On China and the US: speak no evil
There’s so much news lately that I haven’t given enough attention to some of the big stories, such as all the recent coverage of the NBA and China.
It’s not that I care much about the NBA; I don’t. I used to watch basketball, but haven’t in decades. The importance of the story rests on what it signifies, looking at the larger picture.
So to get up to speed on that, I recommend this article by Jim Geraghty [emphasis mine]:
Back in May, I went back to the arguments American policymakers had with themselves in the 1990s as they contemplated extending “most-favored-nation” status to China, and then “permanent normal trade relations.” Something weird happened when chief executives of American companies discussed China back then. They kept describing a market of a billion new customers, as if the average Chinese citizen was awash in disposable income. They pictured a China full of people eating American soybeans, drinking Coke, wearing blue jeans made with American cotton, celebrating with American bourbon and riding on Boeing airplanes.
America’s policymakers, by and large, agreed…
Nothing could seem to dissuade America’s business leaders when it came to their vision of an endlessly mutually profitable relationship with the regime. We kept being told how absolutely ruthless and relentless the Chinese efforts at corporate espionage were, and how brazenly and defiantly they stole patents, blueprints, and intellectual property. I don’t know about you, but when somebody steals from me, I don’t want to keep doing business with them. Yet America’s business leaders never seemed to experience anything that made them conclude the regime is so bad that it’s not worth doing business with them…
…[A]s companies became more economically entangled with China, they stopped having any interest in uttering a critical word about China. You stopped hearing about Tibet, or the Falun Gong. As the Chinese government started assembling a surveillance network that would make George Orwell gasp, American companies were happy to supply the tech. The employees and leaders of Google didn’t renew a deal with the U.S. Pentagon, contending the Pentagon’s use of their artificial intelligence tech violated their moral principles. But the company didn’t see working with the Chinese military as similarly problematic…
…[T]he business world’s rosy view of China started manifesting itself in strange new ways…
Criticism of the Chinese government is forbidden — I don’t mean in China, I mean de facto in the United States for anyone who is part of any institution that has any investment in China. The sports league that prides itself on freedom of expression and social relevance — one so politically correct that it banned the word “owner” because the term allegedly evokes slavery — has no one willing to say Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey is right and that people around the world should, as he tweeted, “fight for Freedom” and “stand with Hong Kong.” As of this writing, not a single player, not a single coach, not a single owner has spoken out in support of Morey.
Money talks – that is, it buys silence.
I have noted with much interest that most of the comments at SFGate (in a leftwing city supportive of its successful team) concerning the moral cowardice of Steve Kerr are negative towards the local coach. Kerr, like the equally annoying Popovich, is a perfect example of virtue-signaling “woke capitalism” comfortable with being part of the domestic Resistance (since there is no price to be paid) but otherwise weak, craven, spineless, and hostile to facts and evidence.
Geraghty does not exactly connect up the first part of that excerpt with its ending. The NBA and its players collect revenue from ticket sales, TV contracts, and the sports shoe and apparel companies.
The TV contracts are, I think, the obvious cash cow at risk from Chinese retaliation, but Jason Whitlock, of Fox Sports-1, suggests that the shoe/apparel cos. are really pulling the strings behind the scenes. The potential lost income in China is large.
Vlad was right. They will sell communists the rope.
Then there is this about Hollywood.
Reminds me of this book — IBM and the Holocaust: “…with the help of more than a hundred researchers working in archives in the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, and Israel, [the author] has documented a sordid relationship between this great American company and the Third Reich, one that extended into the war years.”
I recall back in the day, a very popular neo-con / Libertarian argument went something like this: Markets demand open info to be efficient, so the arrival of a market-based system in Communist China will inevitably lead to free speech, and ultimately to liberal democracy.
I think this was Francis Fukuyama’s argument…who studied under Allan Bloom.
Labor and environmental arbitrage to sustain the illusion of liberal fiscal and “green” policies.
“. . . will inevitably lead to free speech, and ultimately to liberal democracy.”
“Inevitably” has a mighty vague, mighty long timeframe to it, don’cha think? It might be an error to count against it quite yet.
Has the history of the CCP ended already? Or is there somewhat more to the story yet to come?
Why is the CCP cracking down on Hong Kong now when by the terms of the agreement they can take over in 20 years, no muss, no fuss?
Could it be that Hong Kong now fills the role of the chicken in the proverb “Kill the chicken: let the monkey watch”?
We might ask “What’s the hurry, what’s the worry, CCP?”
We might ask “What do they know that we aren’t seeing?”
Are the peasants in the mainland beginning to get untoward ideas, like ideas of freedom? How can that be, if so? I mean, shit, it’s a commie paradise, China.
China has also been working to influence the content of US-made films…there’s an interesting precedent, the German consul in LA in the 1930s had Hollywood-film influencing as one of his major tasks.
Because of its larger and faster-growing economy, I believe the threat of Chinese influence exceeds considerably the threat of Russian influence. See my post So, Really Want to Talk About Foreign Intervention?
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60791.html
““Inevitably” has a mighty vague, mighty long timeframe to it, don’cha think? It might be an error to count against it quite yet.”
No, when a policy is based on a specific theory and/or promise and then utterly fails to live up to that theory and/or promise after DECADES, it is entirely reasonable to question that policy and entirely unreasonable to keep hoping it produces the desired result.
How is that post-Communist paradise of capitalism Russia working out? With all those brilliant Western economic advisers who instructed them after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians must all be so happy and content they’re whistling Zip-a-dee-doo-dah out their asses 24/7.
Mike
Manju:
Fukuyama has changed philosophies many times, and studied under many people. I was never a fan.
I don’t think I argue for a “policy” there, Mike, at least not as such. I’m certainly not arguing that the “policy” cannot change.
The point was that the current circumstances may be an indication that the predicted changes are already underway, although we don’t have a full picture. Not to say that continued trade with Communist China has to continue on the previous basis. But that the previous basis hasn’t yet played out. We don’t know what’s to come.
Or otherwise, so what is it then, Mike? That the only true inevitability is slavery for these people? There is never to be a way out; not for them, hence, not for us either insofar as we’re going to live in the world with them in conflict or in peace?
What has hope to do with it, by the way? No one has to hope anything at all. The question, it seems to me, is whether human beings have a nature or not. And if so, what is that, how does that nature to be fit with human governance? Or in the terms we held under the Declaration, is natural right something, or nothing?
I worked in the Tabletop gaming industry for years. I have an old story about a British Tabletop gaming company where they opened a factory in China to make their miniatures. Soon they find cheap lower quality knockoffs of their mini’s being sold in Ali Baba and other channels.
They find who it is and they start legal proceedings on the company making the knockoffs. Fast forward a few weeks and they soon find that all their container shipments out of China suddenly halted due to health inspections. After 6 months of no shipment leaving China they surrender and tell their lawyers to stop, and lo and behold you can guess what happened with the inspections.
Doing business in China is tough and you can find honest dealers if you look hard enough. I know that personally but it sure is a chore to build that relationship.
“The point was that the current circumstances may be an indication that the predicted changes are already underway”
If I predict a meteor is going to hit the Earth tomorrow and it finally happens 1,000 years later…does that mean I was right? The last 50 years, and especially the last 30 years, of Western policy toward China was based on the idea that it would produce a certain result. It has not only failed to produce that result it has, as of this moment, almost produced THE EXACT OPPOSITE.
Now, maybe the magic Democracy Fairy will wave her little wand and everything in China will suddenly be different. Failing that, how much longer do we (and the people of China) have to wait before we can admit that things aren’t going the way we thought they would? 10 years? 50? 1,000? Would THEN be the right time to change our approach to China?
Mike
“change”
Once again (did you bother to read before engaging your sputterer?) the question for me wasn’t addressed to current policy change, which is fine as far as I can see. As far as I can see, better than what had been in place. But never mind as you’re not interested in the rest of it.
I think the issue with the NBA is about dollars and business deals. Their attitude is to not bring politics into the discussion. They have agreed to play basketball in China and so they sort of agree to no politics. The attitude is that the regular NBA fan in China shouldn’t have to be put in the middle of this but they would be if the NBA took a stance against the government it has an agreement with. Should they just terminate the contract? Maybe.
Curious what people here think of Trump when he tweets:
“Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China!”
That’s a pretty colorful tweet that can’t be ignored. Some on the right were critical of it. Others think it’s a bargaining tactic – but congratulating a communist dictatorship should raise some eyebrows.
Trump too has business deals with China [as does Biden & son]. Maybe Trump needs to consider this if the NBA is supposed to? I haven’t seen if he has weighed in on the NBA deal yet.
If you watch Creighton basketball on FS1, you’ll become a fan again. You’ll be driving to games at St. John’s and U Conn.
I’ve never seen this before. Allan Bloom’s response to Fukuyama.
China seeks hegemony over Asia, the resources of Africa, and that is just a start of their long term plans. They are our enemies, pure and simple. They are duplicitous and should never to trusted at face value because they have at least 2 faces. The face they show, and their secret face. All is deceit, intrigue and neferious secret intentions. They steal propriety info. The cheat whenever they see the opportunity.
A little different from the NBA, but this happened almost immediately after. Blizzard Entertainment, a US company, suspended a gamer from Hong Kong for one year and made him forfeit his prize money (I didn’t know there was money in gaming) after at the end of a livestream he expressed his support for Hong Kong. This has stirred a backlash also. Mark Kern, a game designer who was a team lead for the on-line role playing game World of Warcraft (which is run by Blizzard Entertainment) issued a series of very moving tweets.
https://twitter.com/grummz/status/1181736075775004672
“But never mind as you’re not interested in the rest of it.”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to be interested in because I have no idea what point you think you’re making. What? That the arc of history bends toward justice?
History bends the way we bend it. If you ever want to scare the crap out of yourself, go back and read WWII history and count up how many times an event having a different but entirely plausible outcome could have changed the course of the war.
Mike
“I have no idea what point you think you’re making.”
So, sussed it out?
Yes, you testify. Ok then. Very good.
The arguments of the businessmen are eerily familiar – they sound like the arguments of late 19th / early 20th century businessmen anxious to break into the huge potential untapped Chinese market – think of almost 500 million people who need shoes, the slogan went….
“The arc of history bends the way we bend it”?
Too much imbibing psychotropics. There is no “arc of history” to be bend one or myriads of ways. When you believe in BS you don’t understand you make others suffer with your BS. Yes, this is harsh, so is history. If people like you get to hold way, all is lost. But only temporarily in the short term. There is no “arc of history” simply because there is nothing new under the sun.
Sheeeeeesh! Grow up.
with the help of more than a hundred researchers working in archives in the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, and Israel, [the author] has documented a sordid relationship between this great American company and the Third Reich, one that extended into the war years.”
yup..
i noticed that they made the time clocks for the camps..
this was before they ever did computing… punch clocks..
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_time_clock.jpg
and
IBM was, at the request of the government, the subcontractor for the Japanese internment camps’ punched card project.
‘IBM’ Review: Building Big Blue
IBM was originally a holding company cobbled together to please investors. Then Thomas Watson gave the firm a purpose and a sales-driven culture.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-review-building-big-blue-11556663774
As explained in a new history of the firm by former IBM executive James Cortada, the company’s beginnings trace to the financial ambitions of New York businessman Charles Flint. He had a talent for cobbling together companies to reap rewards through public stock offerings, and in 1911 he stitched several firms into a holding corporation called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, or C-T-R.
lots of companies did.. and lots that did still exist
Krups…
Volkswagon (designed by you know who)…
IBM…
Coca-Cola!! Fanta was there..
Hugo Boss (sponsoring member of the SS.. making uniforms)
The Associated Press (fired its jewish workers rather than leave, eventually came under full control of the SS)
Kodak
Bayer a part of IG Farben (made gas).. Fritz ter Meer, who directed operations at the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz, became the president of Bayer after the war.
lots of interesting stuff…
i could sit all day typing
Check National Association of Scholars’ report on Confucius Institutes on American campuses. The Institutes are an arm of China government, spreading propaganda about how benign life in China is.
It is not just globalized US businesses that are in bed (see Tim Cook!) with Chinese totalitarianism, for the moolah. It is also our domestic academia.
Our future is grim.
China will soon be the sole economic superpower, fueled by American purchases over the past 30 years. It doesn’t take long to crater a great republic. And once China has that super-position, it will never relinquish it.
Our mega-nukes will not make any difference in the coming equation. Just like the USSR’s and then Russia’s did not and do not now prove a useful asset to Russia.
Too much imbibing psychotropics.
parker: Hey, you talkin’ to me? 🙂 Unless you know something about MBunge I don’t, I thought I had the psychotropic imbiber spot in neo’s shindig all locked up…
In any event you’ve heard me say it before. I see the arc of history as a much smaller case of the arc of evolution which looks, on this planet anyway, clearly onward and upward, toward increasing complexity, intelligence and, I would say, freedom.
I’ll admit my simple, child-like faith in Whig history has been battered since 9-11. But nonetheless. We’ve seen Nazism and Soviet communism go down. We’ve seen Islamofascism stymied. It looks like the EU is in trouble. And I think the ChiComs are in more trouble than they let on. If the PRC implodes in the next twenty years, I won’t be surprised.
Mordor may win battles, but not the war.
Doing business in China is tough and you can find honest dealers if you look hard enough. I know that personally but it sure is a chore to build that relationship.
chang.. you forgot to mention the government cells.
and the law that makes all citizens spies of sorts
as many as 75% have cells
and in Xi home they wanted 95%
hard to find information as google buries it under cell phone
he National Intelligence Law gives authorities sweeping powers to monitor and investigate foreign and domestic individuals and institutions. It allows Chinese intelligence agencies to search premises, seize property, and mobilize individuals or organizations to carry out espionage. It also gives intelligence agencies legal ground to carry out their work both in and outside China.
and
The Intelligence Law, by contrast, repeatedly obliges individuals, organizations, and institutions to assist Public Security and State Security officials in carrying out a wide array of “intelligence” work. Article Seven stipulates that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.” Article 14, in turn, grants intelligence agencies authority to insist on this support: “state intelligence work organs, when legally carrying forth intelligence work, may demand that concerned organs, organizations, or citizens provide needed support, assistance, and cooperation.”
lots of interesting stuff
but i got tired of having it cut
so i read it.. know it… but share little now
kind of interesting to see how so much is missing from the discussion
Here’s a favorite of mine, the conclusion of William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize speech:
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1949/faulkner/speech/
huxley —
I generally agree with you but I’m not close to anything like the optimism you display. And Faulkner, in that circumstance, said what he knew people wanted to hear.
Profiles in cowardice.
You know what- I don’t want to hear a word from any NBA official about any political issue any longer. If I want their opinion, I know to pay for it.
I generally agree with you but I’m not close to anything like the optimism you display.
miklos000rosza: S’all right! Might be an acid flashback….
Is that true what you say about Faulkner? He was a complicated man. And I would not come away from his work with that summation.
The last Faulkner I read was “Light in August,” which scarred me — not for life or anything romantic — but it was an ordeal and not one I would repeat.
Some years later I noticed Oprah had made LIA a Book-of-the-something for her viewers. I like to imagine how an Oprah fan handled the ending, assuming she got that far.
ESPN (Disney) is reportedly using mainland propaganda maps to represent China in its coverage of the NBA story. You know the Blizzard story about firing a gamer for supporting Hong Kong. You also know about Google’s canoodling with Beijing.
This makes sense economically. The entertainment industry has been a big winner from this version of globalization. So has the software industry. There are extraordinarily high fixed costs to produce the product (a film, a game, a basketball league, a search engine), but the marginal costs of delivering it to one more customer are close to zero. Incremental revenue is effectively all profit. Therefore, the incremental profit offered by the international markets, especially China, go a long way to determining whether there will be a profit windfall. Some simple math to illustrate: a movie that costs $500 million to produce and distribute makes zero profit at $500 million in revenue but $300 million at $800 million in revenue.
The entertainment and software industries will be the last (or next to last perhaps) to let human rights get in the way of making a buck. For the same reason, they will be the first to sign up for every multicultural and de-colonial storyline.
It’s not a contradiction. It is the same strategy.
So why does Hollywood care so little about losing money when it wants to offend its domestic political opponents. Maybe it over weights what happens in the blue enclaves (eg NY, SF, LA), because that is where excess profits pile up. Or maybe it is just a cost of doing business—protection offered to the Blue political machine, which is the group with the power and incentive to expropriate them. You make propaganda for them, and they leave you alone.
So why does Hollywood care so little about losing money when it wants to offend its domestic political opponents. Maybe it over weights what happens in the blue enclaves (eg NY, SF, LA), because that is where excess profits pile up. Or maybe it is just a cost of doing business—protection offered to the Blue political machine, which is the group with the power and incentive to expropriate them. You make propaganda for them, and they leave you alone.
Oblio: Victor D. Hanson has often offered his theory that the Hollywood (and tech) elite deep down do feel guilty for their massive wealth, or at least want a fig leaf to sorta cover it all.
Hence, their progressive gestures. They care! They help! They are not the Man, man!
They will lose (a little) money offending the stupid flyover deplorables for the cause. But they will acquire prestige among their Ivy League peers at business meetings and make up for it. It’s the Masonic handshake from a century ago.
That may be turning around — get woke, go broke — but I’ll bet it’s mostly been good business judgment until now.
huxley, there is much in what you say. The personal desire to let the envy of the mob fall somewhere else is a real motivator, as is the fear of being cast out of the charmed circle. Blacklisting and shunning are real. Being a vocal dissident is a threat to the group and will get you cut off. It all goes into the sociology of those industries.
I was looking at only the transactional economics to show the incentives that lead to this behavior whether or not you are a true believer. (And being a believer—or being good at pretending to be a believer—doesn’t hurt.)
Underneath it all is a consistent strategy of appeasement.
Appeasement is a dominant strategy for those who are rich and fear conflict.
I look at the Harvard affirmative action policy in the same light. Harvard is not and has never been a meritocracy. Harvard lets in people who will help Harvard in some way. If Harvard were to exclude significant parts of the Blue coalition, it would lose “legitimacy” and become a political target. By having spots they give to politicians’ children and representative Blue coalition clients, they avoid political repercussions and tighten their integration into urban institutional leadership. Of course it sounds more plausible if you can convince yourself that there is an academic justification.
Some on the right were critical of it. Others think it’s a bargaining tactic – but congratulating a communist dictatorship should raise some eyebrows.
Trump too has business deals with China [as does Biden & son]. Maybe Trump needs to consider this if the NBA is supposed to? I haven’t seen if he has weighed in on the NBA deal yet.
Interesting. I guess that’s why Trump has not made any attempt to impose tariffs or alter the trade imbalance.
You were kidding, right ?
The question I keep coming back to is this: What alternative policy would help?
I tried to imagine a suitably draconian policy on our part, and came up with the following admittedly hilarious policy:
The Screw China Plan
U.S. businesses are charged a percentage tax on revenues derived from sales of goods and services to/in China which is proportionate to the percentage of the company’s overall revenue that accounts for sales in China. If you do 75% of your business in China, you pay 75% tax.
We sweeten it a little bit on the other side, too: The tax you pay on your Chinese sales goes into limbo for 12 months, after which a part is paid back to you, and the remainder goes to the government. The part which is paid back to you is a percentage of what you paid. The percentage is identical to the percentage of your business you’re doing OUTSIDE China ten months after you paid the tax to begin with.
So: If in January 2020 you’re doing $1 million of revenue from all sources;
and 75% of that is from business in/to China, and 25% is from all other sources;
then your initial tax will be 75% of the $750,000 revenue from your Chinese business, which is $562,500.
Now, you’ll be getting some of that back, after a year. Specifically, if you don’t change the percentage of business you do in China (75%) then you’ll get back a percentage that matches your non-Chinese business (25%). You’ll get back $140,625. So you’ll have actually only paid $421,875 in taxes (not counting lost interest).
But, if you manage to chop your business in China to 40% of your overall business by October 2020 (so that your non-China business is 60%), then, in January 2021, you’ll get back 60% of what you paid in January 2020: You get back $337,500. In the end you only paid $225,000 (not counting lost interest) because you responded to the strong incentive to Get Out Of China.
*cough*
Of course all that’s fantasy.
But, speaking systemically, would it even work?
Wouldn’t it just disadvantage U.S. businesses and create huge market-share opportunities for every other country’s businesses?
I guess we could try to get other countries to sign on for a “punish China” alliance. There’s perhaps a 10% chance we could get some European countries to agree. There’s a 0% chance they’d actually enforce it after agreeing to it. (Witness how we pulled out of the Paris accords and reduced our CO2, whereas every country that stayed in increased theirs. There’s saying a thing, and then there’s doing it.)
Moreover, how would we enforce compliance inside the U.S.? What accounting tricks and non-Chinese “middleman” countries would be used to circumvent the policy? Dollars are fungible and restricted trade is like water: It leaks through every crack in your system, and the cracks are hard to find and expensive to plug up.
So, while I like the thought of my lovely elegant little Screw China plan, I don’t see it working.
I think the more plausible plan is to pass a law mandating that every text-to-speech product sold/used in the United States pronounce the name of President Xi as “Winnie the Pooh.” Much easier to implement, and nearly as effective.
“arc of evolution which looks, on this planet anyway, clearly onward and upward, toward increasing complexity, intelligence and, I would say, freedom.”
Uh, have you seen the news that hundreds of thousands of people in California are having their power cut off because the state literally can’t think of a better way to control wildfires? Onward and upward? And China is pretty clearly a demonstration of how increasing complexity can be antithetical to freedom.
It’s amazing to me that people don’t understand there are only two reasons ANYTHING happens in the world. One is natural reality we can’t control, like what’s going to happen when the Peak Oil people are finally right, and the other is what we do.
America is always having arguments over what kind of country we want to be. If the other side had won some of those arguments, the United States would be a very different place to live. We’re having one of those arguments RIGHT NOW under the guise of Donald Trump and who wins this argument will affect what sort of nation we are going forward.
Mike
“What alternative policy would help?”
The obvious first step in formulating an alternative China policy would be to take power away from those responsible for the failed policy of the last 50 years. Then you give the power to someone else and see what they come up with.
But you’ve got to start with the first step: When you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING.
Mike
Mike K
Not kidding. If China is so bad that the NBA should not do business with them then why should the US continue to do business with them at all? We’re either in or we’re out. And since it is quite obvious we will never not have business dealings and trade with them then why be selective with whom we criticize for kowtowing? At the end of the day China will get what they want from the NBA and from Trump and the USA. This whole issue comes down to who can talk tough. Talk is cheap.
That said, I hope Trump can get the best trade deal available. But don’t expect China to give us all we want or suddenly become a shining humanitarian nation that can justify all the business we do with them.
huxley said, “the arc of evolution which looks, on this planet anyway, clearly onward and upward, toward increasing complexity, intelligence and, I would say, freedom.”
Though I respect and usually totally agree with him, hux is quite wrong in his present optimism. Intelligence in no way associates with increased freedom. What is worse is that “increasing complexity” cannot and will not increase freedom. Just look at the US megalopolises: all run by Democrats with less democracy and more corruption.
Uh, have you seen the news that hundreds of thousands of people in California are having their power cut off because the state literally can’t think of a better way to control wildfires?
MBunge: What a silly question, even aside from leading with “Uh.”
So, as long as there are any instances of problems or regression in the world, progress has been indisputably refuted.
I am speaking generally of progress — not that there is never any backsliding or difficulty.
Right now, for all the trouble we see or obsess upon, people are living longer, better, more freely and with reduced violence than at any other time in history. I call that progress.
See Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels” for documentation.
Though I respect and usually totally agree with him, hux is quite wrong in his present optimism. Intelligence in no way associates with increased freedom. What is worse is that “increasing complexity” cannot and will not increase freedom. Just look at the US megalopolises: all run by Democrats with less democracy and more corruption.
Cicero: I am taking a longer view, actually going back to the beginning of life, if not the Big Bang itself, and that is what I see. However, for the sake of this discussion let us stick with the last ten thousand years of home sapiens. It sure looks like increasing complexity, intelligence and freedom to me. In fact it looks close to miraculous to me.
Again, I’m not talking about gliding effortlessly from one state of perfection to the next higher perfection without problems. It’s a gritty, messy, even frightening business, to be sure, much like capitalism. In fact I see capitalism succeeding because it encompasses this dynamicism.
The progress I see is like the stock market. Sure, at any moment, it’s usually a jittery line and it’s hard to see improvement. There are also terrifying times when the bottom drops out and it looks like the end, but you step back and see … progress.
I’m morbidly fascinated by the VAST Testicular Concavities of some Pro Sports members & owners. Shameless.
S’pose any of these cowards have any awareness of the massive Communist Chinese Gulag known as the LaoGai? Millions are enslaved there. ‘Nuff said.
For the same reason, no one calls them out for pumping out more carbon emissions than the US and Europe combined. If man-made global warming was real, Swedish children should be scolding China (and India) rather than the Western world, right?
Oblio on October 10, 2019 at 9:39 am said:
…
Appeasement is a dominant strategy for those who are rich and fear conflict.
* * *
China is not the only client being appeased by Hollywood.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/09/24/planned-parenthood-advised-hollywood-over-150-movies-shows-since-2014-director-says/
DS based its story on a WaPo article which it rightly calls a “hagiography” of the primary PP advisor to Leftywood, but it might be worth reading to see the length and breadth and depth of the moral rot in American popular culture.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/09/23/feature/planned-parenthoods-woman-in-hollywood/
Other avenues of appeasement for those who are rich and fear exposure (literally) include the airwave infotainment business.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/10/the-impact-of-ronan-farrows-new-me-too-allegations-towards-nbc/
* * *
EDIT seems to have come back from vacation while I was out on my autumn hiatus.
Rod Dreher is writing about China’s horrifying surveillance state over at The American Conservative:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/china-the-techno-totalitarian-leviathan/
“but you step back and see … progress.”
And how much “progress” was there between the beginning of human history and 1000 AD? 1900 AD?
I’m sure your theories of “progress” would be very interesting to the Incans, the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Muslim world which was once virtually equal to or superior to Christendom and is now…well, just take a close look.
But even if you want to cling to a childish faith in “progress,” it still matters how it happens. There is no Progress Fairy. If things get better it is because human being made them better, usually by defeating other human beings who wanted to make thing worse.
Hell, just look at right now. There is a global movement going on that wants to seize control of civilization and daily existence and REDUCE human freedom, opportunty, and prosperity in the name of “saving the planet.”
Let’s dumb it down. Is this the best possible world you can imagine? Is it impossible to conceive of anything better? Of course not. Why aren’t the people of China or sub-Saharan Africa as rich and free as citizens of the United States?
Or try this: How different would the world be if Hillary had won in 2016? That’s just one election and yet only three years later it would have led to a measurably, though not radically, different world.
Mike
Uncle Tom Hobbes, [Lvthn. Part I. Of Man, Chapter 11. Of the Difference of Manners]
(Thus the modern political thinker making his progress away from the ignorance of the ancients.)
sdferr: Hobbes understood the Power Elites of his day, as Machiavelli did in his, and Socrates before them, and so forth. The Hebrews had a pretty good handle on them as well.
How different is this “restless desire for power..because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more” from the desire for individual contentment described by C. S. Lewis in many of his works, but especially “Surprised by Joy.”
I doubt I can help in any serious distinction of difference AesopFan, since I’m too ignorant of Lewis to warrant comment.
Reading there (what you’ve provided) I’ll say I’m somewhat minded of my own occasional, infrequent experiences of the sublime (though infrequent, nevertheless an example just today: hearing for the first time Jessye Norman’s performance [Masur/G. Leizsig] of R. Strauss “Vier Letzte Lieder”). It’s a transportation for me usually ending in tears of joy, but not a Christian such thing as I understand it.
Hobbes above, on the other hand, explicitly rejects Aristotle’s elevation of philosophic contemplation as the pinnacle human good (“Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied”). Owing to Aristotle’s un-Greek monotheistic first philosophy (called Metaphysics), I might surmise something comparable in this of Lewis’ “Joy” to be rather more “like” unto Aristotle’s view than my mere transport in works of great beauty, say, than it is like Hobbes’ “restless desire” described.
Too, I’ve heard our own modern ways (assuredly not attributing to Lewis) described as “the joyless pursuit of joy”. (Nothing to do with Lewis) It’s a thing of thought. Perhaps a prejudice in me. Still, something of this does seem to have arisen after Hobbes’ teachings took hold. Or so we see folks lament.
Apologies AesopFan. After mulling this over some more, I find dissatisfaction with that first go. So to give it another: What is Hobbes doing? What is Lewis doing?
There’s the difference, I guess.
Hobbes is at the beginning of his enterprise, namely, to establish a novel basis for human government or politics generally speaking. He’s examining human nature (of a sort, namely of a low and solid sort) in order to fix an acceptable universal condition upon which to found a lasting polity.
What’s Lewis doing? Looks very different doesn’t it? Yes, he’s concerned with a universal kind, a very high kind as opposed to a low, but not for the purpose of founding a new politics. Or am I mistaken?
Anyhow, that seems something we should bear in mind.
One is at the beginning, the other, it seems, is at the end. One is aiming at the low and common, the other at the highest and, presumably, rarer thing.
“One is aiming at the low and common, the other at the highest and, presumably, rarer thing.” – sdferr
Well said.
Lewis was definitely not looking to found a new politics (there is, ultimately, only the same-old same-old kind), but to explain somewhat the state of mind that underlay his conversion to Christianity, as he recognized that in Christ he had found the Joy that he had been searching for.
“So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death.” – Hobbes
I actually believe he may be correct, but the Jewish Torah and Christian doctrines (I am not familiar enough with other faiths* to comment) are always pushing back against that inclination, and trying to turn it to better paths than those that lead to Fame and Conquest.
Thanks for your commentary; it was a pleasure to read.
*Sadly, much of the Muslim world insists on following the Hobbesian pathway, although I understand there are some Islamic sects that are less doctrinaire about it than others.
CV on October 11, 2019 at 7:54 am said:
Rod Dreher is writing about China’s horrifying surveillance state over at The American Conservative:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/china-the-techno-totalitarian-leviathan/
* * *
I had read about some of the Social Credit system, but Dreher’s warning is well taken, and will certainly not make much impression outside of the conservative circle, despite the former cries of the Left about “Big Brother” when the government was run by anti-Communists and Republicans.
One person at PJ Media Disqus said Pjmedia viewed me was trash or worthless because of my “ratio”.
What ratio argument was this, I replied.
They replied, the ratio of your likes to your comments.
Wow, that must mean any criticism of Trum is invalid and worthless because they have less likes than the total number of comments? Good social ratio! Good Trum Supporters!