[bufordsharkley]

Some things are not cut-and-dry. Some are. Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society.

I'm curious how China currently views Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People"[0], one of which is Democracy. Does his philosophy attract any attention today?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People

[yorwba]

China takes Democracy (民主) very seriously. You'll see it on propaganda banners everywhere. You see, the leadership is democratically appointed by the will of the people. The 100% majority of the CCP is completely justified by its benevolent rule.

/s

There is no need to abandon old principles when you can just use doublethink to make them mean whatever you want them to mean.

[marcosdumay]

> Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society.

If taxation by a non-representative government isn't as much common sense as abolitionism, it's only because of a huge amount of propaganda. It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery.

[lostlogin]

>It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery.

Yes it is.

[marcosdumay]

How so?

What is that large difference? Authoritarian states deal with their people basically as if they were their property. They dispose of their lives at will, they dictate what they think and what they work on, they take their labor at will.

[lostlogin]

Sorry, I misunderstood your original comment as referring to the the US. However I don’t think that the system in China is like what happened with slavery (it is China you refer to?). People aren’t kidnapped, chained and transported in conditions that kill large numbers. They aren’t traded in degrading markets and are not routinely beaten to death or mutilated by masters. They aren’t branded. As bad as conditions currently are it doesn’t seem like slavery to me.

[marcosdumay]

I wasn't talking specifically about China, or specifically about America colonialism style slavery. But I would bet that there are plenty of people kidnaped and forcefully transported around the country on China for labor, that's what that kind of government normally does.

They may not be traded on degrading markets, but that just make people valueless from the point of view of a dictatorship. And I do actually expect people are being mutilated by the Chinese government all the time, we just probably don't hear about it. Again, that what this kind of government normally does.