this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I'm not living in USA but I think people got exactly what they voted for, didn't they?

Now the question of it being an educated vote and people being equipped to navigate modern media with modern disinformation techniques is another subject.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

Not really. The people get only two choices of candidates who are selected by campaign popularity. Those candidates have to raise the money for it by themselves, which means making truthful private campaign promises to their donors while making false promises to the public.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 days ago

the dictatorship of capital vs the dictatorship of the proletariat

[–] [email protected] 65 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

Just the fact that financial crimes over a certain amount are punishable by death in China (and people have actually been executed for them) says a lot. It's a law that literally applies only to the rich because a normal person would never even get to glimpse the amount of money required for execution to be on the table.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (16 children)

Nobody deserves the death penalty. It's just cruelty with no benefit for the society. Studies show, time after time, that it has little to no deterrent effect. Its only purposes are either narrow-minded vengeance or preventing a person from being freed once the current government fails.

That said, I'm all for confiscating all wealth from anyone worth over a billion dollars and placing them under arrest until they can effectively demonstrate they are no longer a parasite on the society.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 days ago (7 children)

The fact that rich people are routinely executed in China is one of the clearest indications that dictatorship of the proletariat has been achieved. And this is precisely why China terrifies the west so much.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Power and wealth control governments ... every government.

Once humanity figures out how to provide more equitable power and wealth to every person everywhere, then we might be able to evolve beyond jungle rules.

In the meantime, it doesn't matter what you want to call it ... communism, socialism, capitalism, liberalism, whatever ... as long as we allow unlimited wealth and power to flow to small groups of people, any system will always end up with the same results.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Inequality absolutely needs to be eliminated to have a truly equitable society. That said though, it's pretty clear that China does have a dictatorship of the proletariat in place. If it didn't then same things we see happening in capitalist societies would be happening there as well.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I don't support the CCP, but I do think about these things. How do you create an open system like a democracy that leverages some of the benefits of capitalism, while also insuring economic inequality is minimized and every citizens basic needs are met, without gradually seeing the rich gain influence in that system over time, corroding the protections that make it work? I think as long as the system is open, the rich will use their power to gradually gain advantage and then destroy the system itself. I think the only real shot at it would be for wealth to be seriously capped. Like, no one person can have more than 100% more wealth than the bottom 1%. Anything above that should be taxed away. Also, corporations are not people and corporations should not have shareholders that are not workers.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Honestly I’m not the biggest fan of everything in China but these are the types of problems the Chinese government seems to try to figure out a lot more than our governments do.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Strengths and weaknesses. Each country has some. Often the net makes them worse than other countries, but that doesn't mean they can't have better aspects

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Meh. Most countries round the world seem to suffer from the same problems to me. Sometimes the jack boot on your neck presses down more. Sometimes less.

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