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.

 

[Nycturne]

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.

Yet, it was also a lack of equitability that ultimately gave us the first civil war. And we were certainly looking the other way while the native peoples had their land stripped away, backed by the force of the state. And the civil war was followed by the gilded age, where economic inequality (much like now) was a key feature made worse by advances in technology. So I'm not really convinced this is true.

We've arced towards more equitability, but it's been a very bumpy road, and I'd argue that the gilded age was more stable than we are now due to leadership differences at the state level.

*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.

China is actually a pretty good example of how you can get stability without high equitability. Single party system, crackdowns on dissent, abuses of minority groups. There is a growing middle class which does increase equitability, yes. But this is closer to say, a monarchy with a strong merchant class. It can be a good place to live for many folks, but it can also be pretty ugly for others.

 

[dada_dave]

Yet, it was also a lack of equitability that ultimately gave us the first civil war.

I think the Civil War more reinforces my point rather than diminishes it - the United States could hardly be called stable during that time and the slaveholding South's revolution was an attempt to violently protect its unequal system from changing. So when unequal systems aren't allowed to change naturally into something more equal or there is an attempt to preserve them or revert to them, violence and instability are the result. That would be the inverse of the theory (i.e. evolution towards equality -> greater stability, attempts to stop said evolution -> violence/instability).

And we were certainly looking the other way while the native peoples had their land stripped away, backed by the force of the state.

Yeah sadly democracies have always had the ability to loudly trumpet the boons and protections of those within the system while destroying those outside it. Democracy is not a cure to a state committing atrocities. That's been true ever since the first Greek and Roman democracies/republics. (oh and this isn't "a you shouldn't judge ancient people by modern standards" thing, the Greeks and Romans called them out as such - they weren't always proud of the shit they did)

And the civil war was followed by the gilded age, where economic inequality (much like now) was a key feature made worse by advances in technology. So I'm not really convinced this is true.

We've arced towards more equitability, but it's been a very bumpy road, and I'd argue that the gilded age was more stable than we are now due to leadership differences at the state level.

Hmmm ... unclear. Could you expand on what you mean by "leadership at the state level" providing the stability in that time? For myself I would say that economic booms can paper over a lot of problems, it's when they end that the problems arise. And at the end, we had Teddy Roosevelt for instance instituting reforms. Then we had the Roaring Twenties with its own gilded age, which again had massive problems papered over by economic success, and its end with the Great Depression. And that could've gone very differently for us with far more instability than we got - and in many countries it did. For all his faults, we got very lucky with FDR as well as previous reforms done by Teddy Roosevelt and (half heartedly) by Wilson being in place.

Again, I would suggest that our current issues stem from ossification combined with a backlash against any progress being made and a wish to return to previous systems. This is more similar to the run up to the Civil War in that sense than what we experienced as the original gilded age (or Roaring Twenties) came to an end (though obviously there are major elements of that as well - it's both).

Naturally it's been a bumpy road, it always is and will be, the question is which road is bumpier?

China is actually a pretty good example of how you can get stability without high equitability. Single party system, crackdowns on dissent, abuses of minority groups. There is a growing middle class which does increase equitability, yes. But this is closer to say, a monarchy with a strong merchant class. It can be a good place to live for many folks, but it can also be pretty ugly for others.

Sure. When times are good, authoritarianism can be stable. It's what happens when things get bumpy that truly defines a state's resilience and stability can be a tricky thing to define as well. Is Iran stable? Is North Korea? They have survived which is a form of stability and especially in the latter case, much longer than anyone predicted. But how much unrest and what levels is a system stable? All systems may require a certain level of state violence (the old saw that the state has a monopoly on violence and all that), but how much violence to maintain a system means that system isn't stable?

Also we sometimes have a tendency to believe authoritarian systems are more stable and stronger than they are precisely because not only do they project that, but also because they themselves believe it when it isn't true. Some of them know how precarious they are, but not all of them.

A good example is the Soviet Union. I was watching a historian's lecture, Sarah Paine I believe, when she stated outright that for most of the Cold War, we in the West, the analysts thought we were losing it, that we had to lose it given the numbers and the situation they were seeing both superpowers. In the US, they looked at all the problems we had, all the protests against our government, all the riots, the breathtaking inequality (which in some ways was worse then it has to be said) and seemingly none of that in the Soviet Union. Their economy seemed better and the society more cohesive. But neither our intelligence agencies nor even it turns out the Soviets themselves were aware just how unstable their system actually was. Sure there violent repression of their Warsaw Pact "allies", but analysts didn't see the rot nor could they because the Soviets themselves couldn't see it. Even at the end when it became more obvious that they were falling behind, we still didn't realize just how much of their economy they were devoting to the military and it seems neither did they!

With the US, plenty of people see the rot. Though admittedly that doesn't mean we'll fix it.

I don't wish to suggest that authoritarian systems can never be stable - indeed I would agree that this is the fundamental difference between an authoritarian system and a tyrannical one. That's why I myself brought China up as a possible counterexample to my own thesis. But I would argue the jury is still out on how stable the Chinese system truly is. They have a lot of problems on the horizon (and those are just the ones we can see harkening back to my earlier point). It's far from clear that they'll be able to navigate them effectively without buy-in from parts of the society currently excluded from any political voice.