Zompist Bboard Again

Xwtek wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:45 am

Vijay wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 12:02 pm Where is niqab not associated with extremism?

Saudi Arabia and Iran?

In Iran, even requiring hijab has become controversial, let alone chador. In Saudi Arabia, niqab is associated with the power base of Salafi fundamentalism.

Vijay wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 1:26 pm In Iran, even requiring hijab has become controversial, let alone chador. In Saudi Arabia, niqab is associated with the power base of Salafi fundamentalism.

Thanks for the information.

This Board has a .org address. Is there any risk that the recently announced purchase of the .org top level domain by a private company might cause trouble?

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2019 4:15 am This Board has a .org address. Is there any risk that the recently announced purchase of the .org top level domain by a private company might cause trouble?

I have no idea. The worst they can do is raise prices, and if this becomes burdensome, the domain can be changed. (Hosting is a separate thing.) Note that .com addressed are already handled by a private company.

On the one hand, I'm very sympathetic to Hong Kong's protest against the Communist Party's totalitarianism. On the other hand, if the Communist Party of China falls, I'm 100% positive that women will regress to their Authentic Traditional Cultural Status within decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ono_TRx64 I'm starting to think my true political position is anti-culturalism. What I support in the most general sense is the destruction of all authentic culture regardless of other factors.

I wrote a disorganized, sleep-deprived blog post about it: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... democracy/

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 5:11 am On the one hand, I'm very sympathetic to Hong Kong's protest against the Communist Party's totalitarianism. On the other hand, if the Communist Party of China falls, I'm 100% positive that women will regress to their Authentic Traditional Cultural Status within decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ono_TRx64 I'm starting to think my true political position is anti-culturalism. What I support in the most general sense is the destruction of all authentic culture regardless of other factors.

Is that actual Authentic Cultures or the idealisations thereof?

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 4:26 am I wrote a disorganized, sleep-deprived blog post about it: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... democracy/

I'm mostly in agreement with your blog post. That's why we call it liberal democracy.

But I don't quite your point re: the situation in Hong Kong. Surely, we don't need totalitarianism to address women's right?

To take a completely different example... In France there's a general consensus against women wearing the veil. And I'm convinced that it's an example of racism or classism, I'm not sure which, disguised as liberalism and support for human rights.
For the most part, I'm in favor of letting people figure it out themselves. The results tend to be better.
I'm not a fan of Authentic Muslim Culture (TM), but I believe that morally we should let the Muslims figure out what they want to keep. As long as nobody is hurt, of course! and that's a tough balancing act.

I'm pretty sure the same could apply to Chinese culture. Besides, we shouldn't be too quick to jettison old values that seem broken. In retrospect, Confucianism seems to me a lot more humane than Maoism ever was.

Consider, say, Saudi Arabia versus the United States - the former is a totalitarian state, the latter is a liberal democracy (for all its faults), yet womens' rights are infinitely better in the latter than the former.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 5:11 am On the one hand, I'm very sympathetic to Hong Kong's protest against the Communist Party's totalitarianism. On the other hand, if the Communist Party of China falls, I'm 100% positive that women will regress to their Authentic Traditional Cultural Status within decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ono_TRx64 I'm starting to think my true political position is anti-culturalism. What I support in the most general sense is the destruction of all authentic culture regardless of other factors.

破四旧立四新

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 4:26 am I wrote a disorganized, sleep-deprived blog post about it: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... democracy/

I think your blog post is good, although I don't see the connection with China. I mean, a non-CCP-led China could go any number of ways. There's a lot of path dependency relating to the specific way you get rid of the CCP. Nothing automatically brings on liberal democracy, or fascism, or socialism, or warlordism, or a return to the Empire. It could go as badly as Putin's Russia, or as well as post-Chiang Taiwan.

I have some thoughts on the general problem, but they need more ordering. But in brief: a) what you call populism in the US and UK a creation of plutocracy. It's the easiest way to get votes for a program that would otherwise be quite unpopular. b) I'm not sure if this applies to, say, Modi. c) One thing that seems to work to quell that kind of populism is increasing prosperity for all income classes. The problem is getting the 10% on board with that. d) I think there must be some socionomic solution, but we may not know what it is yet.

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 2:29 pm Is that actual Authentic Cultures or the idealisations thereof?

Actual culture is an indeterminate list of suggestions that's changing all the time. Authentic Culture TM is necessarily a construction by some ideology as part of a cynical ploy to gain power.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm To take a completely different example... In France there's a general consensus against women wearing the veil. And I'm convinced that it's an example of racism or classism, I'm not sure which, disguised as liberalism and support for human rights.

My mother, who claims to be a devout Muslim, actually supports laicite. She has exactly the same reaction to the burqa as Western liberals. Make of that what you will.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm For the most part, I'm in favor of letting people figure it out themselves. The results tend to be better.
I'm not a fan of Authentic Muslim Culture (TM), but I believe that morally we should let the Muslims figure out what they want to keep. As long as nobody is hurt, of course! and that's a tough balancing act.

It's not easy to be a vocal opponent of injustice when there are bullies patrolling every community. In my opinion, the best bet to move the Muslim community towards progress is to keep harping on the sin of pride, the cause of Satan's downfall. Strictly speaking, Muslims are not supposed to be proud of being Muslim. According to their own religion, they are supposed to be pious, gracious, humble, and definitely not prideful in any way. Unfortunately, Authentic Muslim Culture TM has its own version of everything, including making sense. I suspect they will be Authentic TM about this issue by Ignoring TM it. In case it doesn't work, my only hope is the growth of groups like the Ex-Muslims of North America. I haven't looked into that particular group in detail, but the only way "they" might figure out anything could be if they turn into something else.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm I'm pretty sure the same could apply to Chinese culture. Besides, we shouldn't be too quick to jettison old values that seem broken.

If you want to be Super Duper Authentic TM, what we're looking at is not Confucianism but foot binding (to be fair, a practice which sincere Confucians opposed).

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm In retrospect, Confucianism seems to me a lot more humane than Maoism ever was.

Is it? With its emphasis on rigid social hierarchy, Confucianism has always enabled murderous overlords in practice. The founder of the Ming dynasty was a notorious mass murderer.

The idea that these traditional societies were at peace before the communists came in is a myth. Mao only pushed the pre-existing culture of brutality as far as it would go. Maoism was less divorced from Chinese Culture TM than you might think. It deliberately uses concepts drawn from traditional Chinese philosophy to reframe Marxism in a specifically Chinese context.

This encouragement of brutality is hardly unique to communism. Although they are still totalitarians, the Communist Party is currently not Maoist, just as liberal democrats are currently not supporters of Robespierre.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 6:07 pm Consider, say, Saudi Arabia versus the United States - the former is a totalitarian state, the latter is a liberal democracy (for all its faults), yet womens' rights are infinitely better in the latter than the former.

I hope my blog post did not come off as pro-totalitarian, necessarily.

I have doubts about how much popular support is commanded by the Saudi monarchy. They were originally denounced as heretics for being fundamentalists. They cemented their control over the region with Western support. IIRC Pakistani soldiers are known for propping up the monarchy as an act of piety. Pakistanis are more enthusiastic about Saudi rule for ideological reasons than their actual subjects. It's sad that modern technology has greatly empowered attempts at traditionalist tyranny.

dhok wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 1:45 am 破四旧立四新

There is nothing to "break". Social organization is a process, not a substance.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:07 am I think your blog post is good, although I don't see the connection with China. I mean, a non-CCP-led China could go any number of ways. There's a lot of path dependency relating to the specific way you get rid of the CCP. Nothing automatically brings on liberal democracy, or fascism, or socialism, or warlordism, or a return to the Empire. It could go as badly as Putin's Russia, or as well as post-Chiang Taiwan.

The way this works is that the people first become poor. Then, the populist opportunists tell them that if they return to the ways of the forefathers, they will see a rebirth of the golden age. The golden age never arrives, but the populists use a quirk of psychology (terror management theory) to convince the people to lead ever more traditional lifestyles while they themselves get away with enjoying all the benefits of free society. Eg. In America, note how Trumpists keep going on about how great the economy is despite most of them knowing for a fact that trickle-down economics doesn't work. In India, Air India will now only serve vegetarian meals, except to business class passengers. This status quo is aggressively defended by all sides as the local way of life. How would you dismantle the Communist Party to avoid this outcome? Who's going to give the Chinese as much money per capita as Taiwan received? I'm saying the seeds that enable this strategy of control undoubtedly exist in China.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm But I don't quite your point re: the situation in Hong Kong. Surely, we don't need totalitarianism to address women's right?

Marxists are the only contemporary political faction that is not ashamed to side with people like me, ex-Muslims with aggressively rationalist leanings. Nevertheless, my blog post was critical of traditional Marxism. Marxists were populists in the sense I described. Maybe Marxism can be pushed in a more sensible direction.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 4:26 am

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm To take a completely different example... In France there's a general consensus against women wearing the veil. And I'm convinced that it's an example of racism or classism, I'm not sure which, disguised as liberalism and support for human rights.

My mother, who claims to be a devout Muslim, actually supports laicite. She has exactly the same reaction to the burqa as Western liberals. Make of that what you will.

Several points: I'm talking about the veil, not burqas.
In the French context, yes it's either racism or classism. Is it a coincidence that Muslims belong to the poorest segments of society? Of course in India are certainly different and I wouldn't venture to offer an opinion -- I know next to nothing about Islam there.
Second, yes, plenty of Muslims have negative views of the veils. That gives them no ground to dictate how people should dress.
I don't see why a Muslim woman forbidding other women to wear the veil is any different from another Muslim woman making the veil compulsory.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm It's not easy to be a vocal opponent of injustice when there are bullies patrolling every community. In my opinion, the best bet to move the Muslim community towards progress is to keep harping on the sin of pride, the cause of Satan's downfall. Strictly speaking, Muslims are not supposed to be proud of being Muslim. According to their own religion, they are supposed to be pious, gracious, humble, and definitely not prideful in any way. Unfortunately, Authentic Muslim Culture TM has its own version of everything, including making sense. I suspect they will be Authentic TM about this issue by Ignoring TM it. In case it doesn't work, my only hope is the growth of groups like the Ex-Muslims of North America. I haven't looked into that particular group in detail, but the only way "they" might figure out anything could be if they turn into something else.

Sure, but state bullying (which the Muslim veil ban is) isn't an answer to community bullying.
I'm particularly annoyed about this, because in France we've been historically very good at getting rid of religion. We went from a militant Catholic majority to a militant atheist and/or agnostic majority in a century, all without enacting a single dress code, or forbidding masses, or processions, or whatever.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm In retrospect, Confucianism seems to me a lot more humane than Maoism ever was.

Is it? With its emphasis on rigid social hierarchy, Confucianism has always enabled murderous overlords in practice. The founder of the Ming dynasty was a notorious mass murderer.

The idea that these traditional societies were at peace before the communists came in is a myth. Mao only pushed the pre-existing culture of brutality as far as it would go. Maoism was less divorced from Chinese Culture TM than you might think. It deliberately uses concepts drawn from traditional Chinese philosophy to reframe Marxism in a specifically Chinese context.

I don't mean that Confucianist China was at peace or utopian, for from it. But it compares favorably to communist China.
But you have a very good point about Maoism not being divorced from earlier tradition!

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:23 pm But I don't quite your point re: the situation in Hong Kong. Surely, we don't need totalitarianism to address women's right?

Marxists are the only contemporary political faction that is not ashamed to side with people like me, ex-Muslims with aggressively rationalist leanings. Nevertheless, my blog post was critical of traditional Marxism. Marxists were populists in the sense I described. Maybe Marxism can be pushed in a more sensible direction.

Sure, but I still don't get your point. Modern China isn't Marxist in anything except in name. You could even describe it as Confucianist or even Legalist (Qin China was the original totalitarian state, after all!)

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 4:26 am

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:07 am I think your blog post is good, although I don't see the connection with China. I mean, a non-CCP-led China could go any number of ways. There's a lot of path dependency relating to the specific way you get rid of the CCP. Nothing automatically brings on liberal democracy, or fascism, or socialism, or warlordism, or a return to the Empire. It could go as badly as Putin's Russia, or as well as post-Chiang Taiwan.

The way this works is that the people first become poor.

Yes, that's why I talked about plutocracy vs. increasing wealth for all classes. But that doesn't apply to China right now: they've been growing for decades now.

How would you dismantle the Communist Party to avoid this outcome? Who's going to give the Chinese as much money per capita as Taiwan received? I'm saying the seeds that enable this strategy of control undoubtedly exist in China.

And that's why I talked about path dependency. How the regime changes determines what comes next. And it's 75% likely to be bad! Regime changes are usually violent and lead to a generation or more of trouble.

Yet, it's not 1924. China has the model of Taiwan to look at now, and so do we. It's not some inevitable law of history that Chinese states have to be authoritarian and regressive.

BTW it's more work for you and for people replying to you, when you combine multiple responses in one post. It's fine to make several responses. Then you don't have to combine them and we don't have to edit out parts of the discussion.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am Several points: I'm talking about the veil, not burqas.

Too fine a distinction. Everyone knows burqas are what's wrong with Muslims.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am In the French context, yes it's either racism or classism. Is it a coincidence that Muslims belong to the poorest segments of society? Of course in India are certainly different and I wouldn't venture to offer an opinion -- I know next to nothing about Islam there.
Second, yes, plenty of Muslims have negative views of the veils. That gives them no ground to dictate how people should dress.
I don't see why a Muslim woman forbidding other women to wear the veil is any different from another Muslim woman making the veil compulsory.

I think my mother supports laicite because that's the society she's used to. The same attitude promotes universal burqa wearing when that's how people are raised instead.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am Sure, but state bullying (which the Muslim veil ban is) isn't an answer to community bullying.
I'm particularly annoyed about this, because in France we've been historically very good at getting rid of religion. We went from a militant Catholic majority to a militant atheist and/or agnostic majority in a century, all without enacting a single dress code, or forbidding masses, or processions, or whatever.

I support the censorship of personal taste and deliberately biasing policy towards individual freedom when passing legislation. Having said that, I'm opposed to the tendency to defend oppressive practices in Islamic societies by appealing to cultural roots and beat the shit out of anyone who disagrees.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am I don't mean that Confucianist China was at peace or utopian, for from it. But it compares favorably to communist China.
But you have a very good point about Maoism not being divorced from earlier tradition!

Is that because of a more humane attitude, or because they lacked the power conferred by modern technology to turn their dreams into reality? I'm not saying it's one or the other, only that I don't know the answer. Confucians were not what we'd today call nice people. They were very much what they called "strict", and what we'd call "fashy".

The only thing I'd say in Mao's defense is that he did have a demographic crisis on his hands. The way he handled it is of course inexcusable.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am Sure, but I still don't get your point. Modern China isn't Marxist in anything except in name. You could even describe it as Confucianist or even Legalist (Qin China was the original totalitarian state, after all!)

That's what Western Marxists say. The Communist Party claims they are Marxists with a very long-term plan.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:50 am Yes, that's why I talked about plutocracy vs. increasing wealth for all classes. But that doesn't apply to China right now: they've been growing for decades now.

Why would it apply? There hasn't been a regime change yet.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:50 am And that's why I talked about path dependency. How the regime changes determines what comes next. And it's 75% likely to be bad! Regime changes are usually violent and lead to a generation or more of trouble.

Cheering for regime change without proposing a plan for moving towards a viable alternative is a bad idea. I have seen no such plans, only Anti-Communist chest-beating. Are the Communists holding the Chinese back? Almost certainly, but that's not the only thing they're doing. If they fall, terrible things will probably happen, and there needs to be a plan to avert them.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:50 am Yet, it's not 1924. China has the model of Taiwan to look at now, and so do we. It's not some inevitable law of history that Chinese states have to be authoritarian and regressive.

That's not how these things work. Saudi Arabia has had the example of Dubai for a long time, and they are pivoting only now that they are losing confidence in oil. When I say I'm "100% positive", I mean I'm positive about what will happen without a plan in place, given the ideological climate we're dealing with.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 6:56 am Too fine a distinction. Everyone knows burqas are what's wrong with Muslims.

Too fine a distinction? The difference between hiding hair and full body and face coverage doesn't seem very subtle to me.
And not everyone knows that. As I said, over here, even covering the hair is too much for some people.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am I think my mother supports laicite because that's the society she's used to. The same attitude promotes universal burqa wearing when that's how people are raised instead.

How about, letting people dress as they please?

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am I support the censorship of personal taste and deliberately biasing policy towards individual freedom when passing legislation.

On what grounds? How do you decide whether banning the veil is biased towards or against individual freedom?
You can't have censorship of personal taste and personal freedom at the same time!

How about yarmulkes, btw? Sure they're just as objectionable as a veil.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:26 am Sure, but I still don't get your point. Modern China isn't Marxist in anything except in name. You could even describe it as Confucianist or even Legalist (Qin China was the original totalitarian state, after all!)

That's what Western Marxists say. The Communist Party claims they are Marxists with a very long-term plan.

Sure, but I can check their claim against what Marx and Marxists have said. And it's pretty clear that they do not pass that test.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:01 am

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:50 am Yes, that's why I talked about plutocracy vs. increasing wealth for all classes. But that doesn't apply to China right now: they've been growing for decades now.

Why would it apply? There hasn't been a regime change yet.

I should mention that there has been a regime change, for the worse, but in Hong Kong, and that is what they're protesting against. Hong Kong was doing just fine without Mainland China.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:50 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 4:26 am

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:07 am I think your blog post is good, although I don't see the connection with China. I mean, a non-CCP-led China could go any number of ways. There's a lot of path dependency relating to the specific way you get rid of the CCP. Nothing automatically brings on liberal democracy, or fascism, or socialism, or warlordism, or a return to the Empire. It could go as badly as Putin's Russia, or as well as post-Chiang Taiwan.

The way this works is that the people first become poor.

Yes, that's why I talked about plutocracy vs. increasing wealth for all classes. But that doesn't apply to China right now: they've been growing for decades now.

How would you dismantle the Communist Party to avoid this outcome? Who's going to give the Chinese as much money per capita as Taiwan received? I'm saying the seeds that enable this strategy of control undoubtedly exist in China.

And that's why I talked about path dependency. How the regime changes determines what comes next. And it's 75% likely to be bad! Regime changes are usually violent and lead to a generation or more of trouble.

Yet, it's not 1924. China has the model of Taiwan to look at now, and so do we. It's not some inevitable law of history that Chinese states have to be authoritarian and regressive.

BTW it's more work for you and for people replying to you, when you combine multiple responses in one post. It's fine to make several responses. Then you don't have to combine them and we don't have to edit out parts of the discussion.

With regards to increasing wealth for all classes: au contraire. Yes, the material standards of the average Chinese citizen is still rising--just barely, and most of the gains are swallowed by increases in rent and other prices--but the Gini index, despite improvement in the first half of the 2010s, is high, approximately on par with the US--and these are the official figures, which are much less tethered to reality than the US's are. Once you start factoring in the additional income accruing to Party members and businessmen from kickbacks and palm-greasing that goes unreported, I wouldn't be surprised if the final figure is higher than most of Latin America.

Secondly, there are a large number of artificial barriers to social mobility in China that the US simply doesn't have. Let's ignore questions of ethnicity for a moment (black Americans are considerably more mobile than Tibetans or Miao-Yao, to say nothing of the poor Uighurs) and just consider factors like birthplace or income. It's pretty well-known, of course, that it's more difficult to get into Harvard from a public school in Arkansas or Montana than from Andover or Hotchkiss. But at least you can move, no questions asked, from Montana to San Francisco or New York--while there are material constraints on many people who'd like to do this (above all the difficulty of finding housing), nobody is going to ask to see your papers--a citizen of the US is entitled to live anywhere he or she desires, at least as far as the federal government is concerned.

Contrast the hukou system, which is essentially a system of heritable urban- or ruralness that condemns hundreds of millions of people to pick between the countryside (where subsistence farming is still the norm and social services are extremely thin*) and a shadow existence in the cities as a migrant worker, with a legal status comparable to that of undocumented immigrants in the US. While it's true that nobody in rural Anhui is starving from turning their plows into ersatz steel these days, this isn't exactly an ever-growing pie in the style of the postwar US or western Europe. I should also mention that getting a decent job increasingly means going to a good university, much as in the US, and there aren't enough spots at these--e.g. Tsinghua has just over 15,000 undergraduates as opposed to Harvard's 6,000, in a country with four times as many people--and many of the spots are pre-reserved for the children of party bigwigs and inhabitants of the very biggest and richest cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing).

But OK, let's suppose you're an urban worker with an urban hukou, allowing your kid (you may have two, but much more likely just one) to access public education in the city and your wife to get treatment at an adequate, if not fabulous, public hospital when she gets sick. Now what? The urban pension system pays on average about $500 a month, but the one-child policy means China is getting old before it's gotten rich, and even that meager amount is about to put government finances under serious strain. To cover that gap, you might want to pour your savings into some sort of investment, but nobody trusts the stock market--it's way too volatile, more akin to a casino than a real stock market. So everybody is going into real estate and buying apartments, which the government is desperate to keep prices high on; China's household debt-to-GDP ratio is now about one to one, in line with advanced economies, and well over triple what it was ten years ago.

Now, there are definitely ways to keep a real estate bubble going for a long while, particularly if your population keeps growing (say, by making up a low birthrate with immigration) and/or you use convoluted zoning regulations to keep the supply of housing stock artificially low for the benefit of existing homeowners. The problem is, China is about to hit a premature demographic bust thanks to the one-child policy (and it couldn't attract anywhere near enough immigrants to make up for that even if it wanted to, which it doesn't)--and its seniors are mostly not rich enough to rent or live independently, so they have to move in with their (one) kid and possibly their kid's spouse's parents--and a fifth of the country's urban housing stock is just sitting empty.** Oops!

So China is sitting on a time bomb. Its working-age population peaked in 2014, which means it's about to hit a demographically-induced slowdown, and unlike the US or Germany it's nowhere near attractive enough a destination that it can patch the gaps with immigration (and it's far too big, in any case--it could never find enough people to move in). Income inequality is high according to the official figures and likely stratospheric in reality. The deck is stacked against the average citizen of the PRC*** and towards Party members in ways that make the US look downright Scandinavian. The US has built-in mechanisms to bop the ruling class on the head (1932, 1974, 2008, 2016, 2018) whenever it gets too big for its britches, which keeps it stable. China has no such mechanisms and is held together by the glue of preference falsification. Everything is going just fine--until it suddenly doesn't.

* One reason to distrust official statistics on healthcare and education: Beijing has extremely low standards for social services in rural areas. If I recall correctly, I'd qualify as literate in Mandarin if I were a Chinese farmer, because I know a couple hundred characters and can count to ten in something that sounds like Mandarin. We are talking about a country that has such a tenuous grasp on the on-the-ground situation in rural areas that there are approximately 25 million women in rural areas that nobody in the central government knew existed until recently, simply because nobody bothered to record them.

** Why would China's central government be so short-sighted as to tie itself to a housing bubble that must sooner or later fall to earth? The whims of Zhongnanhai are difficult to ascertain, but one theory I've read is that it's a crutch to keep the economy going. Beijing is willing to pull out a lot of stops to keep economic growth going, and one easy way to do that in the short term is to print a lot of money and hand it off to state-owned banks for cheap and often woefully misallocated credit and infrastructure projects--railways, airports, bridges, subways, and so on and so forth. But there's just one problem with printing a lot of money--it turns to become inflation. The theory I've seen promulgated is that by setting up a real-estate bubble, you essentially create a massive vacuum cleaner at the other end of the economy which sucks up money after it's been printed, preventing it from circulating as much and keeping its monetary velocity (and therefore inflation) low. The problem is, if house prices ever stop rising, you're in deep shit...

***The average citizen of the PRC isn't somebody making $30,000 in tech in Shenzhen or Chegndu any more than the average American works for Microsoft. The average citizen of the PRC, to a first approximation, manufactures tires in a tier 3 or tier 4 city, brings home about $500-800 a month, and has virtually no real hope of getting his one and only child anywhere near the corridors of wealth and power. If he is a bit above the 50th percentile he may well have scrounged for years and borrowed from family members to buy an apartment as a nest egg. If its value collapses and he gets laid off, he will be out for blood. Remember that the most dangerous class to any political order is not the peasantry but the petty bourgeoisie and lower nobility--people with the education and connections to wreck the system and enough skin in the game to have tasted prosperity, but without so much money that they become conservatives who will protect the ancien régime at all costs.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:38 am On what grounds? How do you decide whether banning the veil is biased towards or against individual freedom?
You can't have censorship of personal taste and personal freedom at the same time!

How about yarmulkes, btw? Sure they're just as objectionable as a veil.

Censorship of the legislator's taste. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the context of my blog post.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:38 am Sure, but I can check their claim against what Marx and Marxists have said. And it's pretty clear that they do not pass that test.

They say it's impossible to transition to socialism until China becomes a more industrial society.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:39 am I should mention that there has been a regime change, for the worse, but in Hong Kong, and that is what they're protesting against. Hong Kong was doing just fine without Mainland China.

Hong Kong was a rather authoritarian society under British administration even in recent decades, and incomparably more so in the past. Of course, Communists made things worse.

As for its wealth, Hong Kong was an empire's foreign port in a global trade network. Making that work took skill, but it's disingenuous to pretend that it's all the essential properties of Hong Kong's people or administration. There are cities resembling Hong Kong in Mainland China, but success in this niche is not generalizable to society as a whole.