• Aatube
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    14 months ago

    You can’t just make things binary. If I say billionaires are either taxed or not or say that socialism/happiness either exists or not and there’s no point quantifying or comparing it, you’d certainly disagree.

    If you need clarification: when we say more authoritarian, we mean that the authority gets more upset when their authority is breached/potentially reached and enforces their authority a lot harder. Some escalating examples of such enforcement are: “the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.”

    The document I linked is about the much narrower topic on how “On Authority” does not refuteanarchy or eliminating the state. It’s not supposed to be a refutation of the essay itself.

    Long-term survey reveals Chinese government satisfaction

    Yeah, because unlike America, most people don’t really care about politics or whether you can read Wikipedia. However, I’m a hacker-person, so I care that we have basically no direct representation and Tencent owns the lifeblood of everything online. Is the quality of life better than the USA? I think so. Does the government get more things done than the USA? Probably. Can people say what they want and organize what they want? Depends. Is the government controlled by the workers? Certainly not. I’ve been there for half of life, so please don’t lecture me on how life actually is there.

    Yeah, they control all the finance. No, I don’t see how that means the workers are getting more of or closer to getting the means of production. Unions have nearly no power. The third part of that law you sent, worker’s representatives, just seems like extending the ruling elite’s reach further. Not to mention that the housing bubble hasn’t stopped. It’s much better than the situation in the USA, sure, but it’s crazy how the (actually pretty nice) microdistrict we live in continues to have prices rise even after a pretty big corruption scandal.

    • carl_marks[use name]
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      4 months ago

      You can’t just make things binary. If I say billionaires are either taxed or not or say that socialism/happiness either exists or not and there’s no point quantifying or comparing it, you’d certainly disagree.

      I’d certainly agree. You can’t quantify “Authority”. You can quantify billionairs (one can have more billions than another). You can’t quantify “being taxed”, you can however quantify the taxed amount. Also you can’t quantify “socialism”.

      “the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.”

      You can’t quantify these either.

      Is the government controlled by the workers? Certainly not.

      That’s a very abstract question. When one in 15 is a CPC member the, PRCs government represent workers interests? Certainly.

      Yeah, they control all the finance. No, I don’t see how that means the workers are getting more of or closer to getting the means of production.

      Not what I’m saying? I gave you examples on how the state represents workers interests.

      Unions have nearly no power.

      Good. They can be used as a wedge against the workers state as we saw in the Western toppling of the SU.

      The third part of that law you sent, worker’s representatives, just seems like extending the ruling elite’s reach further.

      How so?

      Not to mention that the housing bubble hasn’t stopped.

      Then you’re not following news. The fact that western media is screeching about how CNs real estate market crashed says otherwise.