China blocks NYT Story on Leader's 'Hidden Fortune'

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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For some strange reason, the Chinese government isn’t really all that keen to publicize the fact that it’s very own Prime Minister has amassed a fortune of around $2.7 Billion dollars while serving in the position. The New York Times ran a report of Wen Jiabao’s family wealth, but the reporting site was immediately blocked.

A report from the newspaper yesterday detailed how relatives of Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao have grown extraordinarily wealthy during his time in China's ruling elite.
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oh wow who'd have thought it, some person of political power managed to make lots of money not associated with the salary of his position... it's unbarevabar!
 
Not too surprising. It's own population is apparently also oblivious to what's actually happening in the South China sea. Kinda hard going into an argument with someone that keeps their eyes and ears covered.
 
Wow, he's rich... and in China.

That's like being king of the hobo's. You may be on top... but... yeah.
 
Well if we keep letting our federal government shit on our constitution we wont be too much different from China in 20 years. Federalism for the win.
 
Just think: Similar will happen in Iran once their statewide intranet starts up. Their people won't even know what the rest of the world says about their country or their leaders.
 
People love to argue whether communism is evil or capitalism is evil, when really there's nothing inherently wrong with either system, it's just the evil people who ruin them, whether it's Wall Street bankers or Chairman Mao.
 
Super-D said:
People love to argue whether communism is evil or capitalism is evil, when really there's nothing inherently wrong with either system, it's just the evil people who ruin them, whether it's Wall Street bankers or Chairman Mao.
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Exactly.

Heck, the original form of Communism as developed by Marx was a good system until the Soviets changed it.

It all depends on the person or people behind the concept of government, how they lead and how they run the nation, that determines whether that form of government is good or not.

It's like giving a weapon to a criminal and to a pacifist. In the wrong hands, it can be a very dangerous weapon. In the right hands, good things and the right things can be done.
 
Vicinity said:
Wow, he's rich... and in China.

That's like being king of the hobo's. You may be on top... but... yeah.
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That..... is absolutely hilarious. If you read Jin Yong (Louis Cha Leung-yung)'s book, you'd understand why.

But in his series of books, one of the most powerful and well respected factions is a group of hobos.
 
Serpent said:
That..... is absolutely hilarious. If you read Jin Yong (Louis Cha Leung-yung)'s book, you'd understand why.

But in his series of books, one of the most powerful and well respected factions is a group of hobos.
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Wuxia =/ IRL lol....
 
octoberasian said:
Exactly.

Heck, the original form of Communism as developed by Marx was a good system until the Soviets changed it.

It all depends on the person or people behind the concept of government, how they lead and how they run the nation, that determines whether that form of government is good or not.

It's like giving a weapon to a criminal and to a pacifist. In the wrong hands, it can be a very dangerous weapon. In the right hands, good things and the right things can be done.
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Nothing good has ever come from Marxism or Communism, period.
Please show me one point in history where either one of those 'isms' was ever a benefit towards mankind on a whole and not a tiny group of people in charge.

Oh wait, you can't. :rolleyes:
 
octoberasian said:
Exactly.

Heck, the original form of Communism as developed by Marx was a good system until the Soviets changed it.

It all depends on the person or people behind the concept of government, how they lead and how they run the nation, that determines whether that form of government is good or not.

It's like giving a weapon to a criminal and to a pacifist. In the wrong hands, it can be a very dangerous weapon. In the right hands, good things and the right things can be done.
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The Soviets didn't "change" Marxism so much as they took it to its logical conclusion: The problem with large-scale Marxism and Communism is that it actually requires a totalitarian government to enforce communal distribution of all property. It also requires a totalitarian government to impose all of the cultural "reeducation" and such necessary to condition people to accept it. The gulags are almost necessary to "protect" the stability of such a system from the people, and the wanton cruelty is a natural consequence of putting so much unlimited coercive power into the hands of a government.

There's supposedly a such thing as "anarcho-communism," but they really replace the de jure totalitarian government with a de facto totalitarian government that's essentially the same in all but name: The reason is, people are hardwired toward a sense of ownership over their possessions/property (some view a distinction between the two, as "possession" is less permanent). In the general sense, they worked to create them, or they worked to create something else they exchanged for them...since their labor is an extension of themselves, they can naturally feel the injustice of someone else taking those fruits without their consent. Most people are willing to voluntarily give up property as part of a fair trade, and most people are even willing to give some freely for nothing in return (generosity is part of humanity as well), but almost nobody wants to feel the helplessness and loss of just having their possessions ripped away from them or repurposed for someone else's benefit without their consent. For instance, people build their homes on land, so they're liable to assert exclusive ownership of the homes they invested so much effort into...and the land they built it on. If people don't make their own homes but pay home-builders in exchange for their work, they would still assert exclusive ownership, because they already exchanged something they owned (and likely worked for) of equal value; most people instinctively grasp the unfairness of the home-builders asserting rights over the home as well even after having already been paid through exchange. Communities who work together to build their homes are a bit different, and vaguely anarcho-syndicalist behavior does exist on a limited scale (e.g. the Amish), but the community as a whole will still jealously assert their ownership of their homes over outsiders, and they'll likely view things individualistically as well once the homes are built, rather than "everything belonging to everyone." While limited anarcho-syndicalist behavior does exist, communities of people who know each other still have a tendency to live aside from - or economically compete with - other communities of people they do not know. Taking the broader view, such communities are essentially democratically organized companies competing in a larger capitalist market.

In other words, voluntary cooperation and capitalism are both intrinsic to human behavior. In contrast, the communist ideal is alien to human behavior, because it requires large scale collectivist organization and totalitarian direction to even attempt; whether it's organized democratically or hierarchically (more typical), it requires people to surrender control of their lives and possessions to people they've never even met. Since we are not a hive mind, this isn't exactly a state of nature. (It's also completely economically unworkable without a hive mind, because large-scale socialism and communism cannot solve the economic calculation and coordination problems...hence all the famines in Communist countries.)

In the absence of government, people naturally assert individual property rights and operate in two modes:

Most have a tendency to contribute their labor or resources toward creating goods or services other people need/want, in exchange for something of their own. This is naturally competitive, but it also requires a large element of voluntary cooperation, because it's more efficient for people choose who to work with and pool resources than it would be if everyone stubbornly refused to cooperate.

Other people obtain goods/services/resources through theft and violence instead of voluntary, consentual means.

At the most basic level, government is a protection racket set up to "protect" most people against the criminals who have no respect for reciprocity or the free will of others...but in the process, all known governments have also engaged in the same behavior, to a greater or lesser degree.

The ultimate outcome of a government has to do with just how much power and control it has, and just how out of control it can get: Sociopaths are naturally attracted to positions of power of all sorts, and their ruthlessness permits them to thrive in that kind of environment. This is true of communities, churches, NGO's, charities, corporations, and governments...any kind of collective. The government is special though, because it has the unique and unchallenged monopoly over determining the legal use of force...which is easily abused even by those with the best of intentions, let alone sociopaths. There is no competitive check to government, so Constitutional limits are put in place to check its power. Left unchecked, without strict limits, it can quickly get out of control and tilt the playing field in favor of itself and people/corporations/etc. in bed with it.

Long story short; It is POSSIBLE for a limited, non-abusive government to exist in the context of a free market (and therefore a market which allows capitalist behavior), but that is no guarantee. Once the government becomes too powerful, you head toward socialism or fascism. However, it is completely impossible for a limited, non-abusive government to exist in the context of Marxism or Communism.
 
Communism, totalitarianism, socialism, capitalism; you know what they all have in common? MONEY! You don't need to read a book to figure out all of them can easily be corrupted. And guess what, every system including our current one existing today is all destined to fail. Then maybe we can get the Venus Project started sooner, rather than later....
 
Vicinity said:
... By living in a shit hole...

You can live like a king in a shithole. But it's still a shithole.
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Yes, because one of the most powerful men in the world would be living in a shithole. And he can't ever leave China if he wants too. Poor guy with stuck with $2.7B.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
To elaborate on the conclusion a bit more: The excessive centralization of power, including forced collective control of resources, is not just dangerous but completely anathema to individual free will, self-determination, and the mutually empowering role of voluntary cooperation. While such centralization can potentially exist under any economic organization, Communism and Marxism demand it both in practice and in theory, to a greater degree than even fascism/national socialism do...which is what makes them the most inherently evil and unworkable systems anyone has ever devised. In the name of "equality," they completely destroy the equal and reciprocal ownership and autonomy that individual human beings could otherwise enjoy over their lives and belongings. A capitalist or "capitalist" society can become overly centralized and oppressive as well, but at least forceful subjugation to a centralized authority/collective isn't a mandatory prerequisite, so there's at least a possibility for people to live in peace and have their own will over their own bodies, efforts, and property peacefully respected.
 
Ski said:
Communism, totalitarianism, socialism, capitalism; you know what they all have in common? MONEY! You don't need to read a book to figure out all of them can easily be corrupted. And guess what, every system including our current one existing today is all destined to fail. Then maybe we can get the Venus Project started sooner, rather than later....
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The Venus Project IS Communism. It's techno-Communism which sells itself with the lie that resources are infinite, when they are obviously not. The day will eventually come when full automation replaces human labor, but EVEN THEN, resources will still be finite and therefore scarce in the technical sense.

We will still have use for money, because while food will be abundant and we'll have gadgets and gizmos a-plenty and whozits and whatzits galore, we still will not have enough for people to take an arbitrary number of them for themselves, and land and natural resources will always be scarce enough to hold value. Moreover, there will always be commodities that are difficult to produce and scarce: For instance, everyone might be rich by today's standards, but we'll still have a limited number of Federation-class starships for people to go exploring in, and so their scarcity will hold economic value that people are willing to trade for.

Money is NOT the root of all evil; it is simply a high-demand stand-in for other goods and services, so people can exchange their property and labor for something more useful to them without the problem of finding someone to directly barter with. (After all, it's hard to find two people who both have what the other wants.)
 
Actually, I want to backtrack a bit: The day will eventually come when full automation replaces *manual* human labor...but the actual design and engineering of new technology will still be left to humans, unless our minds are made dangerously obsolete by our AI overlords.
 
Teenk9 said:
Yes, because one of the most powerful men in the world would be living in a shithole. And he can't ever leave China if he wants too. Poor guy with stuck with $2.7B.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
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... Wow, did you read the OP...

Hold on, I'll highlight the important part. Prime Minister.

Never said he couldn't leave. But he's still living in a shithole.
 
Vicinity said:
... Wow, did you read the OP...

Hold on, I'll highlight the important part. Prime Minister.

Never said he couldn't leave. But he's still living in a shithole.
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And you're still clueless. Whatever. I'm done.
 
Well, he is the Prime Minister. It would be beneath his station to let lower ranked officials than him amass more wealth than he could. He gotta be on top.

It's a matter of principle:eek: And what's a man without his principles?:D
 
Vicinity said:
... By living in a shit hole...

You can live like a king in a shithole. But it's still a shithole.
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Yanno, the entire country of China is hardly a shit hole. You could make the same argument that the US is a huge shit hole too if you just look at what parts of it usually makes the nightly news, namely the inner city ghettos.
 
Blocked or not in China, most educated Chinese know what's going on. They may not know all the details but the details have little meaning. There are hundreds if not thousands of Chinese websites and blogs devoted to pointing out the wealth flaunted by the ruling elite. Ferraris, mansions, watches that cost as much as a house, mistresses, houses for the mistresses, Ivy League education abroad for their kids....etc. Somehow they pull this off on salaries that are quite low. Think nobody in China has a clue?

Sad fact is that is accepted and expected by the majority. Different culture. The rich and powerful in China live by an entirely different set of rules. This has happened before in China...and it kicked off a revolution or three when the people finally could accept no more..

As to the one jackass who just wants to say China is a shithole....I'd rather be rich in China than rich in the US. In China..money truly can buy you anything....absolutely anything.
 
spinelli said:
Blocked or not in China, most educated Chinese know what's going on. They may not know all the details but the details have little meaning. There are hundreds if not thousands of Chinese websites and blogs devoted to pointing out the wealth flaunted by the ruling elite. Ferraris, mansions, watches that cost as much as a house, mistresses, houses for the mistresses, Ivy League education abroad for their kids....etc. Somehow they pull this off on salaries that are quite low. Think nobody in China has a clue?
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The interesting thing is that in theory, corruption is supposedly punishable by death in China. In practice, it really makes you wonder who exactly the Chinese government is executing under that pretense...but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used to kill and intimidate the few who aren't corrupt.

spinelli said:
Sad fact is that is accepted and expected by the majority. Different culture. The rich and powerful in China live by an entirely different set of rules. This has happened before in China...and it kicked off a revolution or three when the people finally could accept no more..
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It doesn't exactly bode well that their last revolution made the underlying totalitarian power structure worse, either.

spinelli said:
As to the one jackass who just wants to say China is a shithole....I'd rather be rich in China than rich in the US. In China..money truly can buy you anything....absolutely anything.
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The way you said that sounded...pretty dark and creepy. I'm not so sure I'd want to live in a place where money can buy "absolutely anything," if you intended that the way I think you did. Yikes.
 
Mini-Me said:
The Venus Project IS Communism. It's techno-Communism which sells itself with the lie that resources are infinite, when they are obviously not. The day will eventually come when full automation replaces human labor, but EVEN THEN, resources will still be finite and therefore scarce in the technical sense.

We will still have use for money, because while food will be abundant and we'll have gadgets and gizmos a-plenty and whozits and whatzits galore, we still will not have enough for people to take an arbitrary number of them for themselves, and land and natural resources will always be scarce enough to hold value. Moreover, there will always be commodities that are difficult to produce and scarce: For instance, everyone might be rich by today's standards, but we'll still have a limited number of Federation-class starships for people to go exploring in, and so their scarcity will hold economic value that people are willing to trade for.

Money is NOT the root of all evil; it is simply a high-demand stand-in for other goods and services, so people can exchange their property and labor for something more useful to them without the problem of finding someone to directly barter with. (After all, it's hard to find two people who both have what the other wants.)
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To clarify, I think when you say "communism" you are referring to the government instituted by lenin and stalin in the soviet union. That is not communism, that is totalitarianism.

And more to the point Jacque Fresco's philosophy on the TVP and technology will eventually remove the labor force completely out of the equation (which we're already seeing now), freeing humanity of the burden of being servants to a slave labor system where a select few can exploit off of. Ultimately, the entire mindset of people who've been conditioned by the very same system of greed, envy, corruption, hatred, and war will no longer have those characteristics anymore. I don't know if you really studied into the social aspects of what the TVP is about because there is a lot more depth than just a simple techno-communistic label you put on it

The "state of communism" is described by Marx and Engels as the condition in which "the State" no longer exists and people live and work together in harmony in a society based on equality where the fruits of labor are shared with all members of society and no one is exploited.

Which is exactly what TVP is essentially. The only difference is TVP has vague examples of technology that can automate labor. However with the advent of the internet and more and more people becoming informed and educated, we will solve these problems of limited resources and food. TVP isn't the perfect system, nor will it ever be, but it's a helluva lot better than what exists today.....

So essentially TVP = Marxism.
 
Mini-Me said:
The interesting thing is that in theory, corruption is supposedly punishable by death in China. In practice, it really makes you wonder who exactly the Chinese government is executing under that pretense...but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used to kill and intimidate the few who aren't corrupt.


It doesn't exactly bode well that their last revolution made the underlying totalitarian power structure worse, either.



The way you said that sounded...pretty dark and creepy. I'm not so sure I'd want to live in a place where money can buy "absolutely anything," if you intended that the way I think you did. Yikes.
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They execute those who become a liability or those with few friends when it is politically worthwhile. The certainly do execute people for corruption but...it's all a farce. They execute and hand out prison sentences to minor players so they can use it as 'proof' that the Party is tough on corruption.

As far as money buying anything...it is as creepy as you want it to be. Or as creepy as you can afford.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yanno, the entire country of China is hardly a shit hole. You could make the same argument that the US is a huge shit hole too if you just look at what parts of it usually makes the nightly news, namely the inner city ghettos.
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Yeah I'm going to have to agree that having 2.7 billion dollars and being the PM of what is becoming the most powerful nation on earth would give me the ability to insulate myself from all the stuff in China that makes some parts a shithole.

With that money and Power I could do absolutely anything I wanted.

Consider that the US president lives in Washington D.C. in a mansion with any amenity he could possible ever want but within that same city are some of the worst ghettos in the whole of the US.

I wouldn't consider the President living in a shithole and the PM in China lives under a completely different set of rules.

He could be living it up in a manner better than any emperor , king, czar, pope, tycoon or magnate ever dreamed possible.

What would he care if there ware millions of his countrymen live as poor farmers and abused workers, all the places he might go wouldn't be were the average chinese person frequents.
 
I thought he was trolling on the 'shithole' comments before he replied so many times. With the billions of dollars this guy has, you can insulate yourself so extensively that you could turn Uganda into a spa resort getaway. Look up the Ambani house in India for a nice example. That said, there are large chunks of China that are nice and even quite high end (and westernized, if that is a measure of what is a dump or not). Add in that, as others mentioned, your money will go farther there and you can purchase ANYTHING you want, and it sounds like a pretty nice deal to me.
 
octoberasian said:
Exactly.

Heck, the original form of Communism as developed by Marx was a good system until the Soviets changed it.

It all depends on the person or people behind the concept of government, how they lead and how they run the nation, that determines whether that form of government is good or not.

It's like giving a weapon to a criminal and to a pacifist. In the wrong hands, it can be a very dangerous weapon. In the right hands, good things and the right things can be done.
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They said the same thing about Kings. If you got a good one it was great. You just had to suffer the 199 A-holes until you got a good one. So, we decided to give them up.

Maybe its time to toss Communism on the dustbin with them.
 
Ski said:
To clarify, I think when you say "communism" you are referring to the government instituted by lenin and stalin in the soviet union. That is not communism, that is totalitarianism.
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Communism demands totalitarianism; there is no other way to redistribute resources equally, let alone on a perpetual and ongoing basis. (The USSR was hierarchical in particular, but whether this totalitarianism is hierarchical or democratic is beside the point.)

Ski said:
And more to the point Jacque Fresco's philosophy on the TVP and technology will eventually remove the labor force completely out of the equation (which we're already seeing now), freeing humanity of the burden of being servants to a slave labor system where a select few can exploit off of.
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This will eventually happen for manual labor, but The Venus Project pretends as though it's right around the corner when it's not. Exactly when do you foresee robots building homes, let alone larger structures?

Even once manual labor is entirely automated, higher level specialized labor cannot be so easily replaced. We will still need engineers, doctors, artists, and other forms of human laborers to create technology and art and perform services that automated technology alone cannot. These people should NOT be everyone else's slaves, to be forced to perform their services at gunpoint without voluntarily choosing what they consider a fair exchange. THAT would be true exploitation.

If we ever get to the point of technological singularity where AI can do all of that for us, our intellectual obsolescence will make that AI an existential threat. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but it's not exactly a rosy future I'm looking forward to with anticipation, because a lot can go wrong.

In terms of a "slave labor system," that's Marxist indoctrination talking: The primary reason for perpetual "wage slavery" almost always boils down to governments taxing and printing money (as well as introducing artificial market entry barriers and price-fixing through regulation). Without the government enslaving people by siphoning wealth and causing prices to rise [faster than wages] through inflation, a country's gradually increasing economic output will naturally cause material wealth to be increasingly more abundant, and prices will universally fall. As a result, consumer buying power will increase, which makes consumers and laborers less desperate and therefore more powerful from a negotiating standpoint for better prices, better wages, and better hours (which would eventually dwindle to nearly zero once we reached the point where material abundance was produced through automation).

Ski said:
Ultimately, the entire mindset of people who've been conditioned by the very same system of greed, envy, corruption, hatred, and war will no longer have those characteristics anymore. I don't know if you really studied into the social aspects of what the TVP is about because there is a lot more depth than just a simple techno-communistic label you put on it

The "state of communism" is described by Marx and Engels as the condition in which "the State" no longer exists and people live and work together in harmony in a society based on equality where the fruits of labor are shared with all members of society and no one is exploited.
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Don't you see the contradiction in terms? "Fruits of labor are shared with all members of society" and "and no one is exploited" are contradictory both with themselves and the concept of statelessness, because the former absolutely requires a totalitarian redistributive state to implement...and forceful redistribution IS exploitation. The use of force is the worst kind of exploitation as well: "Wage slavery" involves the manipulation of a person's free will and voluntary choices by exploiting their circumstances...but force/coercion violently overrides free will and individual choice altogether. That's not exactly a recipe for human happiness or justice.

Marx fooled himself into believing that a totalitarian state is just a "stepping stone" to a stateless communism though, where humanity is magically transformed into his ideal of a selfless hive-mind. However, absolute selflessness demands a complete surrender of all individuality and any reason to live except "for the Horde," and realistically speaking, most people are not willing to voluntarily give themselves up so fully to such a dubious cause as "harmony and economic equality at all costs."

This is not a matter of humans lacking the necessary "enlightenment" to embrace Marx's ideals: Human beings will never universally choose to sacrifice themselves completely for the Horde, but there is no shame in that, because a life like that calls into question the purpose of the Horde's existence in the first place. If the desires of individuals have no meaning or value, the existence of the collective as a collection of individuals loses meaning as well. Human beings should be free to choose for themselves who to cooperate with, when, why, and how...always, even when others choose differently from what you might like. Every person on earth experiences life through the lens of individual experience and has their own ideals, and everyone's love and generosity toward others is counterbalanced by their own desire to pursue relationships and interests of their own. Some people serve their ideals, some people serve their families, some serve their friends and communities, and some serve only themselves. Just about everyone enjoys the autonomy of making their own moral judgment calls here, even those who reject the equal autonomy of others.

Sure, some people are more selfish and greedy than others...and some people are SO selfish and SO arrogant that they would seek to impose their ideals on every single other person on earth by force, leaving no room for the ideals and pursuits of others. That is the heart of Marxism: It is profoundly anti-human, but it is completely tone-deaf to it's incompatibility with the human spirit, which is why every Communist government has done everything it could to forcibly stamp individuality out of people and remold them through gulags and reeducation camps...you know, for "equality."

Those are the "social aspects" of Marxism and the techno-communist Venus Project: They pursue collectivist ideals of "harmony" and "equality" at the expense of other far more important ideals, such as an individual's dignity and autonomy over their own life, body, and work. This extreme collectivism and pursuit of economic equality completely rejects the single most fundamental aspect of human equality, which is each individual's equal ownership of their own life! You cannot truly claim to support equality without respecting this, yet it is impossible to reconcile Marxism with this ideal. That is why Marxism is completely anathema to human nature...and horrendously abusive and violent when instituted by force, as had been woefully attempted time and again throughout the 20th century.

You might say that the supporters of the Venus Project learned from the USSR and wouldn't do that, and that it's all fairies and butterflies and will arise voluntarily...and I sure hope so, but if that's the case, the Marxist ideal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" will not actually happen on a universal scale (not a bad thing), because it requires iron-fisted totalitarianism to even come close. If people pursue The Venus Project through peaceful means only, it will remain a completely unrealistic utopian ideal forever, even though the world will move on naturally towards greater automation one way or another anyway. If people pursue The Venus Project through more forceful means, I just hope it ends before the body count sets a new world record.

Greed - the desire to accumulate more material wealth than someone else deems "necessary" - will never, ever be abolished entirely unless not only all of humanity, but all non-hive-mind animals, are completely eradicated in favor of lifeless nothingness. Every attempt to eliminate greed by force will end horribly, because it requires an attempt at destroying individuality, which is core to the human spirit. The required infrastructure for such an attempt also enables a much greater evil to thrive without limit: The lust for centralized coercive power and dominance over humanity. The sociopathic pursuit of raw power, rather than material greed, is the true culprit for the vast majority of war and state violence...and communist ideals are second to none in terms of just how controlling and power-hungry they truly are, because they demand full collective control of society, resources, and the hearts and minds of human beings everywhere. "Ideally," it means complete subjugation to someone's warped ideology...and realistically, as implemented the only way it possibly can be (through a totalitarian state), it means complete subjugation to the ruling class.

Now, will greed be minimized over time naturally? Sure. As scarcity becomes less of an issue, both desperation and greed will become less of an issue. Humanity will gradually move on ethically and philosophically, but we will never reach the utopian (dystopian, really) ideals that Marxists demand...and that's a good thing.

Ski said:
Which is exactly what TVP is essentially. The only difference is TVP has vague examples of technology that can automate labor. However with the advent of the internet and more and more people becoming informed and educated, we will solve these problems of limited resources and food. TVP isn't the perfect system, nor will it ever be, but it's a helluva lot better than what exists today.....

So essentially TVP = Marxism.
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Our current system is terribly flawed and crumbling for a number of reasons, primarily the centralization of power without limit and expansion of the money supply...but as you said, The Venus Project is Marxism, which is far from "better." It's literally the most violent, controlling, and arrogantly anti-human ideology ever conceived on Earth. The thought of it makes me shudder, and it scares me that adherents still cannot recognize its inherent barbarism. Subjugation to a collective on a massive scale is not the road to happiness. It's up there on my "worst possible things that could ever happen to humanity" list, right below "being harvested by Reapers and turned to goo to document our DNA and clear a path for other advanced life before we destroy ourselves."
 
pgwalsh said:
Well if we keep letting our federal government shit on our constitution we wont be too much different from China in 20 years. Federalism for the win.
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Make that 2 to 3 years. China own the U.S as it is.......the Chinese PM just owns Texas, that's all!

ROFLMAO
 
Teenk9 said:
Yes, because one of the most powerful men in the world would be living in a shithole. And he can't ever leave China if he wants too. Poor guy with stuck with $2.7B.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
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Well, here's the thing: if you had 2.7 million dollars, you could probably leave China. However, if you have 2.7 billion dollars and has just stepped down from a politlcal leadership position,

"they" might not let you leave.
 
(Actually, I may have exaggerated slightly when I called Marxism the most arrogantly anti-human ideology ever conceived on Earth: Extreme religious environmentalism and deep ecology and such, while typically intertwined with Marxism, are more overtly misanthropic, opposing not only human individuality but humanity in general...so I'll backtrack a bit on that part. ;))
 
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