In Capitalist nations, the further we are from the era of peak Unions and in general civil society movements (which was just after WWII) the slower infrastructure improves from one year to the next, something visible not just in trains but at all levels (even National Health Services for those countries which have them).
The same thing will happen in China now that they’re getting more Capitalist than Socialist.
It was never the Capitalist part doing the kind of improvements that benefit most people, it was the stuff outside Capitalism (that used it as a Trade Philosophy only) constraining it and guiding it for policy ends which were independent of Capitalism.
This of course accelerated with Neoliberalism, since that stuff is mainly about making Capitalism the sole definer of policy, or in other words make Capitalism the entirety of politics, hence unconstrained and unguided by interests other than those of Money.
Capitalism is reasonably decent at optimizing Trade in the short and mid-term, but is completelly shit for non-Trade interests such as Quality Of Life, as well as for anything which doesn’t have direct and reasonably immediate action-consequence links such as situations where negative effects are very delayed in time (for example, companies enshittifying their products but keeping on going for years on the inertia of brand name) or emergent in nature (i.e. things that appear due to the accumulation of the actions of many actors, such as Global Warming).
That’s nature in general.
I don’t know if this analysis is true generally, Japan is pretty fucking capitalist.
I would argue it’s more a matter of what wing of the capitalist oligarchy has the upper hand. In the US and Canada, it’s the extractive fossil capital and that ultimately holds power. In Japan, or the Netherlands it’s more the manufacturing.
Don’t extrapolate from the US to capitalism in general. It’s more nuanced than that.
Whilst I can’t speak in an informed way about Japan, I can about The Netherlands and they have been degrading in terms of quality of public services during the Neoliberal era.
Certainly by the time I left (about 15 years ago) the trend was well establish in that country of having Scandinavian levels of tax (but only for people, not for companies) and ever more American-level of public services. For example, they don’t have a National Health Service (instead they have Health Insurance) even though taxes there for individuals are significantly higher than in countries which do have one such as Britain or Portugal.
They also use to have a high level of public housing but haven’t been building much of it in the last few decades and now have a giant realestate bubble.
The Netherlands is a great example of how even countries which started with a higher level of policies geared towards the good of the many, have a decay of those over time as we get further and further away from the post-War era, especially during the Neoliberal years.
The same thing will happen in China now that they’re getting more Capitalist than Socialist.
China: “We’re working on our next five year plan, as part of a grand fifty year plan for full national modernization. We haven’t had a recession in 40 years and we’ve functionally eliminated poverty within our borders. We’re currently working on a network of trans-continental railroads and global shipping lanes to bring our modern industrial capacity to the planetary scale. As we slough off the productive surge of capitalism and turn state owned enterprises into the foundation of our economic model, we are enjoying an era of wealth and social stability not enjoyed by any country on earth in human history. This is just as Karl Marx predicted, two-hundred years ago.”
American: “No, that’s just capitalism. You’re doing capitalism right now.”
Also American: “We invested another trillion dollars in VR that hosts an AI that makes bitcoins. Our GDP is up to 15 digits. No, we don’t care about our measles epidemic, it builds character.”
American: “We invested another trillion dollars in VR that hosts an AI that makes bitcoins.”
China: “Sounds great, we’ll gladly make and supply 90% of all bitcoin hardware to make a quick buck off of your global ecological crisis machine (100% not capitalism I promise)”
100% not capitalism
Capitalism is when you… produce low cost surplus for general consumption?
What happens when you ban crypto trading and mining because its exploiting the SOE low cost electricity?
So long as the workers’ pockets are being filled, being the number one producer of literal trash, propping up global consumerism and burning the planet is irrelevant.
After all, it’s those dirty capitalists that forced us to pillage our own country and disregard our worker’s health and safety. But at the same time don’t forget that we’re the #1 shining world leader and those capitalist pigs can’t boss us around! 🇨🇳💪🇨🇳
those dirty capitalists that forced us to pillage our own country
My man, what are you even on? You seem to have China confused with West Virginia.
Capitalism is when there’s an owner-class controlling production via capital. It doesn’t really matter what they’re producing or at what cost or who’s consuming.
Capitalism is when there’s an owner-class controlling production via capital.
It’s funny, because I’ve seen more than a few libertarians assert that Communism is the Worst Form Of Capitalism because any kind of regulation is just Government Ownership of Production. The only true path to socialism is a fully devolved privatization of all territory and commodities.
So you have people go out into the woods to create this ultra-orthodox free market absent any kind of iron grip of Big Government. They spend millions on marketing their liberal utopia to attract a large base of like-minded people. They take over the local government, abolish the regulations, end the tyranny of the Woke Government Leftists, and finally unleash the power of individualist John Galt style ingenuity. And then their city fills up with bears.
You might ask if capitalism is the sole definer of policy, what’s the purpose of our elected parasites? If they can’t define a reason for their existence, they too need to be replaced with ai.
Well, the point of Neoliberalism is to de facto destroy Democracy by making the powers controlled by voters (the State) be secondary to the power of Money.
I guess the end stage will be something similar to Feudalism, or maybe just Fascism (a number of very Neoliberal nations have of late become a lot more Fascist).
In the transition stage, the politicians are needed keep up the Theatre Of Democracy and distract the masses with ever louder shows of conflict around things which Money doesn’t really care about (hence the Identity Politics Wars).
What hypercapitalism lobbied by big oil does to your country.
it’s not even capitalism at this point. there’s various definitions of capitalism out there, which makes it blurry and difficult-to-talk-about, but most of them feature some element of wealth maximization. in the current trajectory, nobody’s wealth is increased.
trump’s policies hurt not only the common people, but also the economy. if the common people have less money, they spend less on consumerism and that cripples the economy. that is actually what’s already happening rn. and it’s only going to get worse. we need handouts, so people can spend money.
yeah, anti public transit has several motivations, the most American is racism. if we have robust public transit, they can’t be “whites only” and you can’t force the not-whites to sit in the back. so right there. Then you have white land owning hegemony. Why do the busses only go downtown and not to the shopping center half way to the suburbs? because they don’t want the filthy poors mucking up their white fort, if you let busses go up to the suburbs then THEY can get there and do all the things they get blamed for!! Lastly, profit motive. mass transit means people can choose to have a car or not. the powers that be are making a lot of money off cars and mass transit will upset the apple cart.
i think it’s not only racism though. surely, there’s also a lot of kicking-downwards on the poor. the poor shouldn’t get a nice life, so they’re motivated to work harder and be successful, so since public transport helps everyone, including the poors, we don’t want that.
(not my words, just a common sentiment i’ve heard)
You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And your comment reminds me of it. The aesthetics of evil. Racist segregation is an obvious evil. So if you tell black people to stand at the back of the bus because they’re not allowed to mix with the whites, that’s rather obvious and a horrific picture to have. But, if you handicap them, make sure they can only live in the cheapest communities and then limit the mobility of them. Same result. But because you didn’t see it, and the enforced segregation is rather subtle… Well, looks better, doesn’t it? So people are more likely to accept it. And if you say things like “The city has marked this black community unfit for investment.” then it sounds already like a conspiracy theory. Making you the weirdo for speaking out. Horrid, but an elegant and efficient system for censorship, isn’t it?
And to be absolutely clear: I reject racial segregation and censorship, obviously.
Oh trains! Now do pollution, or infrastructure, or empty cities…
A year ago I would have said Concentration Camps, but we both have those now.
You should try to find better criticism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_China
empty cities
Not so empty anymore, and calling them empty was bullshit.
Turns out when you decide to build a new city, of course it would be empty at first, then people will eventually move in. But we can’t do that because we need to preserve the artificial scarcity of housing so they can be used as an investment.
It’s true that China’s co2 per capita has gone up sharply, however it’s still about 30% lower than the yanks. China is also dwarfing other countries with the amounts of renewable energy currently under construction https://globalenergymonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/solar_wind_in_construction_treemap_for_online-1.png
actually China’s CO2 hasn’t gone up in the past 12 months: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/
it’s likely that china has reached its CO2 emissions, and now they’re beginning to fall.
This is a good point, however the me meme is comparing to 1996. I think there’s some way to go until it drops back that far.
America has had a concentration camp since 2001
China has an ambitious urbanization plan, so they’re building the cities before there are people actually living there to get ahead of demand. It’s not like China has a shortage of people to live in these cities and they have central planning, they can just move production into these developments and people will move there for work. In fact, it’s happening right now. They don’t just build empty cities that just sit empty forever.
A year ago I would have said Concentration Camps, but we both have those now.
Jesus Christ. American liberals are champions at historical revisionism.
Yabbut somebody think of the car companies!!!
While continuing to produce the worst cars imaginable
Every three years China pours more concrete than the US has since WWII.
Bragging about encasing the natural world in a synthetic crust and displacing wildlife… Great flex
Just a reminder that concrete releases huge amounts of CO2 as it cures. Empty cities don’t help anyone.
i don’t think their intention is to keep them empty. not the worst thing to spend co2 on.
Their intention was to bolster the economy with busy work, but that’s not a long term solution.
busywork making houses ahead of time is pretty good tbh.
id take that over ai or some shit.
That’s comparing Apples to Shampoo. To completely different concepts and it’s not an either/or situation.
it really isn’t. both give out emissions, one of them is housing.
its like complaining wind farms are ugly.
Concrete doesn’t house CO2. When they created Biodome2, the engineers didn’t factor in the curing time and CO2 output and the scientists had to vent the facility or suffocate.
Houses don’t stand long on their own. It takes a significant amount of time and money to keep these things from filling up with mold or collapsing.
Another reason good urbanism and walkability is super important: the emissions don’t just come from the cars, they come from the excess roads themselves, too.
cement releases large amounts of CO2 when it is being produced, i.e. when the cement powder is being produced from limestone. this is due to a chemical reaction: CaCO3 (limestone) -> CaO (cement) + CO2
later, when you mix the cement with water and sand to make concrete, it re-absorbs (approx. 43% of) that CO2. you’ve got it backwards :D
curing reaction: CaO + CO2 -> CaCO3 (facilitated by water presence)
edit: ok i looked it up and concrete only absorbs about 43% of the CO2 that is emitted during cement production. Source
Hey now, that’s a misrepresentation of both the US and China.
China had way nicer locomotives in 96. It wasn’t 1896.
And in the US, that guy would have either been replaced by a machine, or replaced by someone younger who won’t be expecting the seniority and pay raises that being there for over 20 years usually gets you.
Replaced by machines that can’t transport humans or even freight for that matter
now I want to watch an entire playlist of Adam Something videos about dumbass tech bros trying to invent the train over and over again
What’s the problem? The rich have private planes.
this is kind of an exaggeration, but still crazy to think about. in a way similar to when we think of space exploration in the 60s today.
we can achieve so much so fast when we actually put some effort into caring about it.
when we care
Yeah but who would get to skim off the top of that?
Oh, you dont think Lockheed skimmed off the top of the Apollo program?
Sure by loke 60s standards. That would be like saying a cave that doesn’t get too damp when it rains is luxury, because cave people thought so.
It’s exaggerated and massively understated depending on location.
There are several metro areas in the US with over 1 million people that has zero metro/subway or light rail, some of them don’t even have a passenger train connections or stations, or at most it stops by once or twice a day. Places like Columbus Ohio that has literally zero rail passenger rail for over 2m people in the metro area. If you want to take the train from there to NYC you’ll have to spend a couple of hours on a bus to a different city first. And it’s not like they never had it, they razed the train station in the 70s.
Other places that lack light rail or metro and have 1m+ people in the metro area: Tampa, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Oklahoma, Memphis, Richmond, Louisville, Rochester, etc. with many of them having a very bad outside passenger train connections. There are also a bunch of others that almost slipped by or did stay off the list over technicalities like having a single tram line going up and down main street or similar. Places like Orlando, Cincinatti, etc.
I recently planned out a trip to Chicago using trains. The fastest and most cost efficient route was to drive 3 hrs to Indianapolis and then take a 3 hr train to Chicago from there. Literally, the passenger rail network in the US is so bad that the fastest and cheapest way to travel by train is to do it as little as possible.
Id argue the northeast corridor is effectively the only place we have intercity rail.
While there are other routes, it’s mainly just keeping the lights on. How can rail be useful at 1-2 trips/day, travelling at glacial speeds? We shouldn’t even count it. If we ever start funding rail seriously, we’ll save a crap load of money where Amtrak kept the right of way sort of in use but that’s the only benefit.
The 2022 infrastructure bill would have made a huge difference increasing several routes to “plan to be useful” or even “sort of useful”, but even then a decent rail system would be a century out until we actually start spending. It doesn’t even have to be much, compared to road spending, but it has to be a lot more than we do now, in percentages more similar to road spending, and it needs to be consistent, long term. It can’t just disappear every time a Regressive is in office.
That requires political will to achieve objectives other than wealth maximization, or in other words a political philosophy other than Capitalism which, at least sometimes, is dominant over Capitalism.
The whole point of Neoliberalism from the beginning was eliminate those and make Capitalism the dominant political philosophy rather than just a trade philosophy, so almost 50 years into it the effects are all around us and painful to see.
This isn’t even about government styles. This is just investing in infrastructure vs not doing that.
US Train travel has actually gotten worse since 1996.
Came to say this. If it had literally remained unchanged they’d still be doing pretty good.
Yeah, the only reason we still have tracks most places is for freight.
Plot twist, the bullet train only goes to an enormous city in which nobody lives or works.
Reality: Trains in China go pretty much everywhere and are often sold out days in advance.
Trains everywhere connecting the entire country is a very worthwhile goal for a country, regardless of profit motive. If we can see the benefit of doing that with roads, why can’t we see the benefit of doing that with rail?
Trains being sold out days before is not a good sign, it means people are missing their appointments
It means they need to run more, longer trains.
Sold out trains still sell standing tickets, which let you pick seats if available. I’ve seen old ladies choose to stand so they can all be in a group.
Also sometimes they’re not totally sold out, but you’ll be choosing between a standing ticket and an expensive first-class ticket or hard seat and soft-sleeper for a slow train.
i mean from what i read there is only one country with more ppl die in traffic which is india https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Länder_nach_Verkehrstoten but good they have a few trains for 1 billion ppl. sure thats going to help. LOL.
Congratulations, you figured out that China is a large country! It would be ridiculous to think that a country with 1.4 billion people would have less people dieing in traffic than a country with a smaller population.
If you just go by absolute numbers, a large country will have more of absolutely everything than a small country.
Now go back to your link and sort by “Je 100.000 Einwohner” and see how that changes the list.
But you understand that “je Einwohner” means shit with that density of cars? cant have a car crash when you ride a donkey. per car would make much more sense but that’s the least the regime would care about which is why say 50k ppl died. i guess from how much their culture sucks it is 500k per year. :-)
If only that metric was included in the link above. Well, luckily it is. And guess what: When sorting by “je 100 000 motorisierte Fahrzeuge” (“per 100 000 motorized vehicles”), China ranks even much better.
Sorting by per inhabitants puts China as the 68th worst country, so 67 countries are worse. Sorting by per motorized vehicels puts China as 115th worst, so 114 countries are worse.
When looking at “per motorized vehicles” China is on par with Lettland.
If only there was a way to follow the link and look at actual numbers before spouting made-up misinformation.
this misinformation you are talking about it what i am talking about! yeah. finally. ofcourse the numbers are MUCH higher. coercion or killing of others is legit for motorists and the governments that need the industry.
i am sure china is always and will always be among the worst of the worst. one of the oldest countries and still tourture,regime government and imbecile citizens.
You really have trouble understanding numbers, right?
LOL.
If it was only about competence, I think throwing dice might yield better results than what many politicians are doing.
that you and nUmbErS? that is called being disconnected with the world. maybe 4chan convinced you to love pervy chinese regime but “AFK” is where those cars actually drive. should check it out some time.
Weird to compare a brutal dictatorship which violates human rights on the regular vs a democracy which violates human rights a little less.
So far…give Trump time and he’ll catch right up.
a brutal dictatorship which violates human rights on the regular
Don’t you think you’re a little harsh on the US?
Now do aircraft carriers!
Aircraft carriers don’t let me travel to my destinations
Your fault that you weren’t born as an aircraft!
Setting that cash on fire would be more practical use of tax payer money
