this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Very good point and one that people often forget. It's literally impossible to build high speed rail without first becoming an authoritarian dictatorship.
TIL Germany, Belgium, Austria, France and Portugal are authoritarian dictatorships
They are, but that's not actually relevant to this discussion.
Don't forget Taiwan as well. They have HSR although to be fair it's also a very small country.
US is the authoritarian dictatorship here, and it can't build shit. Meanwhile, worker democracy in China is able to build infrastructure at scale. Don't take my word for it though, every western study admits this
I don't know, man. This sounds like some "the enemy is both strong and weak" BS to me. When they can't build a HSR in California they are an unplanned economy but when I point out the cost of China's flavour of government suddenly the US is a dictatorship?
I've got no issues acknowledging when China does some good things but come on. I was rightfully making fun of the implication of your meme here and you come back with doublespeak. There's really no need to pick a side and defend it at all costs, we can acknowledge the positive and negative things.
These ideas are not in nearly as much tension as you think. California is a bourgeois dictatorship (like all other capitalist nations), and the bourgeoisie require the government to forgo centrally planning the economy in order to maximize their exploitation of the people (and therefore profit margins).
I mean I linked you a whole bunch of western studies showing that people living in China see their country as being more democratic than people living in US see theirs. Furthermore, a study analyzing decades of US policy has found the following:
That certainly does sound like US is a dictatorship of capital to me where regular working class people have little say in the running of the system.
My argument is based on the empirical evidence available, meanwhile I have no idea what you base your position on.
I'm confused by this, because it looks like China is proving you wrong right now?
Now I'm confused, what do you mean? I never said they didn't have a great high speed rail network. I think they've done a great job and I've got no problem acknowledging that. I was just poking fun at the implication of the meme.
Well, China, a participatory democracy with a 95 percent approval rating according to a Harvard study, is in the meme building high speed rail, and you're claiming you have to be an authoritarian dictatorship to build high speed rail?
Oh right I see what you mean. If you pretend China is a democracy my point is automatically disproven, that is true.
Why would I pretend China is a democracy when it empirically is according to any useful measure?
High government approval
Bottom up representation
Policies benefit the masses
Wide range of public opinion represented in government
That all may be true, but have you considered the fact that they're savage mongoloids who need enlightened white people to come and bring democracy to them?