[tmule]

In America, politicians are controlled by billionaires. This comes at the cost of national interest, given that winner-takes-all systems are gini coefficient maximizers.

In China, politicians control billionaires. At least in theory, especially given how much the Chinese political establishment is attuned to the needs of the Chinese commoner, this does protect the national interest.

[bhawks]

China's parliament is a literal billionaires club.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/business/china-parliament...

There is no altruistic motivation to better the lot of the common person. The only motivation is to maintain control.

[baybal2]

> There is no altruistic motivation to better the lot of the common person. The only motivation is to maintain control.

I don't take it even as a control maintenance. They are now literally back to years when they were taking it as an insult for anybody to be more rich, and successful than a village party head.

It's 100% truth. Heard stories of people having their houses demolished for building them more fancy than the house of a party leader nearby, and that was not in the cultural revolution era, but barely 3 decades ago.

Bad old times are back.

[strogonoff]

> In China, politicians control billionaires.

The problem is when said politicians are a small faction of fallible people with unlimited power and no procedure of being peacefully replaced. Such a setup strongly hints at the fact that they really don’t want to give up control, which implies any policy is bound to protect their position first. They might act selflessly or benefit the nation at some particular point in time, but blindly counting on it being consistently so seems foolish.

[tmule]

“ They might act selflessly or benefit the nation at some particular point in time, but blindly counting on it being consistently so seems foolish.” I think you’re right. But Chinese politicians are yet strongly motivated by nationalistic impulses, which are long dead in the thuggish political establishment of the West where nationalistic impulses are long dead (the GOP does performative nationalism very well, but they’re always ready to jump into the next war that’ll kill tens of thousands of Americans).

[Rapzid]

In America politicians are influenced by actors and forces that affect their election prospects. This includes companies, billionaires, and yes even voters.

[yann2]

Has nothing to do with the needs of the Chinese ppl. Its just about survival.

Once you accumulate enough wealth and/or power unintended consequences just keep increasing. They never decrease. And the 6 inch chimp brain everyone has dooms it to blunder.

The East India Company did hand over ownership to the Queen after 200 years of raking it in. Why? And look at the state of the Queen today.

Xi and the Billionaires are trapped by their own hubris.

[nostromo]

This is such a naive take.

Xi Jinping is literally a billionaire.

[tmule]

Am seeing a lot of pushback against this take. There are two things to keep in mind: 1. On execution: The track record of the Chinese political establish in bringing hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty is arguably the greatest political achievement of the last four decades. Their track record here gives them legitimacy as a national-interest optimizing function (despite admittedly terrible human rights abuses for minorities). The contrast with, for example, the neocon-military-industrial complex that jumps from one failed international adventure to the next is astounding! 2. On planning: They’ve demonstrated a phenomenal understanding of key issues that the nation currently faces and expects to face, and has prioritized them appropriately — often using Western failures and failure modes as data points to inform their strategy. The contrast with the constant bickering in American politics is astounding. How can America succeed if there’s no general agreement even about what the problems are?

[calsy]

It's a great political achievement bringing people out of crushing poverty and starvation caused entirely by the last authoritarian in charge? 'Hey maybe we shouldn't turn all our farms into factories', its simplicity is what makes it so brilliant I guess. It's an achievement to starve millions to death then decide to give them something to eat and a job.

[h8hawk]

How massive censorship and state surveillance have anything to do with need of Chinese commoner?

[ithkuil]

To protect them, of course /s

[falomor]

Are they called "politicians" in a one party state?

[refurb]

This is an incredibly generous take on the situation.

In China the corruption of government officials is several orders of magnitude higher. We’re talking wholesale theft of govt assets in the billions of dollars.

Chinese leaders also have a much more tenuous hold on power. They aren’t smacking down Jack Ma because they are looking out for the Chinese commoner (though they might benefit), their top priority is looking out for themselves.

[oreally]

To put it this way is too much of a simplification. There is good and bad.

For now their priorities intersect with the chinese commoner, ie. Protecting themselves via serving the chinese commoner. Another bonus to this is the ability to make harder decisions now for the sake of the future.

The fact of the matter is that with this 'aligned interests' dictatorial style you can more done and plan for the future - so long as that future is aligned with your population.

I'd say the standoffish bipartisan politics of the US is far harder to get things done, but hey, as I'm sure some of you would say, it's better to have the freedom.

[refurb]

Authoritarian decision making is great until the authority starts making the wrong decisions.

The bipartisan politics of the the US is not a bug, it’s a feature. It was entirely intentional that power was split and broad consensus was required to get anything done.

[oreally]

Categorizing it as either a bug or a feature is thinking at extremes and is indicative of the influence of the media on your minds, leading to poor decision making. It's a feature with weaknesses.

As another example, the NRA preventing gun control laws in spite of school shootings. The path the US has chosen is both poison and boon. The trouble is who gets to suffer from the poison?

[bllguo]

nobody disputes if it was (broadly) by design, it's whether the design is outdated and needs modernization.

by the way, i actually really disdain founding fathers veneration, but two-party deadlock was infamously _not_ intentional. neither was our increasingly corporatocratic government.

[refurb]

i actually really disdain founding fathers veneration, but two-party deadlock was infamously _not_ intentional

It absolutely was.

Canada, where the majority party can pass whatever they want (their majority practically guarantees it), the unelected Senate almost always rubber stamps it and the head of state is one and the same as the ruling party, it's clear that the US design is intentional.

Nothing gets passed in the US unless: 1) House approves it, 2) Senate approves it, 3) President signs it. All three bodies are independently elected.

It was clearly intentional to be much more challenging to pass legislation in the US. What you call gridlock, I call the system operating as designed.

[haram_masala]

This is the first time I have ever heard the claim that the CCP's hold on power is anything but rock solid. Unless you mean that specific leaders within the party have a tenuous hold against their party rivals.

[refurb]

The later.

[native_samples]

People who don't compete in fair elections aren't politicians. They are dictators.

[reader_mode]

Vote with your feet ?

[euroderf]

When the USSR collapsed, the USA lost its primary ideological competitor, and proceeded to turn inequality into an unspoken national growth industry. Let's see if vigorous competition from those other commies can feed a USA course correction.

[dirtyid]

Pretty much. Deluded people who think Xi and politburo fears tech billionairs when actually dangerous rival factions and unreliable military brass have already been managed / purged. And TFW all of these supposedly desperate moves for survival just happens to meet needs of commoner or improve comprehensive national power. Generic whining about Xi being authoritairan overlooks possiblity of him also being a generally benevolent dictator. Complaints of Xi's CCP is generally not mutually exclusive with the fact that his actions are mostly benefitial to PRC interests.

[sgt101]

Hang on, what about all the people he's had executed? What about their interests? Shooting people doesn't seem benevolent to me.

[dirtyid]

>_generally_ benevolent

...

>PRC (national) interests

Governance priorities and development generally going right under Xi. Crack egg to make omelette etc. Incidentally, political executions also way down after his reforms, customary executions now "death with reprieve" sentences, where death is suspended. Way things are going, Xi's hagliography is going to be 10% bad and 90% good, especially if he can avoid war with US. Otherwise, hard to argue he isn't resolving or trying to resolves some of modern PRC's most entrenched problems across many domains.