Re: What do you think about the Corona virus conspiracy theories?
@204
yeah. I don't disagree. But at some point you have to draw the line and say "this country is actively a threat to all the other countries" and do something about it. The reeducation camps are World War II level shit. I don't know for sure where the line is, or what the answer is, but it's not entirely about helping them once you're at the point of religious reeducation camps, anymore.
@207
I'm pretty sure the answer is people stop trading with China over these issues. No need to overthrow the government. "You want to do human rights violations and no free speech? have at it, but you won't be at our table" goes a very long way as long as the people in charge are sane. Instead it's "we're happy to give you special versions of our product that help you maintain the status quo". At the end of the day China values and actively wants to be part of the world economy, and I doubt that they'd be able to spin it/cover it up sufficiently that the citizenry just stands by and keeps putting up with it.
I don't think China is stable in the sense that they are sort of approaching the point where they will have to start choosing between keeping their no freedoms and oppressed masses status quo and actually continuing to play on the world stage, because with the modern internet and stuff it comes down to loosening things or asking everyone else everywhere to please give us an exception. But what scares me is that they've built the apparatus to close their border and go North Korea, except it's even better than anything north Korea could have ever dreamed of.
@209
China doesn't exactly hold us by the balls financially. All the people saying that are too busy making a political point to stop and inform you that at the level of first world governments talking to other first world governments, money is kind of imaginary. At the point of hypothetical invasions or other extreme action, the U.S. will just go "we don't care about our debts" and China will go "that sucks, but we have bigger problems" and that will be the end of it.
'I'm not sure China does actually hold us by the balls financially anyway, I'm pretty sure that's a much more complex and nuanced point. But my point is that it only matters as long as both sides agree that it matters. Personal-level debt is different than country-level debt because the bank or the cops or whoever can show up at your door, but all countries can do is get out the armies unless it's a situation where it's China and everyone else vs. the U.S. wanting to disregard debt, and the thing is China isn't very busy making friends right now and hasn't been for along time, so if it got to the point where the U.S. was willing to just say fuck you to China in that way, it'd probably be bad enough that everyone else would just be like "we're staying out of it" and that would be that.
Mind you, normal times are different, because what's actually going on with debt to China is primarily big financial institutions who aren't governments working with other big financial institutions that aren't governments. So as long as the parent governments on both sides are like "we have good relations" the things underneath them in the hierarchy have to function as you'd intuitively expect them to. So, another thing is, the people using this to make a point are too busy to rephrase it as "Chinese banks hold some major U.S. companies by the balls" because "China will use their evil demonic army to enforce their debts and invade us one day" is scary and feels correct to anyone who doesn't have more than a basic understanding of what money actually is. I mean, most people believe that the u.S. dollar is still backed by gold.
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