[coldtea]

>He/you are hardly illustrating a clear example either.

My argument is: if we want to change society in a way that resembles how one thing was in another era, there's no law or necessity that dictates that we also adopt everything else from that era.

We can pick and match.

>You're just flinging poop, basically, with your "bad teaching" and "progress is a myth"

Not sure what the "bad teaching" refers to.

The "Flinging poop" part, I find rude.

With 'progress is a myth' I made a statement, and gave two supporting examples just below it.

>The bottom line is that trade with the developing world over the past half century has been a staggering engine of growth. So if you don't want "globalization" then you have to explain how you get China to grow at 9% year after year for like three decades (or whatever the numbers were) without that trade. You don't get to wave a magic wand and assume that part.

I don't want "China to grow at 9% year after year". I want them to have a stable economy and work on redistribution. Similar for everybody else.

I don't want ever growing pies and larger slices. I want better cut slices of the already existing pies. Growth "year after year" is not sustainable (not just not sustainable itself, not sustainable for the environment and society either).

Besides, the net result of that "growth" was to make a middle class in China by deflating the middle class elsewhere (including the US).

The rich get to produce stuff in China and increase their margins (so the "economy grows"), but their country's working class (that used to produce similar stuff at home) is dealt a heavy blow and the middle class is squeezed.

The end result is not some large pie / bigger harmony slices and other fictional unicorns, rather it's trillion dollar bailouts of Wall Street and Detroit, plus "99% percent" on one side, and the "Tea Party" and Trump on the other side.

[ajross]

> I don't want "China to grow at 9% year after year". I want them to have a stable economy and work on redistribution. Similar for everybody else.

No one who knows anything about the cultural revolution would make that statement. A China starting in the 1960's with a "stable economy" and "better redistribution" would, today, be a dirt poor backwater having survived famine after famine. Think North Korea, but with a billion people.

You're fantasizing about a world that doesn't/didn't exist. There's no way to get modern Chinese wealth without "globalization". And without that wealth you have a humanitarian disaster.

[coldtea]

>You're fantasizing about a world that doesn't/didn't exist. There's no way to get modern Chinese wealth without "globalization". And without that wealth you have a humanitarian disaster.

China existed for milennia without "modern Chinese wealth" -- and was the biggest economy on earth for many centuries before the European powers started their colonial plundering.

Economies can also grow slowly and organically -- as opposed to a mad rush to "year over year N% growth" consequences be damned -- and can also chose which areas NOT to grow, and not to pursue, when those areas might be harmful etc.

[ajross]

What on earth are you on about? It genuinely seems like you're arguing that the only difference between the literal famine of the cultural revolution and modern China is... I dunno, attitude or something.

Something had to build all that infrastructure: the factories, generators, plumbing, aqueducts, cell towers, refineries... If you have an alternative economics that can get all that without "economic growth", then you really need to start explaining it to people.

[coldtea]

>What on earth are you on about? It genuinely seems like you're arguing that the only difference between the literal famine of the cultural revolution and modern China is... I dunno, attitude or something.

Who said modern China is what's needed or that it's a sustainable model? I, for one, didn't.

You can avoid famine without having "modern china". They could avoid famine even in the "great famine" era -- as long as they didn't have the stupid bureaucratic policies that created its conditions (forced migrations, mismanagement, agricultural regulations, etc).