Making the USA Better Country

[Huntn]

Something for perspective.

We are/were the most powerful country in the world, with a bold veracious statement of creation: liberty, equality under the law, equal rights and opportunity, that btw has never been realized. We had tycoons in the late 19th century, major pushback with the New Deal in the early 20th century, and then the move towards actual equal civil rights in the 1950-early 1960s, but the Capitalists, the forces that want an unhealthy, destabilizing amount of wealth for those who can best maneuver within the system, at the expense of the masses instead of pushing for the truly great civilization that lifts most, not uses them as glorified livestock or a commodity, well, they’ve been steadily regrouping and making gains.

I’ve spent my life bad mouthing China and Russia, communists= bad! Right?* Russia leadership is criminal, it’s where we are headed unless we get it together and push back the evil of Capitalism run amuck, all that entails including racism and sexism. And while I still have issues with China like its intolerance to civil unrest and disobedience, it seems like China is the entity that will conquer the world. I have an online friend who lives there, a ex-patriot Brit who loves it and will never return to the UK.

* Lately I’ve been saying any system can work, socialism, capitalism, communism, as long as the majority are in agreement about the rules, the rules are followed, and most importantly corruption is not allowed, period. The problem is people, greedy selfish ME>We people, not WE>ME, it’s the mindset, it’s all about me and others outside of a small group like the 1% “can go fuck themselves”. If we can’t fix this among ourselves, we’re in for a lot of heartache and pain as we devour the planet and ourselves.

The following article compares the US to China. I think it’s a fair companion. China is building, while we are in the midst of coming apart at the seams, that is unless we manage a reversal in the nick of time.

https://open.substack.com/pub/bettb...-game-vs-the-american?r=61g20l&utm_medium=ios

Excerpt:
The Long Game
China does not fight the way America fights.
America bombs. America sanctions. America coups. America installs and deposes and invades and occupies. It has eight hundred military bases circling the globe. It spends more on weapons than the next ten nations combined. It speaks the language of shock and awe, of overwhelming force, of violence so spectacular it becomes its own justification. It is the nation of guns, slavery, genocide and white supremacy.
China builds.
It builds ports in Pakistan and railways in Kenya and highways across Central Asia. It builds chip factories and solar panels and electric vehicles. It builds alternative payment systems and development banks and trade networks that route around American control. While the Empire bombs, China pours concrete. While the Empire sanctions, China signs contracts. While the Empire makes enemies, China makes customers.
This is the long game. Patient. Incremental. Invisible until suddenly it is everywhere, until one day the world wakes up and discovers that the roads all lead to Beijing, that the loans all come from Chinese banks, that the future was built while the West was busy destroying the present

 

[Huntn]

The wheel turns as heinous always seems to come back for an encore. Make no mistake, there’s money involved in a few pockets, mixed with selfish racism tribalism infecting a significant portion of the populous. Humans must become better than this to succeed as an advanced species. WE>ME.

anildash
20h
On this day in 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court *unanimously* decided that people of South Asian descent could not be American citizens, and retroactively stripped citizenship from many who had already been naturalized. Years of organized persecution followed. saada.org/explo…

saada.org
United States of America vs. Vaishno Das Bagai | SAADA | TIDES Magazine

 

[Nycturne]

Excerpt:
The Long Game
China does not fight the way America fights.
America bombs. America sanctions. America coups. America installs and deposes and invades and occupies. It has eight hundred military bases circling the globe. It spends more on weapons than the next ten nations combined. It speaks the language of shock and awe, of overwhelming force, of violence so spectacular it becomes its own justification. It is the nation of guns, slavery, genocide and white supremacy.
China builds.
It builds ports in Pakistan and railways in Kenya and highways across Central Asia. It builds chip factories and solar panels and electric vehicles. It builds alternative payment systems and development banks and trade networks that route around American control. While the Empire bombs, China pours concrete. While the Empire sanctions, China signs contracts. While the Empire makes enemies, China makes customers.
This is the long game. Patient. Incremental. Invisible until suddenly it is everywhere, until one day the world wakes up and discovers that the roads all lead to Beijing, that the loans all come from Chinese banks, that the future was built while the West was busy destroying the present

It used to be we also made customers. But we lost sight of that decades ago.

What we do now is the actions of an empire that built and then is trying to maintain control. It's not like we can expect China to spare the stick part of their policies, when we're already seeing it now. It's just trading one economic powerhouse and their political whims for another. Specifically one we don't have any real say over. Some nations' situations don't really change in this situation, but those of us in the US certainly will feel it.

Lately I’ve been saying any system can work, socialism, capitalism, communism, as long as the majority are in agreement about the rules, the rules are followed, and most importantly corruption is not allowed, period.

To be honest, corruption is not a deal-breaker in many systems. Rampant corruption can undermine a system, but corruption by itself can simply be part of the rules that people wind up accepting.

It all depends on how we define a "working system", really. I think there's a gap between a system that doesn't implode, and a system that people actually thrive under and want to live with.

 

[dada_dave]

Something for perspective.

We are/were the most powerful country in the world, with a bold veracious statement of creation: liberty, equality under the law, equal rights and opportunity, that btw has never been realized. We had tycoons in the late 19th century, major pushback with the New Deal in the early 20th century, and then the move towards actual equal civil rights in the 1950-early 1960s, but the Capitalists, the forces that want an unhealthy, destabilizing amount of wealth for those who can best maneuver within the system, at the expense of the masses instead of pushing for the truly great civilization that lifts most, not uses them as glorified livestock or a commodity, well, they’ve been steadily regrouping and making gains.

I’ve spent my life bad mouthing China and Russia, communists= bad! Right?* Russia leadership is criminal, it’s where we are headed unless we get it together and push back the evil of Capitalism run amuck, all that entails including racism and sexism. And while I still have issues with China like its intolerance to civil unrest and disobedience, it seems like China is the entity that will conquer the world. I have an online friend who lives there, a ex-patriot Brit who loves it and will never return to the UK.

* Lately I’ve been saying any system can work, socialism, capitalism, communism, as long as the majority are in agreement about the rules, the rules are followed, and most importantly corruption is not allowed, period. The problem is people, greedy selfish ME>We people, not WE>ME, it’s the mindset, it’s all about me and others outside of a small group like the 1% “can go fuck themselves”. If we can’t fix this among ourselves, we’re in for a lot of heartache and pain as we devour the planet and ourselves.

The following article compares the US to China. I think it’s a fair companion. China is building, while we are in the midst of coming apart at the seams, that is unless we manage a reversal in the nick of time.

https://open.substack.com/pub/bettb...-game-vs-the-american?r=61g20l&utm_medium=ios

Excerpt:
The Long Game
China does not fight the way America fights.
America bombs. America sanctions. America coups. America installs and deposes and invades and occupies. It has eight hundred military bases circling the globe. It spends more on weapons than the next ten nations combined. It speaks the language of shock and awe, of overwhelming force, of violence so spectacular it becomes its own justification. It is the nation of guns, slavery, genocide and white supremacy.
China builds.
It builds ports in Pakistan and railways in Kenya and highways across Central Asia. It builds chip factories and solar panels and electric vehicles. It builds alternative payment systems and development banks and trade networks that route around American control. While the Empire bombs, China pours concrete. While the Empire sanctions, China signs contracts. While the Empire makes enemies, China makes customers.
This is the long game. Patient. Incremental. Invisible until suddenly it is everywhere, until one day the world wakes up and discovers that the roads all lead to Beijing, that the loans all come from Chinese banks, that the future was built while the West was busy destroying the present

Hmmm ... while we are certainly being self-destructive and China is going to rise and take advantage of that, truthfully this oversells how smart they're being on a geopolitical scale (and undersells the level of corruption there). I'm not saying they're being the same level of idiocy as ourselves, their push to control the green energy market for one will have far reaching consequences, but you can also already see where the cracks are forming - a lot of their initiatives have met with far more tepid responses from smaller countries than if you took China's bold announcements at face value. And as @Nycturne stated China has done, and is planning on doing, plenty that is causing that reticence. Basically we're self-immolating more than anything else.

It used to be we also made customers. But we lost sight of that decades ago.

What we do now is the actions of an empire that built and then is trying to maintain control. It's not like we can expect China to spare the stick part of their policies, when we're already seeing it now. It's just trading one economic powerhouse and their political whims for another. Specifically one we don't have any real say over. Some nations' situations don't really change in this situation, but those of us in the US certainly will feel it.



To be honest, corruption is not a deal-breaker in many systems. Rampant corruption can undermine a system, but corruption by itself can simply be part of the rules that people wind up accepting.

It all depends on how we define a "working system", really. I think there's a gap between a system that doesn't implode, and a system that people actually thrive under and want to live with.

I'm going to disagree here with both of you a bit. Corruption by its very nature is the undermining of the rules people accept for personal gain/profit. That said what gets formally classified as corruption can indeed vary system to system and I would also argue that some systems are more open to corruption than others and often for different reasons. Authoritarian, command-based, systems become corrupt because lying becomes a feature of the system with few obvious metrics to contradict it until it's too late. Market-based systems become corrupt when greed becomes a virtue rather than a vice and money translates into political power and a lack of accountability (and one could argue that if market-based system are corrupted enough they eventually become authoritarian, command-based systems as wealth becomes so concentrated that only the translation of wealth into political power matters rather than the generation of wealth itself). In both cases it boils down to those with unchecked power over others will eventually abuse that power but arrive there via different paths. In no case is it healthy and yes the system matters.

 

[Nycturne]

I'm going to disagree here with both of you a bit. Corruption by its very nature is the undermining of the rules people accept for personal gain/profit. That said what gets formally classified as corruption can indeed vary system to system and I would also argue that some systems are more open to corruption than others and often for different reasons. Authoritarian, command-based, systems become corrupt because lying becomes a feature of the system with few obvious metrics to contradict it until it's too late. Market-based systems become corrupt when greed becomes a virtue rather than a vice and money translates into political power and a lack of accountability (and one could argue that if market-based system are corrupted enough they eventually become authoritarian, command-based systems as wealth becomes so concentrated that only the translation of wealth into political power matters rather than the generation of wealth itself). In both cases it boils down to those with unchecked power over others will eventually abuse that power but arrive there via different paths. In no case is it healthy and yes the system matters.

We probably disagree less than you suggest here. What you say here is why I made the comment at the very end of the post. How we define a functional state is pretty important, and if we have different definitions of that, it will be hard to find the common ground.

My argument is more that we aren't defining functional state all that well, and if we define it as one that is stable, then a lot of systems can have a stable state, and stability can tolerate more abuses than we might think given our assumptions today. Many of these forms aren't ones I'd want to live in. The values that create a stable state don't necessarily translate into those that create an equitable state, or one where the majority of the people thrive (we could call that a healthy state). The USA was stable for nearly 100 years while it was run by aristocrats and denied rights to so many. It was functional. It was also not a place I'd want to live by today's standards.

That said, if I understand your underlying point, I would generally agree that states will tend to devolve to similar forms as they become unstable. And yes, a state cannot be stable if abuses go too far.

 

[dada_dave]

We probably disagree less than you suggest here. What you say here is why I made the comment at the very end of the post. How we define a functional state is pretty important, and if we have different definitions of that, it will be hard to find the common ground.

My argument is more that we aren't defining functional state all that well, and if we define it as one that is stable, then a lot of systems can have a stable state, and stability can tolerate more abuses than we might think given our assumptions today. Many of these forms aren't ones I'd want to live in. The values that create a stable state don't necessarily translate into those that create an equitable state, or one where the majority of the people thrive (we could call that a healthy state). The USA was stable for nearly 100 years while it was run by aristocrats and denied rights to so many. It was functional. It was also not a place I'd want to live by today's standards.

That said, if I understand your underlying point, I would generally agree that states will tend to devolve to similar forms as they become unstable. And yes, a state cannot be stable if abuses go too far.

Absolutely. I'd also argue that the USA only remained stable as a political construct during that time because we evolved increasing equitability*, we wouldn't have remained stable had we stagnated, and we're losing our stability primarily because as we enlarged our equitability politically, we eroded economics equitability, especially over the last few decades. We now have a toxic stew of those with power and money, what I think we can now safely call the Epstein class, wanting reverse back those changes (some to the pre-magna carta middle ages and I am not exaggerating) both to stop further erosion of their power and out of genuine racial and gender animus (sadly some on the left treat the latter as not real or at best only an outgrowth of the former - i.e. that class war is the only real war, many of the people wanting to reverse Civil Rights do so because they truly hate women and minorities).

*Admittedly, some people would call this notion naive since when that idea was applied to China, many analysts concluded that China would have become more open politically by now, and China, at least so far, shows little sign of being so. If anything, they're more politically closed than they were 30 years ago.