution was very acute and dramatic. Things DID go to shit, but not because of authoritarianism. The famines were solved until the Nazis invaded. The invasion sent everything to shit. Millions died, famines returned, etc.

But AFTER Stalin came Kruschev. And Kruschev and every subsequent leader actually went for LESS overt authoritarianism. They all engaged in a process of liberalization of the economy, allowing more private wealth accumulation. In the early years after the war, this was actually accompanied by an incredible increase in living standards based on the industrial strength develop before and during the war, and based on the fact that they were no longer facing imminent invasion. The USSR was second only to the United States in food availability and nutrition. They were the 2nd best fed country in the world according to the CIA.

It was the last few decades of the USSR where things really went to shit. The country was deep in its liberalization movement, with private wealth accumulating and inequality getting horrible. There were two prominent periods of scarcity (like bread lines) in the USSR - the first was caused by WW2, the second was in the 80s caused by the wealth inequality caused by liberalization. There were two prominent periods of mass deaths in the USSR - the first was caused by WW2, the second was in the 7 years following the dissolution of the USSR when liberalization shock therapy caused mass deaths due to lack of medicine, food, and hope.

China follows similar patterns. The initial revolution is deeply authoritarian. Then it lightens up. But the US is launching wars in Korea, Vietnam, etc and they are threatening to invade and even to nuke China. The authoritarianism becomes more acute, but less universal. Unlike the USSR, China has managed to continue to build up the autonomy and wealth of the masses over its 75 years. The USSR was already gone by year 75.

People very quickly lose equality and equal treatment as a result.

As you can deduce from the above, the problem is the opposite, in fact. Things go to shit because of the elevation of private wealth accumulation (unequal treatment is the cause not the effect).

Corruption is the biggest, inevitable problem […] Since that’s incredibly difficult under communism, you end up with lots of quid pro quo. Underground, black markets

You say this, but the US has been running covert drug operations for decades, literally creating entire cartels and running drugs globally for black market profits. Organized crime has always been a huge part of the US history, including its mythos. And we’re literally looking at that exact thing happening with Donald Trump and realizing it’s been this way for decades involving weapons manufacturing, human trafficking, feeder schools, the movie industry, etc. You’re pointing at a universal problem of power and saying somehow its special under communism, but Epstein, Trump, Enron, Bear Stearns, LIBOR, the Sacklers, and so many others happened under capitalism.

Basically, it never works out.

It’s been tried 6 times (USSR, China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, DPRK). One has failed.

The end result is authoritarianism and deep corruption every time.

Just look at the authoritarianism and corruption in the USA, UK. Most countries in the world are capitalist, and most are corrupt as shit and most are beating pro-Palestine protestors or imprisoning political dissidents.

Except with communism, the pressures of the system force these sorts of problems to arise much faster.

The US was literally founded on indigenous genocide and mass slavery? It was so fast, it literally took zero time.

Uhhh. Is this a real question?

Sounds like you’re in favor of central planning

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2026/2/11/iranians-mark-47th-islamic-revolution-anniversary-with-nationwide-rallies

Th exception proves the rule. Department of Transportation is not market driven. DPW is not market driven. Army Corps of Engineers is not market driven.

And that’s just the US. Look to the rest of the world and you’ll see that most infrastructure is not market driven at all.

And even in the cases where they have to get private companies to do the build, the INFRASTRUCTURE ITSELF is not market driven, it’s the talent that’s market driven.

You said universities share information in “marketplaces of ideas”.