COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

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fiby41
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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by fiby41 »

Remove China Apps in an app that identifies the country of origin of the apps you've installed.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by fiby41 »

Kṛṣṇa defines a paṇdit as one who sees in a dog and in a dog eater with equal vision but this is really pushing the limit...
I don't think China can afford to fight a seven front war.
I think Covid is going to be to PRC what Chernobyl was to USSR. We'll find out in 5 years if it melts down or disintegrates.
If it is on that path then these are the extinction bursts.
But the CCP has gone on record saying they're not stupid as the Russians to do glasnost or perestroika and their behaviour sometimes shows that.
21 Indian soldiers including 1 officer attain martyrdom while 34 Chinese including 1 officer suspected dead although China refuses to confirm figures.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by chenda »

fiby41 wrote:
Sat Jun 20, 2020 4:37 am
I think Covid is going to be to PRC what Chernobyl was to USSR. We'll find out in 5 years if it melts down or disintegrates.
I don't think so. The Soviet Union had stagnated for decades and Chernobyl became symbolic as to how rotten it all was. As noted above, the CCP have given the Chinese the best 40 years in 4000 years. If anything, China will be strengthened
by crona.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

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chenda wrote:
Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:04 am
China will be strengthened
by crona.
How so?

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by chenda »

fiby41 wrote:
Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:32 am
How so?
The suggestion is that an absence of US leadership globally has left a vacuum which China is more than happy to fill.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by thrifty++ »

chenda wrote:
Sat Jun 20, 2020 6:31 am
The suggestion is that an absence of US leadership globally has left a vacuum which China is more than happy to fill.
This is true. USA is too distracted with its own internal issues. It needs to get things together.

Im not sure how well China's bid for leadership will go though, given that China has developed negative and fractious relationships with many places from all corners of the world including with its own immeidate neighbours. China's attempt at leadership when Europe was hit with the virus did not seem to go down to well either because of how the Chinese govt went about it.

Also if the virus were to have come from somewhere else that would be a better position for China to fill the void, rather than being the place where the virus actually came from.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

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People must really dislike stereotype of American MAGA hat guy with pickup truck so much that they start to speak in glowing terms of organ-harvesting ethnically homogeneous totalitarian dictatorship.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

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Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:35 am
People must really dislike stereotype of American MAGA hat guy with pickup truck so much that they start to speak in glowing terms of organ-harvesting ethnically homogeneous totalitarian dictatorship.
I don't see anyone here doing that.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by thrifty++ »

Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:35 am
People must really dislike stereotype of American MAGA hat guy with pickup truck so much that they start to speak in glowing terms of organ-harvesting ethnically homogeneous totalitarian dictatorship.
I think Trump has done damage to USA's brand. Once Trump is out I can see USA very much returning to its traditional global leadership position. I cant see China taking a global leadership position in reality anytime soon. The Chinese govt is far too disliked and distrusted on a global scale. If you just think of the amount of conflict it has right now, with USA, the phillipines, Japan, Europe, UK, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan<, India, Vietnam, the middle east, Tibet, etc. Any attempt at leadership by China would never be accepted. Not in the foreseeable future anyway.

I think COVID19 could well have quite a lasting negative impact on China. I think it has affected the perception of its govt in a large and negative way, and its politically volatile behaviour has escalated sicne the pandemic began as well. Using USA's distraction as a means of trying to exert political influence may well backfire in a negative way as well, as it seems to have done so far.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by horsewoman »

thrifty++ wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 1:48 pm
I think Trump has done damage to USA's brand.
I don't know how the other "Euros" here perceive this, but in Germany this is definitely the case. He is so bizarre and so far off the way politicians behave in our country that it is hard not to be reminded of parts of "Idiocracy"...

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

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Dictatorships are fragile, all the more so when you have to feed, brainwash, and placate over a billion people.

I did not vote for Trump but my understanding is that the people who voted for him did so with the express contempt for the ex-USA opinion of the USA, and for the anti-USA sentiment within the USA itself.

Something I read from a lot of the euros and europhiles is that post-Trump “everything will go back to normal” as if normal was a desirable condition for the Americans who voted for Trump because he felt he gave them a voice.

If you want to see what the alternative is, observe how the Democratic Party pays lip service to BLM, socioeconomic inequality, and whatever progressives might be concerned about this week. Then at their primaries once Biden won South Carolina all of the other candidates withdrew from the running to support him, to stop Bernie Sanders. Virtue signaling can be politically advantageous to a point but when the hypocrisy of doing so whilst being so completed owned by Wall Street people will vote in an obnoxious jerk like Trump because they have been otherwise hammered to the point of desperation.

So I guess Wall Street bailouts and drone strikes are cool as infinitum as long as it’s a charismatic dude like Obama who is authorizing it.

If the Democrats nominated someone credible as wanting to work on socioeconomic inequality while not sounding like a batshit crazy race-baiting Marxist zealot, they would be a slam dunk for the Presidency. But they are not interested in that- it’s either a Wall Street stooge or a batshit crazy Marxist and nothing in between.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by jacob »

@MI - It's too bad there are effectively only two parties to vote for. Otherwise things would be a lot clearer and a lot less confounding.

The US, like Europe, experienced a populist rising after the financial crisis. In the US it was a bit delayed because of the 4 year cycle and so didn't happen until 2016. Meanwhile, in some parts of Europe, populism is already past the "been there done that, now lets return to normal"-stage.

Populism works by a leader identifying with "the people" against some enemy. In the US, there are two populist leaders currently. Sanders on the left identifying with "hard working Americans" and singling out "the billionaires" as the enemy. Trump on the right identifying with "real flag-waving TV-watching Americans" and singling out immigrants and high-falutin printed newspapers as the enemy.

You see the same tendencies in the European theater, where the boogeyman is picked from a similar menu of "big banks", "Muslims", and/or "EU bureaucrats". Both kinds of populism appeal to the "economic roadkill" demographic, that is, those who have been left behind by the globalized economic train. Uneducated, no career, lack of jobs, never left the valley, likely indebted both money and healthwise, no solution in sight. They vote in populist leaders to "clean up the system"... but of course they never succeed in cleaning up; reason being that the system will not allow the burning down of the barn w/o at least some constructive proposal for its replacement.

Populist policy is not a practical platform since it defines itself more about what it is against than by any kind of coherent policy that it is actually for. Populism essentially runs on vacuous slogans and not much more. Hence, there will be constant railing against "the enemy" to rally "the people". Any plans proposed tend to be spontaneous, unrealistic, incompatible with reality, and consequently go nowhere fast. Eventually the economy either recovers enough or people---the ones who stayed home during the last election---get tired of the "dog and pony show" and elect someone else. In some cases populist parties even resign from leadership because they realize they can be more effective as an oppositional gadfly than being in charge and having their lack of leadership competence on full display.

Will also note that not all populists have authoritarian leanings. For example, Trump does but Sanders does not. From a Euro-perspective, people are much more concerned about Trump's authoritarian streak than his populism or nativism. He's basically put in the same group as Orban and Erdogan. Compare to BoJo who is also a nativist populist but shows little tendency towards authoritarianism which is a big no-no in Euroland for historic reasons.

Populism exists kinda like an emergency brake so that the middle class with actual jobs who are still doing well don't forget the economic roadkill they leave behind in their pursuit of bigger houses and higher incomes for themselves and their own children.

Electing a populist is the political/election equivalent of a riot. It's a protest to say "Hey, what about us?! We're also important and we're still here!"

Biden won the primaries because he has more left-wing middle class support than Sanders---in particular voters realized that replacing a right-wing populist with a left-wing ditto might not be that much of an improvement wrt their globalized meritocratic values and consumer corporate lifestyles. The other candidates, starting with Buttigieg and quickly followed by Klobuchar, did the game theory math, quit, and rallied behind Biden to prevent the divide&conquer that got Trump nominated in 2016. Note that advisors from the Sanders camp was invited into Biden's policy sausage making machine in return for Sander's departure and endorsement. As were the others. Hopefully this will be solved amicably with Sander's voters being thrown a bone, like a student debt fix or something.

Conversely, if Trump had been a more competent negotiator he could likely have gotten his wall funded (nativist bone) and satisfied his base. Instead we got what initially looked like a WWE show ("But wait, there's more. Tune in next week, when we unveil ...") complete with the aforementioned heels (immigrants, China, and the media) to beat up on with a bunch self-created crises serving as background story arch. This worked well until a real crisis appeared (pandemic) which revealed the missing component in most populist movements: competence in government.

I'd say people/voters usually do learn from these experiences. But they also forget again. The question is whether Americans have learned enough already or they want to learn more. Anyway, I see very strong parallels. The main risk [to middle class lifestyles] is if a competent populist with a realistic plan gains power, but these are rather very rare and I'm not seeing any such candidates right now.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

While I never imagined in any universe that Trump was a grand savior, I still do not believe there will be a “return to normalcy” in the face of economic upheaval (cans can no longer be kicked) where zero-sum game play starts to dominate. If people are losing their retirement nest eggs to stock market declines and inflation and the well-paying jobs go away people are going to be unable to cope with diminished consumer lifestyles and they are going to look for scapegoats.

The establishment Democrats did a good job selling the narrative of Biden’s “electability” to whites and to blacks he seems to have street cred collected from Obama thru osmosis but I expect the electability narrative to fade when he finally has to debate Trump and the street cred with blacks to become potentially cringe-worthy (we will probably start to hear more about #YouAintBlack as part of the shameless co-opting of black people).

With respect to the virus I think you articulate the left’s narrative well but considering what people have gotten from the WHO, CDC, and local political leadership (the virus is not a concern/never mind the virus is a pandemic, you do not need to wear a mask/you must where a mask at all times, you are refrained from doing business or working and are dependent on us for unemployment insurance). The virus outbreak and economic fallout was being celebrated as politically disadvantageous for Trump. I think ZAF mentioned the “worst part” of this was that the “smart people” sacrificed more of their dwindling credibility for two seconds of political advantage and those two seconds have already past. Read the comments on SeekingAlpha or any multi-partisan forum (here for example), the perception of the management of the virus response is completely split along political lines, and unfortunately for the Democrats it does not matter if 99% of Massachusetts or California agree that it was mismanaged.

The response of the establishment to the fast-approaching brick wall has been to step on the gas and approach the brick wall faster, so my guess is things get more wild. The Eurozone is insolvent and potentially fracturing with poor demographics, I do not think they are in the clear yet either. I guess at this point the Mediterranean countries intend to get bailouts from Germany on a repeating basis? I just do not think at the end of the day these problems are solved by simply having a politician that can go on TV and not sound crazy.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

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I don't think the issues of the present are or the issues of the near future will be economic issues. This is a Marxian worldview that was accepted by both sides in the Cold War, with the "anti-Marxist" side essentially making Marxian argument that capitalism was better at providing materially for the working class. I'm old enough to remember this, but not quite old enough to "swim in it and not see, as fish don't see water." More recent generations do not think this way. People live at home and take drugs not because it's a materially better deal than alternatives (it is not, even if their other options aren't materially spectacular), but because they have lost reason to be and faith in anything greater than themselves.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by chenda »

@jacob - excellent post. I wish some of these populists leaders would consider how harshly history will judge them.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by jacob »

Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:34 pm
With respect to the virus I think you articulate the left’s narrative well but considering what people have gotten from the WHO, CDC, and local political leadership (the virus is not a concern/never mind the virus is a pandemic, you do not need to wear a mask/you must where a mask at all times, you are refrained from doing business or working and are dependent on us for unemployment insurance). The virus outbreak and economic fallout was being celebrated as politically disadvantageous for Trump. I think ZAF mentioned the “worst part” of this was that the “smart people” sacrificed more of their dwindling credibility for two seconds of political advantage and those two seconds have already past. Read the comments on SeekingAlpha or any multi-partisan forum (here for example), the perception of the management of the virus response is completely split along political lines, and unfortunately for the Democrats it does not matter if 99% of Massachusetts or California agree that it was mismanaged.
Well, yes, in the US, COVID got politicized real fast. It seems crazy on the surface of it, like how can mask-wearing be turned contentious when refusing to wear one can literally kill you? However, that's a very "successful middle class"-perspective. I remember driving in Poland in the early 2000s and being told that wearing a seat belt was effeminate. The reason being that the personal discount rate was extremely high. For example people would immediately use an entire paycheck/windfall to buy small overpriced luxuries (Mach3 razorblades) instead of setting up for a better future. If people are [economically] pressured they will care much less about their future life than otherwise. Thus making an obvious political statement that gets in the face of "the establishment" (enemy) at the small risk of dying seems worthwhile for those who have little to lose. It is interesting to note that those who have more to lose (old (and therefore medically vulnerable) well-off Republican middle class) are peeling off Trump support because to them not-dying is an important value that they can no longer personally afford to ignore in favor reducing unemployment numbers---especially not now that the Feds have boosted the markets/pension funds back up again. They are no longer entertained.

The younger crowd still toes the line though. Double think is entirely achievable even when it comes to one's own survival insofar it doesn't matter that much. See e.g. https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1274355082402955269 and realize that what he's saying makes totally sense to him within his framework and the heuristics he's adopted.

It's also interesting to note---very interesting---that a lot of the countries in the world (US, Brazil, Russia, UK, Mexico, Pakistan, India, Chile) where the virus is still not "not well controlled" and consequently have the fastest rising case numbers also happen to be under populist or authoritarian "leadership". This does not mean that all the "high case" areas are populist or run by wannabe strong-men, but it does mean that most of populist or authoritarian countries do have high case loads. Whether that's due to incompetence in leadership or because people electing such leaders care less about living---I don't know ... probably some combination---populist nations suffer a higher disease burden as the values that led to their election get used to run the entire country.

My point here is that the "smart people" or technocrats didn't lose credibility outside of the populist dominated nations.---That dinging the "smart people" is mainly part of the populist playbook, the goal being to take the establishment down by a peg or two. However, this is just part of the circus. In reality, expert guidance is still being taken from those who ostensibly know what they're talking about. E.g. Trump discounting experts and mask-wearing in public to uphold his image, yet testing vigorously in the White House when the cameras are off and making people around him wear a mask. However, as a populist leader you can never admit publicly that those experts might have a better understanding of the subject than what is apparent to the "common sense" of "the real people". Your entire support is based on you validating their importance by telling them that the "establishment" can no longer be trusted.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by chenda »

The conclusion seems to be the masses need to be taught more respect and deference to elites for their own good i.e. when an expert says wearing a mask is important, the experts opinion should be respected and followed with minimal fuss.

Similarly elites need to recognise the dangers that the neglect of the masses poses to them both. Like a parent- child relationship, the child should be given an appropriate level of autonomy based on their age and maturity. Similarly, the parent has certain obligations to curtail their own interests for the good of the children.

It's a shame this can't be achieved without the pendulum swinging dangerously back and forth like some dysfunctional family in need of constant social service intervention.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by jacob »

@chenda - Yes, that's what I think---in that way it's not overly different from a feudalist worldview which humanity has had much more experience with than representative democracy. However, this [parent-child explanation] is a dangerous way of phrasing it because it can easily be seen as infantilizing the masses and to some extent that is also what populism is rebelling against. However, the dysfunctional family is a good model/metaphor to work from when trying to understand the real-politik of modern/social media democracies.

Respect should ideally be given. When respect is "taken", it demonstrates arrogance and when experts do it, it is seen as patronizing or condescending. On the other hand, when respect is withheld and experts are too generous "giving" people the benefit of the doubt, it validates continued ignorance. It's a fine line to walk and I've fallen off it many times.

Democracy is a crude mechanism to ensure that everybody is given equal respect. This, however, shouldn't mean that everybody's input should be equally respected. For example, the child should be respected but their input on bedtimes or the amount of ice cream they should eat should be weighed according to their experience. The parent should also be respected but only insofar they remain a good parent and take the interests of the child into account too.

Modern democracy also assumes that everybody past the age of 18 or 21 is a fully developed adult who is competent in all aspects of 21st century complexities. I don't even know where to begin wrt complexities but even sociologically speaking, that is certainly not the case. Some adults never mature beyond the level of the average teenager, and the majority of adults only mature to the level of identifying with their personal tribal interests---the worldview that human phenotypes have had by far the most experience with. This makes it difficult to live in a modern world with many competing tribal interests.

First and foremost, this works best when political leadership and more importantly political culture understands that good governance needs to find a balance between all the tribal interests. Ideally there would be Kegan5 leaders recognizing all interests and integrating them into some wonderful solution. However, these are few and far between. At best we get K3 and K4 people mostly representing the interests of their own tribe along with a system (voting, compromise, sausage making) that is beyond the individual politician but helps them indirectly recognize other tribes than their own. Over time this can still lead to one tribe gaining far too much power and leaving other tribes disenfranchised. When this fails, those [losing] tribes rebel under the banner of a K2 teenager who think they have all the answers while in reality having none of them because they don't yet know how little they know.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

My assessment of an establishment that assigns itself several hundred billions of years worth of claims on embodied life-energy while actively destroying the life-energy of others is that I do not owe it respect nor will I assume posture of obediently waiting to be thrown a bone.

Before being killed, George Floyd was reportedly arrested for using a counterfeit $20 bill. Imagine that.

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Re: COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

Post by chenda »

@Jacob - agreed, it's a fine line and there is no obvious solution to this problem. Although I wonder if this plays out or is perceived differently in more collectivist cultures like Japan.

You may be interested a book called Against Democracy by Jason Brennan, where he advocates Epistocracy instead. I've not read it, but it sounds like an interesting if obviously controversial (and apparently somewhat condescending in tone) read.

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