Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

silbasa
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@Wiimeiser  
I don’t think so, but with the largest economy and if their army could beat NATO they will set the stage for world politics, drawing the world further in an authoritarian direction. And as we know their political system leaves a lot to be desired. For many countries in the third world the chinese model seems very attractive as well, something that is a grave concern.
 
@NitroFury  
Yes. They also have organ harvesting concentration camps and a wonderful social credit score system. Oh, and censorship everywhere. No thanks.
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@silbasa  
And what do those have to do with their budget priorities, as somehow they can still afford to modernize their infrastructure better than the US? As I pointed out, the US could slash their military expenditures by half and still be the big guy in the playground, with the extra money put to better uses (Dustcan pointed out a few of them).  
The Soviet Union made the same mistake, y’know: too much focus on the arms race with the US, not enough on domestic development.
silbasa
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@Ereiam  
Did China have any infrastructure in place to begin with here? Until fairly recently it was a developing country and it for some bizarre reason still has status as one. When their infrastructure plans are done, where do you think they will focus their attention next? Their military.
 
The Soviet economy was so decrepit as it was due to communism that in the end the entire scheme just folded in on itself. China has a very effective market economy it can command to do whatever the party wants.
 
Point of being the big guy, especially globally is to be so ridiculously big no one will ever consider attacking you. Dominance, not parity is the goal. If America wishes it can of course prioritize differently but at a cost in other areas, mainly global power and influence.
Ereiam
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Did China have any infrastructure in place to begin with here? Until fairly recently it was a developing country and it for some bizarre reason still has status as one. When their infrastructure plans are done, where do you think they will focus their attention next? Their military.
 
That’s the point: they became such an economic powerhouse because they invested in an modern infrastructure. The US lagged behind on that matter, and now their hegemony is in jeopardy as a result.  
The Soviet economy was so decrepit as it was due to communism that in the end the entire scheme just folded in on itself. China has a very effective market economy it can command to do whatever the party wants.
 
You do know that, despite being communist in name only, the Chinese economy is still fairly centralized, with nearly two thirds of the employment in the public sector, right? OTOH, the US massively privatized their infrastructure and skimped on the maintenance costs, and now it’s crumbling everywhere, hence the need for Biden’s plan.  
Point of being the big guy, especially globally is to be so ridiculously big no one will ever consider attacking you.
 
And look how well that worked when 9/11 occured: the only positive result of this mess was removing the talibans from power in Afghanistan (and even after twenty years, they’re poised to retake it as soon as the US troops withdraw), and that’s not even going into the $2 trillion scam that was the Iraq War.
silbasa
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@Ereiam  
China’s economy is not communist as I stated. It is a market economy, one could say capitalist but the party has the final word in everything. As long as business flows they don’t intervene but if something becomes unruly they crackdown. More like nazi Germany than the Soviet Union. Chinese businessmen have disappeared for months inexplicably after having done something the party dont like only to reappear later and be much more in line with the parties doctrines.
 
In a sad irony China shows us the power of the most effective economic system we have invented to date combined with some of the worst political systems we have ever come up with, forming something new that can’t be quantified just yet.
 
I speculate some here but I imagine a lot of US infrastructure is older than the chinese brand new infrastructure thus needing maintenance and upgrades to a large extent. If I am not completely off the mark here much of it was built in the 20s,30s and onwards. (Could be wrong here.)
 
It has worked remarkably well. WW3 never happened. Proxy wars sucks and are bad but in the grand scheme of things NATO have been a success, largely led and supported by the US military.
 
@AaronMk  
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@Wiimeiser
I don’t think so, but with the largest economy and if their army could beat NATO they will set the stage for world politics, drawing the world further in an authoritarian direction. And as we know their political system leaves a lot to be desired. For many countries in the third world the chinese model seems very attractive as well, something that is a grave concern.
 
And once something becomes a dictatorship it’s nigh impossible to overthrow it from the inside, especially with modern technology and lessons learned from events like the JFK assassination…
silbasa
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@Wiimeiser  
Whenever something like this happens it is usually very bloody. Modern technology deployed on the scale we see in China now makes their intelligence into the STASI 2.0. I don’t want to live in City 17, democracy and human rights for me thanks.
 
@Latecomer  
China? Who knows when the next Hitler or Lenin pops up somewhere.  
As to why, power and influence of course.
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@silbasa  
Yeah, it’s ironic indeed that it is as I always said: capitalism works best when it has regulations in place to ensure that corporate entities don’t end up monopolizing the market and the wealth concentrated in the hands of a few to the detriment of the many (that the regulator, in China’s case, be an authoritarian police state is the sad part, of course).
 
As for the infrastructure, it is obvious that if the initial investment doesn’t have its upkeep and modernization costs earmarked in the budget as ongoing expenditures, obsolescence becomes inevitable and ends up costing more through the economic shortfalls that ensue. The Chinese obviously don’t want to skimp on those like the US did.
 
And once again, about the military deterrent, balance between being sufficiently armed and ready and sinking disproportionate amounts of money into the military-industrial complex matters.  
Going back to what I said about the Soviet Union, while it owes its failure in no small part to the lack of adaptability of a central planning that ended up breeding corruption and inefficiency, thus stymying innovation and leaving their economy behind the times and unable to catch up, the fact remains that every ruble diverted into the arms race with the US (at its peak in 1986, the Soviet nuclear arsenal was nearly twice as big as the American one, which given the state of global scale MAD existing since the 1960s, was nothing but pointless overcompensation at this point) was one not spent fixing those lingering structural issues (it took until Gorbachev for someone to finally try and tackle them, but by then it was already too late) — which ties back to my point about modernization being a capital investment: cutting back on it to overspend on defense is a bad move.
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@silbasa  
The Combine was only overthrown because of the Gravity Gun, all of Gordon’s other weapons were completely destroyed. We don’t have a gravity gun. We can’t manipulate zero point energy. Think about that.
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silbasa
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@Ereiam  
America has those mechanics in place as well.
 
In time China’s shiny new infrastructure will get old and run down. Time will tell if they run into the same budgetary problems. (I have never heard of anyone anywhere not complaining about having shitty roads…)
 
Compare the two systems and see just how much more powerful the market economy was and is. You couldn’t fix the Soviet economic system because the system itself was the problem. Communistic planned economies have never worked, China learned this the hard way. By adopting a market economy their power and wealth have skyrocketed.
 
 
@Wiimeiser  
Indeed. We need gravity guns asap.
Ereiam
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@silbasa  
Look at how big the GAFAM have grown and the liberties they take with their data harvesting and tax optimization. Already, they’ve run afoul of the European authorities way more often than the American ones, where it is only lately that the antitrust lawsuits have started to multiply (and Biden’s initiative for a minimum global corporate tax rate, endorsed by the G7, has at least the merit to be a step in the right direction).
silbasa
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@NitroFury  
Nope. I imagine it’s like most other places, a very mixed bag. As it is here in Norway. Some are new, some are crumbling.
 
@Ereiam  
I have to admit this is a little outside my area of knowledge. I have seen antitrust lawsuits and regulation underway in the US against tech giants for example. Hopefully more to follow as some sensible regulation is needed.
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In Vino Veritas
@silbasa
 
Our infrastructure is some of the worst in the western world. We consistently score near the bottom in terms of integrity and distribution of resources. We have some of the slowest internet speeds of the West, despite paying more than almost any other country (yay capitalism?), and we have many places around that are facing water scarcity.
 
 
Every place has its ups and downs yes, but the #greatestcountry shouldn’t have this many “downs”.
silbasa
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@Zincy  
By “integrity and distribution of resources” are you talking about financial wealth?
 
America is a country the size of Europe itself. Is it that bad in all states?
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@silbasa  
Considering when the nation went into lockdown, the national government had hospitals basically fend for themselves when it came to medical supplies. It’s far than just wealth that mishandled.
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