• letsgo@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    So true! Western “freedom” my arse!! Life is so much better in Russ…oh, wait, maybe not at the moment. China! Oh, wait, no, that’s not a good example either. OK, North Kor…what? Oh, right. Not them then.

    Er… need a bit of help here guys. What’s a shining example of communism that’ll make us Westerners wish they were living under that instead of our current hideous regimes?

    • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Three things:

      1. Russia isn’t communist. I don’t know why I have to remind libs of this fucking constantly, it’s infuriating. You remember in 1991 or so when the Soviet Union fell? Yeah, Russia hasn’t been communist since then.

      2. The DPRK is how it is because of the actions of the western world, especially the US. The DPRK has tried to open itself up to trade and immigration and has been stopped from doing so by the western world, especially the US. That being said, life there is fine. It’s just a normal country that’s suffering a bit because it has not been allowed to trade freely with the rest of the world. Maybe watch the Boy Boy video where they go to the DPRK to get haircuts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E

      3. What exactly is your issue with China? Can you please explain what you’re actually getting at here? Lots of other people have brought forth some pretty decent evidence that life in China isn’t as bad as a western lib thinks, but I am curious about your thoughts and feelings on the matter. What is your issue with China? Why would you not want to live there?

      • Eat_Yo_Vegetables69@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        What exactly is your issue with China? Can you please explain what you’re actually getting at here? Lots of other people have brought forth some pretty decent evidence that life in China isn’t as bad as a western lib thinks, but I am curious about your thoughts and feelings on the matter. What is your issue with China? Why would you not want to live there?

        With many redditor types, it’s down to their white/moral superiority + saviour complex. Even if they know it might not be true, they will grasp onto the thought that “liberal democracies” are the best system until the end of history. Just the thought of another country with a different system, and not subservient to the enlightened/civilised west is rising to challenge them is a triggering point for them.

        For the sexpat types that you see on Youtube making a living with the anti-PRC grift, they’re no longer worshipped as “superior people” even if they were to visit again so of course they will harbour hatred against them lol.

    • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      I have yet to meet an American who visited china who did not come back screaming praises for that country. When you mention their visits, they always grin even if it was a grueling work trip.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        There was ine ledditor that I spent too long talking to who claimed to like China until he traveled there and saw guards with rifles at Tiananmen Square, which he interpreted as exerting a psychic pressure to not even think about the June 4th Incident. No, as far as I can remember from his harrowing account, no one actually said anything.

          • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            11 months ago

            Shit, i can go to Seattle right now and see cops with body armor and assault rifles patrolling the train station like it’s Fallujah. Even the motorcylce cops around here have AR15s sticking out the back like they’re judge dredd

      • Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        They’re all actors, every last one of them, acting their entire lives in case a Westerner catches a glimpse of them. Nobody actually works in China it’s just actors. It’s a wonder they’re the second largest global economy /s

    • Hagels_Bagels@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 months ago

      If capitalism is so bad then how come living conditions are worse in the exploited global south whose nations are targeted, exploited and destabilised by the imperialist core?

      Same dumbass line of questioning.

    • Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 months ago

      Russia isn’t communist (and seems to be doing just fine regardless), China has an outstanding quality of life and is arguably one of the best places to live in the world, and I quite enjoyed my time in the DPRK. Many of the issues the DPRK suffers is because of sanctions placed on them, not their own government.

      You are missing a few horrible rote generalizations. Would you like to say something about Cuban supermarkets to get the full experience?

    • iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      before you praise America or Europe, remember where that wealth comes from

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X

      Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.