1,676

(30 replies, posted in Politics)

"China will not survive as an autocracy. They are prospering mainly due to new given freedom. If they take back some of this liberties, the economic growth halts and there will be huge riots. If they don't population will riot as well. Especially in the cities resistance against the regime is growing everyday."
China giving more freedom to its inhabitants doesn't mean it is a democracy or growing towards being one, as there still is only one single party. It means it has given up on communism, or at least the strictest forms of communism. But you have to remember there are more types of totalitarian/autocratic regimes than just communism. The day it does become a democracy it will most likely stagnate like the Western democracies and Japan, for the reasons i gave in my post.

"That is exactly why it works so well."
How does it work like that, judging by the stagnation of democracies around the world? you could argue India, being a democracy, still has a huge economic growth, maybe even bigger than China does. However, this economic growth is entirely based on the skills of their cheap work force and has nothing to do with the government at all, as the government in India has close to no influence on the people.

"If you don't have a democracy, you don't even have to be a populist, and you can do exactly the same. Stalin fits that example. But what I don't understand is, why you advocate an autocracy when you dislike populism. A populist is skilled in deceiving the mob, and has more power because of that skill. He can do more things fitting his self interest and get away with it. In an autocracy, you can get away with almost everything so it even worse. Most of the populist tend to loose the election after they came into power unless they manage to decrease the democratic process by eg controlling the media like eg chavez or berlusconi."
Stalin is a good example of why autocracies can fail. He probably ruined the Soviet Union so badly that it came to implode in later years. That is true. But Stalin was corrupted by power and only wanted more power for himself. Another example of this is Mao Zedong, who  had almost ruined China with his reign, especially the cultural revolution. When you have a good and stable political party (stable autocracy) you can prevent this from happening. Once again, look at China. After the unstable first period during which Mao Zedong reigned with an iron, communist fist, China settled down, the government having taken complete power and being able to focus on other things than to beat down its citizens, even being able to give them back some of their freedoms. Also it is not like democracies don't face the same dangers. Hitler was chosen in a democracy. Parties want to stay in power and yell out crazy things like "hey lets lower the taxes on everyone, especially the rich, so our government has less of a stable income, but we trust on the trinkle down effect which has never been proven by anyone and is highly doubtable judging by the luxury lifes of the wealthy. Who cares we are in an economic crisis... no one right?". The worst part is in a democracy where everyone can vote a large amount of people will vote for this.
On democratically elected people turning autocratic: the fact that people would even vote for a person with such a shady background such as Berluzconi or a neo-communist making a lot of promises but delivering none like Chavez shows you one of the failures of democracy.


"Western countries economies stagnate because of resource prices, and the fact we can't possibly get any richer compared to eg Chinese population. Ireland is an example like china, it was poor, it boomed, it is rich, economy stagnates. China is still poor compared to its amount of inhabitants."
The most important reason for why Ireland boomed was becoming part of the EU and receiving massive amounts of aids. Ireland, as having to please it's citizens for governments to remain in power, used it's income in the wrong places (i.e. not in infrastructure, telecommunications and public services, as a  Davy Research (an irish stockbroking, wealth management and financial advisory company) report concluded. Also Ireland suffered from numerous banking scandals, as the Irish government didn't impose strict regulations on the financial sector, as China does. In that way Ireland is not like China and so China will probably not face the same problems Ireland did.

"Again, china is full of tension. It will either adept or burst. Their people will get richer, and economy will slow down. Then they either go back to closed system, collaps or change. I cannot understand how you fail to see that it is exactly the injection of freedom, as opposed to the totalitarian regime earlier, caused this economic growth. Their entire economy is based on cheap labor, and the lack of environmental rules. The pollution already makes some places uninhabitable. Its a time bomb."
I can see how the injection of freedom stimulated their economy, causing a large economic growth. I can also see how their economy is based on cheap labor, and yes the pollution in china is becoming unbearable. But as the government still has a lot of power they could in fact impose enviromental regulations. This would slow down their economic growth however, that is true.
However, can you see that the freedom they give has to do with their government becoming less totalitarian? not that it is becoming less autocratic (or more democratic). Those are two different kinds of freedoms.

"You also forget how it is a third world nation still, with a weak army and most of population -unofficially 2 billion- poor."
sadly that is true. China is only a developing nation.

"That is true but I think it is due to people "sticking" to a certain party. In a 2 party system, some people tend to vote for a party only because they dislike the other."
Another cause for the failure of democracy. People get attached to their political party, so that even when their party is not able to adept to the changing political climate they still vote for the party (here in the Netherlands we have an extremely reformed Christian political party, which still gets 2 seats in the parliament). Also the voting for the lesser of two evils is a weakness of a democracy.

1,677

(30 replies, posted in Politics)

> Omega Man wrote:

> >.The autocrat is powerful enough to monitor, regulate, and punish any private interests who threaten the state. <

AKA "their self interest", the pursuit of which drags down the whole state


being autocratic doesn't necessarily drag down the whole state. just look at china and its economic prosperity . denying the succes of the stable autocratic state of china is just ignorant.

1,678

(30 replies, posted in Politics)

<< One counter argument may be that Democratic countries are the most powerful, however Western countries have largely inherited the assets and opportunities of past empires. >>

arguement is also easily debunked by looking at China and the world supremacy it is surely going to obtain in the coming few decades.

another arguement for why democracy fails is that in a democracy not one party tends to stay in power for a long time. Power switches from party to party, as parties who make laws the people don't like are quickly removed from power. Democracies are also very vulnerable to populists, who can easily get a lot of votes in a short time by just shouting out things many people have problems with but not giving actual arguements or viable/effective solutions, or if they give solutions not telling how they would fund these solutions (examples: Sarah Palin, Geert Wilders, Hitler in the past).
This makes it impossible to do long term planning and causes governments to be reactionary, and not willing to take strong measures (as those would make them lose votes), and so they tend to not have a big impact on the country.
Democratic countries tend to stagnate politically and economicaly due to this lack of long term plans and governments erasing unpopular but much needed legislature from their predecessors (as is happening to the Western world and Japan at the moment), as opposed to stable autocratic countries who do tend to have long term plans, are able to impose unpopular laws, and have a steady growth in their economy (China).

1,679

(889 replies, posted in Universal News)

i'd do it if i knew who was where... but there's too many hiders this round :\

1,680

(889 replies, posted in Universal News)

pvc yikes.

1,681

(465 replies, posted in Universal News)

no idea tongue

1,682

(465 replies, posted in Universal News)

yay i got killed off big_smile

1,683

(194 replies, posted in Universal News)

dead thread is dead...

1,684

(17 replies, posted in Universal News)

yeah was a nice clean bit of skirmishing ^^

1,685

(17 replies, posted in Universal News)

descended.. why'd you make this whine thread. it was our own choice to keep on fighting.

1,686

(194 replies, posted in Universal News)

me! me! choose me! big_smile

1,687

(889 replies, posted in Universal News)

7 man fams without allies o.O gonna be interesting.

1,688

(889 replies, posted in Universal News)

no you yikes.

1,689

(889 replies, posted in Universal News)

let's hope for a good round!

1,690

(33 replies, posted in Community)

congrats mizzle!

1,691

(18 replies, posted in Community)

congrats man!

1,692

(145 replies, posted in Universal News)

woo goooo flashy! big_smile

1,693

(170 replies, posted in Universal News)

congrats 75/ 72 on the win. war was decided when hydro's ground got crashed. nice move lohan.

@all the haters: lol... how sad you are.

1,694

(145 replies, posted in Universal News)

good luck flashy! big_smile

1,695

(170 replies, posted in Universal News)

say wuttt. why shoot me bitch D:.

1,696

(170 replies, posted in Universal News)

WS cleared 75, HydroP lost 10 mil ground, couple of fig runs have been going on... that pretty much summarizes it all.

1,697

(170 replies, posted in Universal News)

good luck!

1,698

(50 replies, posted in Community)

Congrats TBO wink

1,699

(465 replies, posted in Universal News)

nooo. now i need to look for new allies. again D:

1,700

(394 replies, posted in Universal News)

Vladimir_Weiss wrote:
4. which banker/res will get pwn'd first?
RDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD



never!