Public outrage is mounting in China over allegations that a major state-owned food company has been cutting costs by using the same tankers to carry fuel and cooking oil – without cleaning them in between.

The scandal, which implicates China’s largest grain storage and transport company Sinograin, and private conglomerate Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, has raised concerns of food contamination in a country rocked in recent decades by a string of food and drug safety scares – and evoked harsh criticism from Chinese state media.

It was an “open secret” in the transport industry that the tankers were doing double duty, according to a report in the state-linked outlet Beijing News last week, which alleged that trucks carrying certain fuel or chemical liquids were also used to transport edible liquids such as cooking oil, syrup and soybean oil, without proper cleaning procedures.

  • Flying SquidM
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    41 month ago

    Am I supposed to read the whole thing to find the defense of the billionaires that didn’t exist when he wrote that or do you feel like quoting me a relevant passage rather than make me waste my time to see something that isn’t there?

    • @UnderpantsWeevil
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      -31 month ago

      Am I supposed to read the whole thing

      Not just that chapter, either. You should read the whole book.

      • Flying SquidM
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        41 month ago

        In other words, you can’t quote the relevant passage where an ever-increasing number of billionaires who control the means of production is a feature of communism.

        • @UnderpantsWeevil
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          -21 month ago

          you can’t quote the relevant passage

          The accumulation of labor power through central management of the capital stock isn’t something you’re going to understand or accept as a single sentence.

          You want this to be like the Bible, where you can just quote John 3:16 and nod sagely, as though it should be revealed wisdom.

          But the material is more complex than a bronze age scripture verse.

          That said, capital accommodation is one stage of economic development. This is the chapter which covers the process of economic development. At some point, you do need a handful of central administrators to oversee productive use of capital. And these administrators will become rich as a result.

          Marxism doesn’t refute this process, it leverages the process towards Socialist accumulation.

          • Flying SquidM
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            31 month ago

            I’m pretty sure, based on the Marx I have read, that a pillar of Marxism and communism is that the workers control the means of production, but you have taught me that what is meant by “the workers control the means of production” is “one multibillionaire controls the means of production for tens of thousands of workers.” So thank you, I had no idea that all this time, the U.S. was a communist country too.

            • @UnderpantsWeevil
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              -21 month ago

              a pillar of Marxism and communism is that the workers control the means of production

              Through workers councils and vanguard parties that govern the country.

              That doesn’t preclude any one person from accumulating more currency than another.

              one multibillionaire controls the means of production

              He doesn’t control it. He administers it on behalf of the workers’ state.

              I had no idea

              If you read the whole book, rather than panicking at being handed a single chapter, you’ll know more

              • Flying SquidM
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                31 month ago

                He doesn’t control it. He administers it on behalf of the workers’ state.

                Now that’s just nonsense:

                Zhong Shanshan (Chinese: 钟睒睒; pinyin: Zhōng Shǎnshǎn, born 1954) is a Chinese entrepreneur.

                He is the founder and chairperson of the Nongfu Spring beverage company and the majority owner of Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise.[1]

                As of 2022, he was ranked the wealthiest person in China, garnering a net worth of $62.3 billion.[2][3] His source of wealth is derived mainly from his business stakes and interests in the Chinese beverage and pharmaceutical industries.[4]

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhong_Shanshan

                He literally earned $5 billion in one day and became the sixth-richest person in the world because his company became publicly traded.

                https://web.archive.org/web/20210115223106/https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/2021/01/05/chinas-bottled-water-mogul-gains-5-billion-in-one-day-becomes-worlds-sixth-richest-person/?sh=7872f8b6792d

                Entrepreneurship and buying and selling stocks, publicly traded companies… Things China didn’t have for decades back when it was apparently less communist (who knew Mao was so non-communist), but which the U.S. also has now.

                Once again, sure sounds like the U.S. is just as communist as China.

                But hey, I’m sure the fewer than 300 billionaires in China with their over $4 trillion in wealth back in 2020 have distributed it all to the workers now, right?

                https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/20/chinas-billionaires-see-biggest-gains-ever-fueled-by-ipos.html

                Or is hoarding wealth also a big part of what makes a country a communist one?

                  • Flying SquidM
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                    11 month ago

                    I’ve read Capital and the Communist Manifesto, which is why I know that billionaires who hoard money and own controlling interests in publicly traded corporations is a feature of capitalism, and also why I know that China didn’t used to have such things.

                    But to hear you and others tell it, China was more capitalist under Mao than it is today.