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The real lesson is actually 'if you oppress a group of low performers you must never stop. If you grow tired of oppression then leave no survivors, but only if they are low performers. It's fine to just liberate Chinamen or Ashkenazim because they'll catch up without really needing the help their more unhinged activists demand.'
Looking at the current geopolitical situation, there may have been other downsides.
The moment attitude to China changed from "how do we keep them in eternal poverty and civil war" to anything else, Americans lost.
It's that simple. They're mostly one people, they were backward for historical reasons. They are 1/2 of the world's high average IQ population.
Had US presidents read more Lothrop Stoddard, this would never have happened.
Fuck propping up the USSR to keep Chinese down would have made sense.
As a non-American, I find the notion that America should permanently kneecap anyone who might contest their dominance very off-putting. If America isn't clever enough, organised enough or stable enough to compete with China on an even footing, why should it be in charge of the globe?
I would also argue that even America benefits from having an actual rival that can go toe-to-toe with it. When America was competing with the USSR, it had to be focused and cohesive and attractive to its citizens. When the USSR died and the USA was left without rivals, it seems to me that it sickened and started to alternate between flailing around and infighting. (The same of course applies to China in reverse).
Because the comparison isn't America to some hypothetical perfect country. It's a comparison to China, and China's government is pretty shitty. If you have to choose between China and America and you're not in the Politburo, America is loads better even if you don't like some of the things America does.
At the very least, this is not an indisputable fact. I've known various Chinese in and out of the country and I've visited briefly; China had much tighter security and much more overt control of information than America, but it was, basically, just another country. The people clearly didn't consider themselves to be living in a dystopia. Nor were they smiling and desperately terrified like somebody in North Korea.
Meanwhile @No_one is literally arguing that America should keep any potential competitors 'in eternal poverty and civil war'. That strikes me as pretty shitty! Like, probably America is still the country that most of us would prefer to win a battle of superpowers if it absolutely must come to that, but that calculus changes very quickly if America starts throwing its weight around even more than it already does.
I’m not sure. I like America as a country, and it wouldn’t be bad if they win the war of civilization if it happens, but im also very impressed with what the Chinese have built in their own country and the competence of their leaders. They’re pragmatic to say the least, value stability both at home and abroad, they make decisions based on fact rather than feelings, and the society itself is pretty balanced and sane. A Chinese century would be boring but probably fairly stable and prosperous.
This is very weird to me because this is heavily colored by recency bias. China looks like this because this is intentional. Their realpolitik and pragmatism is born out of fire, revolution, infighting over the levers of power and millions dead.
The reasons people like to hold up for China's success - their uniparty, the absolute dominance of the governing power, their zero-tolerance model of governance, their model of state and local governments, their high-IQ population - are also reasons to doubt them.
China has unique strengths, but also unique weaknesses. The Party is bloated, corrupt, inefficient, and bloodless transitions of power are not guaranteed. Local governance lies, schmoozes, and fakes numbers to look good to state governance. Measures are targets. Their state capacity leaves other states green with envy. But for all the bemoaning that You Can Just Do Things, or that the Chinese Government Can Just Do Things, the corollary is that the Government Can Just Do Things to You.
They're facing some genuinely difficult problems now; real estate collapse, the income trap, historical weakness in domestic consumption, demographic issues with tax base + aging population. It's too early to call the Chinese century. But broad policy strokes can affect billions.
The best way to understand this is that in China, the trains will not stop for you, even if you get caught in the doors. It'll drag you for miles, uncaring of if you become a corpse or not. And you have little control over where the train is going. It may lead to a prosperous, stable future, but if it doesn't and the train is headed for a cliff, what control could you possibly have over it, short of killing your way to the front?
If the train is a metaphor for direction the government is going, than I'm not sure that America is that different. If America's train is heading for a cliff, I also have no possible control over it or ability to stop it. That train also won't stop for me, and will happily drag me to my death if I interact with the door mechanism wrong or whatever the equivalent metaphor is.
The biggest difference I see is that Chinas train is piloted by a single conductor who appears to be sane and fairly smart. So I think that train will be safe until he dies, and then yeah, huge potential for disaster as a new pilot is selected and possibly a bad or evil one.
versus America's train, there barely is a pilot at all, and to the extent their is a pilot he gets replaced very often and the new one is selected by a people I don't trust, interacting with entrenched and sinister factions in esoteric ways.
At least until Xi dies, I think that the China train sounds like that safer bet.
Obviously I'm not going to move there, the American train is more luxury, and I've already paid for a nice cabin. But I'm not convinced our conductors are likely to be better than theirs.
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