Is Professor Mearsheimer saying that the end of the world is coming soon?

[Jodistrict]

That lecture by the former Chinese foreign minister was awesome.    Unfortunately, he won't be listened to by the crazies that control US foreign policy.      

[Bobby_2021]

These times call for more self restraint. You can impose on others only for so long. 

[tvaeli]

18 hours ago, zazen said:

The point about balance between state and market gets over looked as the often uninformed Western perspective clings to the notion of China being strictly communist and authoritarian and communism = failure = bad. The reality is more nuanced: China operates under a mixed economy paradigm that is almost its own thing and is beyond capitalism or socialism. 

Local governments play a big role to the point a political scientist terms their hybrid economy the 'mayor economy.' 

 

I was born in Soviet Union - in Estonia, which was part of it 6 years of my life. It is really painful for me that in communism, you cannot become rich and get the money in case you really work much; but you can manage to be an average middle class or part of a government. Otherwise, people are really safe, they help each other by means of food, etc., and there are none of many financial danger feelings you get in capitalism. Anybody would have cookies and tea to offer to visitors, and in Soviet Union, the science was respected and average intelligence in many areas was higher for common people. Today it starts to annoy me how stupid some worker might be, as they really can make bugs like programmers - they turn out to be bugs in longer time; in soft sciences, you also need to be something. In Soviet Union, many areas of human development was respected a lot and popular science was very advanced. The food was more natural and the machines worked longer. You cannot be rich in communism, but you cannot be poor neither. In capitalist countries, you would live on the street or work hard for your apartment - in communism, having a place to live is very normal and your pension fonds do not disappear magically. There is also some money and if you save, you can be quite well with this. Sometimes I think it's higher pleasure than having some few people being rich; but it's also very useful if some people learn to live higher classes, richness somehow spreads and the experience they get, and when people, who manage the money better, can manage larger amounts of it.

I think many people are not neutral when speaking about communism, they talk only about a bunch of people killed in the beginning, some wars, and the lack of some freedoms; but in capitalism, people do not have the freedom to have some money and apartment without doubt. They always do doubt, something can happen and nobody is going to rescue them - it's the normal statistics of financial accidents. It the yin and yang - capitalism is yin, building the model from bottom-up, small to big, and communism is yang, building from top-down, big to small. In reality, you need to unify the yin and yang, not choose, and the experience of two systems is something really valuable in the world; the experience of yin and the experience of yang - until we learn to combine them perfectly, we need people to experience this all.

You cannot become rich, but you can be hard working, and guarantee for sure all the "luxuries" of the middle class, and have friends and good ambient. With all this guaranteed to many, you have a fair competition with the case where a lot is guaranteed to a few - maybe you are even richer in total. I like the good feeling when people feel safe. They get a different feeling out of the life, not such hurry, fear and struggle, and hate of the poor. You need to be really neutral when talking about these experiences, because what communists talked about capitalist is as true as what capitalist talked about communist; you need to leave aside the crimes and death punishments and work with the life of common people - maybe you can do this without all that punishment. The system itself is deeper than this karma, and it's worth the study; we could also speak of America only in terms that it used to have slavery - but modern people know nothing of it. People of my time also did not know much about those punishments, those were a century ago, and where I fear the case when being religious is somewhat illegal, it happens here, to - it's financially illegal sometimes, or your psychology is not considered correct. If I see all this "freedom of word" and other things in capitalism, they are comparable, so there is something deeper to develop. You are also somehow spied, government might not like all the things you do and they have their means to pressure you. In communism, also, a normal rebel just had some pressure - and when you pressure the country, usually it pressures you back, a rebel must work hard with reasons of those pressures and complain less; when I have a great idea here, in capitalism, I feel a lot of pressure and this is normal. When you work with food, you also feel pressured to not cut off your hands.

So, do a neutral research of these yin and yang, and find out, how in capitalism you can connect all ends to safeguard common people, who want to work and live