From: Ozy
Bcc: Everyone
Subj: Freedom
“Freedom’s just another word for… nothin’ left to lose…”
– Janis Joplin, “Me and Bobby McGee”
I hate to disagree with such a great lyric and song, but Life has provided me with some uncomfortable lessons. I would love to believe some of the things I was taught in school, but I’ve found that the truest measure of Wisdom is our ability to discard what we *want* to believe in the face of what Life is actually showing us. It’s emotionally uncomfortable (and that’s an understatement) and even flies in the face of our own psychological makeup. The economists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have shown (see “Thinking Fast and Slow”) that we have different ‘cognitive processing’ systems. Additionally, we have biases, or ‘information filters’ as I prefer to think of them, and among them are (1) the tendency to discard information that contradicts what we believe (cognitive dissonance); and (2) the tendency to focus and credit information that supports what we want to believe (confirmation bias).
You might be legitimately wondering at this point, “just what the hell this has to do with Ozy’s visit in China?” Hang on tight. This may get ugly and uncomfortable; it was for me.
When I came to China, I came with more than a little trepidation, some of which I joked about with friends, but I didn’t want to make too much of it. Just to recap, however: (1) I was a United States Marine, trained and raised in the shadow of the Cold War; (2) I spent a significant chunk of my life in the pay and service of the US govt, including some time doing intelligence work; (3) The US govt – those stalwarts of IT security – managed to get hacked by the Chinese; (4) all of us who have TS/SCI clearances had SSBI’s (background investigations that include a ton of private and personal information about us) received emails saying, “Uhhh, whoops” with an offer for some kind of 6 month free subscription to LifeLock or some other bullshit (Gee, thanks, Uncle Sam…).
Now, I didn’t really believe I would be grabbed by the Chinese intelligence service when I stepped off of the plane at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport, but… well, I would be lying if I said that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind once… Okay, maybe twice. At the very least, however, I had images in my head of an authoritarian presence, with soldiers on the streets in Red Communist Chinese uniforms… you know – commies, man. Like – everywhere.
I was pleasantly disappointed to find…nothing. As in, I haven’t been able to find a single commie, despite my best attempts. I’m not (really) joking.
When I first visited for a week in December 2016, several of us were walking around the French Concession area in Shanghai and our guide pointed out (rather causally) the building where Mao Tse Tung first began lecturing and officially started the CPC – the Chinese People’s Congress.* The building was rather… nondescript. In fact, it was indistinguishable as the birthplace of Chinese communism and posted a sign indicating “hours from 8-4, closed on Sundays, etc…” There was one sleepy-looking officer walking around trying to find something to do.
Not exactly what I’d expected from “communist” China. Something about the scene piqued my curiosity, so I turned to our host and guide:
“How much education do you get in school – like middle and high school – about communism?”
He thought seriously about it for moment.
“Not much,” he said. “Maybe…” I could see him trying to calculate the time in his head, “…an hour?”
My colleague and friend Brian, who was walking with us, jumped in: “Come on!! An hour?!?” He laughed good-naturedly as he said it, but he was obviously calling bullshit.
Our Chinese host turned to him seriously:
“Brain -” (whenever the Chinese try to say ‘Brian/Bryan’ it comes about as “brain” and I don’t know why, but I get a giggle every time I hear it. It’s never NOT funny, which tells you a lot about what a high school sophomore I still am).
“Brain -” he began patiently, “China’s history is… large -” He held his arms as far apart as they would go. “Communism takes up…” and now he held his right thumb and first finger apart about an inch, “a very small part of it.”
Whoops.
That was the first inkling I had that maybe all that I thought I knew about “communist” China might not be quite what I had been led to believe. Because it made perfect sense. We all know the jokes about the Chinese and how good they are at calculus (for example). I don’t know a lot about a lot of things, but I did manage to get all the way through four semesters of calculus in college, including differential equations, along with three semesters of calculus-based physics. You can’t do that without putting in time. It’s just that simple. You can’t spend tons of hours in school on communist indoctrination AND learn calculus. There just aren’t that many hours in a week. We all get 168 and that’s it; it’s the great leveler.
I’ve been traveling around China for almost two months now, observing, walking the streets, talking to Chinese people (through an interpreter, admittedly) and I have a rather depressing conclusion to share: the Chinese people are, on average, freer than Americans.
WHAT!?!? THE HELL YOU SAY!
I know what you’re all thinking:
“Ozy’s gone to China and lost his fucking mind.”
“The COMMIES GOT TO HIM!!”
Please hear me out. I say this because – well – I suppose I say it because when it gets right down to it I care about the Truth more than just about anything else on this planet. And yes, there is such a thing as objective Truth. It’s a bit of an obsession with me, really. I care about it even more than I do your esteem and love, if I’m being blunt. I would rather be the loneliest man on Earth who knows the Truth than a part of any group of people committed to a lie.
But I tell this to you all because of my love for you.
A man or woman is free to exactly the extent they get to keep the efforts of their labor.
Freedom has very little to do with being able to bitch on Facebook or Twitter about your slaveowners. We have been duped into believing that “True Freedom” is the freedom to complain – loudly, but ineffectually. It also does not mean that just because we get to vote for our Masters that we’re free. Imagine for a second if instead of the Civil War, the South and North struck a deal whereby blacks were given all of their “civil rights” – they could vote, complain all they wanted, move around – but their owners would still get to keep 50% of their wages. Just think about it for a bit…
When viewed from an economic perspective, slavery is nothing more than a 100% marginal tax rate. You work and work and work, but at the end of the week, the “government” (slaveowner) gets to keep 100%. Again, let’s remove the horror of human beings owning human beings from the equation for the moment. In truth, if you’re getting room and board, I believe the govt calculates that value as something like 30%, so really, slavery was about a 70% marginal tax rate.
If you think this is just Ozy being an insensitive jerk, consider this passage from Frederick Douglass, the brilliant man whose lessons have been all but forgotten:
I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,—not because he had any hand in earning it,—not because I owed it to him,—nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Chapter 10.”
Some of you are so used to being tax donkeys that you can’t imagine a government without taxes. You should re-read your Constitution. There was no federal income tax until the 16th Amendment in 1913. In fact, every tax and tax increase in US history can be directly tied to a war. Please read this link for a little history primer on the subject of taxes in the United States.
Now let me be clear: the Chinese are NOT free to speak ill of the government. Start running your mouth about Beijing and you may well find men with guns showing up in your house in the middle of the night. And you may disappear for a few months, get a serious ass-beating, and then show up on Chinese television explaining how you have transgressed “against the people”. It has happened to a number of reporters in Hong Kong. I do not want to make light of that. That is always and everywhere wrong and immoral.
On the other hand, you would be amazed at how much less you have to bitch about when you get to keep a bigger chunk of your money and are free to earn without impediment by the government. I hadn’t realized just how over-regulated the US was until I came to China. And it makes perfect sense: you can’t possibly regulate 1.4 billion people. You’d have to have a bureaucracy of 500 million… And so the Chinese are largely left to earn and keep as they can. I walk around neighborhoods all the time where the local version of the copy shop is a tiny, tiny hole in the wall with a fax machine or two, a computer and printer, and an old Xerox copier. Some local person has cobbled it all together to serve that neighborhood. There is no gleaming “OfficeMax” or “FedEx.” I can guarantee you that not a single government official has been consulted in the setup of that business. I assure you that there is no certificate of occupancy issued or other maze of regulations that impedes people from starting a business to serve their local fellows and make a buck.
The same is true of most little tea shops and restaurants. There is no sign assuring the locals that the health inspector has been there or that the myriad of regulations that stand between the poor and their own business have been complied with. Now, some of you are thinking, “OMG! B-but, but – how will they know that the food is safe?!” To think that a certificate on the wall guarantees food safety, however, is to prove just how brainwashed we are in the US. No certificate on the wall guarantees you won’t eat bad food. It happens all of the time in the US, notwithstanding all of the USDA and other regulators we have. And the same is true of financial markets and every other thing that is hyper-regulated. There were 37 regulator on the floor of all of the major trading houses when the financial markets shit themselves in 2008.
Let’s suppose we have two restaurants, one that has complied with every single law and regulation and health inspection and one that has not. How would we know the difference? In other words, forget about the certificate on the wall and the false confidence it gives you for a moment. In real, concrete terms, how would anyone know that something was “wrong” in food quality, cleanliness, etc. (in either place)? The answer is identical in either case – no one would know until someone got sick enough and could trace it back to the restaurant. But that would be true whether you had the certificate or not. In other words, the certificate doesn’t prevent anyone from getting sick. It’s a false assurance. I could comply with all of the regulations and then decide that the costs were too much to continue to bear and start cutting corners and no health inspector is going to come in there and “catch me.” They come by – if at all – once a year for inspections. Maybe.
Yet the most direct feedback – and the most deleterious thing for a small shop owner – is not a health inspector: it’s the locals who frequent it. If the people in the local area are getting sick, they will tell everyone else that you make food that makes people sick. You couldn’t survive in a small neighborhood for more than a few weeks to a month (I would bet even less) if you were a small shop owner in one of these tiny neighborhoods selling crappy food.
And so we have to ask ourselves: at what cost health inspectors and regulators and bureaucrats? Because the costs that are associated with all of those things are born disproportionately by the poor. It takes vast (excessive) amounts of capital to open a small restaurant in the face of all of those regulatory requirements and minimum wages and labor laws and on and on.
In 1979, the city of Shenzhen, where I just spent this past weekend, was a fishing village of 30,000 people. It sits on Mainland China, just north of its sister city, Hong Kong, the former British protectorate. I had to take a trip across the border to meet with some of our attorneys in Hong Kong, so I had the chance to make the crossing (and back) and spend some time in both cities.
According to Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong had the highest degree of economic freedom in the world since the inception of the Index in 1995.
….
As one of the world’s leading international financial centres, Hong Kong’s service-oriented economy is characterized by its low taxation, almost free port trade and well established international financial market. Its currency, called the Hong Kong dollar, is legally issued by three major international commercial banks, and pegged to the US dollar. Interest rates are determined by the individual banks in Hong Kong to ensure it is fully market-driven. There is no officially recognised central banking system, although Hong Kong Monetary Authority functions as a financial regulatory authority.
Deng Xiaoping took over as the leader of China in 1978. I cannot help but notice that the first “Special Economic Development Zone” he established in China was Shenzhen. Again, just 35 years ago, it was a fishing village of 30,000 people. Today it is the 7th largest city in China, with a population of 12 million, although most of the locals tell me that’s “official number only” – and that the reality is more like 25,000,000. Let me right that number out for you: Twenty-Five Million people.
The locals on both sides of the border have an open rivalry over the fact that Shenzhen will pass Hong Kong for GDP this year.
Let me offer the observation that this did not happen because of government regulators.
I saw perhaps three people with a cup asking for a handout the entire time I was there. Shenzhen is sizzling, as is Xiamen, as is Hangzhou, as is… everywhere I go in China. EVERYWHERE.
The government here may be “commie” in thought and word, but not in deed. Officials in the “communist party” move up after serving as mayors or officials in these special economic development zones. Guess what they’re judged by: economic performance of those cities. And guess what they’ve figured out? Government bureaucrats and regulators do NOT grow economies or help the poor. So they pay lip service to communism and publish wonderful tracts about the benefits of the “ideology” and paeans to Karl Marx while they all have copied Hong Kong. Deng knew. He couldn’t help but know.
The Chinese were looking at the rampant starvation that killed upwards of 70 million of their countrymen under Mao’s Five-Year Plans, while Hong Kong – full of Chinese people, too! – grew like wildfire. It enjoys an unprecedented standard of living, average GDP, etc. You think Deng didn’t look and ask himself what the difference was between “those” Chinese people awash in wealth, and the ones just a few miles north and west, starving and dying? Deng was twice purged from the Party under Mao for suggesting that maybe those five-year plans weren’t such a great idea. He likely lived solely because of how close he had been to Mao and the fact that they fought together against the Japanese.
I came here prepared to see…well… “commies” – and all the ills of a managed economy on display. Just like the Soviet Union was centrally planned and managed before it finally, inevitably (and thankfully) collapsed under the weight of its own stupid and disastrous economic policies. Frederick Douglass once called socialism “arrant nonsense.” I am embarrassed to find that my beloved United States has a lot more of that disease than “communist” China. And if there is one final thing I could share with you to prove the point, consider this:
So-called “Milllenials” are people born after 1980. In China, there are roughly 385 million millennials, making up 28.4% of the total population. Here is what a western-based marketing firm says about them:
Thanks to the economic growth of the country, people are less worried about finding a job. They are also more likely to enjoy their work. According to recent research 85% feel their jobs help them to pursue their passion.
There is also an abundance of entrepreneurial spirit, with 74% saying they would start their own business if they lost their job or struggled to find work.
Read that last part again. 3 of every 4 young people aren’t worried about work at all because they’ll just “open their own business” if they can’t find a job. Now, ask yourself this:what do you think that number is in the U.S. for our millenials?
We certainly are the Home of the Brave because of our warriors, but I am sorry to say I don’t think we’re quite the Land of the Free any more. Our spirit of rugged individualism has been smothered by regulators and replaced by a belief in the necessity of Government Almighty to provide for us. We smugly tell ourselves that we’re “Free! [‘Murica]” while our government reads our emails, throws people in jail for using intoxicants (evidently they don’t teach about Prohibition any more), and continues to chip away at each of the 10 Amendments that were supposed to be inviolable. Now there is talk about regulating “fake news” because evidently we’re too stupid to be able to sort out Truth from Fiction any more – and we’ll need the Government to decide that issue for us, too.
I truly am sorry for having to send this to each of you. In a way that I can’t begin to convey with simple words. I hesitated each time before hitting send, hence the time between posts – but I can’t bring myself to turn back from what I know, no matter how uncomfortable that Truth. I keep looking for something to prove me wrong, truly, but the reality is so obvious. Everywhere I go in China I am daily confronted with the economic reality of how much freer the average Chinese person is. It came to a head when I was having lunch with some friends here and they were discussing how “rich” I must be as an American and I told them point-blank how much I make – and then how much I pay in taxes. And they were like, “WHAT?!”
They believed the myth here, too. They looked like kids when learning that the Santa Claus at the mall is really some guy playing dress-up. They were bummed out about it. When we talked about what it took to open a small business in the United States – compared to here – they were shocked. They won’t talk about it with me any more.
That has been my job for the last 9 years as CF’s General Counsel – and now as the “Special Envoy to China”: I have helped open up 14,000 small businesses – gyms – all over the world. I have done it in over 100 different countries with a variety of rules, regulations, and government impediments. The US does not rank high on my list of countries for ease of opening up a small business… and “commie” China does.
With all of my love,
Ozy
Great article, OZY. The older I get the more I realize how little I know
Life’s experiences can be eye openers but one must have the mindset that teachers (of any sort,parents, bosses, wives, neighbors, IOW all others) collectively know very little about you, the person.
A young girl employee once told me “Freedom has to mean more than 50 choices of cereal at the grocery store.”
We can learn a lot by listening
“It does. Anyone who told you that’s all it means is either stupid, evil, or both.”
Did she mean that in a there is more to life than bread way or in a Bernie Sanders no one needs more than 23 types of deodorant way?
She told me that more than 30 years ago, no one had ever heard Ol’ Bern. She was an art major, worked for me long enough to realize her real talents were not in retail. She was a good employee, did a lot of creative things in the store because we gave her some space to use her initiative.
I’ve come to believe the only advantage China really has that matters is cultural self-confidence. I think these attitudes reflect that underlying self-confidence. Whereas the cultural gatekeepers in this country hate the country, hate their countrymen, hate American culture, and hate themselves.
I wonder how much of this is also a reflection of how the underlying (and famous) Chinese mercantile spirit survived two generations of pretty hardcore Commie rule.
This is a huge factor that no one is spending enough time dissecting.
North-South Korea. North-South Viet Nam, though the VN are paying attention to their environment.
Culture matters. No one wants to study it as there is a lot of racist baggage that went along with it when the Europeans first started encountering other societies. Heck the Prime Directive in Star Trek was invented by Roddenberry because we shouldn’t tell people what the right way to live should be. That said we’ve gone too far in the other direction. You can study cultures without judging them. You can also judge them on their outcomes with out being a racist d-bag.
It would make sense that this has a significant role to play. Historically it seems that the nations that have dominated have thought highly of themselves well before they had any justification to do so. Confidence is important, and when coupled with diligence can produce great results.
Loved this article. It reinforced other stories I have heard from people who live in Hong Kong. My thoughts go to how lessons learned in China could be used to shame bureaucrats here.
You assume they have shame.
Those small entrepreneurs will do well until they come up on the Party’s radar.
Or the economy collapses under China’s White Elephant projects.
Not too much different from the USA.
Used to work for a corporation that had a Swedish subsidiary. One of their managers was over here meeting with compliance working through our federal rules. When they were done, the guy actually thought he was finished. Boggled his mind when they told him he now had to do it all over again for most states and even some cities.
Federalism was supposed to keep us free. It has been highjacked to make us some if the least free people on Earth – economically and otherwise.
This is the new federalism: https://nypost.com/2021/06/02/derek-chauvin-makes-first-court-appearance-on-civil-rights-charges/
I always read that many European countries have generally less regulation to deal with for most types of businesses.
Funny how that never gets brought up when Lefties are lecturing us about how we need to “be more like Sweden”.
While Im not happy for China, Im very bummed about the US, sad but good article Ozy,
“People in China are way more free than you are” is one of my go-to lines with fellow US-ians that they just can’t wrap their heads around.
Short version of my explanation – the only thing illegal in China is embarrassing the government. Otherwise you can do anything – take what you want and pay for it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-defendant-ryan-sammsel-viciously-beaten-guard-washington-dc-jail-lawyer-says/
I’m sure we can find a liberal chorus rendition.
Political prisoners being held indefinitely without trial and being tortured.
I know this is always a part of leftist authoritarianism, I just never thought I would see it here.
This song needs an update.
Given all of the lost businesses we’ve had this past year, the best thing the government on all levels could do is to get rid of a host of regulations to make it ridiculously easy to open a business. *sigh* We’re fucked aren’t we.
Very interesting article.
Not really all that shocked by this, least of all by the native resourcefulness of the Chinese. Sowell’s book Wealth, Poverty and Politics discusses exactly the point of cultural impact and that Chinese throughout the Pacific region have been more economically successful than the natives despite the handicaps of being immigrants. He makes the same point about Lebanese migrants (in the various locales they have appeared in) and Germans in 19th century Eastern Europe.
Oh, and in spirit of reparations, here is the link I screwed up near the end of the last thread. A little humor to leaven Ozy’s forboding account.
Thanks, Ozy.
That’s an important perspective.
I’m not sure I give a fuck whether a government is ostensibly socialist, fascist, communist or facist-adjacent like ours. It’s their willingness and ability to enslave or kill me that I worry about. I still think we have way too many guns in private hands for that to happen here. We have plenty of totalitarian nut-jobs in positions of power, but their control is far more tenuous than the propaganda suggests.
What are your thoughts on the CCP in light of all their beligerence recently? Will their own people follow, or is the lure of personal success too strong? Like you say, how the hell can you regulate (or centrally plan) a population that large? I wonder if their time is coming to an end, too.
I appreciate your articles.
Tundra, see my response at Comment 19 below.
Hope your move has gone well!
Thanks, Ozy!
Packing now. Leaving in mid-July. Schedule got a little fucked up, but we’re good to go.
I think I phrased my question poorly. Is the belligerence of the CCP a by-product of a realization that the county is getting away from them? It seems that governments sure do like the prospect of some catastrophe to get the people back in line.
That would be my read.
The power-hungry are generally at their worst when they feel the most tenuous about their grip on the levers of power. Same as here (and downtown).
$20?
“When viewed from an economic perspective, slavery is nothing more than a 100% marginal tax rate. “
This is worthy of a sigfile and a T-shirt combined.
Except it’s not.
At 100% tax rate, you can opt to not work and go walkabout.
A slave does can not.
True, the defining feature of slavery is not the work or compensation, but the compulsion. A slave can be well compensated and still a slave (and there have been many instances of this in history).
Which is why I always caveat the statement with “setting aside the evils of ownership of other human beings” which is where the compulsion comes in. But UCS feels compelled to “correct” me every time I say it, even though he’s actually not. If we got right down to it, slaveowners provide room and board, however shitty it is, which would make slavery something less than 100% marginal tax rate, but the point is a mathematical one about how freedom is tied to being able to keep the fruits of one’s labor. I should know better than to try to speak broadly about principles among the Pedant-atariat.
So it’s the same as slavery except for the defining characteristic of slavery.
But I’m compelled to work by nature, or I might starve. /whinging soy-boy
But I’m compelled to work by nature, or I might starve. /whinging soy-boy
I think it can safely be said that we are all slaves to nature, and no one has proposed any realistic form of emancipation from that master. We can be emancipated from other people, individually and collectively, but not from nature herself.
Now you’re just trolling. So… fuck off.
That’s the last interaction you get from me, UCS.
You’ve pissed on my good will too many times.
“Other than what happened in Vietnam, Ozy is just like Lt. Calley.”
I have a rather depressing conclusion to share: the Chinese people are, on average, freer than Americans.
Ten years ago I would have snorted derisively at the very thought. Now I find this assertion much less laughable.
I am also not surprised that American schools spend much more time extoling the virtues of collectivism than Chinese schools do.
They have the time to spare since history and math are so racist.
I think we all already knew or at least suspected.
I don’t think we’re quite the Land of the Free any more. Our spirit of rugged individualism has been smothered by regulators and replaced by a belief in the necessity of Government Almighty to provide for us.
American’s supine acceptance of unconstitutional Covid diktats is all the evidence I need to confirm this.
While economic freedom is important, it is not the only freedom. I’m not sure on balance I’d be willing to swap my place in this society for a place anywhere in theirs (aside from the cultural mismatch I would be).
It’s amazing how much less you care about bitching on Facebook when the govt only takes about 20% and otherwise gets out of the way.
Maybe you feel differently, but in China it was sooooooo much easier to open gyms than it was in most of the other countries with which I was involved (which numbered over 100). No Twitter, Derpbook, or the like anyway, so I didn’t miss it. My life was not lesser by the absence of that bullshit.
And in the current state of American politics, voicing the wrong opinions can get your livelihood and your life destroyed. So we don’t even have that going for us anymore. On top of the ongoing negation of the Bill of Rights.
Bitching on FB rates as one of the lesser things I care about. You can fuck all of social media (and mass media) for all that I care. The vast majority of media serves one true purpose – advertising.
I’m not disagreeing with you about how off kilter things are economically either, and the brutal irony (and bitter stupidity) of that. But there is a lot more to life than work or doing business.
In China you are talking about a country that just relinquished one of the most egregious social controls ever conceived – the one child policy. Our totalitarian-wannabes can only masturbate to the fantasy of having that kind of control of people here. If they can exert that kind of control (even if it was managed with great subtlety) – what can they not do when they put their mind to it?
You mean… like how Dems have done with abortion for poor blacks? You help pay for it, yanno.
Of course the one-child policy was terrible – and they’re paying the price for it, too. Some geneticists think they may have done irreversible damage to the gene pool and there are academics who have openly suggested that women “be allowed” to have more than one husband – because an older man who has no wife is looked down upon.
But it’s easy from the comfort of middle-classdom to think that economic freedom is ‘less than’ other freedoms.
I assure you, if you were starving every week, you might consider and rank them differently. Again, I saw almost zero homelessness there, in massive cities that dwarf NYC by 2-5 times the population. How do you feel about the homelessness here? About the govt policies that cause and exacerbate it?
I’m not sure that their govt “evil” is any more evil than our govt “evil,” on balance, but hey, everyone has their own ideas about that.
Don’t impute to me what I didn’t say, i.e. economic freedom is less than others. Nor did I say their govt is inherently more evil – but the degree to which power CAN be exercised is worse than ours (until the progressives have done their Roper bit on due process).
And yes, the policy was terrible and has terrible consequences – they still pulled it off. That is a frightening degree of power/control.
Homelessness is sad, but it isn’t the thing to convince me to give the govt even more control – since that control is a large part of creating the problem in the first place.
What you said:
I’m not disagreeing with you about how off kilter things are economically either, and the brutal irony (and bitter stupidity) of that. But there is a lot more to life than work or doing business.
From your point of view. That’s all that is, you know. Just your own personal moral compass. And, as it turns out, there are a whole bunch of other values that matter. I know a ton of expats from other countries living wonderfully in Shanghai. When I’m there, I visit, we eat great, the Chinese kids are wonderful, etc. They’re raising their child there with no problems. There are MILLIONS of others like them, and that’s just in Shanghai. Talk about Gell-Mann amnesia effect. You believe everything you read by the American press about the Chinese? Really?? I’m not putting my head in the sand, but I’m also not ignoring that the US has done some pretty terrible shit to its own people – 2.2 million folks in the military, for starters, and are currently performing a large-scale experiment on their own people, and berating them about it, but yeah, China’s fucking horrible. UNLIVABLE!!!11!!!1!
Yet people are raising their kids and their daughter is trying to learn the cello – and they are not anything approaching wealthy – my Turkish friend loves his german shepherd; and travels home to Turkey with his new wife during the summers There are millions of Brasilians in a variety of cities with a tight-knit community within China.
In China you are talking about a country that just relinquished one of the most egregious social controls ever conceived – the one child policy. Our totalitarian-wannabes can only masturbate to the fantasy of having that kind of control of people here. If they can exert that kind of control (even if it was managed with great subtlety) – what can they not do when they put their mind to it?
Fix a Presidential election? Lock the entire economy of 350 million people down? I don’t know, what do you think?
“what do you think?”
Ezra Pound, is that you?
Do they force the PLA to get vaccinated for anthrax?
At least we haven’t put a despised minority in concentration camps as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Well, not for the last 75 years, anyway.
Oh, my!
Well I think depends largely on the next midterm elections.
mrfamous, white people are actually a despised majority. Contrary to what the wokesters earnestly hope for, and want you to believe, America is not a “majority-minority” country.
Good article. As one of those dead white guys (Milton Friedman?) liked to say, “Economic freedom is political freedom.” On the subject of quotes…
“There just aren’t that many hours in a week. We all get 168 and that’s it; it’s the great leveler.”
I have it on the highest authority* that alcohol is the great leveler.
*The Philadelphia Story, starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, etc.
“I have it on the highest authority* that alcohol is the great leveler.”
Then this Rye finished in port barrels is one Hell of a Leveler…
Let me drop an omnibus answer here for several folks above:
On CCP belligerence, I can only point to our own country and ask if you would like to be defined by how our State Dept. runs our foreign policy.
This is a subset of a broader point (as I’m sure I’ve lit the Winston signal) that make sure you differentiate b/w “the Chinese” and “the Chinese Govt” in the same way that you differentiate Americans (like us) from their shitty government.
Final comment on this is that I knew someone in China who had been a devoted party guy his whole life, but even he talked about “seeing the [chinese] flag change” during his lifetime. The 400 million millenials there are very entreprenurial, very American/Western-aspirational, and they are the largest cohort in the country. They’ve been compared to our Boomers. The difference is that they work their asses off and don’t seem entitled because of their Tiger Moms. They gave me a lot of hope when I was there; I spent almost all of my time with that generation.
Ah, the “My Lived Experience” school of Argument.
*applause*
As Frederick Douglass pointed out in the quote you included, the offensive part is that the 100% marginal tax rate is compulsory. A non-compulsory 100% marginal tax rate is volunteerism.
Just to quibble, it wasn’t always 100%. For example, Robert Smalls worked for outside employers and kept a portion of his wages. This wasn’t unique and was a means for slaves to [re]purchase their freedom.
This really cuts against the “wage slave” bullshit the Marxists try to pull. Where the money goes has very little to do with* whether the arrangement is exploitative. The compulsion is what matters.
*At the tails of the bell curve, the money transfer or lack there over may be a good indicator of exploitation, but it isn’t dispositive.
I have no experience with street-level businesses in China. I suppose being too small for anyone to worry about is a form of freedom.
My only experience is with a mid-level manager at China Southern Airlines (a member of the party) and a collection of flight attendants. The flight attendants talked about travelling internationally for work and 1) being forced to give up their passports to their handlers; 2) being restricted to the company hotel inside the “international zone” at the airports. They were forbidden from clearing customs and immigration and going out to the cities that they travelled to.
One night in Guangzhou, the mid-level manage took us out to dinner. The parking lot was guarded by armed Chinese soldiers. The manager did explain to us that only party members could get into the restaurant.
I won’t ever forget the crews of dozens of women stooped over to cut the grass in the medians with hand shears.
Kinnath – Let me add some other observations, lest people think I’m an apologist for the less savory aspects of the place.
1 – Misogyny is open and accepted; women have a role, but men run the show.
2 – Further to that, marriages are still arranged for the most part, by parents.
3 – Prostitution, while illegal, is an openly accepted part of society and allowed in KTV establishments. The wives know their husbands are doing it and it’s simply part of the landscape. It seems to me that the women are likely fooling around on the husbands, as well. I once joked to someone (while drunk) – “Alright, where’s all the fucking going on?! I know you didn’t get to 1.5 billion by being puritans about sex.”
4 – Notwithstanding #2 above, I didn’t see anything like the police hassling the girls because it’s all run as part of legit businesses and you won’t find johns slapping girls around or cops using the threat of arrest to get favors.
5 – The police are orders of magnitude better than ours, in every respect.
The police are orders of magnitude better than ours, in every respect.
In all fairness, that’s a pretty fuckin’ low bar.
“Orders of magnitude better,” WTF.
A meter is orders of magnitude higher than a millimeter.
Yeah, but a spoonful weighs a ton.
We were there trying to sell a work flow management solution to the airline. The flight attendants were way more focused on how fucked up the basic job was.
The lead attendant was working our flight out of Guangzhou. She had us show up a couple of hours early; got us walked completely around security; and got us onto the aircraft as the crew were arriving.
When it came time to provision the flight, the ground crew just loaded open bins of random shit. The attendants had to sort and store everything before the passengers started boarding.
Labor is just so plentiful and cheap, there is no real reason to do anything efficiently. It’s more important to keep bodies employed.
We didn’t quite make that sale.
On 1, I’ve only dealt with Taiwanese, but the ones we imported here have a higher fraction of women in senior positions than USians or (especially) Europeans. Of course, that could be because women were trying to GTFO of TRC.
5 – The police are orders of magnitude better than ours, in every respect.
This one actually surprises me, so I must ask: is their authority generally respected, and when not what do they do? Because some places, so I’ve heard (I generally minimize interaction with police, so have no first hand knowledge), have professional police that nevertheless are allowed to beat people into submission without being sanctioned in either the courts of law or public opinion, so I’m wondering if China is the same.
“5 – The police are orders of magnitude better than ours, in every respect.”
Sure, Chief. The rural county deputy in my county who helps people change flats on Route 31 is worse than the HK cop who stomps and imprisons people for wanting a voice in their own governance. Whatever you say, boss.
–
Janis JoplinKris Kristofferson , “Me and Bobby McGeeFair enough. I like both versions (and others), but JJ’s is still my favorite. I dig that raspy voice, though I’m not a huge Joplin fan, in general.
His words, though, she just made more of a hit out of it.
I meant that he wrote the lyrics, not that he sang it (although he probably did as well). KK has had quite an interesting life.
I was still working at the VA when they offered that following the OPM breach in 2013. Yeah…thanks assholes.
Good article. Depressing. But, good article.
Let me add some other yin/yang form my time there:
– Homelessness is almost non-existent because the Chinese govt appears to understand that poor people need access to goods, as well as the fact that there are no unions and no minimum wage. As a consequence, shit gets built FAST and underground markets, much like flea markets (used to be) here, are plentiful and provide decent consumer goods cheap.
– Shame is still a very, very real social force there. Of course the govt helps enforce cultural norms that come out of Confucianism, but you could do a WHOLE lot worse than Confucianism as a baseline for a culture.
– Hard work and respect for elders are absolute bedrock of the whole society.
– Govt officials are corrupt, but about every 5-8 years some official goes over the top and there’s a big show trial, at the end of which, said dirtbag gets executed. Typically, his wife is involved and she gets whacked, as well. I wonder how much less corrupt our govt would be if about once every 5-8 years a senator or representative got the death penalty for their fuckery?
…shit gets built FAST…
So I’ve been told.
Seen that image – really looks like a digital artifact to me. Like the building in the lower left on the 2018 picture; no reason for it to be ‘wavy’. I haven’t dug into the origins and history of the image, but really looks like an artifact of satellite imaging.
The water in the lower right is two different colors indicating they are stitching together two different pictures, so at least some of the waviness is indeed due to artifacts.
Google Maps maps the image onto the topographical model data, and so makes the image look wavy in many cases. That’s very unlikely to be real structural damage–at that scale, visible shifting would have breached the dam already.
Good point; without even having to get into the platform elevation angle, multiple images obtained with (potentially) differently orientated relative velocities, all re-mapped onto common grid, that sort of physical distortion on that scale would have already collapsed the damn thing!
Jesus Christ, boys! I was making a fucking joke and chose the best pic I could find!
*mumbles something about autists*
Apparently it’s all we’re good at.
[quickly tries to isolate Tundra’s lat and lon from the angle of the shadow on his top hat and the glint off his glasses. Maybe the foil on his knuckles is producing enough radio reflectance to geolocate]
OK, now that’s how it’s done.
Excellent, PutridM!
The current Google Earth image, from March this year, doesn’t show any waviness.
You know, it’s an interesting contrast you have there between shame and corruption.
On your last bullet (corruption) – 2 things that are really 2 sides of the same coin:
– Everybody accepts the corruption as perfectly normal. Of course everybody’s on the take. That’s just the way it works. When you want something from them, you pay them or appeal to their sense of power, whichever is most convenient for you. There’s no ethical worry about paying a bribe, etc. The muckety-mucks that get hammered every few years are to remind everybody to keep it on the down-low, and to preserve the image of the state as “taking care of the abusers for your benefit.”
– One of the dumbest aspects of our own citizenry is this notion that “the government is us”. Nobody in China is fool enough to think that. They don’t think the officials represent them, and so they don’t impute some kind of noble “public servant” BS to it. They get (and we don’t) that from top to bottom they’re petty, power-hungry bureaucrats who are just there for their own benefit. Chinese people just know how to deal with it.
Nobody in China is fool enough to think that.
I’m pretty sure almost nobody else on the planet is fool enough to think that.
You don’t talk to many Tucson Democrats, do you?
I’m awash in them, mostly at work. Good little squishy progs who are completely inside the DemOp media bubble.
By “almost nobody else”, I meant to refer to non-Americans.
I suppose it might be better if you aren’t Christian…or Tibetan, or Uighur, or practice Falun Gong…
Oh yeah. I’ll grant that I’m commenting in the context of Ozy’s observations on the sense of economic/regulatory freedom.
I was Christian and didn’t have any problems. There aren’t roving gangs of Christian police, Swissy.
And the falun gong guys were doing fine until they started making political noise and holding large protests – that’s what got them cracked.
I’m not saying it’s paradise, but it’s a whole lot easier to start a business, and there’s a whole lot less homelessness and poverty, which strikes me as interesting.
I knew people would get their dander up when I published this one.
I think most of us here realize that abolishing the minimum wage would not alleviate poverty (as Americans define it) but it probably would alleviate homelessness (which is probably how Americans should define it).
I’m interested in what different cultures consider “shame”. There are plenty of Americans that don’t feel ashamed to be homeless (they might even consider it freedom) – the shame of homelessness in the west comes from people who aren’t homeless and their envy of people who are even better off. I suspect envy isn’t as prevalent in China as it is here but I have no knowledge. Would be interesting to compare and contrast the seven deadly sins in both cultures but that is a tall order.
Anyway, I suspect the western fetishization of the minimum wage has opened the door for people who are happy to ignore the concept. This would mean most of China as well as undocumented immigrants in the US. However I suspect so many Americans have side hustles that are under the table and simply can’t admit it because of the threat that bureaucratic greed creates.
Not as long as there are anti-flophouse laws on the books it wouldn’t. And whatever codes those are that make tiny houses illegal.
the shame of homelessness in the west comes from people who aren’t homeless and their envy of people who are even better off.
I think it comes from the primary interactions people have with the homeless, which are usually unpleasant because they tend to be with panhandlers, squatters, mentally ill, and/or drug abusers.
I don’t think that shame applies in the slightest to somebody like KK looking to travel around in an RV for a few years seeing sights and experiencing the country.
I wouldn’t consider someone with an RV to sleep in “homeless”.
Me either, but some consider everybody without a permanent address as homeless. They’re probably just being flippant, but the distinction between incapable of holding down a permanent residence and doesn’t want to hold down a permanent residence is a big one.
but some consider everybody without a permanent address as homeless.
Some people are stupid and should not be humored.
There are plenty of Americans that don’t feel ashamed about anything at all, as far as I can tell.
“There aren’t roving gangs of Christian police, Swissy.”
Did I say there were? You are framing my argument to one I did not make, Ozy. Good for legal argument, but not here.
Ask the Catholic and any number of Protestant churches what happens when you are a CHINESE person trying to practice your faith without government permission… Much less a Muslim anywhere in the PRC. What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his soul?
As for the poverty – get out in the countryside?
At my last church, we had missionaries in China doing work to grow the Chinese church. We had to obscure their identifying info just like for the middle eastern countries to avoid … erm… unpleasant consequences.
Probably not at all since a) it doesn’t end corruption at the various levels in the PRC, and b) there is a non-zero chance of getting away with it and c) even if every corrupt person was caught and executed, if the benefits of being corrupt are worth that, then some people will take that trade.
Corruption can’t be reduced by increasing the penalty of being bought. Just like corporate taxation or the black market, that cost/risk gets passed on to the consumer. The only way to end corruption is to make officials not worth buying, i.e. reduce their power.
THIS.
BTW, sorry for focusing on a minute little point (poorly reconstructed satellite imagery). Enjoyed the article, and while I sort of grasp the point and am sympathetic, there’s some ingrained resistance to the idea.
I think every one with a libertarian bent will agree that we are not free, far from it. And there’s a bit of a parallel between China as you describe and the old outlook on things like the mob. Sure you had to toe the line, especially if you got ‘big’, but the mob sort of left you and and yours alone. Were you more free in that situation than where the the police/bureaucracy (the official mob!) could come in and mess up your entire existence with no recourse?
Perhaps the resistance comes from seeing the principle rather than the practical. It is hard to acknowledge that a person may be more free practically in China when the organizational principle of the ruling apparatus is so antithetical to the principles of freedom and the basic philosophical underpinnings of that freedom in western societies. Maybe some of it is the strong parallel between individualism and freedom. Utilitarian vs. principled freedom? I don’t know and can’t really formulate why I’m resistant to the premise, but I think it’s rooted in not being terribly utilitarian, but more interested in underlying principles. But if that navel gazing gets you to where we are right now in this country, is that really the right approach?
I’ll quibble with one thing:
Homelessness is almost non-existent because the Chinese govt appears to understand that poor people need access to goods…
The vast majority of homeless here aren’t homeless because they’re poor, they’re homeless because they have substance abuse and or mental health issues.
Cheaper goods won’t (and don’t) make a dent in the issue.
This. 90% of the homeless I’ve met are either active drug abusers, acutely mentally ill, or recently out of prison (usually because they were drug abusers and/or mentally ill). I’ve handed them cash in the past, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s an enabling behavior and stopped. Poverty is a lifestyle (or, more accurately, a genre of lifestyles), not a number.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJj–Cg44ic Chappelle on being poor.
Oh, and quibble aside – great article Ozy! I’m not at all surprised that their “utilitarian freedom” exceeds ours.
I understand illegal drugs are expensive (Restricted supply ad infinitum). Homeless most often don’t have jobs. Where does the money come from? I realize they steal and 10% retail is what the market bears but who are the buyers?
I don’t see them hanging around convenience stores with TVs that were accidentally left on the truck. Pawnshops mostly are reluctant to deal with those that claim they bought the tools at a garage sale. Flea markets?
I just don’t understand, maybe I need another trip around the block.
Not _that_ expensive – pan-handling and petty theft will keep you in (allegedly Chinese-produced) fentanyl and/or heroin in perpertuity.
You’d be surprised at the amount of hustle a motivated junkie has.
I DO need another trip around the block.
You’re not missing much.
I’m not sure how to square this picture of economic freedom in China with what I saw in Datong–small-time coal mines told by State apparatchiks that their mines were now the property of, and to be operated by, a conglomerate owned by people well connected with the CCP. The family miners were “compensated” by being granted some apartment units in a megacity, which they were “free” to use or sell as they pleased.
In Ningxia, there is a big coal-based chemicals industry where a lot of small time “mom-and-pop” chemical plants (If you can imagine such a thing) were being subsumed and overwhelmed by plants that were being built by people who were well connected with the party and had access to large amounts of capital and connections with State officials who could make life hard for the small time operators–in much the same way that large interests in the US take advantage of Byzantine regulations to erect barriers to entry and keep small competitiors down.
Also, I’m involved with a small manufacturing operation over there that, more than ten years after completion of the facility, is still strugging to determine whether or not the local government will pull out the rug and withdraw its land use authorization. Strangely enough, it was thought that the facility “owned” the land they had paid for and build a plant on, but apparently, they only paid for authorization to use (I guess, sort of like a lease) from the local government/industrial bureau. In addition, every couple of years, a local environmental regulator comes in with new regulations, threatening to shut down the facility unless they install new equipment designed by approved vendors…
It may not be much better in the US for industrial concerns, but it’s certainly no picnic in China.
In another industrialized city (home to part of Norinco), I was told proudly that most of the workers at the factory I was visiting now owned their own homes. Turned out the old way was to require employees to live in company (government) housing adjacent to the plant. Upkeep cost a lot, so the company offered the employees the “chance” to buy their apartments (which was really a requirement, more so than an opportunity). Thereafter, the tenants were saddled with the cost of maintaining the places, while the company got rid of that expense, and even made some money off the property “sales,” which, to be fair, sound like they were done at discounted prices.
As far as individuals go, I’ll just say “you’re not free unless you’re free to be ‘wrong’.” There are definitely things I can have and do in the US that I can do in very few to no other countries in the world, China least of all. The Chinese people I met, as individuals, were in large part polite, friendly, and generous, but I wouldn’t call them “free.” The picture I saw in many places was the State having a heavy hand in many aspects of business and life.
Note that “free” and “free-er” aren’t the same thing.
I think the point is free-er. And not utterly in every aspect, but generally and particularly wrt economic regulation.
I think both can be true, db.
I saw whimsical use of state power there, but it didn’t strike me as particularly worse than the whimsical use of state power here. In fact, as Pine Tree’s comment above yours suggests, the Chinese don’t for an instant seem confused about what the party bureaucrats are about, as opposed to say… most of our academics and media apologists here.
Maybe that’s why my observations tended to be more remarkable at the economic freedom I did see. And the lack of homelessness – and the shitton of economic activity that goes unregulated and untouched by the Party because it’s just about impossible to have a regulatory state like ours for a population that large. Think about how many bureaucrats you would have to have to control a population that large – and think about Chinese history.
As I noted (I believe) the Chinese have a looooooooonnnnnnngggg memory and sense of history. I’m not saying the CCP isn’t bad – quite the contrary. I am saying that (1) it’s much easier to open a small business in China; (2) it’s much easier to enact commerce sufficient to take care of yourself and stay off of the streets; (3) I don’t think the Party will make it through our lifetimes, though that might be wrong.
When Xi goes, it will be REALLY interesting to see what happens.
I hope you’re right about the Party being scrapped in the dustbin of history, and agree that Xi’s departure will be very interesting.
You and Pine_Tree are right that the Chinese people, individually, see the government/state for what it is better than many in the US do, but they’re also not really free to challenge it directly (as we aren’t here). They may, because of their overwhelming numbers, have the upper hand over the bureaucracy in petty matters more than we do. Certainly, the ability to set up a little business relatively free from interference there is admirable. However, I think that’s largely the effect of them being such small fish that the state predators don’t notice them. Get too successful, or start acting too free, and I think the level of scrutiny/action changes significantly.
Exactly, which I believe I noted in my article, but has been ignored while everyone (most of whom have never been there) tries to tell me how wrong I am.
/shrug
You’ve spent a lot more time in China, interacting with many more people that I have, and that point of view is important. I have a less optimistic view, partly because I think the CCP may have come close to an equilibirum state where they can exercise as much control as they need to. They own and operate all the institutions–governmental and educational–and can enforce their norms. The population is relatively occupied and satisfied. Disturbing that equilibrium in China (as in the US) would be a prerequisite for true societal and governmental change. It’s unlikely in either case, except through some sort of externally imposed disaster, or perhaps an internally precipitated economic crisis.
Now you are striking the martyr’s pose… come on now. No persecution complexes here, Ozy.
When Xi goes, it will be REALLY interesting to see what happens.
Yes, yes it will.
Peter Zeihan makes the argument that Chinese demographics (going back in part to the one child policy) are on a bad trajectory, similar to Japan. Yet you have a big belief in their young. Do you think that cohort will be successful at the power level as well as the economic realm?
The simple question is whether or not I would dump my US citizenship and move to China if I had the chance.
The answer is no fucking way.
I wouldn’t either because there are still enclaves here where freedom can be enjoyed in most of its manifestations.
I’m saying China isn’t the totalitarian shithole that it is frequently depicted in the Media. I was also shocked at how easy it was to open small businesses there.
AdvChina has been good on that although their focus has changed as they left China. And understandable why it has, along with how China has also changed.
God bless the czar and keep him far away from us. The problem is sometimes the czar is interested in you.
A small business that the state had no interest in. That’s a far cry from how they treat major corporations creating Chinese subsidiaries.
I’m not denying that you saw what you saw or experienced what you experienced. But your interpretation of those experiences doesn’t mesh with what other people I’ve found to be generally trustworthy have told me.
So yes, you found it easy to open small businesses there. For other people. People who may have had the correct connections, paid the proper bribes and otherwise smoothed the way for you to come in and do your part.
And you saw no homeless. I can believe that. That doesn’t mean that your conclusion of “China has fewer homeless because of economic freedom” is true. It could be:
-China institutionalizes the mentally ill
-China incarcerates vagrants
-Local property owners are empowered to chase the homeless off of their property and its surroundings
-You never went to the parts of the cities where the homeless are tolerated
“You can’t spend tons of hours in school on communist indoctrination AND learn calculus. There just aren’t that many hours in a week.”
And that’s why they no longer teach calculus in American schools.
Thanks for the article. It’s always interesting to see how other societies do things, and to compare relative freedoms. I would object to the general assertion that Chinese people are more free than Americans, because I view freedom of speech, right to bear arms, and freedom of religion as fundamental to liberty, and Americans still enjoy those more fully than the Chinese, but it does seem from your description that it must be conceded that the Chinese are more free in the realm of economics, which is of course an important realm. Given that so many of the Chinese party insiders seem to be ensconced at the top of the major businesses in China, it seems to me that their “communism” has given way to a new form of the old aristocracy, with more economic freedoms granted because the nobility has realized, like many of the ancien regimes in old Europe, that it is better to rule over rich slaves than poor ones.
““Ozy’s gone to China and lost his fucking mind.”
“The COMMIES GOT TO HIM!!””
Something like that. You know, they’re just subtle. But they’re all commies, all of them. And they gots the evul eye on you when you are not looking, just getting ready to alert the commie squad to take you to dear leader the first slip up you make. You’ll get the Jack Ma treatment or wind up in a concentration camp. And for good effect, in the mean time, they probably sent out one of the cute little chingy lings and she put the yellow fever on you, and then your brain got all short circuited.
That was Eric Swalwell.
Tell me about it!
On topic: Fed Soc teleforum on Chinese trade and economic policy starting right now
Watching the videos for Ian McCollum’s new book taught me that the Chinese tradition of making copies/knockoffs has a long history.
差不多 isnt a new concept either.
(Literally “difference not much”, meaning close enough/good enough which covers all manner of sin)
Since the one-child policy and the very loooong memory built into Chinese culture have both come up above, I don’t feel too bad bringing up an anecdote that combines the two:
On one trip to China about 15 years ago, I was in our plant cafeteria with our co-workers. We sit family-style and all serve out of dishes brought to the table. And all of them are folks I’d emailed and talked with very regularly – normal and really good international colleague relationships. They were almost all mid-level Engineers or managers like me, and we were all about the same age. Got to talking about family and home, and at some point one of them asked “how many kids do you have?”. At the time the answer was only 4, and the other American with me had the same answer. You could tell they were psychologically stunned. They knew the “normal” American answer was about 2, and also knew that people with answers like 4-5 existed, but did not expect 2 of them to show up at the table.
Here’s what’s going on in their minds: All of them grew up in the 1-child time. None of them (except the few who are ethnic minorities) have siblings. The more successful ones, even back then, paid the massive second-child tax to have another baby, and it was THE major status symbol – “I have arrived”. In the ancient culture built into them despite the CCP, large families with multiple children is a sign of being the BIG MAN. Wealthy, prosperous, blessed, etc. etc. And even though they get that we’re not locals, 2 of us were sitting there and very casually stating that, by their own ancient cultural measures, we were richer than literally any other man in their entire nation of 1B+ people.
You kinda figure out not to talk about it after you do that.
Eh, they pioneered the introductory 20 questions including ones that are taboo in US conversations. I wouldn’t worry so much about it.
This is interesting:
Bitcoin slumps further as China tightens crypto crackdown
I’m puzzled. Why would a contraction of supply lead to a reduction of price?
People thinking China not accepting it (and “persuading” other countries to do the same) reduces demand?
Sounds like its already “illegal” in ComChina. Probably the prospect of the commies browbeating other countries to try to block it in favor of CommieCoin.
Of course, the Treasury is also supposedly thinking about having its own crypto. Since 95%+ of all USD in circulation is digital now, I’m not sure what exactly the difference will be between the USD and CorruptoCoin.
Related.
Thanks for the perspective. And I believe you.
Had a Russian friend who, through marriage, moved to murica in her early 40s. She’d gone through the commie schools, lived through the fall of the USSR… Emphatically she’d claim that life for her had been much freer in Russia than here, in particular because of all our laws, or at least the enforcement of all our laws. And that’s here in the relatively free state of TN.
After having been a Marine during and after the cold war, with particular emphasis in the training on the evils of the soviet empire, her perspective was quite a shock.
I’m sure that one’s perception of freedom varies greatly based on what they know/want/do. Someone who doesn’t care for guns doesn’t see NY’s SAFE act as any reduction in freedom at all.
Yeah, we’re all vulnerable to that kind of ideological blindness. The worst part about it is that it’s perfectly reasonable. We can only care about so many things before we drive ourselves nuts.
During my travels in the Third World, i often felt more free. Not because of their laws but because nobody cared what I did. Being poor countries, perhaps their legal systems have not evolved into revenue sources for big government.
Being poor countries, perhaps their legal systems have not evolved into revenue sources for big government.
Or being poor, perhaps their people have more important things to do with their time than be busybodies who go snitching to the government. Ozzy mentions how China is too big to be governed by a bureaucracy, but lest we forget the US is the 3rd most populous country in the world (330M ain’t 1.4B, but it’s still a lot). The relation between size and govern-ability includes not just the size of the population being governed, but their willingness to be governed and eagerness to govern others. The reach of the US bureaucracy is extended multi-fold by the willingness and eagerness of hordes of the people to snitch on their neighbors. Were it not so, our black markets would probably be much larger as well.
Free to stand in long lines, maybe?
I’ve been to the first McDs in Russia. The lines were manageable when I got there.
I guess that’s why Bernie says bread lines are good for us. If you’re not standing in one, they lock you in your house because of a Chinese virus.
About that freedom of speech thing…
A court date for what?
From a different website:
RIGHT BY A SCHOOL!!!!!!!*
*brought to you by the same people
teaching sexuality and masturbation togrooming preschoolers and little kids.Bet if you were to pull all the internet traffic from the kids at school they have seen worse.
But not teaching the First Amendment.
If he replaced the word Biden with Trump, I’m sure his signs would be fine.
Feel free to stop in tonight and make fun of my latest post.
Great series Ozy. I can’t speak to China, outside of what our media speaks to and generally, they are all propagandist, so really your boots on the ground are more enlightening than anything else.
I think China is probably a lot like other places, maybe like Dubai, just in a different sort of way. If you can stay out of trouble and keep from attracting the attention of the authorities, I’m sure you’ll be just fine. But if you catch the attention of the authorities, you’ll probably get some some trouble and there won’t be a lawyer getting you out of it.
And the USA on it’s present course is not too far off from being China type of authoritarian anyway. And it’s even worse because our fearless leaders parade around the world preaching about ‘democracy’. At least China doesn’t pretend.
I think there’s an interesting dichotomy in that you can have two societies:
Society #1: A society with a relatively small number of extremely onerous laws that are rarely and selectively enforced. The population can more or less live as they see fit in relative freedom provided they don’t “rock the boat.” If you do get in trouble though, there’s a decent chance you get disappeared and no one ever hears from you again.
Society #2: A society with a seemingly unending number of petty laws and regulations, many of which are aggressively enforced because they generate substantial revenue for the government. Unless you rape, murder and steal, it’s really hard to get into too much trouble, but virtually everyone has to spend significant amounts of time and money dealing with the government on a regular basis, because they impose themselves in small ways on every aspect of your life.
So which is more free? And which is a better place to live? We’d all love for the answer to be ‘neither,’ but that seems like it’s off the table now.
The answer is Killdozer.
The answer is always Killdozer.
I still haven’t learned how to drive one of those yet. Fire truck and forklifts, and I’m up for one of those big Lull offset forklifts used to transport stuff from the ground to the tops of buildings. But no bulldozers.
If your intent is to cause carnage, how hard could it be?
I’d rather have a tank. Moar scarier looking.
Just don’t high-side it on a jersey barrier and you’ll be unstoppable
https://nj1015.com/randolph-nj-holiday-calendar/
Columbus is so last week. The wokesters have moved on to Plato, Socrates, and Jesus.
“In your attempt to be woke, you’ve wakened up the entire community of Randolph”
Jeebus. You’d at least think the non-wokesters here could speak English, but it’s too much to hope for I guess, they went to public school also.
And they’ll re-elect everyone on the board at the next election, too.
Maybe. But, I get the impression you’re seeing a lot of the people upset about CRT starting to organize. And I think we could see “anti-CRT” slates running in school board elections around the country next go-around. If the Republicans have a clue, they’ll try to latch onto it to leverage it for upballot races.
Maybe not…
In reversal, New Jersey school board restores holiday names
However, I’m not sure how the hell you “misconstrue” a vote of 9 people.
It means what it always means when coming from the left. You misunderstood, let us progsplain it for you. Oh, you still don’t understand it, OK, we misspoke, we take it back. For now until we try to get away with it again, after naming it something else. Assholes.
I choose to believe he’s a fresh-off-the boat
dagowopeye-talian and no speeka the english goodWe certainly are the Home of the Brave because of our warriors, but I am sorry to say I don’t think we’re quite the Land of the Free any more.
This says what I’ve been thinking for years. You say it better.
A man or woman is free to exactly the extent they get to keep the efforts of their labor.
Money quote.
A man or woman is free to exactly the extent they get to keep the efforts of their labor.
I don’t believe that freedom is a one dimensional thing. So, I don’t believe taxation is even close to being the best measure of freedom.
Yeah, it’s one thing and an important thing but it’s one among many.
It is certainly an important aspect of freedom. Destroying personal wealth through taxation effectively limits individuals ability to move, travel, save, etc. It makes people more dependent on the government for everything and more susceptible to coercion.
We’d have to ask Grzz (if he’s old enough) but didn’t you keep what you earned in the USSR? Sure the government dictated what job you could have and how much you were going to get paid, but by Lenin, you got to keep those wages! And your food and housing were free!
Oh, and the medical care! And the great sex!
In 1994-1995, I was travelling regularly to Moscow for a project. We hired local engineers to do testing for us. They struggled with the concept of filling out a time sheet to get paid for hours worked. But many of them, would drive people around at night for cash.
We brought several of them over to the US for meetings. They were completely astounded by the car in the parking lots and by the mall.
They would all stock up on shit (like batteries) to take home and sell.
Clearly, they were free.
Well, but they had a good life, because unless the James Bond movies were lying to me, Soviet women were smoking hot nymphomaniacs. And I know they weren’t completely lying, because I could turn on NBC and watch Svetlana Boginskaya do her floor routine.
Mmmm… Daniela Bianchi…
Black markets spring up in times of shortages, unless the government mandates anti
Need more anti gouging laws and rationing of batteries.
If we get electric cars et al and rationing we’ll need to buy gov chits to plug into the outlet meter, lest we go over our rationed allowance
Food was never free. Housing could be “free” but it involved waiting for an apartment for many years if not decades. Salaries were always quoted free of any taxes (if those even existed). If someone’s salary was 120 rubles per month then that’s what one got at the end of the month.
I don’t believe that freedom is a one dimensional thing
I’d measure it on thre axes. Breadth (how many aspects of life are you free in), depth (how much freedom do you have in each aspect), and universality (how many people have that freedom).
^^^ great way of viewing it
/flash back to a few weeks after getting married:
wife’s uncle: So, she’s found your breadth. Have you found her depth?
kinnath: What?!?
Hopefully not too much universality going on there.
Oh sure, explain exactly why liberty is such a hard concept – 3 axes? How do you sell the simple-minded on THAT, I ask you?
What a shock.
https://www.oregonlive.com/sports/2021/06/portland-classic-golf-tournament-moves-to-the-suburbs-citing-safety-concerns-in-the-city.html
Plot twist, it’s not antifa.
I’m going to bring down my reply to JI’s comment because I think it provides a valuable perspective. I’ll take the slings and arrows, but only if it’s in good faith.
“I’ll take the slings and arrows, but only if it’s in good faith.”
Somebody seems a wee bit touchy here…and it ain’t JI.
If you were appellate counsel and tried that in IL, your ass would be in too many pieces to even hand back to you.
Most excellent observations. They are the same ones I have had in every third world “shit hole” I have ever worked in. The Joplin song was written by Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes Scholar and pretty smart fella by those standards. But then again so was Bill Clinton who I figure got a girlfriend to do his homework. In my English 101 class I was given an assignment to write an essay on those 10 words: Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. So I did. Maybe if I can dig that up I will share it because there is another side to that coin.