• TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    So China must be a paragon of eco-friendly, right? Right? Like, you wouldn’t place all your bets in a pseudo-imaginary concept that has never been able to materialize and when it does it only seems to favor fascist behavior, right? Right? It must also mean that there aren’t capitalist nations the means and innovation for protection of the environment, right? Right? You totally aren’t setting yourself up for a scale you will define completely subjectively to suit your point, right? Right?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      So China must be a paragon of eco-friendly, right?

      If every country was doing as well as China right now, the world would be a much better place. But the Chinese advantage is largely in its cutting edge industrial capacity. A bit unfair to hold Vietnam or Cuba to the standards of a tech giant.

      It must also mean that there aren’t capitalist nations the means and innovation for protection of the environment, right? Right?

      Economic central planning that forecasts the consequences of ecological degradation on a 5, 10, and 50 year time horizon will lead administrators to policies that individual businesses fixated on quarterly profits and annual executive compensation packages don’t want to embrace.

      Past that, a big part of what the Chinese environmentalist project has been about is experimentation. They’ve done manual reforesting along the Gobi Desert. They’ve done nuclear energy R&D. They’ve done carbon capture projects. They’ve invested enormous sums in their space program.

      Most of the western R&D and infrastructure development has been limited by what the O&G industry is willing to directly invest in (carbon capture, converting from coal to nat gas with supplementary wind/solar, carbon credits and other forms of green financialization) all of which are designed to immediately enrich their bottom lines. That’s not even considering the deliberate efforts to maximize fossil fuel usage (the Texas ERCOT grid refusing to buy cheap renewable/nuclear power from outside the state, various states threatening to prohibit/tax electric vehicles and renewable energy power systems).

      To conclude capitalist rent seeking isn’t guiding any of these policies is deeply irrational.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          So, is China capitalist?

          They seem to be employing a central planning model out of a public sector unconcerned with maximizing personal profits. So… No?

          Is it communist?

          Not yet. They appear to be exploring Socialism, but with a particular set of Chinese Characteristics. I think they’re even a book on the subject.

          Thank you for your totally not subjective reply.

          No problem.

          • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            3 months ago

            China’s economic system is called authoritarian capitalism. It has more billionaires than the United States.

            Also, please don’t call China “socialist.” It’s offensive and feeds into the false right-wing narrative that socialism is fascistic.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              China’s economic system is called authoritarian capitalism.

              Under the colonial model, China exported a great deal of its wealth overseas. Post-WW2, they have domesticated their wealth and accumulated capital/infrastructure for the benefit of the local working population. This transition, from colonial expropriation to domestic social development, is a crucial stepping stone towards the Socialist mode of production.

              Also, please don’t call China “socialist.” It’s offensive

              eye-roll

            • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              China’s economic system is called authoritarian capitalism. It has more billionaires than the United States.

              Please read China Has Billionaires. Nobody believes China to have achieved full socialization, but it does have strong central planning.

              Also, please don’t call China “socialist.” It’s offensive and feeds into the false right-wing narrative that socialism is fascistic.

              What is Socialism, and what is Fascism, in your eyes? You don’t appear to be working off of Marxism with respect to Socialism, and you don’t appear to be working off of Ur-Fascism for your point on fascism.

              • yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                3 months ago

                I’m always happy to discuss socialism, anarchism, fascism, or any other topic in political philosophy, which I’ve spent half my life studying, but not with people who link PRC authoritarian propaganda. I’ve blocked you so don’t bother replying.

                • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  You’re literally on a Marxist community, I am going to link Marxists. Red Sails is a Marxist site, and Roderic Day is a Marxist. I know you blocked me, but for anyone else wandering in here, please actually be willing to engage with Marxism, without wrecking and crying about it.

                  You evidently were not willing to discuss Socialism or fascism. This is ridiculous, and you are no useful member of any mass Leftist movement if you can’t be willing to confront your previously held biases for even a milisecond, even if to ultimately argue in favor of them.

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          China is Socialist, in that it’s a transitional economy. There’s a large and robust Private Sector with strong central planning. It’s nowhere near fully Socialized, and nowhere near Communist, but it is a transitional economy.

      • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        This wasn’t even true under Dengism, can you seriously look at their percentage of private sector now and say they’re capitalist?

        • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Are they a liberal laissez faire capitalist market? No. However they operate as a capitalist market that is tied to the government. Their special economic zones operate in ways that even places like the US find under regulated. They have people running corporations and making billions in private capital, while investing their capital in shares/futures/etc markets. They are a capitalist country, they are also a dictatorship that ultimately controls everything. These things are not mutually exclusive.

          • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            However they operate as a capitalist market that is tied to the government. Their special economic zones operate in ways that even places like the US find under regulated. They have people running corporations and making billions in private capital, while investing their capital in shares/futures/etc markets.

            https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

            https://youtu.be/M4__IBd_sGE?si=AQOKB0e9RRIuIxhw

            also a dictatorship that ultimately controls everything.

            http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zgyw/202112/t20211204_10462468.htm

            • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Ok under the billionaires one it literally says it is mixes private business and capital investment as a venue that makes a strong economy due to pragmatism. They find it pragmatic to be capitalists when they want to make money and increase their capital holdings, because it make the economy better.

              Great, ultimately, you get to vote for one party’s offerings, and they get that appointment for life, and control a police/surveillance state. Great democracy there. Recently they have purged a lot of high ranking party members, due to graft, making them a paper tiger, of sorts, in a lot of their most important new weapons developments. Not dictatory at all.

              Look, person, I do not think China is the big evil, as portrayed by western media. However they are a highly authoritarian police state, with a single party dominance, the head of which is a life time appointment. They also participate in capitalism, not the open, liberal, laissez faire type, but they have a class of capital owners, investing that capital to increase said capital holdings. They just have big brother standing behind them, hand on their shoulder, watching what they are doing.

              I also do not like the capital colonialism of the west. If I had to choose to personally live under one, or the other, I would stay where I am, because I am not the personality type to conform, at least publicly, to the legal framework China practices. China is shittier than the west in some ways, and the west is shittier than China in others. Both are surveillance states, China has proven more proactive in targeting people who publicly diverge from their party line. Where I am I can openly say nearly anything about my government, and I won’t be forced into a camp, and re-educated. We just have other prison industry issues. I am actually intimately aware of, as I used to do data analysis for the “corrections” system.

              Basically, there are no “good guys”.

              • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                3 months ago

                Honestly at this point it seems like you’re not really engaging with the material: your more reasonable concerns are straight up addressed in the material listed.

                Where I am I can openly say nearly anything about my government, and I won’t be forced into a camp, and re-educated.

                Do you see this as a good thing? I’d rather live in a society that re-educated people who were saying Nazi shit tbh

                • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  Yeah, I absolutely believe I should be able to say what I will, about my government, without being fucked by the state. The fact that you can not see why that is a better way to live informs me of you authoritarianism. The reasons you should be curtailed are few and far between. Like I understand that if I say I am going to assassinate a poltico, that should be illegal, and things of this nature. Also, being a nazi is a non-sequitur to my statement. That goes far beyond talking shit about your own government. That requires action.

                  Yeah, I read them, and the way they are addressed doesn’t sound good to me. I have read more in-depth pieces discussing the same things. Sorry, I am far too against the type of control they exercise. They practice a hierarchy that is even more rigid than where I am from, so that’s not gonna work for me. I am an anti-authoritarian leftist, China does not jive well with me.

                  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                    3 months ago

                    Okay, well your “anti-autboritarian” ideology gets anywhere you’ll have my support, until then I’ll support socialist projects that actually work within their limitations.

      • Klear@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Try Eastern Europe then, before the fall of the communist regimes there. The environment got fucked hard by the commies here.

        • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I wasn’t arguing that point. I was saying China’s new economy is a form of capitalism. Everyone can fuck things up. Who is the most vested country int he world in renewable/clean energy sources? China.