People being jailed in china over wechat messages, saw a video on reddit recently about some chinese fellow being interrogated by the police for a message in a group chat and did some more digging. I'd say this is what real world implementations of socialism will always wind down to.



https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-for-a-text-chinas-censors-are-spying-on-mobile-chat-groups-1512665007

Seems more political than economic Duff. This isn't happening in Norway right?

Maybe illiberalism is the reason the Chinese do not have rights and socialists in liberal nations do have rights . You aren't thinking too deeply about social contract theory here friend, maybe a philosophy refresher is in order? I know you detest philosophy and it shows through lazy thinking like this.

Maybe the Chinese need to have a revolution like France where they kill so many people that it is impossible to return to the former social order. Except that's what led to this amirite?

Authoritarianism is the disease.

#freeduffman

This post was edited by Skinned on Jan 16 2020 06:21am

China is not a socialist country.

Seems interesting to attribute this to socialism rather than the authoritarian mass surviellance that allowed this to be possible.

i think yes and no. when people attribute negative socialist outcomes to scandanvia they're told, correctly, that they have a fairly free market system of economics. but when china does something bad it's also not socialism at play. the main criticism against socialism/communism is that it leads to corruption by centralizing power and the utilitarian goals it sets will invariably put sectors of society on the outs. in china we have a corrupt centralized power structure that's consistently attacking the sectors of society on the outs with they utilitarian goals. one can argue if their goals are truly utilitarian, or how much benefit the chinese public sees from the "socialism" at play here, but these are still the issues people warn of when socialism is suggested. and further they suggest the socialist utopia state is an impossible goal because corruption will always stop it from being put fully into action. the state of china is a good example of what happens when that much money is on the table, it goes to shit. socialism/communism only works on the fringes of society where the temptation for corruption is less powerful, imo.

instead these conversations of real potential issues with a govt system many people are in support of, in theory, devolve into no true scotsmen peepee measuring.

If your point is that how governments can become corrupt and that the interaction between economics and politics is complicated, I agree. However, mass surveillance and a police state seem to both be much larger factors here in this particular instance than the economy.

How did China get this point? Sure, the country's economy likely played a role, and a large one at that. But furthermore, China's economy is a communist one, not a socialist one like OP mentioned. Lastly, I'd wager that a false cause logical fallacy is at larger play here than a no true scotsmen.

my point was that whenever bad side effects of centralizing govt come up its all "thats not communism's/socialism's fault". and my response is no one dies of aids, either.

Socialism and Communism are about as different as boxing and kickboxing. Sure it's not identical, but ur a fucking moron if you think its not basically all the same garbage.

This post was edited by LA-Leviathan on Jan 16 2020 12:00pm

I see your point. No one dies from mass surveillance, either. But the coordination between mass surveillance and a police state from an authoritarian government probably plays a role. And capitalist countries have mass surveillance operations in effect, too.

The key point of this discussion is what aspect of the authoritarian government likely plays a larger role in this atrocity?

My point is that I concede the economy played a role in getting there but mass surveillance and a police state played larger roles.

Authoritarianism is also just the symptom, not the cause.

When does a government have to resort to authoritarian rule? Answer: when the goals of the political leadership are not in sync with the desires or needs of the people. Therefore, the more a political system goes against human nature and/or the more it facilitates corruption by an elite (be it the communist cadres in China or plutocrats in the U.S.), the higher the likelihood for it to take an authoritarian turn. The more inconsistencies there are in a political/social system, the more effort is required to keep the status quo alive.

In this sense, the communist or pseudo-communist system of China does contribute to incidents like this one. If the CCCP didnt have to fear public unrest and criticism of its leaders as much, they wouldnt even feel compelled to build all this dystopian surveillance infrastructure and to nip any kind of dissent in the bud.


More generally, this argument also explains why democracy, despite all its problems and imperfections, has proven so resilient; and in particular why it is more stable than communist/socialist systems: in a democracy, even an imperfect one, the people are able to course correct and keep the leadership somewhat attuned to the desires and needs of the people. Democracy enables a peaceful and non-revolutionary dissolution of social tensions and conflicts of interest, something that isnt possible in dogmatic systems which are anchored by a "the party is always right"-doctrine.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 16 2020 12:15pm