[throwa34943way]

To some in the west, China is a land of opportunities, a booming economy with tech giants and a supply chain for the industrial world. To others it's a bloody dictatorship that assassinated thousands of people for the sole crime of speaking their mind in 1989.

To me it's the embodiment of the hypocrisy of the west when it comes to the defense human rights. Let's be frank, we didn't abolish slavery, we just outsourced it to make it more acceptable. It's also a proof that capitalism doesn't need democracy or free-speech to function.

[factsaresacred]

> Let's be frank, we didn't abolish slavery, we just outsourced it to make it more acceptable.

As Joan Robinson said, "the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all."

Being paid for work you do not have to do is not slavery. You see we built this thing called civilization whereby instead of starving when crops fail, dying at age 30 with dysentery and living in fear of being bludgeoned to death by a rival clan, we can exchange our labour for security, health and resources.

It's not perfect but if Capitalism ain't pleasing you then ask the person working that outsourced job what their grandparents thought of Communism, an ideology that crushed the very soul of China and brought misery, mass death and madness.

Or just ask them what work they'd be doing if Capitalism wasn't keeping them enslaved in jobs.

[vacri]

There are more political ideologies out there than just capitalism and communism. It seems to be a very American thing to argue as if there are only ever two possible alternatives.

[literallycancer]

If your only options are "work here" and "die of starvation", then I'm not sure you can really call it a decision at all. Frequently the people doing the work can not, in fact, make any decisions. The guy who owns the factory, on the other hand, will make sure his thugs beat up anyone who brings up fire safety or asks for better working conditions. If that's not slavery, then what is?

[codefined]

As a point, what are your thoughts of a Meritocracy as a paradigm to follow? Nationalise everything, pay everyone an equal amount, to begin with, but based on their "merits" boost their pay. Seems to have all the advantages of capitalism, without the perceived negatives of communism equally a dictatorship or "fat cats", which could be managed by the government.

[factsaresacred]

It's easier to model countries with sane wealth distribution - Sweden, Germany etc. Allow everyone to get rich as they wish, but tax them.

In return you get to live in a society with high trust, little crime and good social services.

This requires trust and ethics and the will to enforce it politically (and maybe a small homogeneous population).

[Nition]

Feels like one of those nice ideas that would never work well in the real world. Any defined measuring system would be gamed (Goodhart's law), and any undefined measuring system would be abused by nepotism/cronyism ("my brother adds tons of value").

[wyager]

Why would you ever trust the government to decide how meritocratous people were? "Why yes, commissar, the merit department thinks you did very well and deserve a 3000% bonus this year. Please remember this when looking at my nephew's resume, as he's applying to your division. Ah, sorry comrade Bob, you don't get any bonus this year. (That's what you get for cutting me off in traffic last Monday!)"

The incentives in capitalism actually work out. When you can only spend your own money, and you have the freedom to choose how to spend it, markets are stochastically optimal for a huge range of allocation problems. Any sort of centralized system that tries to have only "the advantages of capitalism" usually fails because it doesn't make any sense game-theoretically or from an optimization perspective.

[reitanqild]

Who measures the merits?

I'd say very soon you'd see fat cats sitting and deciding that on average their friends do better than the rest and here we are again.

[dTal]

I'm sure the native Americans would disagree with Joan Robinson.

The fact is there is no opt-out, you do have to participate in the capitalist system to survive, and even if you somehow manage to live in the wilderness, capitalism will eventually come and beat down your door to tell you that the land you're camping on now belongs to someone else, and would you kindly move along? Capitalism claims all resources, then sells them back to you in exchange for your soul. It was this realization that eventually motivated the Unabomber.

[sametmax]

You don't have a generalized cancer, you just have a small tumor. All is good.

[peteretep]

Equation of work conditions in China with slavery is flatly idiotic.

[InclinedPlane]

He's equating slave labor in China with slavery, which is ... not? idiotic, I imagine. At the outbreak of the US Civil War there were about 4 million slaves living in America. Today there are, according to international estimates, about 3.4 million slaves living and working in China[1].

To claim that it is a non-existent problem or that it isn't severe or that it doesn't merit outrage or to imagine that it is somehow on a different level to the chattel slavery of 19th century America is to turn a blind eye to the truth or to try to finely grade suffering in a way that is dehumanizing.

[1] https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/country/china/

[dis-sys]

you do realize that your suggested site clearly states that the modern slavery situation in China is almost the same as Japan/Italy and better than South Korea?

How about you go back to your suggest site and read it carefully?

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/index/#

[remline]

I've seen an excellent documentary on South Korea's rural slavery problem.. Can you point me to a Chinese one?

[pizza]

People nowadays often don't know that the abolitionist movement in the states saw chattel slavery and wage slavery as not particularly different and wanted to abolish both.

[js8]

I am not sure what your point is. Are you telling me, if I have no interest in Chinese industry, that empathizing (which I do, as a human being) with Liu Xiaobo is a hypocrisy?

I think you're doing an aggregation error of sorts. The fact that different people in the West have different opinions about China (and some of them are perhaps even hypocritical) doesn't make every westerner's opinion a hypocritical one.

[philippnagel]

Capitalism needs government guaranteed private property. Was there ever the need for anything else?

[blazespin]

Capitalism is changing China and the world for the better. Wealth is leading to more educated Chinese people who through enlightenment will support better government. If Russia could create the same culture of wealth generation rather than relying on military and natural resources, they’d be improving as well.

Is it the best system? Hardly, but I don’t think withdrawing from globalism is going to help matters. The more we find ways to work together the better.

[dilemma]

>To me it's the embodiment of the hypocrisy of the west when it comes to the defense human rights.

The Iraq War, The American War on Vietnam, daily drone bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan by a nobel peace prize winner would be more like it.

[sametmax]

Exactly. Too many people in our countries are very pushy about their value system but see no problem communicating about it through orwelian services using hardawre built by children.

I mean, I'm veggie but I wouldn't dare considering eat lovers bad persons given what else I consume.

That doesn't mean we should feel guilty. It's a hard problem. But that's certainly means we should not feel entitled. And boy do we love to be.