Hukuo in modern China could be perceived as prioritizing the right to have a home over choosing to have none. “At what cost” includes homelessness and higher unemployment rates. We are quick to highlight where there is a lack of right in China but not how it reflects on our own lack of rights. That is to say, they aren’t trading their rights for economic progress, which is how the west often frames progress (our foreign sweat shops are good actually because it helps them in the long run). They are trading one set of rights for another.

I don’t know about Canada but the USA has been pro-child factory work lately. China’s wages have been rising faster than expected so they have gone all-in on automation. So when I see people claim their stuff is cheap because of “slavery” or human rights, it reads like projection.

And what are the Uighurs making that is so interesting?

Did you know that most of China’s debt is held domestically?

I mean so does the United States thanks to the 13th amendment but we don’t have anywhere near the same infrastructure to show for it

Overproduction of commodities is certainly a problem for capitalists. But the workers get to enjoy a lower cost of living. Like I would much prefer we built ghost cities (Chengdu was derided as a ghost city at one point) than have a decades long housing crisis with no signs of improving unless we deport millions of people.

Maybe there’s a better example but the point remains, liberating a people comes with self-determination. It’s not a matter of how little rights the people had before the military action.

Well TIL. But to call it liberation isn’t correct. America is also kidnapping people from their homes and work places but to say of another country was to invade and take a territory wouldn’t be the same as liberation. Liberation has a higher standard where the people of the land receive sovereignty and a self-determined government.

Y’all are desperate to relive the glory days of WW2 when it was clear who the baddies were. I get it, Americans do the same.

Conscription has always violated human rights but there are certainly better words like “conquer”. And let’s not pretend Russia isn’t also conscripting men (though certainly not those in their 50s).

The stock market makes no sense to me.

That’s because “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

That would mean admitting they did something wrong, which is impossible for these ghouls.

Wish they’d pray for forgiveness because then that would mean admitting mistakes.

There are about ~3000 billionaires. Or a billionaire every minute.

I mean churches should be anticapitalist and before the turn of the last century they often were. But then property got expensive and churches would need loans… Now we have prosperity gospel and mega churches. The internet ran the same course but in just a couple decades.

Oh man I have a story about an unhoused lady who has dementia. I walk my dog and sometimes she recognizes me, other times she has no idea. One of the days I was walking the dog and she forgot who I was and asked to pet my dog. She thought I was unhoused as well for some reason and told me about some good spots to sleep. These people know what it means to survive based on the kindness of others.

PS

Her name is Catalina, and sometimes I see her at church and she donated what little money she has. It sorta painful but then I remember how we treat her. We always have a place for her at our table to eat after the service. She’s our neighbor as far as we’re concerned.

Aside from the systemic reasons why the internet leans heavily right: when you deport people’s neighbors then politics is no longer a sports game and even the nonvoters understand this.

I honestly think how we treat the service industry is how many people end up treating their kids.

I think it was David Graeber that pointed out that the poorer you are the more you need to be able to empathize with your boss and clients in order to survive.

But this notion that the middle class are somehow more empathetic is interesting because I think it is based on the (correct) idea that people need to actually own something in order to be generous. However, I find from personal experience, poor people have an easier time giving what they have because they know they can survive having nothing.

Communists are just as selfish as anyone else. Their point is that if we want a better life we need to move beyond capitalism, communism is an appeal to our selfish nature as much as it is a call for cooperation.