The Chinese are kicking our butts

[dfnj]

In this country we are inundated non-stop with pro-laissez faire capitalist propaganda. Mention anything about the high cost of healthcare or wealth inequality and you are instantly labeled a communist. But you have to stand back and be a little astonished by what China has accomplished in the last 30 years. The Chinese are very good at setting top-down government policies that are in favor of the worker instead of wealth accumulation.

For example, check out this video where a 20 story hotel is built in six days:

The floors come pre-fabricated with all the wiring and plumbing. All the workers have to do is screw it up and connect pipes and wires. Just amazing!

 

[Sunstone]

China since the late 80s does indeed demonstrate that government intervention in the economy can have beneficial effects -- laissez faire capitalism is a zombie idea -- dead with everyone but its partisans. However, China has its problems, including a great deal of corruption. For instance, there are whole neighborhoods in some cities of high rise apartment buildings that were constructed within the past ten years, and which are today falling apart. Bribing construction inspectors is all too common.

 

[McBell]

In this country we are inundated non-stop with pro-laissez faire capitalist propaganda. Mention anything about the high cost of healthcare or wealth inequality and you are instantly labeled a communist. But you have to stand back and be a little astonished by what China has accomplished in the last 30 years. The Chinese are very good at setting top-down government policies that are in favor of the worker instead of wealth accumulation.

For example, check out this video where a 20 story hotel is built in six days:

The floors come pre-fabricated with all the wiring and plumbing. All the workers have to do is screw it up and connect pipes and wires. Just amazing!

Really?
"Kicking our butts" because they can assemble a prefabricated hotel?

 

[Revoltingest]

In this country we are inundated non-stop with pro-laissez faire capitalist propaganda. Mention anything about the high cost of healthcare or wealth inequality and you are instantly labeled a communist. But you have to stand back and be a little astonished by what China has accomplished in the last 30 years. The Chinese are very good at setting top-down government policies that are in favor of the worker instead of wealth accumulation.

For example, check out this video where a 20 story hotel is built in six days:

The floors come pre-fabricated with all the wiring and plumbing. All the workers have to do is screw it up and connect pipes and wires. Just amazing!

There is indeed no doubt that a powerful centralized
government can be more capable at tackling big goals.
But a question....
Under which system would you rather live?
Rather than it being about which is better,
I see it as personal preference.

 

[Nakosis]

In this country we are inundated non-stop with pro-laissez faire capitalist propaganda. Mention anything about the high cost of healthcare or wealth inequality and you are instantly labeled a communist. But you have to stand back and be a little astonished by what China has accomplished in the last 30 years. The Chinese are very good at setting top-down government policies that are in favor of the worker instead of wealth accumulation.

For example, check out this video where a 20 story hotel is built in six days:

The floors come pre-fabricated with all the wiring and plumbing. All the workers have to do is screw it up and connect pipes and wires. Just amazing!

Sure if you don't perform your allotted job in the allotted time you might just find yourself "disappeared".
The People China ‘Disappeared’ in 2018
Where film stars and police chiefs can simply vanish
Int'l Day of the Disappeared: China must put a halt to secret detention and all forms of enforced disappearances | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP

Put simply, state policies are designed to permit disappearances and perpetuate impunity. This includes the persistent erosion of due process guarantees, such as blocking access by lawyers and family to those detained; extensive use of legalised forms of incommunicado detention, including ‘Residential Surveillance in a Designated Location’; a system of ‘retention in custody’ called liuzhi for Communist Party members and public sector workers; the transition of released prisoners into house arrest or other forms of ‘non-freedom’; and the widespread use of re-education camps in Xinjiang.
UNPO: End Enforced Disappearances in China!

I'd imagine that is a pretty big incentive to do whatever it takes to get the work done.

 

[leov]

In this country we are inundated non-stop with pro-laissez faire capitalist propaganda. Mention anything about the high cost of healthcare or wealth inequality and you are instantly labeled a communist. But you have to stand back and be a little astonished by what China has accomplished in the last 30 years. The Chinese are very good at setting top-down government policies that are in favor of the worker instead of wealth accumulation.

For example, check out this video where a 20 story hotel is built in six days:

The floors come pre-fabricated with all the wiring and plumbing. All the workers have to do is screw it up and connect pipes and wires. Just amazing!

Chinese are very capitalism oriented folks, elites do not like idea that every Chinese may have a car, AC, e.t.c,

 

[metis]

And I predict they will pass us up economically within the next two years, as they have their act together and we simply don't.

Even before this virus outbreak, they were averaging roughly 9% per year over the last decade, whereas we here in the States were averaging under 3%. Now, with the situation with our virus problems versus theirs, I think it's likely they'll pass us up.

 

[Stevicus]

There is indeed no doubt that a powerful centralized
government can be more capable at tackling big goals.
But a question....
Under which system would you rather live?
Rather than it being about which is better,
I see it as personal preference.

Wouldn't it depend on where one is in the pecking order? Every system is great, if you're one of the privileged few at the top. The true test of a system's quality is how good it is for those at the bottom.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I'm not going to complain just because somebody innovates and creates a nice technology. Its eventually going to help us over here, too.

 

[McBell]

I'm not going to complain just because somebody innovates and creates a nice technology. Its eventually going to help us over here, too.

Prefab houses have been around since the mid 1800s...

Prefabricated Homes (U.S. National Park Service)

 

[Notanumber]

Was it not the case that the wet markets sprung up due to famine across China?

Is it not those very same wet markets that caused covid-19?

Did the Chinese government not try to cover up the outbreak, putting the rest of the world in peril?

Is the Chinese government not now using the mess that they created to benefit their deplorable regime?

 

[Revoltingest]

Wouldn't it depend on where one is in the pecking order? Every system is great, if you're one of the privileged few at the top. The true test of a system's quality is how good it is for those at the bottom.

Aye, even back when I lived paycheck to paycheck,
I had an awful lot of liberty. I don't think our political
opining would go over well in The PRC.

 

[Twilight Hue]

In this country we are inundated non-stop with pro-laissez faire capitalist propaganda. Mention anything about the high cost of healthcare or wealth inequality and you are instantly labeled a communist. But you have to stand back and be a little astonished by what China has accomplished in the last 30 years. The Chinese are very good at setting top-down government policies that are in favor of the worker instead of wealth accumulation.

For example, check out this video where a 20 story hotel is built in six days:

The floors come pre-fabricated with all the wiring and plumbing. All the workers have to do is screw it up and connect pipes and wires. Just amazing!

I'm sure the cheap forced labor in China is just all giddy about it.

 

[Stevicus]

Aye, even back when I lived paycheck to paycheck,
I had an awful lot of liberty. I don't think our political
opining would go over well in The PRC.

Perhaps not, although I guess it would depend on what one is opining about. Different countries have different sore spots or areas of sensitivity where one's opinions might be looked upon unkindly.

The level of liberty one enjoys in this country is contingent on not being a threat to the powers that be. They don't care about the idle complaints of the peasantry, so we can opine all we want with little fear.

But if you're considered a threat to the power structure (like if you're a Karen Silkwood or a Jimmy Hoffa or Martin Luther King or any number of journalists and others killed by the Mob), then your level of liberty can be suddenly reduced to zero.

Just like in China.

 

[Revoltingest]

Perhaps not, although I guess it would depend on what one is opining about. Different countries have different sore spots or areas of sensitivity where one's opinions might be looked upon unkindly.

The level of liberty one enjoys in this country is contingent on not being a threat to the powers that be. They don't care about the idle complaints of the peasantry, so we can opine all we want with little fear.

But if you're considered a threat to the power structure (like if you're a Karen Silkwood or a Jimmy Hoffa or Martin Luther King or any number of journalists and others killed by the Mob), then your level of liberty can be suddenly reduced to zero.

Just like in China.

Are you saying the level of free speech is the same in USA & PRC?

 

[Stevicus]

Are you saying the level of free speech is the same in USA & PRC?

Not the same. I just don't agree with the notion that one can say whatever one wishes in the U.S. and have no consequences.

I don't think either government arrests people for "free speech," at least that wouldn't be the official charge. It might be masked as some kind of legitimate charge, like "incitement" or "disorderly conduct" or something like that.

In any case, do you really think that the government of the PRC would be all that interested in the idle banter of a few old farts on a forum that nobody reads? (Not that I'm referring to RF, but some Chinese equivalent based in that country.)

 

[dfnj]

Chinese are very capitalism oriented folks, elites do not like idea that every Chinese may have a car, AC, e.t.c,

I've been to Beijing in 2003. My impression was I was in a communist country. My experience in China was Chinese companies are more about employing the most people as opposed to building a brand. Some of the companies my company dealt with share trade secrets.

 

[dfnj]

Really?
"Kicking our butts" because they can assemble a prefabricated hotel?

Yes.

 

[Notanumber]

This reporter understands China.

 

[MNoBody]

except few westerners would appreciate living and working on the team due to the different ideologies....
yet, if a terrible crisis came down, where are the essential domestic industries, ....right,..... over in china..... no skilled workers in that sector in this continent......strategy of interdependence ..right..... replaces the MAD policy...