Hong Kong! Remember Tiananmen Square!

Discussion in 'Asia' started by Starjet, Jul 29, 2019.

  1. free man

    free man Well-Known Member

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    Exactly. It is internal China issue.
    The rest of the world is interested, like cars stopping in the road to watch an accident.
     
  2. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you really believe those who value liberty need Trump’s permission to stand tall and fight for their right to live free? That's absurd.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  3. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Makes me want to rethink my position on legalizing drugs, appears to meld reality with fantasy. Could be detrimental to those who over indulge.
     
  4. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    They may want our support, but if their counting on Trump to cover their backs, they had better be wearing one of those Mithril vests.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  5. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    :applause:
     
  6. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    The trade balance between the US and China is killing the US. US buys too much and sells far too little. The general idea was that the US would buy cheap and sell expensive. But in practice the US started to buy both cheap and expensive and as for goods abroad - it dreams to become at least world's fuel station... So the US needs 'a deal' which means that China starts to buy everything it can from the US and will force some of the american industries out (which hopefully will lead to return of at least high tech industries back to US.

    Of course it is too easy. But in general it is so. If the deal is made - the problem with the debt and economy is solved. If not - nothing will prevent the debt to grow more and more. If you have to buy more than you sell - you need the money. If you need the money and didn't earn it - You need to increase debt. As easy.

    So basically it doesn't matter if Xi does it because of his love of democracy or blackmail or bribe or getting too drunk or whatever. Now they try this thing in Hong Kong... If it works - it will be just fine. Lots of options are still there. The guy may capitulate as ukrainian President, or some arabian guys. Or the peaceful protestors can be stuffed with the guys from ISIS like it happened in Syria (Assad didn't want to leave). Or it can be successfull and things can end up like they did in Libya... China to this extent is not any different.

    Could you please get more specific? :) I know the story. I just want you to find out yourself. I would just add that Chinese communists proclaimed the principle 'one country - two systems' and tolerated for decades a completely different society. Just imagine that Mr Carter would turn Texas into a communist state and left it leaving as commies for decades... But gradually (it doesn't happen at once) Chinese communists are little by little returning not only the official posssession but actual control to their hands. At the moment Hong Kong is to pretty much an extent still a western colony... Of course it cannot be tolerated forever and sooner or later Hong Kong and Beijing would find themselves under the same circumstances... Which is natural for a country.

    If it was a chinese problem your media wouldn't get a command to perform propaganda on this theme... As I said before if hundreds of people die today in Yemen - you would never know. But if someone sneezes 10 minutes ago in Hong Kong - you willl get full report... This is how propaganda works. They get paid for this job.
     
  7. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    I didn't say that.
    Once again. I said that the only sense to protest (!) is to let the government known of people's attitude towards a problem. Once it is done - there needs to start a dialogue. The only sense to continue with provocations and inventing new excuses for rioting and performing disorders is not the peaceful protest but taking part in color revolution as it happened several times all over the world (including my motherland with my witnessing and participation).
     
  8. Heartburn

    Heartburn Well-Known Member

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    If you think our media works in Trump's interest you know as little about us as you seem to about what is happening in HK.
     
  9. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    As a teetotaler, I wouldn't know the feeling.
     
  10. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    Democracy is the road to tyranny??? Really. What kind of system would you have instead? How would you create a system based on individual rights without democratic institutions to protect those rights? We have been here before and what you are proposing is really a cult of narcissistic individualism and rule by the most powerful. The idea that a capitalist system is individuals of equal stature trading freely without restrictions or barriers is about as Utopian fantasy as you can get.

    Certainly capitalism can be fascist as it concentrates power and wealth into the hands of a small minority and always leads to the kinds of power inequalities we are seeing today. This was true in the 1890's, it was true in the gilded age that led to depression and war and it is true today. Nazi Germany was a state capitalist system with a military industrial oligarchy.

    From your own wiki link:

    "However, Smith[20] and notable classical economists such as Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo did not use the phrase. Jeremy Bentham used the term, but it was probably[original research?] James Mill's reference to the laissez-faire maxim (together with the "Pas trop gouverner" motto) in an 1824 entry for the Encyclopædia Britannica that really brought the term into wider English usage. With the advent of the Anti-Corn Law League (founded 1838), the term received much of its English meaning.[21][need quotation to verify]

    Smith first used the metaphor of an invisible hand in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) to describe the unintentional effects of economic self-organization from economic self-interest.[22] Although not the metaphor itself, the idea lying behind the invisible hand belongs to Bernard de Mandeville and his Fable of the Bees (1705). In political economy, that idea and the doctrine of laissez-faire have long been[by whom?] closely related.[23] Some have characterized the invisible-hand metaphor as one for laissez-faire,[24] although Smith never actually used the term himself.[20]

    In Third Millennium Capitalism (2000), Wyatt M. Rogers Jr. notes a trend whereby recently "conservative politicians and economists have chosen the term 'free-market capitalism' in lieu of laissez-faire".[25]"

    and:

    "Over the years, a number of economists have offered critiques of laissez-faire economics. Adam Smith acknowledges some moral ambiguities towards the system of capitalism.[101] Smith had misgivings concerning some aspects of each of the major character-types produced by modern capitalist society, namely the landlords, the workers and the capitalists.[101] Smith claimed that "[t]he landlords' role in the economic process is passive. Their ability to reap a revenue solely from ownership of land tends to make them indolent and inept, and so they tend to be unable to even look after their own economic interests"[101] and that "[t]he increase in population should increase the demand for food, which should increase rents, which should be economically beneficial to the landlords". According to Smith, the landlords should be in favour of policies which contribute to the growth in the wealth of nations, but they often are not in favour of these pro-growth policies because of their own indolent-induced ignorance and intellectual flabbiness.[101]

    Critics and market abolitionists such as David McNally argue in the Marxist tradition that the logic of the market inherently produces inequitable outcomes and leads to unequal exchanges, arguing that Smith's moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange was undermined by the practice of the free market he championed. According to McNally, the development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation and violence that Smith's moral philosophy could not countenance.[102]

    The British economist John Maynard Keynes condemned laissez-faire economic policy on several occasions.[103] In The End of Laissez-faire (1926), one of the most famous of his critiques, Keynes argues that the doctrines of laissez-faire are dependent to some extent on improper deductive reasoning and says the question of whether a market solution or state intervention is better must be determined on a case-by-case basis.[104]

    The Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek stated that a freely competitive, laissez-faire banking industry tends to be endogenously destabilizing and pro-cyclical, arguing that the need for central banking control was inescapable.[105]

    Wrong! Socialism and Communism is cooperative systems of worker owned and shared production.
    Correct!Fascism, state control of the economy as you noted
    Correct in part! Capitalism, private control of the economy, political structures and resources by a capitalist elite class of oligarchs and corporate entities for their own benefit.

    Not addressing all the science fiction quotes as that would be indulging Utopian fantasy but;

    Under a capitalist system the government is not commanded to do anything but enact legislation in a political process. Under capitalism that political process is always corrupted by the tendency to concentrate wealth and political power to those with the means to command government to it's own interests - which we see happening in spades right now. This has been true since the down of capitalism itself as it arose out of European feudalism. The ultimate progression of this concentration of wealth and political power is fascism.

    How on Earth could you possibly describe the system we see now of privatization of what used to be public commons and a rising militarism and authoritarianism along with tariffs and sanction on practically every nation on Earth as rights of men to trade freely? You are living in a fantasy world unfortunately.

    Again, wrong! Socialism is an evolving system of thought where state ownership was never the final intent. Today's democratic socialism is in theory a critique of LF capitalism intended to be a kind of steam valve that allows mitigation of the worst excesses of the capitalist system to concentrate wealth and power and to destroy the democratic process to rule by a corporate oligarchy able to co-opt the mechanisms of the state to its own narrow interests at the expense of the democratic rights of the people.

    Again, we are seeing that in spades right now. And it is a march towards fascism.

    It's not Socialism and Fascism vs Democracy; it's Collectivism vs Individualism, or tyranny vs liberty.

    Then you need to isolate yourself from the benefits of living in a stable democratic society and find yourself an island where you are free to keep what is yours for yourself. The only place for such selfishness is in complete isolation of democratic society where you are free to live your life outside the confines of the society of decent men. Of course you will need your own army to protect what is yours from other free men and you will need to provide your own health care and infrastructure.

    We don't yet know what is going to happen in Hong Kong. For my own part, I hope there is no more violence and that HK finds away to greater democracy - something you decry as tyranny but which the protesters are fighting in the street for. China's state capitalist mixed economy is in need of overhaul and the political elites there need to introduce a more democratic system. This will not happen while China feels threatened economically and militarily by outside foreign governments waging aggression gunboat diplomacy and directly trying to destroy it's economy and the greater world order.,
     
  11. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh, I know that tea was than mets the eye.
    And just what dialogue does liberty have with tyranny? A virgin and a rapist? A Corpse and its murderer? Between nutrients and poison?

    Ayn Rand: "It is only in regard to concretes or particulars, implementing a mutually accepted basic principle, that one may compromise. For instance, one may bargain with a buyer over the price one wants to receive for one’s product, and agree on a sum somewhere between one’s demand and his offer. The mutually accepted basic principle, in such case, is the principle of trade, namely: that the buyer must pay the seller for his product. But if one wanted to be paid and the alleged buyer wanted to obtain one’s product for nothing, no compromise, agreement or discussion would be possible, only the total surrender of one or the other.

    There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one’s silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender—the recognition of his right to one’s property."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compromise.html
     
  12. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The solution to all your criticisms, all your worries, all your dreads, all your concerns, which are rooted in all your evasions, is simple--prohibit the government from interfering in the economy--to the best and brightest, go the highest rewards (you know, like in sports); to worst and dullest, the best they can get; to the wicked and the evil, their just desserts; to the weak and helpless, the goodwill of their fellow, if they've earned it; and to the state, the only power it is morally justified to have, to protect each in the name of their individual rights.

    What kind of government? A republic based on the principle of Individual Rights, codified in objective law, with a military and police force dedicated to the protection of those rights, and with voting limited to only those with assets and who can pass a citizenship test that includes questions on Individual Rights, Fascism, Socialist/Communism, Statism, Collectivism, and can name the branches of government, the reason for their separation, and how a republic works. One like our Founding Fathers created, but without the "General Welfare Clause", which is nothing more than authority to enslave in the name of the common good, (you know, like the Old South felt about slavery)

    As for Democracy--unlimited majority rule is the tyranny of the many, and it is as evil as the tyranny of the one.

    Ayn Rand: "If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it’s done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong)—how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/democracy.html

    As to America being Capitalist, nothing could be farther from the truth. It is a statist government and a regulated economy. It is teetering right now between becoming a socialist fascist state or a fascist socialist state. It is nowhere near being on the path to a future of "...live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" Indeed, it is slowly drifting toward a new 'There is no "I", only the great "We".'

    A society that demands human sacrifices for the communal good is not a community of free, living souls; it is a mob of zombies feeding off the living.

    And lastly, whether it's called "free market",or "laisse faire", it's capitalism, the free exchange of trade by free men, of free men, and for free men. It is the only moral system of economic, social, and political justice known to Man. To each what they've earned from the best within themselves.

    Ayn Rand: "The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html

    The Morality of Capitalism--Yaron Brook


    And lastly, why is it a free man must run away to an island? To escape being eaten by his brothers? Why do the masses have the right to use the Government's gun to loot their brothers? Why is it moral to sacrifice human life to humanity, and immoral to assert your right as a free soul to live your life as you see fit. Why does the majority demand that I surrender my life to their needs? When did cannibalism become legal?

    Back to you, tribalist.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  13. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    America, be true to your birth;

    [​IMG]
     
  14. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  15. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    Lol, yeah I'll get to you later when I have nothing better to do.......just kidding.

    You really can't see the logical hole at the heart of all your arguments, can you?

    Or are you part of the Rand society and getting a nickel for every quote? If so, be aware I don't even read the quotes any more than I'd read LR Hubbard or Anne Coulter. But if it gives you something to do with your time........

    You should try Nietzsche. Way more interesting.
     
  16. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Ok. Fair enough. But your Nietzsche reference suggests you wish Ayn Rand wasn't as brilliantly right as she is, and betrays your fear that she is.

    I quote Ayn Rand because she is brilliantly right, morally courageous, and deserves to be honored.

    She is hated by many.because her words reach deeper than a mirror and they hate the reflection they see; and rather than reach for the best within themselves, they condemn her for making them look and then wanting to be better.

    Ayn Rand: ”Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being—not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement—not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason.”

    This is why she’s hated. Why does it say about those who do the hating?
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  17. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  18. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  19. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  20. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    After we embarrassed them for it.

    Hong Kongers are waving the stars and stripes, singing the national anthem, and issuing a global cry for freedom.

    The Democrat Party loudly supports bend-a-knee leftists who hate the U.S. flag, such as Colin Kaepernick.

    Democrats are trying to sell socialism to the U.S. public, well, oppressive China's got socialism in spades.
     
    Starjet likes this.
  21. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    There are two major strategies of problem-solving between the nations. One is based on the attempts to understand the other side, to look for compromises, to establish laws and principles for decision making and to respect the others. This strategy is called diplomacy and is considered a choice of civilized people. The other approach is based on false superiority complex, on the grounds of absence of any values and principles except for the false ones, it rejects the very opportunity that the other people can have a different view and deserve some respect. This is war and it is considered as a path for barbarians.

    I am afraid that you have just made a very disappointing choice... :)

    Ms Rand didn't know a thing about economy and marketing. In some cases in exchange for public attention it makes all the sense for the buyer to spread his products without being payed... in the beginning. She makes a false 'basic principle' which is a principle of 'money' But money is not a substance! The basic principle is different and it is - a feeling oif satisfaction. If the buyer feels satisfied getting a product in exchange for his gratitude - it is still good. It is an appropriate behaviour for kids or people who are currently weak and need time to recover. Ms Rand established a very blood-thirsty movement which in my opinion is worse than fascism or communism, because the latter wanted to get happiness to a whole nation or multinational class at the expense of all the others. Libertarians officially want to make happy a very peculiar and unique man (or woman which doesn't matter) at the same price... Be careful once you acquire the so-called values from her words. Be as carefule as Eve should have been talking to a Snake in Heavens. :)


    And still that is a compromise and a choice of person's freewill. It used to happen in the Past when someone was getting robbed and found it out. Sometimes (very rarely) the owners prefferred to give the despaired person at least something and perhaps some conditions which helped a person to restore himself.

    The strong people need to help the weak. The clever people need to help those who aren't. This is our responsibility as men.
     
  22. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    I didn't say that. The media is controlled by Trump's opponents who didn't come to the office but retained their indluence on the state disregarding the will of the people. I know that. But both Trump and the clans (like the Bushs or the Clintons) have common interests and in this case they work together against China.
     
  23. Yazverg

    Yazverg Well-Known Member

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    Every single person among the protesters is there because of the work in social networks that is performed by the agents of Department of State and regular media activity. If there was no such a work people of Hong Kong wouldn't be a problem for chinese government and would be able to improve their state to mutual benefit. And it is not about Trump personally. Afterall the president or any elected official is not able to affect the policy of the USA.
     
  24. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Just what improvement is possible between tyranny and liberty except for liberty to triumph?
     
  25. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you say. I disagree, as does Ayn Rand and Fransico, but not James Taggart, and apparently not you.

     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019

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