Australia's Hard Choice Between China and the US

When they develop a sufficiently bad conscience they will doubtless outrank the US in paying out marginal conscience-money. What on earth has that got to do with Christianity?

 

Is there absolutely zero special treatment in Britain from the time they retire?

 

Can't really help you on this. I'm far from being knowledgable about the subject other than knowing they get a very poor deal and historically always have. Others here probably have a better insight. I hope anyway.

 

Seems like an easy choice to me and if Australia is really struggling with it they have a deep societal problem.

 

i think Austrailia is plagued with clueless liberals in large quanities just like America is

 

Even larger I'm afraid

 

It would be sad if Australians chose the Marx-Lenin model for their country. Communism never ends well for the people.

 

China wants to control Austrailia economically for the advancement of china

But it will be mostly behind the scenes

If austrailia is like America its education system is brainwashing the child to believe socialism is the fairest system

So as china impoverishes western economies the next generations in those countries are ready for socialism

 

I always thought we could bring capitalism and democracy to the world. But it appears authoritarianism and communism are grooming us for the future.

In need to read "1984" and all of those books again to be immune to the lure of China.

 

Following on from your "obesity, obesity, obesity" in another thread:

Opinions, opinions, opinions....

 

I thought we were talking about State-Capitalist China. Has there been a revolution?

 

Capitalism and democracy are coming to the world, regardless of what the US does to bring them.

Capitalism is the only economic system that lets your country grow economically. Everyone has figured that out, including the Communists, starting with the Chinese. Even the Cubans are keen to 'go Chinese' if we give them a chance.

Democracy is not so easy. The slow evolution from orderly feudalism to democratic societies that we saw in Europe and Japan is going to much rougher elsewhere. (Hell, it wasn't so easy there.)

But it's happening, and capitalism is making it happen: the more a country grows economically, the more its population becomes modern, skilled, middle class, urban, educated, less and less tribal ... and the more that population feels itself the equal of its leaders.

Eventually this will result in either a more or less peaceful slide into some form of democracy, or a violent upheaval resulting in one.

So let China grow. Every son or daughter of a backward rural peasant who moves to the city and gets a job in a factory, is a step towards Chinese democracy. Their children will go to a good urban Chinese school and become a computer programmer or secretary, get on the internet, travel, and eventually not want to be ruled by old men who can't be voted out of office.

This will take decades, generations, but it will happen. It's happening right now in Iran and elsewhere.

In the meantime, the only thing that could really interrupt this process is a big war.

Avoid that, and our descendants a century or two from now won't be looking at each other over gun barrels but will be on the way to the stars together.

 

I think the goal of china’s dictatorship and the goal of enlightened chinese is the same regardless of political freedoms or lack thereof

They want to control and bring back to china as much of the worlds wealth as possible

 

What world are you in?. Capitalism has been the ONLY system for a very, very long time, either monopoly or State.. Capitalism has caused dreadful, murderous colonialism and two world wars, as you know, and is now working to burn humanity to death. For that, are we?

 

Yes in my opinion siding with a country that props up states like north Korea would be a bad move for Australia in the long run.

 

The difficulty is that America is still rich enough to look okay, but if it goes on electing TV loonies, is that a sensible course?

 

The people of Hong Kong aren't feeling so free and capitalist these days. There's been a slow and steady crackdown on rights since the British left in 1999.

 

China's neighbors are going to face some tricky choices as China displaces the US as the dominant regional, and then the dominant world, power.

Let's hope the Chinese emulate the Americans, in our kind and benevolent treatment of our neighboring countries over the last century or so.

 

BIgod, you can read. What has that to do with a choice between capitalisms?

 

Great sentiments, but the reality is that democracy is fading further and further away and capitalism is leading to greater and greater concentrations of wealth amongst an increasingly small number of people.

The US today is an oligarchy, not a democracy (HERE). The European Union is fundamentally run by bureaucrats as a cartel for business and bankers and is not really democratic in a meaningful sense. China, meanwhile, is a communist state.

Nor am I a big fan of the present form of capitalism we in the West adhere to... neoliberalism. It fundamentally redistributes wealth from the many to the few, hence the recent headline that 8 men have the combined wealth of half the world's population (HERE).

According to Prof Carroll Quigley, based on access he was given to the secret archives of the CFR, bankers and the elite in post WWII planned to turn the world back towards a feudalist system - not away from it:

Tragedy & Hope, p 324, 1966 by Professor Carroll Quigley

 

It will come down to money as it always does. As China increasingly takes over from the US as the world's economic power-house more nations will switch to them.

Australia and the UK and several leading European nations in 2015 accepted Beijing's offer to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. This against pressure and pleading from the US not to join, which was duly ignored. The writing's on the wall...

 

Why, yes, of course - Corporations were closing down their plants in America to re-open them in SE Asia not for more profits, but out of philantropism, to help those poor Chineses.

These bleeding heart corpos... Ha ha ha.

 

I think you confuse your own personal perception for reality. Yes, there have been examples of job shifting. For sure. But those were developed in direct support of US policy that not only produced it but also encouraged it. Ignoring that seems, well, insular. Decoupling the effect of the US policy for China and your willful characterization of the adoption seems personal and devoid of facts.

 

All societies have been heavily influenced by a relatively small group of powerful people. "Democracy" in some pure sense is possible only among a small group of equals. Whatever Europe or the US are -- call them whatever you like -- their political systems are infinitely preferable to those existing in Russia, China, Iran, Cuba ...

And there is a reason that the European/American system emerged: it's the natural way to run a society that is becoming modern: the rule of law, which benefits elites as well as ordinary people, and governmental power distributed among political parties that have to get a majority vote. Of course, these are norms, and norms are not always met.

I don't think your summary of what Quigley had to say about the CFR -- that they were planning to restore feudalism -- is an accurate description of his views. He's always been a favorite for conspiracy theorists, but he himself was not one. His phrase "in a feudalist fashion" is much more convincingly understand as behind-the-scenes paternalism, not a vision of a world ruled by a nobility lording it over illiterate serfs.

His Wikipedia entry gives a lot more detail about this interesting man.

 

"Get in bed with dogs get up with fleas"