Political Posts

[lnofeisone]

19 hours ago, ValueArb said:

Claims of uprisings in southern Russia today.

 

 

I wouldn't call it an uprising. More like a terrorist attack. I'm following this through Russian telegram channels. Here is what the YouTube guy is missing other than being unable to pronounce Makhachkala (maha - ch - kala with emphasis on last a in kala). 

 

1) A handful of armed individuals (I've seen at least 4 on videos and heard a claim of up to 8 ) attacked a church where they beheaded a priest and a synagogue where they shot police guards.

2) Attacks happened in two cities simultaneously. 

3) The high police loss is because the terrorists were heavily armed and attacked mostly unsuspecting police officers and their outposts. Most losses are amongst the police and posted obituaries show it's mostly locals. 

4) I've only seen reports of 2 lightly injured ros  guard (RosGvardia) personnel

[ValueArb]

2 hours ago, lnofeisone said:

I wouldn't call it an uprising. More like a terrorist attack. I'm following this through Russian telegram channels. Here is what the YouTube guy is missing other than being unable to pronounce Makhachkala (maha - ch - kala with emphasis on last a in kala). 

 

1) A handful of armed individuals (I've seen at least 4 on videos and heard a claim of up to 8 ) attacked a church where they beheaded a priest and a synagogue where they shot police guards.

2) Attacks happened in two cities simultaneously. 

3) The high police loss is because the terrorists were heavily armed and attacked mostly unsuspecting police officers and their outposts. Most losses are amongst the police and posted obituaries show it's mostly locals. 

4) I've only seen reports of 2 lightly injured ros  guard (RosGvardia) personnel

 

Yea, that's why I said it was a claim. I see reports like these every so often, but so far none has rolled up into anything significant since Wagner's revolt so I've ignored them. This seems more like it was over religion, not politics.

[ValueArb]

Over time wars are a series of tactical adjustments and counter-adjustments. Russia now launching cruise missiles from sea of azov to make it harder for Ukrainian drones to target them.

 

https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukraine-situation-report-russia-now-launching-kalibr-cruise-missiles-from-the-sea-of-azov

[nsx5200]

Yet China's rich are leaving the country...  

https://www.newsweek.com/china-millionaires-leaving-country-1916427

 

With the kind of propaganda that China can push, and does push, I'm always wary to read articles that pushes only the positive of China.  I find that the action of the people speaks much louder than any article/opinion.  Just ask any North Korean outside of North Korea.

[Hektor]

12 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Yet China's rich are leaving the country...  

Probably an after effect of bringing Ma to his knees!

[Hektor]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/science/change-6-china-earth-moon.html

 

China Becomes First Country to Retrieve Rocks From the Moon’s Far Side

The sample, which might hold clues about the origins of the moon and Earth, is the latest achievement of China’s lunar exploration program.

[Luke]

13 minutes ago, Hektor said:

Probably an after effect of bringing Ma to his knees!

 

13 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Yet China's rich are leaving the country...  

https://www.newsweek.com/china-millionaires-leaving-country-1916427

 

With the kind of propaganda that China can push, and does push, I'm always wary to read articles that pushes only the positive of China.  I find that the action of the people speaks much louder than any article/opinion.  Just ask any North Korean outside of North Korea.

 

China wants meritocracy, not oligarchies where the rich buy themselves into elite schools and gatekeep high paying jobs. It is understandable that people with money move to a country that will protect them first and not a healthy and fair economy. I think a country that rewards effort, and promotes fairness in compensation will reach a healthier living environment and more flourishment than a society with very high inequality and unfairness. 

14 minutes ago, Hektor said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/science/change-6-china-earth-moon.html

 

China Becomes First Country to Retrieve Rocks From the Moon’s Far Side

The sample, which might hold clues about the origins of the moon and Earth, is the latest achievement of China’s lunar exploration program.

 

Yep, another sign of the progress they are making on all fronts. 

[Hektor]

30 minutes ago, Luca said:

China wants meritocracy, not oligarchies

Interesting.

 

I looked up Oligarchy and found this in Wikipedia.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

 

"Oligarchy (from Ancient Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía) 'rule by few'; from ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few', and ἄρχω (árkhō) 'to rule, command')[1][2][3] is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.

 

Throughout history, power structures considered to be oligarchies have often been viewed as coercive, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist."

[nsx5200]

19 minutes ago, Luca said:

China wants meritocracy, not oligarchies where the rich buy themselves into elite schools and gatekeep high paying jobs.

That's the propaganda portion.  The real power is not with people with capital, but with people with connections to the CCP party(and thus government positions).  I don't have articles references on it, but I've been watching Youtube videos where children of government official describe that type of system.  Government officials are essentially mini-kings over their 'area of responsibility', and senior official holds similar power over less senior officials.  So the meritocracy is actually an autocracy.  We've seen the result of that in their seemingly arbitrary decision to completely close and re-open to handle COVID, and not really based on a consistent transparent approach.

 

We're currently seeing their opaque approach to addressing their current real estate issue.  Maybe they do have a method to their madness that can eventually solve their issue, but it's really not transparent.  Same thing with how they dealt with Qin Gang... well.  Actions speaks louder than... dare I say propaganda?

[lnofeisone]

14 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 

Yea, that's why I said it was a claim. I see reports like these every so often, but so far none has rolled up into anything significant since Wagner's revolt so I've ignored them. This seems more like it was over religion, not politics.

Totally get it. News are all over the place on this one so I am sharing what I am seeing on telegram. 

[Luke]

2 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

That's the propaganda portion.  The real power is not with people with capital, but with people with connections to the CCP party(and thus government positions).  I don't have articles references on it, but I've been watching Youtube videos where children of government official describe that type of system.  Government officials are essentially mini-kings over their 'area of responsibility', and senior official holds similar power over less senior officials.  So the meritocracy is actually an autocracy.  We've seen the result of that in their seemingly arbitrary decision to completely close and re-open to handle COVID, and not really based on a consistent transparent approach.

 

We're currently seeing their opaque approach to addressing their current real estate issue.  Maybe they do have a method to their madness that can eventually solve their issue, but it's really not transparent.  Same thing with how they dealt with Qin Gang... well.  Actions speaks louder than... dare I say propaganda?

We had a tough crackdown on this kind of corruption and CCP leadership doesnt want to have this. Thats why some chinese decide to flee to the US where this behavior is allowed. And yes, China isnt transparent with government workings but the US isnt either and this elitism is sadly always a problem. I like that they sent a strong signal against it.

[nsx5200]

2 minutes ago, Luca said:

We had a tough crackdown on this kind of corruption and CCP leadership doesnt want to have this. Thats why some chinese decide to flee to the US where this behavior is allowed. And yes, China isnt transparent with government workings but the US isnt either and this elitism is sadly always a problem. I like that they sent a strong signal against it.

When a government needs to resort to censorship, even for something as innocuous as Youtube, to control the thinking of its people, I'd be very skeptical of what it pushes.  Corruption crackdown, viewed in a different light, is a mask for the removal of political adversaries.  I'm not saying that's what happened in China, but it's important to keep that in mind, as there's not enough evidence one way or another to say which one is which, from my limited point of view.  Not saying that the mass media in the free world doesn't have bias leaning, but given the choice... you know what the 'correct' solution is.

[crs223]

To those who are making good arguments about China heading in the wrong direction, will you please give your thoughts on the bullet points below, which are being used to describe the west?  You guys would provide a good balance.  Text taken from this long article.

• Widespread sociocultural and political upheaval produced by the emergence and rapid proliferation of an ideology that foregrounds extreme attention to issues of identity (including racial, gender, and sexual identity) and victimhood, a morality of collective “social justice,” and a revolutionary objective of universal liberation from historical “oppression.” This ideology, an outgrowth of progressive left-liberalism, is today colloquially known as “Woke” in the West and “Báizuŏ” (白左: “White Leftism” or the “White Left”) in China. It features what can be described in sociological terms as an “inversion of values,” or the subversion and reversal of traditional moral beliefs, strictures, and value judgements. This inversion means that the ideology manifests as distinctly oikophobic (fear of and hostility to one’s own homeland and culture) and ultimately antagonistic to Western civilization itself. This has resulted in sharp, largely generational divides over what previously were widely held Western values, such as the importance of freedom of speech, objective reason, meritocracy, patriotism, or the idea that individuals (rather than collectives) should be held culpable for crimes.
• A crisis of social atomization, loneliness, low social trust, mental illness, and drug addiction, contributing to a proliferation of “deaths of despair,” including by suicide, overdose, and alcoholism. In the United States, these deaths have helped to drive a fall in overall life expectancy. This crisis may be related to a broader context of sharp declines in reported religiosity and participation in traditional religious communities, as well as the suffusion of society by a more widespread, if less measurable, sense of nihilism and loss of meaning.
• A culturally significant background of persistent structural economic weaknesses, including the offshoring of manufacturing and an overall pattern of deindustrialization and financialization, the hollowing out of middle-class economic security, high rates of debt, and exceptionally tight housing markets that have largely priced out younger buyers. This has fostered persistent popular resentments about economic inequality and lack of social mobility.
• Rising crime, homelessness, and vagrancy as well as an increase in instances of disruptive protests, riots, looting, and political violence, reflecting a perceived general breakdown in social order.
• Loss of control over national borders and the normalization of illegal mass migration due to a political unwillingness to enforce immigration law along with an inability or unwillingness by Western societies to assimilate migrants into existing cultures and value systems.
• A failure in education systems’ ability or intention to transmit inherited knowledge and values across generations, reflecting a broader crisis of authority and institutional legitimacy and purpose.
• A breakdown in gender norms and relations between the sexes along with a collapse in family formation and fertility rates, driving a worsening demographic crisis that threatens the long-term survival of Western societies (although this particular crisis is arguably now even more acute in China), and a concurrent rise in the percentage of the population, especially among the young, identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) or other alternative sexual and gender identities.
• A significant collapse of public trust in major institutions, including across all branches of government, the law, corporations, media, education, and even the military. This collapse has proceeded alongside a broader decline in the popular legitimacy of elite institutional or “establishment” authority—a trend accelerated by the widespread adoption by many of these institutions of radical ideological positions corrosive to their own historical raison d'etre.
• A decline in overall levels of both patriotic sentiment and approval of democratic governance. Only around half of young Americans, for example, still favor democracy as the best form of government, while only around 40 percent of Americans and 30 percent of Europeans say they would be willing to fight to defend their country.
• Intensifying partisan political division, factionalism, and rivalry, producing growing risks of political instability, including breakdowns in the peaceful transfer of power and, in extremis, the potential for civil conflict or revolutionary regime change.

 

 

 

 

 

[Xerxes]

On 5/30/2024 at 6:39 PM, ValueArb said:

Unclear to me. Latest order included 48 “launch stations”, 644 missiles, and 12 latest radar systems. First (2018) order included 2 “batteries”. So maybe it’s 14 batteries total?

 

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/06/29/us-state-dept-clears-15b-sale-of-missile-defense-system-for-poland/

saw this in the AW. 
left column where I am pointing. 
 

8 batteries in total. 
it is fortress Poland indeed. 

 

 

[nsx5200]

37 minutes ago, crs223 said:

To those who are making good arguments about China heading in the wrong direction, will you please give your thoughts on the bullet points below, which are being used to describe the west?  You guys would provide a good balance.  Text taken from this long article.

I don't know about heading the right or wrong direction, but social discourse, IMHO, is a sign of a healthy democracy.  Without social discourse, it's less feedback mechanism for society to improve.  All those concerns are very valid points against western society, but I don't think they're solely the product of western society/value.  There are stories in China where people are so distrustful of the fallen that they don't even dare try to help them (https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-34612516).

 

Current democratic/capitalistic society is not without issues, and it'll get worse as the trend toward fully mechanization/automation becomes a reality.  We'll need discourses to correct them.  Exposing the issue is the first step in correcting them and I'm glad somebody took the time to list them so that they can be addressed.

 

I think the proper way to evaluate these contemporary issues is to take a step back, and look at it from a 20+ year span, and the perspective changes significantly.

[crs223]

28 minutes ago, nsx5200 said:

I think the proper way to evaluate these contemporary issues is to take a step back, and look at it from a 20+ year span

 

In the USA, the major problems (outlined in the bullets posted earlier) sound like rot in the core of society, and more importantly future generations.  i.e. the problems compound (in the bad way) over decades.  The most obvious example to me is education.  I'd love to be convinced otherwise... it's very sad.

 

Some Chinese problems (stealing of organs, lack of western-style bailouts, poor building codes, lack of shareholder rights), if real, could be fixed overnight (not multi-decade threats).  Low birth rate is the obvious multi-decade threat.  I'm not convinced that "regime oppression" is as real/awful as westerners imagine... looks like they have made great progress over the decades with their system.  I would not say the same about North Korea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Spekulatius]

Had $1.5 Tacos today from a local chain since it’s  Taco Tuesday. I bet you can’t get Tacos that good for the same price in China.

It has been a while since I was in China on business and what I do recall is that China is cheaper, but not that much cheaper - perhaps 1/2 US prices for restaurants.

 

Turkey In my experience was equivalent or cheaper than China in term of prices. My experience was from 2017 - I do not know how the currency collapse and the inflation played out if our pay in foreign currency.

[Luke]

3 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Had $1.5 Tacos today from a local chain since it’s  Taco Tuesday. I bet you can’t get Tacos that good for the same price in China.

It has been a while since I was in China on business and what I do recall is that China is cheaper, but not that much cheaper - perhaps 1/2 US prices for restaurants.

 

Turkey In my experience was equivalent or cheaper than China in term of prices. My experience was from 2017 - I do not know how the currency collapse and the inflation played out if our pay in foreign currency.

China street food and local restaurants are dirt cheap for our salary. McDonalds etc are not as cheap and depending on location bit more than 50% off sounds right.

 

Well guys, as far as i like the shareholder protections in the US, i like the prices and business more in China. BRICS also seeming to really getting further interest, Thailand interested too. They all also seem to not agree with the wests treatment of the ukraine conflict. China seems to secure access to a lot of markets of the global south and is better positioned in an area that will have way more growth than the US is. Both are fighting for influence in SEA/asia but China sits in the heart of it with closer supply chains and cultural proximity. Combined with the FUD and dislocation I still cant leave this space to invest in. 

[Luke]

5 hours ago, crs223 said:

To those who are making good arguments about China heading in the wrong direction, will you please give your thoughts on the bullet points below, which are being used to describe the west?  You guys would provide a good balance.  Text taken from this long article.

• Widespread sociocultural and political upheaval produced by the emergence and rapid proliferation of an ideology that foregrounds extreme attention to issues of identity (including racial, gender, and sexual identity) and victimhood, a morality of collective “social justice,” and a revolutionary objective of universal liberation from historical “oppression.” This ideology, an outgrowth of progressive left-liberalism, is today colloquially known as “Woke” in the West and “Báizuŏ” (白左: “White Leftism” or the “White Left”) in China. It features what can be described in sociological terms as an “inversion of values,” or the subversion and reversal of traditional moral beliefs, strictures, and value judgements. This inversion means that the ideology manifests as distinctly oikophobic (fear of and hostility to one’s own homeland and culture) and ultimately antagonistic to Western civilization itself. This has resulted in sharp, largely generational divides over what previously were widely held Western values, such as the importance of freedom of speech, objective reason, meritocracy, patriotism, or the idea that individuals (rather than collectives) should be held culpable for crimes.
• A crisis of social atomization, loneliness, low social trust, mental illness, and drug addiction, contributing to a proliferation of “deaths of despair,” including by suicide, overdose, and alcoholism. In the United States, these deaths have helped to drive a fall in overall life expectancy. This crisis may be related to a broader context of sharp declines in reported religiosity and participation in traditional religious communities, as well as the suffusion of society by a more widespread, if less measurable, sense of nihilism and loss of meaning.
• A culturally significant background of persistent structural economic weaknesses, including the offshoring of manufacturing and an overall pattern of deindustrialization and financialization, the hollowing out of middle-class economic security, high rates of debt, and exceptionally tight housing markets that have largely priced out younger buyers. This has fostered persistent popular resentments about economic inequality and lack of social mobility.
• Rising crime, homelessness, and vagrancy as well as an increase in instances of disruptive protests, riots, looting, and political violence, reflecting a perceived general breakdown in social order.
• Loss of control over national borders and the normalization of illegal mass migration due to a political unwillingness to enforce immigration law along with an inability or unwillingness by Western societies to assimilate migrants into existing cultures and value systems.
• A failure in education systems’ ability or intention to transmit inherited knowledge and values across generations, reflecting a broader crisis of authority and institutional legitimacy and purpose.
• A breakdown in gender norms and relations between the sexes along with a collapse in family formation and fertility rates, driving a worsening demographic crisis that threatens the long-term survival of Western societies (although this particular crisis is arguably now even more acute in China), and a concurrent rise in the percentage of the population, especially among the young, identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) or other alternative sexual and gender identities.
• A significant collapse of public trust in major institutions, including across all branches of government, the law, corporations, media, education, and even the military. This collapse has proceeded alongside a broader decline in the popular legitimacy of elite institutional or “establishment” authority—a trend accelerated by the widespread adoption by many of these institutions of radical ideological positions corrosive to their own historical raison d'etre.
• A decline in overall levels of both patriotic sentiment and approval of democratic governance. Only around half of young Americans, for example, still favor democracy as the best form of government, while only around 40 percent of Americans and 30 percent of Europeans say they would be willing to fight to defend their country.
• Intensifying partisan political division, factionalism, and rivalry, producing growing risks of political instability, including breakdowns in the peaceful transfer of power and, in extremis, the potential for civil conflict or revolutionary regime change.

 

 

 

 

 

Ironically many of these points are under active problem solving by China. Censorship of the media does a lot of work here too, just ban "sissy men" and control kids play time. There are advantages to their total political control and longterm planning power the west just cant match. "China builds an airport and the west holds a lecture" is something i read on a lot of african news channels that talk about china and the wests aim to stop cooperation with africa->china. Why arent we matching the developing power of china? Where is our belt and road? My government is currently betting on austerity and buying weapons for ukraine while fighting china with tariffs and deindustrializing the economy with absurd green energy plans that just wont work. Its an odd time and China is setting a lot of groundwork for a great economy and future IMO but is discounted to death. 

[Hektor]

China used to be the world's destination for all things manufacturing. That might be shifting. While the shift might not be detrimental to China in the short run, I doubt how anyone can prosper without friendly relations with the world.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/business/india-us-manufacturing.html

 

For American Brands Worried About China, Is India the Future?

As multinational retailers diminish their dependence on Chinese factories, some are shifting production to India.

 

In a global marketplace reshaped by volatile forces — not least the animosity between the United States and China — India shows signs of emerging as a potentially significant place to manufacture products. Multinational brands that have for decades relied on Chinese factories are expanding to India as they seek to limit the vulnerabilities of concentrating production in any single country.

 

India presents a unique proposition as a country of 1.4 billion people, making it even larger than China. With abundant raw materials, from cotton to iron ore to chemicals, it holds the potential to develop its own supply chain. 

Edited June 26, 2024 by Hektor

[Luke]

31 minutes ago, Hektor said:

China used to be the world's destination for all things manufacturing. That might be shifting. While the shift might not be detrimental to the China in the short run, I doubt how anyone can prosper without friendly relations with the world.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/business/india-us-manufacturing.html

 

For American Brands Worried About China, Is India the Future?

As multinational retailers diminish their dependence on Chinese factories, some are shifting production to India.

 

In a global marketplace reshaped by volatile forces — not least the animosity between the United States and China — India shows signs of emerging as a potentially significant place to manufacture products. Multinational brands that have for decades relied on Chinese factories are expanding to India as they seek to limit the vulnerabilities of concentrating production in any single country.

 

India presents a unique proposition as a country of 1.4 billion people, making it even larger than China. With abundant raw materials, from cotton to iron ore to chemicals, it holds the potential to develop its own supply chain. 

Yes, so the US will try to establish manufacturing in India, makes sense. China is changing its development model anyways to not being a cheap labor force for US goods but having their own brands, vertical supply chains and exporting them to the world and all of that at a more affordable price and partly even now better features. 

 

America can produce in India but that wont change the fact that China has more competitive products, supply chains, and talent pool. The production environment is probably a lot better in China than it is in India where many things have yet to be established. 

 

The best for the US would be to lure China into doing something they can use to isolate China from most countries and hope the competition evaporates so they can own the market again. This likely won't happen but I can see from public statements and media consensus that this is what they try to mentally prepare western societies for. "the china threat" is simply an economic threat that threatens to dethrone the richer Western standard of life and obviously the western governments will try to stop that from happening. Thats why voters wanna see trump and biden being "tough on china" because they simply are growing too fast, producing too fast and have the ability to disrupt so much. 

 

China has tremendous opportunity the next 10-20 years. They can actually challenge liberal democracies by increasing their wealth a lot more from internal scientific advancement and adaptations to the capitalistic system and rise to the center of the world again. Which is of course the plan of the CCP. I think its not unlikely this is going to happen but if you are the leader of a western liberal democracy which gets financed by wealthy western capital, your job is to try to stop China from achieving all that, destroying their influence with other countries and inflict as much damage as possible and getting away with it in the public eye. 

Edited June 26, 2024 by Luca

[Luke]

Once the way of life and quality of life in China is so vastly superior to the internally struggling Western societies many will want to move closer to China than to G7/US. All that matters is technological advancement, strict execution of infrastructure and scientific progress, and delicate balancing of capitalistic forces to achieve maximum growth and development. They could probably solve their Taiwan problem that way too, if China is so wealthy, luxurious, and developed compared to the rest of the world, you will have people that will push for closer ties no matter what. 

[Luke]

But there are certainly pessimistic scenarios too where China cant achieve what it wants either by external or internal forces, problems with execution government-wise due to lacking feedback mechanism and "yes-men" that Xi installed. Lots of unforeseeable problems arising. Geopolitical scrutiny against China etc.

 

The good news is that nothing of the bull case is priced in, rather the opposite. And the bull case isn't egregious in its assumptions either which I am happy with. 

Edited June 26, 2024 by Luca

[Luke]

 

Highly interesting no matter what your opinion on this war is. Also questions about North Korea, all with great subtitles.

 

Note: I can not guarantee correctness of subtitles

[formthirteen]

Machines will take over manufacturing at some point:

 

https://www.figure.ai

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/29/robot-startup-figure-valued-at-2point6-billion-by-bezos-amazon-nvidia.html

 

They will be operated from places like India and the Phillipines by English-speaking homo sapiens if support is needed, like Waymo:

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/06/waymo-one-is-now-open-to-everyone-in-san-francisco/

 

Welcome to the future, it's already here, just unevenly distributed.