The Problem of China, part something

China is a massive country with a growing industry and middle class, emulating almost perfectly the United States route to dominancy. It started with cheaper and faster industrialization backed by government protection and even funding, it has been fighting the growth of its own middle class while exploiting them as a market and it will, like the US at the end of the industrial age, have a massive banking and currency collapse. It won't, however, be as bad. China has one challenge that the US did not: a truly global market.

While Chinese companies and the government of China attempt to exploit smaller, weaker countries the way Europe and the US did, they are running out of places to go. The mercantilistic and imperialistic methods of past industrialized nations won't work out as well in an interconnected world. The highly protectionist policies that have enabled some Chinese companies to better exploit the growing consumer class in China won't hold up as long. For example, their first to file patent and copyright system allows local companies to file obviously false claims, like a company now claiming the iPhone 5 in preparation to sue Apple when they release it in China. Google's Android may lose out to a local phone OS because Google services are severely limited by an autocratic an paranoid government. A system built on bribes and business ownership of local governments, worse even than the US, has built a highly protected atmosphere, but the Chinese people won't have to put up with it. They have alternate markets, alternate sources of goods. Chinese goods are not necessarily the cheapest now, and brand identity, such as Apple's, makes the consumers there demand genuine iPhones, not knock offs built to abuse a terrible patent system.

On a side note, the US patent system is supposed to change to first to file as well, opening up the same mess as in China where patents favor the filer with money and local offices rather than the inventor.

China is emulating the western method of industrialization, and while it is working now the collapse will have a very different recovery. The military industrial complex that was built in the US, the arms race and world wars being absent, won't truly be able to build up. I consider this an excellent thing, allowing China in a few years, after the communist government collapses with the currency they have artificially propped up and deliberately used to slow their own middle class growth, will be able to show the west how to build a modern economy and infrastructure. They may, if we are lucky, pass on US and Japanese style patent systems and copyright enforcement, where jail time and outrageous lawsuits are the norm. They will have a chance to build a consumer class from the ground up, competing fairly with a world market.

Or they could try to copy our obviously broken system. Either way. In the long run the US system is doomed to fail. It increases wealth disparity, reducing the flow of currency and growth. We have built a patent and copyright system built to prevent competition and eliminate consumer rights. We have tried to all but destroy worker rights. While China slowly moves towards sanity, we move towards insanity. The system of imperialistic abuse is almost completely dead, and a truly global economy will allow no more hiding places for the wealthy, no more tax dodges, no more exploitable cheap labor. We can only hope China is a catalyst for the new system to be built, and we can only hope the collapse they suffer right before that isn't too harsh.

Logic Priest

Lazy People

Only lazy non whites take in welfare. Because when it is "hardworking" white people it isn't welfare, just government aid. When Exxon pays negative money in taxes after making record profits, it isn't welfare just "incentives." When the red states in the union receive far more in federal aid than the taxes they pay it isn't welfare it is... actually I am lost on that one. The only explanation is the "otherness" of the people conservatives imagine to be getting welfare.

Now intelligent and rational people know that the economic imbalance in the US doesn't stem from the lower classes working less or being lazy, but from a combination of luck and occasionally some ability. Mitt Romney, for example, was born into wealth and used it to make more. He now holds no job and makes millions a year. Millions of people work 40 or more hours per week and make at most $50,000 a year. Is this because they are lazy? Obviously not. The point of government aid was never to help the lazy but to provide a slightly better playing field and more importantly as a safety net. When the millionaires and billionaires inevitably crash the economy they lay off workers. Now hard working middle and working class families and individuals need a way to live, to feed themselves. Yes they don't have jobs but not due to laziness, rather a lack of opportunity. An ideal government would open as much opportunity to as many people as possible.

Yet somehow the myth persists with conservatives, especially those who receive aid, bitching about how welfare recipients need to stop being lazy. No one, liberal or not feels that we don't need to work. In fact the biggest issue most liberals have with the rich is the fact they receive what amounts to tax breaks and welfare by being rich. They work the least and make the most. Then these rich people use racially charged language to convince working and middle class white people to imagine lazy non whites taking all their money, causing the government debt. In reality the massive wars and too low tax rates on the wealthy cause the debt. I keep hearing about largest peace time expenditure while we are in the middle of two wars.

Rich corporations get welfare they don't deserve. Rich people get tax breaks they don't need. Liberals don't want to "punish success" they merely want conservatives to shut the fuck up about lazy poor people and look at the abuse they receive from lucky rich people. Hell, most of the wealthy who started poor and middle class are liberals. It seems to me the rich folks whining about persecution and hard work "earned" their wealth by being born to the right parents. Mitt Romney was born rich, he is a Republican. Bill Gates admits he got a lucky break, worked hard to build his wealth, and is a liberal.

The next time someone whines about poor people taking their hard earned cash, remind them the difference between a welfare check and the literally billions of dollars of "incentives" that oil companies, coal companies, and red states receive from the federal government. Remind them that most welfare recipients are either working part time jobs or can't find jobs because the rich people fired them all. Remind them that the mean income for the middle class hasn't gone up in decades while the top one percent has exponentially grown. Remind them they are fucking racist assholes.

Logic Priest

Who Let the Paulbots Off their Leashes?

Now this one tickles me in a way that if... anyways. This woman seems to genuinely believe Ron Paul can win not just the GOP nomination with almost no delegates, but that he could then win in a general election. Despite his continuous losses, despite a lack of delegates, despite the fact that outside of Paulbots and the people they harass (read: the atheist community for some reason) they have a negligible chance of winning votes. Most people don't even know who he is, people with money refuse to be associated with him, and aside from his unchanged but rabid base no one likes him. Libertarians don't like him because he is an evangelical Christian. Republicans don't like him because he claims to challenge the centralized power both the GOP and DNC support. Other evangelicals don't like him because he is anti-war. In fact, aside from a select group of privileged white people and the occasional confused stoner college kid, no one likes him.

Ron Paul has been connected to white supremacists, anarchists, libertarians, evangelical conservatives, pro marijuana protestors, anti war protestors and in general too many eclectic groups to present a solid face. His supporters of course go on about him being the best/only choice, they claim that using magic he will both eliminated debt AND taxes. He wants to slash social spending more than Ryan does, and is an open fan of Ayn Rand, despite his evangelism. College liberals occassionaly think they like him because he voted against the invasion of Iraq and thinks the federal government shouldn't illegalize drugs, but they either realize he is a social nutcase who does want the fed to control women's bodies or they grow up and support someone mainstream. Other young people support him because they see his anti federal stance as close to anarchy, failing to realize he wants the power to go into the hands of private corporations.

Ron Paul's actual policies, as a refresher, would eliminate all but social laws from the federal level. He would outlaw abortion and gay marriage federally, despite his claims of wanting a non invasive fed. The real point, however, is that he isn't against someone controlling your life, he just wants it to be private corporations. He espouses a belief that you are absolutely free in an absolute free market, ignoring the inevitable consequences like indentured servitude, corporate interference in your private life and a total police state controlled by said corporation. Just in case anyone was considering liking him. Ron Paul is the ultimate stopped clock. By virtue of his absolute freedom (for corporations) belief structure he is anti war and federal drug control so young people sometime flock to him. This of course ignores private wars and employee drug testing, which he is all for since you are an "at will" employee. The only people who can support his real policies are Objectivists, always heroes in their own minds. People born to privilege love him because he tell them they earned it via a free market and no one has any right to touch that. Except those with more privilege.

But my favorite thing is the rabid support Ron Paul receives from his Paulbots. They are gifted at lying to themselves. They already convinced themselves they are privileged due to their own labors, despite being universally white and middle class and above. It was only a small step past that to delude themselves, every time into thinking Ron Paul would somehow, with no financial or popular support, take the GOP nomination. Every time they claim the GOP fears him but will somehow support him. Every time they claim his technical but unimpressive wins early in the primaries means he will magically come out on top. It is objectivism at its finest. Convince yourself you earned everything as some sort of microcosm of awesome. Convince yourself that you are the hero, the winner, and that you would come out on top in an anarchy. Then convince yourself the rest of the world fears and needs you so that you must triumph. They must be the best mental gymnasts in the world to reconcile their confidence before the nomination each election with the reality afterwards.

Logic Priest

Red States

It is becoming increasingly clear that the more someone rails against the "others" who take their money in some sort of welfare queen imaginary land, the more likely they were to receive such welfare. Paul Ryan received Social Security survivor benefits, using those to go to college. Ayn Rand, his hero, took her Social Security pension after decades of railing against it. Red states overwhelmingly receive the most federal aid per taxes paid.

There seems to be some innate hypocrisy in bitching about "others" getting off easy. The same voters Ryan and Romney are sucking up to imagine those others to be black welfare queens, lazy immigrants, so on and so forth, while it is they who need the most government help. The working class is obsessed with the idea they are paying for the rest of the working class, despite the inherent insanity in that belief. An imaginary lazy poor peasant class has been invented in their minds, and goddammit they want to keep it out of those lazy (insert racial slur here) hands. They never notice the bloated military budget or low upper class effective tax rates, they bitch about welfare and science taking all the funds.

Logic Priest

More Legislation

More legislation that pretends rights don't apply online, that is. SOPA was but one of many, not the first and certainly not the last. The 1994 Telecom law allowed wiretapping, which was expanded to include the entire internet in 2004/5, something the original bill explicitly forbid. That is, network component makers (Cisco, etc) must make back doors into the entire internet, at least the parts made in the USA. Aside from privacy issues, security (backdoors are easily used by criminals as well) this could deter anyone looking to start businesses in the US. Extra costs of infrastructure combined with customer privacy issues can and will drive many out of country.

Followed by the DMCA, a horrific law that allows content industries to sue for $150,000 per work, that makes it illegal to even theoretically find ways to bypass copy protections, that allows end user agreements to prevent you from modifying your devices, etc. The EFF, a wonderful organization dedicated to privacy and fairness online, has to fight just to make it a legal exception to jailbreak iPhones and root Androids. Every year congress passes or tries to pass SOPA like legislation. Usually under the umbrella of "Intellectual Property" protection that ignores consumer rights and assumes guilty until proven otherwise, or as a way to "combat" child porn. While protecting copyrights, patents and trademarks is part of capitalism, the unlimited protection for unlmited times is bad for society as a whole, but that is for another time. Up next is CISPA, an almost direct clone of SOPA. A few in the senate managed to get an amendment that would alleviate some of the worst issues in the bill, although a complete drop would be best, anti-privacy or pro- campaign funded by Sony Universal house members are trying to remove those protections.

Once more, we must fight this until congress understands that not only do we not need more legislation to enable anti-competitive and invasive moves by government and private corporations with poor track records to begin with, but we need to undue the damage done by the DMCA and telecom act.

Go Here.

Logic Priest

Democracy

Democracy is a singularly unimpressive system. It tends to be just as oppressive for those who don't represent the ethnic, religious and cultural majority, especially women and children, and it tends to be built around a strong upper class. Democracies or republics, whichever you prefer for terminology (they are one in the same, regardless of what your grade school teacher claims) support the status quo just as much as any given monarchy or military run country.

Our democracy, in the US, is just a facade on top of an oligarchy. There always arises a class of wealthy, powerful people who overwhelmingly control policy, and sometimes it isn't even a bad thing. Sometimes the influence of the wealthy, as in the United States, can bring a measure of equality to marginalized groups who otherwise would remain marginalized forever. Usually this is for their own benefit, as well, but still some good can come from the oligarchy. For example, slavery only ended because the industrialized businesses of the Union preferred the cheaper, lower liability labor of poorly paid employees to the hassle and, in the long run, uneconomical slavery. The civil rights movement had some, if not much, success in part because it was beneficial for America to look less hypocritical when fighting for "freedom." International business was growing, and cooperation was difficult when at home the people you tried to deal with were less than human in your society. Civil rights was not well supported by the public, who preferred the status quo of women and non whites serving them.

The public, on the other hand, is even more attached to the status quo than the wealthy it helps. Change is hard, and it is frightening, and if a minimum level of comfort is maintained, the masses prefer to avoid change. The majority oppose civil rights and abortions and efforts to demarginalize non majority religions and the irreligious. The majority opposes acceptance of the "strange" such as transexuals and homosexuals or anything outside of the easy to understand social constructs of sexuality. The majority wants prayer in school, they dislike the idea of critical thought and changes, even ones which would help them, are opposed. And this is what makes them easily manipulated, easily led, easily lied to and what makes them follow the obvious oligarchy into oblivion.

This oligarchy is also incredibly bad for the majority, when it becomes overly short sighted. Of course policy will reflect some way to increase or maintain their power and wealth, but sometimes at the cost of their own long term health. Much of the changes in the industrial age were brought about by those better fit to think long term, who built up regulations and protected industries to avoid the crippling losses of the Great Depression. Many of the wealthy survived the crash in 1929, but many of them banded together and supported FDR in creating regulations, in spending government monies in order to rehabilitate the economy, and it positioned the US as the largest economy on earth. This long term thinking is rare, though. For the last several decades policy, against both self interest and majority opinions and interests, has been all about deregulation and moving away from a progressive tax structure. The wealthy have made themselves into victims, tried to convince the populous they are somehow blessed, as with the "divine right" of monarchs to rule.

These wealthy are only going to destroy themselves in the long run. Even a stupid majority will eventually notice, and even if they never revolt, a wrecked economy from the over concentration of wealth is no good for those who run it, either. If I have all of the money, it becomes worthless, and if I destroy industry to make money for myself, once more the currency becomes worthless and the economic collapse from stagnation and destruction don't help even the wealthiest. This kind of short sighted money making led to the Great Depression and will again, where many of the wealthy lost it all, too.

But aside from policy favoring the wealthy, aside from the gullibility and easily led nature of humanity, democracy makes little sense to begin with. It is however, ever so slightly better than monarchies, where one selfish monarch can destroy a nation, in democracies it takes many wealthy to do so.

Logic Priest

The Problem of China

I was in the bookstore today, and I noticed while browsing the current affairs section (for a laugh, I love seeing all the "Obama is the worst thing ever" books) I noticed several books on China. Reading the titles and descriptions of each, they all treated China as some alien threat. Using buzzwords like communism and even some McCarthy era "red menace" terminology, they all claimed to explain the "threat" of China. I have actually read a few of these books, but some of my favorite are the counterpoints to these xenophobic, racist claims. Which is what they are, since the claims
tend to be built around communism, alien cultures and imaginary threats of someone else invading or just having money.

The basic claims nowadays, compared to the Cold War version, comes down to economic warfare. In an increasingly international marketplace, conservatives love to whine about globalization. As the United States has shifted from an industrial to a consumer based economy, conservatives do what they do best: fear change. And make a fuss about it. Originally it was a fear of spreading communism, and while you may see that word used often enough the complaint now seems to be about China's successful industrial age capitalism. Talks about the Chinese economy and industrial base, complaints about their increased need for resources starting to finally compare to ours, complaints that they will overtake us or steal "our" resources and "our" jobs as if the US owns prosperity.

Aside from the idea that America owns prosperity, that the US deserves all the wealth, there is a deeper point. Politicians go on and on about China stealing jobs, implying they do not deserve economic growth and only we do. It is an old, mercantile and imperialist attitude, that the rest of the world exists only to serve our wealth. The real issue, though, isn't even the inherent arrogance and xenophobia surrounding this fear mongering about China, is a basic misunderstanding of how economics and its developments work. China is the greatest industrial nation still around, and it doesn't matter. The US economy is not industrial based and it hasn't been for a while. The jobs we lose have been replaced by other jobs, such as service industry and managerial jobs, such as stock brokers and middlemen, developers and engineers, while the Chinese economy is akin to our World War II economy, building machines, factories everywhere and a small consumer economy growing but quickly. They make but are only beginning to consume, and while the economic struggle for resources may cause issues, the job differences will not.

In fact, China gets the short end of the stick. They have stagnated their own change into consumerism with an artifically deflated economy, with an oligarchical and conservative government also struggling to stay in an industrial age keeping their currency kept low by purchasing bonds to keep much non liquid, to keep prices low and wages lower. Chinese companies make some money, but the workers make almost none, though more than they would otherwise. They have a growing class of middlemen, like our middle class, but they too are kept smaller than they should. And most important of all, while they make the goods, they do not profit much from them. For an example, look at Apple Computers. All of their goods are made by various East Asian companies, yet Apple themselves, an American company, bring home all the profits. Apple was the most profitable company on earth last year, and less than ten percent of the money went to manufacturers out of country. Their executives, their supply and distribution in all countries, brought back all the money.

The US doesn't get cheated by Chinese industrialization, China is being cheated by our economy. When the west industrialized it controlled its own profits, but with China, they don't get much of the money at all. China is on the bad end of the deal. The "threat" of China is manufactured, invented the by the same people who constantly blather about Muslim terrorists while 2/3 of terrorist attacks are from domestic sources. These people need us in fear, and this is just one more line of attack. The US middle class has suffered at the hands of US executives, who bring in the money they used to, more in fact, but no longer pay the middle class employees fairly. US wealth has grown with the shift in economies, but mostly at the top. The problem is not a lack of jobs, but unfair pay, unfair lending, unfair credit. We haven't lost anything to China, we have only lost out to other Americans, who wave a scary, non white and alien entity at us to fear.

Logic Priest

Punishing Success

Republican rhetoric now is focused on making business people out to be Randian heroes. So soon after these "heroes" directly caused a worldwide banking and US real estate crisis, they now whine as if they are under attack. They pretend they made their money out of shear willpower, and when the president calls them out, when he says they built it in an American system, with taxes having paid for infrastructure they use, with normal, non rich people providing the consumer base and the actual labor, they whine about paying too much. They claim Obama wants to punish them for their work. They appeal to laborers to imagine their money being "stolen" in taxes.

The oddest part is that the loudest ones, the ones pushing these ads and politicians the hardest, are almost exclusively heirs to business empires. Romney himself is the child of a president of a once major  auto manufacturer. The Koch brothers, now infamous in liberal circles, pledge millions to politicians who spout this nonsense and set up shell corporations to lobby for more of these policies. They inherited the largest fortune on earth, put together, from a billionaire oil magnate father. Look into these people, who whine so hard about their "hard earned" money being "stolen" by taxation, which in turn should go to maintaining the public, allowing their corporation to operate with a good infrastructure, in a safe country. The shear ridiculousness is not even funny anymore.

The worst part is, they seem to have actually convinced themselves of it. Now, thinkprogress.org can be odd sometimes, but here is a good example. These corporate agents whine that they are disadvantaged here, they pay too much taxes, it hurts their businesses, then proceed to pay nothing. These "one percent" people claim if you reduce their stagnant, unused wealth they won't hire as many people, going back to a new version of Reagan's "trickle down" economic arguments.

Just look at the first few paragraphs and charts, seen repeatedly. These bitching wealthy have seen massive increases in earnings in the last decades since massive efforts at deregulation of banking and business. The middle class, however, has not seen much at all. The rich just gather more wealth, hoarding it in caves, risking other's money to make more for themselves, never using their money as they claim. This is obvious in investment companies like Romney's own Bain Capital, or in Enron where the whole company collapsed yet the executives remained wealthy as always. This money they earn just sits around, it never goes into the economy.

In very simple terms, an economy is healthiest when cash is liquid. When wealth concentrates, those with it have less and less need to spend it. Yes a billionaire may buy a ten million dollar boat, but they will never spend much past that. They sit on billions, they never borrow money for themselves, and they never spend their paycheck. The middle class, which does control a good chunk of wealth (not as much as before, but still good) must spend most of it. While we get told to save all the time, in reality the economy suffers if money is saved. Credit that people can afford to pay back is the best. Inactive money is like the warehouses of wheat in the Great Depression. Ya it is there, but how much does it help the country, or the starving masses or anyone at all?

The current wealthy are overwhelmingly heirs. They made money with money they got for free. And at no point do they "create" wealth. The money is there, the resources are there, at best workers can input more raw resources, but the majority of the rich only invest in things, never making any kind of real capital. They only concentrate it from the hands of the populace, from consumers and customers. They then pay almost no taxes on this wealth, hiding it and lobbying for insanely low capital gains tax (15% maxed out) which is the majority of their income. They then sit on it, as mentioned a second ago, and it kills the economy, slowly if done carefully, quickly when things like the mortgage crisis, caused by overzealous rich people lying to each other, too.

Taxes, on the other hand, forces that stagnant wealth to actually work, towards welfare for the poor, for infrastructure for all of us, for the education system that allows more people to become actual producers and consumers, who in turn make healthy economies. But the Republicans don't care. They don't think ahead that far. They just want as much money now, and will say any lie to keep it. In the long run, though, it isn't that helpful to have all the money. Once it concentrates into few enough hands, it becomes worthless, since the rest of us will use something else to trade resources. And that is assuming they don't just revolt.

It isn't socialism, it isn't punishment, it is just the way a good capitalist system works. It is the only way a capitalist system works, in the long run.

Logic Priest