zephyreks

The laws of Western states that the West only selectively follows? Gee...

India's getting blatant and nobody cares because of China.

Yeah, didn't you hear? Acquired last year along with WaPo and the NYT.

Does it? How's that been going for you?

The neoliberal democratic experiment has been a failure. It's unclear whether the failure is on behalf of neoliberalism or democracy, but it's failed like every other government in the past:

(1) There's a corrupt government that has enough power to cause system collapse, OR

(2) There's not enough power in the government, so since people with money are naturally corrupt and greedy, the system collapses on its own from exploitation

We're barrelling towards (2) through problems mostly caused by (1). We live in the most surveilled set of countries in the world - the NSA has capabilities shown from the Snowden leaks that China can only dream of, particularly because the NSA has no qualms spying on American allies. We have seen almost complete defunding of key social services in favour of "lower tax rates" that don't actually materialize. Labour has been entirely stripped of its power because the government decided that "national security" trumps people's rights. Meanwhile, government expenses are going up because, turns out, a lack of social services is pretty expensive and leads to directly subsidizing big corporations. We've seen a complete disinterest in active democracy to such a degree that even China gets more active citizen participation in its government (which, tbh, is super depressing because China is wildly considered to be a one-party state). We've seen complete apathy to local and municipal governments, despite those having a much greater impact on peoples' lives.

The Western model of democracy has had about a 250 year run. That's pretty good.

The only way to actually make change is to be active. That's what conservatives get and that's why they're able to make change. You don't change things by sitting at your table and bitching and moaning about how sad everything is. You don't change things by talking to people who agree with you and pointing at people who you disagree with and saying "wow they're bad people!" You aggressively lobby, you play dirty tricks, you invade the Capitol, you protest and protest and protest, and you do everything in your power to make sure that what you want passes because it's a matter of ideology. To some extent I admire religious conservatives for their dedication to their core issues and the commitment they have to seeing it through. It's changing the country into what they want, and that's respectable even if I don't like the country they want.

That's a lazy response if I've ever seen one. What economic advantage does China have for importing resources and selling to the West?

The West is trying to decouple trade with China. Why wouldnt China optimize for it's economic future?

Well,, admittedly the US 4th PsyOps could be lying in their promotional materials, but the track record of US support for regime changes has been pretty exceptional. Basically, past performance implies future performance.

Ah yes, because that was going so well before China entered the market.

China just recently set up robust recycling mechanisms for solar and wind systems, years before the anticipated surge in recycling demand.

Back in 2011 or whatever, China put rules in place regarding the production of silicon tetrachloride waste as well as energy consumption. New plants require Environmental Impact Assessments and older plants who couldn't comply were shut down because China don't give no shits about corporate lobbying.

It's not 2008 anymore, honey.

Asbestos has some pretty insane properties, though. Just a shame it causes cancer when disturbed and inhaled.

As a building material? What's even better than asbestos in terms of the trifecta of sound/heat isolation, bulk, melting point, and structural soundness? Aerogel?

So far, the US has approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine ($62 billion through the Pentagon and another $40 something billion through the State Department that definitely totally wasn't spent on war guys). It's something like a tenth of the US military budget and on par with the entire Russian military budget of around $100 billion.

They pulled out of the Middle East and now need a new enemy to justify the defence budget.

Following the Second World War, they had the Soviet Union to blame and the War on Communism. Then it was the War on Terror. Now? Well... Now it's the War on China.

There's a video of a single Chinese guy whipping a single Kenyan guy who worked for the single Chinese guy's privately-owned restaurant in Kenya, for which the Chinese guy was fined KSh 3 million for. The same guy who had two other employees without work permits. Not exactly a good generalization of "Chinese" rather than just "shitty guy in general", nevermind of "China" as a country... And frankly it's a rather racist generalization.

China's Belt and Road aims primarily to build out infrastructure of developing countries so that their economy expands and they can buy more Chinese goods. Infrastructure is incredibly profitable, in general (each dollar spent on transportation is estimated to return something like four dollars in government returns). If infrastructure costs go down, returns go up: would you rather spend $10 billion on two dams or $20 billion on one dam and "oh look you ran out of money to build the second dam and your first dam is breaking because you didn't have experience and oh no you don't know how to fix it because you've never run into this problem before." That's the primary sell behind the Belt and Road: they're cheaper, they're less likely to fuck up, and if they fuck up China can audit the problem and fix it. You shouldn't be restricted in what infrastructure you can build by what you domestically have the capability for, because building domestic capability is extremely expensive and extremely time-consuming (and, well, let's just say that developing countries aren't called "developing" because they're swimming in money).

China doesn't profit off of exploiting resources extraction as much as it does off of manufacturing products. China's spent a lot of effort to make sure it's domestic supply chains are robust, but they're running out of room to export to the West. They have a strong incentive to make developing countries have stronger economies so they can buy more Chinese goods to grow China's economy. It's simple economics.

Buddy might want to look at the original comment. Is it only whataboutism if it's against white people? Sounds racist to me idk