Ah yes, because American democracy is going so well.
Who’s interests are the Republicans representing? Who’s interests have the Democrats protected after being in power for 3 years?
Democracy is meaningless if it doesn’t actually act to benefit the people. After all, the goal of government is to improve the lives of the people over which it governs. All of these experiments into different methods of governance should be evaluated based on how much the quality of lives of the population have improved and how happy the population is with their government.
You can find a bad example for any form of government. By any reasonable metric of success, the US government is performing poorly compared to non-democratic countries… Even in terms of freedom of speech, given the prevalence of government and intelligence-funded “independent think tanks” that influence policy in Washington.
At least most people in Russia and China can distinguish between the truth and the party line.
This not an argument. You can’t respond to “X is doing something wrong” with “OH AS IF Y IS ANY BETTER” when literally no one was talking about Y. You’re just trying to derail the conversation. If you’re going to defend China stick to your guts and defend China, don’t attack completely unrelated countries implying I must think they’re any better, they’re not.
At least most people in Russia and China can distinguish between the truth and the party line.
I am sure that most people in the country with the largest censorship firewall in existence know the truth any better. And before you say B-B-B-BUT AMERICA— Yeah they censor shit too. I hate both of them.
I get what you mean, but the other guy brought up democracy as if it was the be-all end-all solution. Countries that disprove OP’s point about democracy being the solution are fair game.
Chinese people know they’re being censored, though. That’s the key difference. They know that the perspectives being presented are, by and large, coherent with national policy and most urban people either know how to flip the firewall or know someone who can - it’s really not that hard. Sure, there is this nationalist block that doesn’t want to do so, but when have right-wing people actually looked at content that doesn’t agree with them, anyway?
Ask any random American what they think, and they’ll go on and on about freedom of speech and blah blah blah… As if the large media organizations in the US don’t all cite reports from “independent think tanks” that are conspicuously all funded by the same billionaires and manned by “ex”-US intelligence. See: the Atlantic Council. The US has been the world leader in manufacturing consent in a way that China and Russia can’t really match. It’s been impressive to see tbh.
I get what you mean, but the other guy brought up democracy as if it was the be-all end-all solution.
Yes. No democracy, no support from me. “But the US isn’t democratic!” Which is why I don’t support it either. Not sure if the other guy is the same.
Countries that disprove OP’s point about democracy being the solution
No country disproves that democracy is needed. “Benevolent dictators” (all dictators think they’re benevolent) die. If you think a dictatorship is doing well just give it a few years.
most urban people either know how to flip the firewall or know someone who can - it’s really not that hard.
“Yes they censor everything, but it’s easy to circumvent!” is not an excuse. How accurate is this really though? Do you have any sources to prove this is the case? Genuinely interested.
As if the large media organizations in the US don’t all cite reports from “independent think tanks” that are conspicuously all funded by the same billionaires and manned by “ex”-US intelligence.
Chinese news cite chinese think tanks, both entities funded by the chinese government. How is it any different? Doesn’t China have more billionaires than the US too?
China doesn’t pretend that their media is unbiased, though. There’s no aura of unbiased media in China. Meanwhile, Facebook’s head of global threat intelligence, is literally a US intelligence plant (and most of the authors on his Meta adversarial threat reports are ex- or current US intelligence). Meta is just the most memorable example, which is why I’m picking on them. Given the algorithmic nature of news delivery nowadays, how much influence would you guess US intelligence has on what news people see?
Xiao Qiang at UC Berkeley did a study before the VPN crackdown and estimated that there are about 10 million DAUs (daily active users) of firewall-flipping VPNs in the country. DAU/MAU is usually between 20%-50%, so that gives 20-50 million people with VPN access monthly (2-5% of internet users). Last October, China clamped down on some VPNs, but then the user counts for those VPNs that were still working skyrocketed.
Anyway, these numbers are actually really quite high:
Bing has 100 million DAUs worldwide. Reddit has about 55 million DAUs worldwide. LinkedIn has about 22 million DAUs in the US. Twitter has about 54 million MAUs in the US. Threads has about 8 million DAUs worldwide (though probably less now, lol). 1-5% penetration of total users in terms of usage is indicative of very high awareness. Other options include using a HK SIM (widely available) and a VPS (harder to setup). I have no idea what kind of market penetration these methods have.
They literally have above 90 percent approval according to international studies from people as conservative as fucking Harvard University.
You’re wrong about their institutions but regardless of what you think of their institutions they have a popular mandate, which is how democracies define themselves as legitimate.
Fuck the PRC because… They have state-owned enterprise instead of actual communism? Interesting take.
That’s meaningless if they aren’t democratic
Ah yes, because American democracy is going so well.
Who’s interests are the Republicans representing? Who’s interests have the Democrats protected after being in power for 3 years?
Democracy is meaningless if it doesn’t actually act to benefit the people. After all, the goal of government is to improve the lives of the people over which it governs. All of these experiments into different methods of governance should be evaluated based on how much the quality of lives of the population have improved and how happy the population is with their government.
Yes yes we know America is bad too, now do you have an actual point to make?
You can find a bad example for any form of government. By any reasonable metric of success, the US government is performing poorly compared to non-democratic countries… Even in terms of freedom of speech, given the prevalence of government and intelligence-funded “independent think tanks” that influence policy in Washington.
At least most people in Russia and China can distinguish between the truth and the party line.
This not an argument. You can’t respond to “X is doing something wrong” with “OH AS IF Y IS ANY BETTER” when literally no one was talking about Y. You’re just trying to derail the conversation. If you’re going to defend China stick to your guts and defend China, don’t attack completely unrelated countries implying I must think they’re any better, they’re not.
I am sure that most people in the country with the largest censorship firewall in existence know the truth any better. And before you say B-B-B-BUT AMERICA— Yeah they censor shit too. I hate both of them.
The post I was replying to said:
I get what you mean, but the other guy brought up democracy as if it was the be-all end-all solution. Countries that disprove OP’s point about democracy being the solution are fair game.
Chinese people know they’re being censored, though. That’s the key difference. They know that the perspectives being presented are, by and large, coherent with national policy and most urban people either know how to flip the firewall or know someone who can - it’s really not that hard. Sure, there is this nationalist block that doesn’t want to do so, but when have right-wing people actually looked at content that doesn’t agree with them, anyway?
Ask any random American what they think, and they’ll go on and on about freedom of speech and blah blah blah… As if the large media organizations in the US don’t all cite reports from “independent think tanks” that are conspicuously all funded by the same billionaires and manned by “ex”-US intelligence. See: the Atlantic Council. The US has been the world leader in manufacturing consent in a way that China and Russia can’t really match. It’s been impressive to see tbh.
Yes. No democracy, no support from me. “But the US isn’t democratic!” Which is why I don’t support it either. Not sure if the other guy is the same.
No country disproves that democracy is needed. “Benevolent dictators” (all dictators think they’re benevolent) die. If you think a dictatorship is doing well just give it a few years.
“Yes they censor everything, but it’s easy to circumvent!” is not an excuse. How accurate is this really though? Do you have any sources to prove this is the case? Genuinely interested.
Chinese news cite chinese think tanks, both entities funded by the chinese government. How is it any different? Doesn’t China have more billionaires than the US too?
China doesn’t pretend that their media is unbiased, though. There’s no aura of unbiased media in China. Meanwhile, Facebook’s head of global threat intelligence, is literally a US intelligence plant (and most of the authors on his Meta adversarial threat reports are ex- or current US intelligence). Meta is just the most memorable example, which is why I’m picking on them. Given the algorithmic nature of news delivery nowadays, how much influence would you guess US intelligence has on what news people see?
Xiao Qiang at UC Berkeley did a study before the VPN crackdown and estimated that there are about 10 million DAUs (daily active users) of firewall-flipping VPNs in the country. DAU/MAU is usually between 20%-50%, so that gives 20-50 million people with VPN access monthly (2-5% of internet users). Last October, China clamped down on some VPNs, but then the user counts for those VPNs that were still working skyrocketed.
Anyway, these numbers are actually really quite high:
Bing has 100 million DAUs worldwide. Reddit has about 55 million DAUs worldwide. LinkedIn has about 22 million DAUs in the US. Twitter has about 54 million MAUs in the US. Threads has about 8 million DAUs worldwide (though probably less now, lol). 1-5% penetration of total users in terms of usage is indicative of very high awareness. Other options include using a HK SIM (widely available) and a VPS (harder to setup). I have no idea what kind of market penetration these methods have.
They literally have above 90 percent approval according to international studies from people as conservative as fucking Harvard University.
You’re wrong about their institutions but regardless of what you think of their institutions they have a popular mandate, which is how democracies define themselves as legitimate.