This will have much less of an effect on housing prices than people wish. The core problem there is lack of supply, not a handful of foreign oligarchs.
Foreign oligarchs affect supply, and I don’t think we have any idea how much. Corporate owners are probably a bigger chokepoint on supply, but domestic wealthholders are probably a big player as well. We need a variety of rules in place; enforcement of any of them will increase supply, but that mostly benefits whoever’s left in the list above. If we crack down on the biggest supply problem, the next biggest one will buy up the excess.
If we actually want private homeowners to take precedence, we have to make it extremely difficult for anyone to own multiple homes, corporation or not, wealthy or not, foreign or not.
To your point, this rule, whether it becomes an enforceable regulation or not, isn’t even targeted at increasing supply. It’s targeted at preventing money laundering.
To your point, this rule, whether it becomes an enforceable regulation or not, isn’t even targeted at increasing supply. It’s targeted at preventing money laundering.
Oh I know; that was aimed more at the people talking about corporations owning housing, as if that's particularly relevant. I'm quite skeptical that the corporate boogeyman is really a meaningful target when it comes to housing costs though. We've been drastically underbuilding for decades now - with quite a lot of that directly coming from extremely onerous zoning laws. The sheer fact of the matter is that in most American cities (where people actually want to live - empty shacks in rural Nebraska are not particularly helpful here), there are far more people who want to live there than available housing, and the inevitable result of this is that the wealthiest people are those who get to live in them. This will be the case regardless of whether the housing is owned by a corporation or a mom and pop. The fundamental problem is lack of supply; anything that doesn't address that will not meaningful reduce housing prices and is at best a band-aid.
There are 16 million vacant houses in the US. Even if half of them are unslavagebale, thats still enough to house the entire homeless population of the US ten times over. I don’t think its a supply issue.
And are those vacant houses in places where people want to live?
In NYC, for example, the vacancy rate is a bit above 2%. Vacant houses in Oklahoma have zero relevance to homeless people in NYC. It also has to be considered that a lot of vacant residences are only temporary; either caught up in legal issues or briefly empty while the owners find tenants. But again, geography is critically relevant here. Vacant properties only help if they're in places where people actually want to live and where jobs are available. It doesn't matter how cheap a shack in Nebraska is if there's no job around beyond farming.
Only a third of those are in the 'other vacant' category that represents housing that's not being used for any purpose. The other two-thirds are currently for rent or sale, have completed that transaction and are awaiting actual occupation, or are seasonally used.
I wouldn't be opposed to a tax on season homeownership, but that's only 10,000 units a city of 800,000.
The real question to ask is why the hell is it literally illegal to build anything other than a single-family home in 38% percent of the city's land, nearly two-thirds of land zoned for residential purpose?
Sure, snapping your fingers and making those ~30,000 units come on to the market would have a small effect, but it pales in comparison to how much supply could be added if such a huge chunk of the land wasn't legally mandated to be single-family homes.
Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Providence, Pheonix, OKC, Memphis, St Louis, Detroit, Houston and Cleveland are all in the top 20 by percentage of vacant houses and NYC is #22. This problem is not limted to small rural areas at all. The vacancies are spread across the whole of the country.
Renting is the right choice for some people. Corporations have to obey stronger laws than mom and pops and are in my experience more likely to keep the houses updated.
The Mom and Pop owners have less resources to handle if you suddenly break your lease and leave due to crumbing conditions so it’s in their best interest to keep their properties updated.
Corporations often will ignore your complaints, and then just absorb the costs for a couple months until they can move in someone else into the same broken property. Corporations do not care when it comes to their properties, while individual owners do care because there are actual people behind them.
Also, regardless if “renting is the right choice for some people”, the housing shortage is due to corporations buying up single family homes with the express purpose of renting them, which pushes potential owners out of the market entirely.
Also too, mom and pop landlords often hold property as a means of retirement savings, so that when they go to cash out and finally retire, the house is worth something as opposed to a neglected pile. Obviously this isn’t true across all property owners that rent out, but it isn’t uncommon.
Just a single data point but as soon as a corporation bought my apartment complex they “attempted” to illegally increase my rent through hidden fee increases. They also “accidentally” sent me the wrong leases with the rents increased multiple times.
If I need to sue a corporation for something like this, it’s going to be a lot of time and effort for me but nothing for them so they can essentially get away with the illegality. Mom and pops it’s a lot of time and effort for both of us so it’s in both of our best interests to do things by the book.
Yes, renting is absolutely the right choice for some people. I completely agree. That is why I never said apartments shouldn’t exist or that people couldn’t own multiple homes to rent out. However, I think people who own multiple homes should be taxed higher on them.
Housing should not be a retirement vehicle. It should be a basic human right.
Also, I don’t think it’s true that corporations have to obey stronger laws than mom and pops. I’m pretty sure rental laws are just rental laws, and corporations just have lawyers who make sure they are following all applicable laws. I could be wrong, though.
This would be the biggest game changer for our country. Let corporations own all the apartments they want but keep them out of single family housing. There’s no reason for corporations to hoard and sit on housing, letting them sit empty and raising the prices of the occupied ones. Single family Housing should not be an investment opportunity for corporations.
Let’s bring down housing prices, and people will have a hell of a lot more money to spend on other things to keep our economy moving.
Then after that let’s do Healthcare and Education.
I live in a house that was sold at below market rates, under the condition that I will also sell to the next homeowner at a below market rate, there is a fixed equity gain each year to cover general home owner costs. I own the house, the city owns the land the house is on, HOA covers outside upkeep like roofing, window cleaning and driveway maintenance. This is known as a Community Land Trust.
There is no reason this method of housing can’t also be applied to folks that live in an apartment. Fuck corporations they shouldn’t own anything.
Just tax any home other than your primary residence at 100% of the assessed fair market value per year. Hell, make it 100000%. This includes apartments, condos, townhomes, mobile homes. It would solve a lot of problems real quick. Some “real estate moguls” might have to find a real job for once in their life but it will be good for them. I hear they like to hustle.
The long-awaited rule is expected to require that real estate professionals such as title insurers report the identities of the beneficial owners of companies buying real estate in cash to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
Fox News and Russian/CCP media use the same double talk, enemy at the gates, boogie man bad speak. Supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine or Chinese aggression in Taiwan is the as supporting American agression in the middle east. It all has the same stink.
Lol, I went to high school in the years after 911 and had trash thrown at me and had to have a meeting with the principal when I stopped saluting the flag. I felt like everyone lost their minds and were replaced by pod people. If you’re going to make personal attacks, take a bit of time to check the comment history of who you’re insulating. I’ve never once simped for America.
Something to consider about western propaganda is that it has many mouths saying the same thing. If fucks news and similar cranks were the only ones peddling the China bad shit, you would see more division along the kayfabe lines between the demonrats and the rethuglicans.
Yes, they moved there and committed ethnic cleansing against the indigenous people of the island. They looted China, lost the civil war and then killed natives when they fled to Taipei.
Go back to sucking Winnie the Pooh’s cock. Too bad he’s too scared to ever actually do anything. He knows that he’s just a little dictator that can only impress or oppress his own people. It would be funny to see how hard you fail, just like you did the last time you decided to pick a fight with your neighbor, Vietnam.
No racism there. I can not be racist against my own family member, which you are. You just wanna wave that card because you think it will work. That was pure anti-CCCP sentiment because your entire dictatorship is nothing more than a paper tiger, just like the other wannabe superpower, Ruzzia. You’re an authoritarian dictatorship, the US is imperialistic, the Ruzzians are fascists. Of the three the only one that is even worth negotiating with is the US, because at least they will pay lip service to their people, unlike the genocidal CCCP and Moscow.
China was nothing but a bully to their neighbors for 4500 years and you want to claim that you aren’t a wannabe bully because you got your face smashed in 50 years ago by Vietnam, and you haven’t dared to try since? Get out of here with that shit. You aren’t communist. You aren’t capitalist. You’re still Han bullys, and just waiting to genocide everyone that isn’t. Just ask the Uigers.
The difference now is that the rest of the world won’t let you, and you’re scared of trying because you fell as a power over 100 years ago, have never caught up, and though you tried hard your leaders ensured you’ll never surpass the US. You got close. That one child policy really bit you guys in the ass.
Your comment is literally filled with racist comments agaisnt Chinese people to the brim. I guess that makes sense as it seems you have a history of racist remarks. CCCP? Haha, it seems you don’t know the name nor can you write
So let me get this straight, a group of people overwhelmingly wish to separate, and the government tries to prevent them from doing that, and you don’t think that’s imperialism? I bet you don’t feel the same about separatism in Catalonia, Donbas, Kurdistan, or the Zapatistas. Classic tankie logic: imperialism good when done by purported “communists.”
Muddied? There’s this thing called “nuance.” I support Donbas independence, I simply don’t think it gives Russia the right to invade anywhere outside of Donbas, is that that complicated to understand?
So let me get this straight: if the US/Canada were hostile with each other, and the people of Alberta, Canada, were separatists that allied themselves with the US, but the Canadian government refused to recognize Alberta’s sovereignty, you would support a full-scale, deadly American invasion of Canada?
To be clear, to be a true analog the province needs to be an ethnic minority which is being targeted by the national government.
Say Alberta was the only majority English speaking province, and Ottawa started putting up statues of a Quebecois terrorist leader from 80 years ago who lead the massacre of 100k English speakers and allied with Hitler during WW2, then they announced that English would be banned from all government facilities including primary schools, and when Alberta tried to secede they sent Nazi paramilitary death squads to harass them and started bombing them daily.
At that point, if the US interceded and went past the Albertan border to attack other military targets in Canada, you would consider that a war of aggression by America against Canada and not them defending their ally, Alberta?
At that point, if the US interceded and went past the Albertan border to attack other military targets in Canada, you would consider that a war of aggression by America against Canada and not them defending their ally, Alberta?
If America’s massacring civilians in Ottawa and Toronto? Yes, of course I would. Any sane person would. Stay in Alberta.
You people call yourselves anti-war? I think you’re the real liberals here.
Sounds like you’re the one who’s pro-war whenever it’s convenient for you. When it’s not convenient, you just say “that’s different!” And refuse to elaborate.
How did Russia invade the Donbas by putting troops in it after being invited? Please admit that the answer is that you actually believe the Donbas is Ukraine and don’t care about its people’s self determination so I can quit asking you this question that you have been dodging for like an hour now.
If I considered it justified for the US to enter the war on the side of the separatists, I would absolutely say that it is then justified for the US to invade Canada proper.
When 99.9% of people who unironically use the word tankie, and think that ‘fascist’ means ‘anything I don’t like’, also fiercely oppose Donbas independence, and when the one I’m talking to is also refusing to just give a clear answer, I’m not about to say I’m in the wrong for asking some clarifying questions.
Also, why doesn’t it give Russia the right to invade? Was it wrong for the allies to invade Germany proper during WW2?
when the one I’m talking to is also refusing to just give a clear answer
I very clearly said I supported their independence, but okay.
Also, why doesn’t it give Russia the right to invade?
So let me get this straight, you support civilians being massacred and innocent lives being lost? You really think Ukraine is on the same level of Nazi fucking Germany? Honestly I wouldn’t even much of a problem if they just invaded Donbas but they’re invading the whole fucking country and causing so much death and destruction. How is that justified? How can you call yourself anti-war and anti-imperialism and justify a brutal invasion? Some true colors being shown…
I very clearly said I supported their independence, but okay.
But you are clearly being deceitful, just in this comment you basically admit that you don’t actually support their independence.
Look:
Honestly I wouldn’t even much of a problem if they just invaded Donbas
The DPR and LPR invited Russia. How could they have “just invaded Donbas.”
Please explain
A) The Donbas isn’t really independent and you consider it Ukrainian property. **(Surely not, you insist that this isn’t the case)**B) You consider soldiers who are in a foreign country to be invaders regardless of the relationship of the two states? **(Can’t be this or the US is invading half the planet right this second, including Taiwan)**C) ???
Please enlighten us.
This isn’t even getting into the point that multiple people made that you’ve ignored for half an hour, that once you’re in a war with someone who wants to conquer you, sending your soldiers into their territory isn’t an act of aggression, otherwise the US and the Soviets aggressed against the Nazis, which only an actual Nazi would claim.
(To be clear, I don’t think you’re a Nazi, just an intellectually dishonest liberal).
you support civilians being massacred and innocent lives being lost?
no, this was why the people’s republics of donetsk and luhansk invited military aid, and was the cause behind the Minsk agreements as well as Russia recognizing the Donbas republics
Wait, do you support Donbas self rule or not? Are they not allowed to invite their ally (Russia) to support them militarily in a war of aggression by their neighbor, Ukraine?
I think all regions deserve self-autonomy determined by democratic referendums, unlike the tankies that think the Republic of China should be re-annexed…
That’s good, so do I. But there are other people, people wearing totenkopfs and firing mortars into town squares full of people they call cockroaches for the language they speak, who feel quite differently than us. What is your solution to this, so that peace and democracy can prevail?
Idk, not my place to say. Your solution to oppression of a minority group in one province is full scale war and mass murders of tens of thousands of civilians? Holy shit you guys are warmongerers, America should be paying you! Guarantee you wouldn’t feel the same if America was Russia and Ukraine/Donbas were countries in the Global South in this case tho.
It doesn’t seem like you do given you referred to the current war as an invasion by Russia and Ukraine has been shelling it’s neighbors the LPR and DPR for nearly a decade.
Can you clarify why Russia shouldn’t be involved in the war between Ukraine and its smaller neighbors?
The Civil War was imperialism but it was good imperialism. Fascist breakaways are a bit different: the Union taking over the South was infringing on their self-governance, but that’s a good thing, Confederates were pure evil. It’s like after WWII and Axis powers became occupied, could you technically call that colonialism? Maybe, but they needed to be.
If Taiwan was blatantly fascistic, genocidal, had slavery, etc. I would support China colonizing them… but they aren’t. They’re neoliberal (much like China), which is lame, but they’re not a Nazi state. Remind me, who was the first in Asia to legalize gay marriage?
And are they a military dictatorship today? Even when they were, they weren’t a threat to world peace or humanity like the Confederacy or the Japanese Empire. By that logic do you think the US military should intervene in African military dictatorships?
The KMT was certainly a threat to Formosans, and to leftists living in the island they’d seized.
If the Confederacy had survived the war as rump state in Southern Florida and continued to claim to rule the entire US South and in the mid nineties claimed to be a democracy and then finally elected a non-military president in the aughts, would you call the US imperialist for not recognizing the Confederacy?
Okay, that’s consistent. Given that the modern incarnation of Taiwan was founded as a fascistic & genocidal settler colony, what was the timepoint at which a decisive end to the Chinese Civil War shifted from acceptable to unacceptable in your eyes?
Almost like the reason some of the population is because they stole from the Chinese people and fled to the island when the people fought back. The oppressor doesn’t deserve to get to pick to be independent
I bet you don’t feel the same about separatism in Catalonia, Donbas, Kurdistan, or the Zapatistas.
Literally none of those are imperialism. Imperialism isn’t having a region want independence. Do you think Scotland not being allowed to have a vote is imperialism?
this is just not true. the overwhelming majority want a return to the status quo, a status quo that was very consistently gravitating towards china before the US decided to stir shit using its DPP puppets. the taiwanese people are perfectly capable of understanding which side their bread is buttered on and that their families cannot subsist on a diet of freedom and democracy.
If you actually read it you would know the vast majority either want to keep the self-governance or become fully independent (50%). Both of those are some form of separatism, even if most of them don’t want anything radical that could trigger a war.
jfc, points for trying to turn this into a semantics game but sorry, fuck you
lets look at bbc, first result we get when we search "台独民意调查“ on google.hk because apparently google.tw is too spicy for google’s techbro commissariat. whatever, close enough:
even tries to reframe it by breaking up de facto status quo supporters into two camps but plurality still supports status quo
how about cn language natopedia
2020, NCCU (same as the bbc study):
“尽快独立”占7.4%
“偏向独立”占27.7%，为历年最高
“永远维持现状”占23.6%
“维持现状再决定”的民众比例持续下降至28.7%
“尽快统一”占0.7%创下新低
2021, united news:
“尽快独立”占18%
“维持现况再独立”占16%
“永远维持现状”占51%
“维持现状再统一”占6%
“尽快统一”占4%
“无意见”占3%
2022, ‘taiwanese public opinion foundation’ (read: cia cutout):
“坚持台湾独立”占27.3%
“赞成但不坚持台湾独立”占22.8%
“维持现状但偏台湾独立”占11.3%
“永远维持现状”占8.4%
“维持现状但偏两岸统一”占6.0%
“赞成但不坚持两岸统一”占9.4%
“坚持两岸统一”占2.4%
look at how they progressively split the status quo category (the size of which does not demonstrably change) into smaller and smaller demos to try and push an agenda
let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and more closely examine what is obviously the most compromised source here. this is the cia cutout’s (shitty and completely unprofessional) paper from this year. they’d probably lose funding if they put something as damning as actual independence vs status quo numbers out there so they decided to go with plausibly deniable second order opinion sets and STILL get blown the fuck out
just take the L dude, taiwanese are completely cognizant of the fact they’re being primed to be the next ukraine and most of them understandably want no part of that
No it isn’t. The status quo is that Taiwan is a region of China, independently governed. This is the case for MANY places around the world, here in the UK for example we have Scottish and Welsh governments, independent of the UK government. Scotland has its own parliament. Does that make it independent? Fuck no it doesn’t and there’s no mechanism for it to leave either.
There are MORE people in Scotland that want Scottish independence than Taiwan. Chew on that for a bit.
This is semantics. You’re playing with the difference between independent as a country and independent in governance, two different things. You’re not participating in good faith, as per usual.
No it fucking doesn’t, because that’s what it is right fucking now. You can’t be a “separatist” if you already have that. You’re just a status quo-ist.
Fuck me talking to nazis hurts, you’re all unbelievably uneducated.
Lmao. Maybe we should drop copies of Oppenheimer on USBs over Pyongyang. Remind them that the rest of the world can nuke them back to the stone age if they actually declared war on anyone.
Possibly, I didn’t look where they’re all from, nor do I know what hexbear is or why it’s significant. Sounds like some kind of intra-Lemmy drama which I’m not too interested in. Just noticed a fair amount, lets say…not totally organic, seemingly agenda pushing comments.
Edit: Forget my previous comment. I now see the problem with Hexbear.
No it’s when there’s mysteriously dozens of comments just magically showing up that are contrary to the vastly popular opinion on only one contentious issue, that serve the best interests of an entity with the time, resources to try to sway public opinion through fake grassroots posting. Also that entity has a fragile ego and a long history of online manipulation…oh and also coincidentally they are all coming from the same server
Least deranged response after being confronted with the existential horror that capitalism causes within us and being asked to cast it aside, choosing instead to bathe in the waters of the imperial core like the river of Styx, forgetting anything else exists, freeing oneself of responsibility for their fellow human, untethered by compassion and hope for the future
Yes, anyone with half a brain can see that people from a leftist instance are contributing leftist opinions to a space they just federated with. What were you expecting?
Insult that has no tether to the topic at hand, inline with your other comments that just make vague allusions that could be applied to any topic. Found the bot.
I love how liberals think anybody who’s outside of their echo chamber must be a paid shill. It’s absolutely inconceivable to them that there is a significant amount of people who have contrary opinions.
Again, learn what federation is, and while you’re at it, learn that racist white westerners like you are not actually “the vast popular opinion”. You’re just used to reddit, where disagreement is suppressed, so now that you’re in a space where genuine different opinion is allowed, you’re desperate into paranoia.
You’re the only one who has brought up race and are speculating what mine must be. I’m not the racist one in this conversation and I’m not the reddit-y one either. I’m not a refugee, I left that shitty site years ago bot.
There are non-white people who don’t like China because of their aggression and obvious leanings towards imperialism. I’ve got friends and family all over Eastern Asia and their countries are constantly getting into territorial spats with China, including in Japan, the Philippines, and even communist Vietnam, not to Taiwan.
You guys just love China because they represent an alternative to the western US order. Maybe if they nationalized more industries, taxed their rich more, helped their workers with universal health care, and helped their oppressed neighbors instead of shooting at them and trying to take their territory, they would be more exciting to root for. Basically, if they were more like Cuba.
Sure, their are non white people with criticisms of China, but his attitude went well beyond that; saying “the vast majority opinion” on China is the reddit propaganda line is absolutely discounting the opinion of non westerners, and I’m sorry, but that definitely comes from a place of racism.
Like, I don’t ‘love’ China, and I agree that much of their appeal is that they’re an alternative to Western hegemony. It would be great if they were more like Cuba. But I think there’s a world of difference between misgivings like that, and the liberal view that China is so evil that anyone who says anything good about them is a paid bot.
entity with the time, resources to try to sway public opinion
why would any foreign political entity waste its valuable english proficient resources on astroturfing an online backwater filled with politically illiterate nobodies? peak liberal solipsism
It would appear that way yes…and as mentioned, they have a history of having extremely thin skin and doing exactly that. So do I expect some group to do the exact thing they have always done? Yes. Yes I do.
And by “have a history of it” you mean "I’ve been told it so many times in the western echo chambers I hang out it that I just implicitly believe it.
Mate, you’ve already had it explained to you where we’re coming from, but apparently the idea of people who genuinely disagree with you is so fucking foreign to you that your redditor brain literally cannot process it, so you continue to descend into paranoid delusion.
I would like to ask you to employ some critical thinking here. Setting aside that the people responding to you have much better English than even a pretty high-level English speaker coming from Mandarin, most of these accounts have months or years of post histories spent almost entirely talking to each other on their previously un-federated instance, including in some cases very harsh arguing, as well as talking about the US on a personal level with intimate detail (and/or whatever other country they say they are from). Do you really believe the most simple answer is that this is all kabuki theater by the CPC to astroturf an obscure collection of websites by wasting a ridiculous amount of resources and the time of highly English-fluent actors? vs just “some people think differently from you”?
If you concede this point, then I would like to ask you to just consider for a moment the implications of the fact that you took the much more absurd and flimsy explanation as though it was just the common-sense explanation. What does that say about the way that you conceptualize the world and what people believe?
No it’s when there’s mysteriously dozens of comments just magically showing up that are contrary to the vastly popular opinion on only one contentious issue, that serve the best interests of an entity with the time, resources to try to sway public opinion
I don’t know if the server you are talking about is hexbear, but they recently federated and are one of the oldest lemmy instances. Lemmygrad also has been existing a long time before lemmy became as popular as it is today.
we federated , so now the stupid Imperialsit lies show up in Hexbear , they obviously can not stay , whats you proplem with beeing Corrected ? Do you want to live in Lies Mr. Jesus ? Because you can not be Bothered to do a ideum of research before running wild with the Mob Mr. Jesus ? , you want to forbide our ?
You sound very Priveldged , trying to impose your ignorance on others , whos your Dad ?
You sound just like every other idiot that says that. Trumpers, anti-vaxxers and the like. If you have to look around for yOur Own rEsEaRcH that lines up with what you want it to say, it’s because it’s not based in facts. You guys seem to honestly think you sound smart…smh
also like every other Iraq war Opponents , Vietnam war opponents, Imperialism Opponents ,Julian Assage loyalist etc… dont forget them !
Do you accept “Dissent” at all ? and are you Capable of Processing new information ?
this is REALLY Taiwans Air identification Zone . it is NOT the Taiwanese Airspace , this is a Factuall basis. Please Just Process this new Information , the Article is really missleading , the babycrying will stop after a while , trust me . You are really wrong and most people can comprehend that after a while.
Hexbear is a large, leftist instance, that just recently federated, and most of us are pro-China. We’re not bots and we’re not getting paid, but we’re not shy about our political views. That’s the reason you’re suddenly seeing a bunch more comments defending China.
Expressing how you feel about China is fine. Calling someone else a “paranoid weirdo” is not. That’s just plain rude and disrespectful.
Edit: I feel like I should make it extra clear that I am not defending myself because several people think that I’m whining for myself. The one called a “paranoid weirdo” was not me.
Insisting that everyone who disagrees with you is a paid agent of spooky foreigners is being a paranoid weirdo. Not to mention, plain rude and disrespectful.
What do you mean by “me”? I wasn’t even the one being disrespected. I was merely speaking out for someone else. BTW no one on this thread was ever disrespectful to the 1.3 billion Chinese people. They were disrespectful to their government.
me , thomas muntzer ,pastor 1489 – 1525 , you shouldnt be disrespectfull to me , i am not chinese , i am white ! dont forget your social conditioning , reddit would not approve of this behaviour…
There’s 1.3 billion people in this thread who are supporting the PRC? There aren’t even 1.3 billion people in China supporting China. How is talking about all the nonsense in this thread being disrespectful to anyone, let alone 1.3 billion people?
For the survey team, there are a number of possible explanations for why Chinese respondents view the central government in Beijing so favorably. According to Saich, a few factors include the proximity of central government from rural citizens, as well as highly positive news proliferated throughout the country.
This result supports the findings of more recent shorter-term surveys in China, and reinforces long-held patterns of citizens reporting local grievances to Beijing in hopes of central government action. “I think citizens often hear that the central government has introduced a raft of new policies, then get frustrated when they don’t always see the results of such policy proclamations, but they think it must be because of malfeasance or foot-dragging by the local government,” said Saich.
Compared to the relatively high satisfaction rates with Beijing, respondents held considerably less favorable views toward local government. At the township level, the lowest level of government surveyed, only 11.3 percent of respondents reported that they were “very satisfied.”
Again, the U.S. reveals quite a different story. “American trust surveys over time show a clear distinction between low levels of trust towards the federal government, but a strong belief and faith in the power of local government — at the most local level, those positions may be filled by part-time volunteers who are a part of your everyday life,” said Cunningham. This dichotomy is highlighted by a 2017 Gallup poll, where 70 percent of U.S. respondents had a “great” or “fair” amount of trust in local government.
Saich contends that the lack of trust in local governments in China is due to the fact that they provide the vast majority of services to the Chinese people. This trust deficit was compounded by the 1994 tax reforms, which garnered a substantially larger share of total national tax revenues for the central government. Local governments, despite being faced with declining revenues, were still on the hook for providing the bulk of public services throughout China.
“Local governments were caught between dropping tax revenue and rising expenditures,” Cunningham said. “Many local governments then had to turn to ad-hoc extra budgetary fees to close the budget gap. I think that has consistently undermined trust at the local level.”
The national government leaves the local government responsible for providing services, fucks them over, then convinces the people that it’s the local governments fault because they control the media. Of course they approve of the national government, though not the local at all so…
Also, a large part of the approval that this article states is because most of the people of China “are only a generation removed from an era of chronic food shortages and significant social and economic instability.” Its easy to improve people’s lives if they’re starting from a shitty position. We’ll see how that changes now that they’re playing in the big leagues.
You said there weren’t 1.3 billion people in China who supported the PRC. Harvard says you were wrong. We’re not talking about the minutiae of Chinese governance here, we’re talking about foreign policy.
PS: If you dig into the numbers (page 3 of the report, aka page 6 in the PDF), 70% of people are fairly or very satisfied with their township governments, so don’t be taken in by the Harvard cope–it really is bullshit.
So you were really going to tell someone they’re cherrypicking and quoting a survey that said only 11% of people were “very satisfied” and just hope no one looked through your wall of text, huh?
China just went through a period where in a single generation they eliminated more poverty than any other country in history (save the USSR). Why is it so hard for you to believe that children born subsistence farmers would have a positive view of their government when they’re middle classed and middle aged?
Why did you accuse me of not reading when my ability to humiliate you for being a GUTLESS FUCKING LIAR hinged on my ability to point out something in the middle of that text? Are you stupid?
Why are you accusing me of not reading and then making it clear that you aren’t reading well enough to know who the fuck you’re talking to? Are you stupid?
Out of all the people who replied to you and humiliated you for being an unread and incurious LIB including myself, why are you ignoring literally everything everyone said and clinging to just three words of only my comment “wall of text”?
I advise you to not waste your time arguing with these people. It’s a total waste of time. You can’t win an argument with stubborn people. Don’t be like me who wasted hours arguing with hexbear tankies. Just downvote them then go somewhere else on Lemmy.
Its easy to improve people’s lives if they’re starting from a shitty position. We’ll see how that changes now that they’re playing in the big leagues.
When’s capitalism planning to do that for everyone in the global south then? If you remove china from the statistics on poverty alleviation poverty has been almost stagnant for the last 50 years. China is responsible for almost all of the vaunted “improvement” in poverty. And they’ve done it without bombing dozens of countries per decade!
Chauvinism? Wrong word choice. It’s chauvinism when you go around supporting one group from a position of prejudice, not when you attack some group, which wasn’t happening anyway. Questioning if something is happening organically isn’t the same as saying it’s bad. Skepticism is usually a virtue. Don’t accept everything you see and are told, and don’t accept that it’s happening by accident.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it.
Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least.
When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense.
I know right! How come there are so, so many people defending China here? I thought they were the minority. Ugh. When I was back on Reddit comments like those would always be downvoted to hell.
It’s a shock to find out that the world view instilled in you as common and sensical is neither.
It’s tough to face up to that conditioning, but you can do it if you try, and if you don’t take it personally. It’s not your fault you were filled with imperialist lies, but it will be your fault if you don’t reflect
you left a Astro Turfed , hardcore censored Faschist Imperialistic Place that spends its time telling you US lies about its enemies … things are Diffrent when you leave your hole , because You changed location , you now meet “non Rediitors” and Communist and all else thats forbidden on Reddit… , thereby you are Accuring an new Perspective …
If its Scary for you then you need to run back where you came from … where the Yellow Peril rules …
When I was back on Reddit comments like those would always be downvoted to hell.
It might be worth keeping in mind that Reddit has, for several years now, biased its moderation policy against the sort of voices who would object to OP, creating a neoliberal echochamber across most of the website.
The issue is there are a much higher percentage here because brigading wasn’t allowed on reddit so they’d be banned for this type of activity. They come here and can do what they want, which is fine as long as it doesn’t hurt other people doing what they want, which in this case is arguably happening because it clutters the comments with the same thing repeated over and over, and they are organized so it’s all up voted. This doesn’t make them the majority opinion though. It makes them the organized opinion. They are not the majority by any means, but they will make sure to come to China’s defence whenever it’s mentioned, where others won’t bother.
Brigading was very much allowed on Reddit as long as it didn’t push the neoliberal imperialist status quo. Since the biggest leftist subs were banned or quarantined the shitheap of a website has seen an unceasing drumbeat of “China bad” and Cold War 2.0 propaganda, with any dissenting opinion piled on and follows across subs and threads. Often for weeks.
Rules only exist to the extent they are enforced. Words aren’t magical. Only the directed use of power gives rules reality, everything else is just so much pablum.
Yeah! It’s kind of sketchy how most hexbear.net comments here have >10 upvotes
edit: it’s also sketchy that over 95% of comments on this post are from hexbear.net, while on the average Lemmy post (not on lemmy.world) there would only be less than 20%
It may be hard to fathom for someone who’s so used to Reddit, but Hexbear users really do have a deep love for each other. Also we are really really ridiculously online.
This is kind of analogous to the “CCP is falsifying all of its own data” allegation. You can cling to some sort of dogmatic narrative like Hexbear inflating its stats à la r/the_donald, that’s exceedingly difficult to prove or draw anything conclusive from, or you can take a close look at it and see the reality that lines up with the stats.
Unfortunately they’re probably real people. Most of Lemmy was full of tankies before the reddit migration so any post involving China or Russia brings them out in force.
You are so far right that you call anything and everything to your left astroturfing. You’ve been in a bubble for so long that it’s a culture shock when you meet actual leftists.
Oh, yes. Actual leftists that somehow support every action of a particular nation. Actual leftists who don’t mind government control of information and gives incentives for supporting them publicly. Actual leftists that are ok with some people being removed from society because of the groups they belong to. Yep, totally sounds like actual leftists to me…
Actual leftists who don’t mind government control of information
Yes, actual leftists. I’m going to quote to you some Marx. This is from Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto which is basically a 30 page pamphlet, I suggest you read it. I want you to pay particular attention to number 6.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
As you can see, nothing here is at odds with that.
Actual leftists that are ok with some people being removed from society because of the groups they belong to.
What groups? If you’re about to use Adrian Zenz as a source you are a joke. If you’re instead claiming that working to abolish the existence of the bourgeoisie is a bad thing you are a clown.
I don’t understand how people don’t understand that control of the means of communication in the hands of the proletariat is a MUST to create a DOTP. Who the fuck do they think owns the media? The proles? Fuck no, the bourgeoisie own the media. It’s ALL their media.
To empower the proletariat in the transitionary socialist state you MUST remove the advantages of the bourgeoisie. This is one of the biggest of them.
Ah but don’t you see that removing the knife from your throat before fighting The Caped Throatstabber makes you just as bad as him, because of human nature or something?
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries
Also note this part:
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production…
Notice, “in the beginning.” Is China socialist or not? It is not the begining. The need to control the means of communication, as well as most of the rest of the goals, is to gain power over the bourgeoisie and place the power into the hands of the people. The means of communication must be seized in order to empower the people to communicate without their interference. How is the control that China has over communication providing for that and not the bourgeoisie itself controlling the media to prevent the people from communicating?
Socialism is the transitionary state between capitalism and communism. It exists in a state of warfare between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
We are very far away from defeating capitalism and such measures will remain in place until we have defeated it globally. What the fuck are you thinking? “Yes I want to give billionaires the ability to own media in my proletarian state so they can spew garbage propaganda until their counter-revolution succeeds”. Are you out of your mind? What exactly do you gain from this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All you are advocating for is empowering the bourgeoisie to crush and re-exploit you.
Ah, yes. China is definitely trying to defeat capitalism globally by opening and expanding special economic zones. If anything, China has become more capitalist (because it makes the current bourgeoisie who control the “communist” government more money). Xi Jinping seems to have an estimated value of at least $1 billion USD. He’s not of the working class. He’s from the political class.
Yes. It is. Your lack of understanding about what their tactics are is a personal failure on your part to seek out the information, not a failure on their part to continue to pursue socialism.
Xi Jinping seems to have an estimated value of at least $1 billion USD. He’s not of the working class. He’s from the political class.
Xi Jinping grew up in a literal fucking cave. This claim is akin to all the estimates of Stalins worth that literally just decided he owned everything that the state owns. Your “”“source”“” for this is capitalist finance blogs after you googled “xi jinping net worth” that don’t break down this figure whatsoever. They all just claim it. It’s literally the embodiment of:
He lived in a cave for some time because his father lost political favor, not because they were poor. He is of the political class. That’s unquestionable. His net worth isn’t public, though guesses can be made from the value of stocks his family can own, which isn’t insignificant. Him “growing up in a cave” is because of his political class standing, not because he was a poor worker.
(It also wasn’t just a cave, but a building constructed of a cave.)
This is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your sentence lmao
Him “growing up in a cave” is because of his political class standing, not because he was a poor worker.
Bro they were poor as fuck what are you talking about.
(It also wasn’t just a cave, but a building constructed of a cave.)
What the fuck do you think cave houses are? Is this literally the first time you’ve ever seen one? Are you really admitting to being that uneducated? Cave homes still have doors and windows nitwit. Doesn’t change the fact it’s still literally a 1 room cave with a bed shared by 4 fucking people.
“They’re not poor they just had to share a single bed between 4 people and walk 3 miles for water” is a shitty racist attempt at trying to maintain your position instead of actually taking on board new information you blatantly didn’t know until just now.
“Freedom of the press” is another of the principal slogans of “pure democracy”. And here, too, the workers know — and socialists everywhere have admitted it millions of times — that this freedom is a deception while the best printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists and while capitalist rule over the press remains, a rule that is manifested throughout the world all the more strikingly, sharply, and cynically, the more democracy and the republican system are developed, as in America for example.
The first thing to do to win real equality and genuine democracy for the working people, for the workers and peasants, is to deprive capital of the possibility of hiring writers, buying up publishing houses, and hiring newspapers. And to do that the capitalists and exploiters have to be overthrown and their resistance suppressed.
The capitalists have always used the term ‘freedom’ to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death.
In capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion.
In this respect, too, the defenders of ‘pure democracy’ prove to be defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the rich control over the mass media. They prove to be deceivers of the people who, with the aid of plausible, fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement.
Yes, this is exactly what I said. The control needs to be taken away from the capitalist class who control it in most places. The goal after the bourgeoisie are removed from control is for the people to have control though, not some new bourgeoisie.
The topic at hand is Western media drumming up support for the US’s next foreign policy disaster. The same way they did for Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Vietnam and so, so many others. I would have called this bullshit before I became a communist. You don’t need Marxist theory to see through the bullshit, just object permanence.
Actual leftists that are ok with some people being removed from society because of the groups they belong to.
Some people should be removed from society based on the groups they belong to. Nazis, for example. Pedophiles, probably. And definitely people who put pineapple on pizza.
No, they should be removed from society based on what they want to do. I don’t think the children of nazis should be removed just because they’re a part of that group.
Ideological belief is not a trait that is automatically passed on to children. Children of Liberals aren’t automatically liberals. Children of conservatives aren’t automatically conservatives.
Yes it is. Your failure to understand China’s structure and its goals is a personal failure on your part to seek that information, the information is out there.
If reading is too much for you (I suspect it is or you wouldn’t hold this opinion) then here is a very brief video by Professor Richard Wolff where he cites China as responsible for the globally rising interest in marxism.
If alternatively your position is that marxism is not leftist, you are a right wing clown and politically illiterate.
I am not near left or right, a 1 line axis is not enough to put all the political positions into account.
After reading the first link, socialism is kindof interesting at its core, but in china you have a person that controls eveything, China is a totalitarian state capitalist system. While Socialism would give people freedom, China is doing the opposite. I am not fully invested into this topic but you can’t tell me that stealing Money from bank accounts, allowing companies to do stupid investments that will become waste just to rise some numbers. Generally forbiding the fact that you have issues (disabled) or are different (religion or sexuality) is really just showing how similar this is to Hitlers time.
In Germany we have the Bundestag and its neither leftist or rightist as you elect the group you like which can be left-ist or right-ist, a group of multiple groups will be build for the few years that have together 50%. So if there is onr far-right group or far-left one, they won’t be able to actually do all the harm except people elect that group 50%.
Besides having every few years either same or slight different groups that regime, there is also the Grundgesetz which protect the Human rights at its core and is not changable except all 2 buildings and 1 person allow for this. With this, everthing should be possible while having freedom.
But for China I really don’t know what is the right thing. Its no different than America with capitalism at many levels because both intoxicate the human rights and nature environment. Somethinf like a Bundestag for China doesn’t seem like a great idea if it would be the main thing, because China wants to grow and the Bundestag is too slow for direct and instant changes. But without, you can see corruption at many corners in China.
I guess you missed the point that one person has the decision to control everything, of course there will be different groups controlling the details, but this is the person who is able to change. Just saying that I should read is pretty much stupid to say, you also just could say nothing, the message would be equal.
But i just gonna be you for a moment: If you do not believe this, you need to do a lot more reading.
Just send me your articles or whatever to justify whatever you mean and don’t be a dick.
How did you come to the conclusion that one person has the decision to control everything in China, an arrangement that has never existed anywhere in history, even actual non democratic dictatorships (which China isn’t)
I guess you missed the point that one person has the decision to control everything
No, he’s saying you’re wrong (and you are). In China there isn’t one person who controls everything. They have millions of elected officials, you don’t have any clue what you’re talking about.
So you are ignorant. Its ok we have all been there. To live is to learn. I would have an essay very similar to yours a couple years ago. Then I started doing some reading.
Essentially leftism v rightism boils down to either you think people all all equals and should be treated equally regardless or you believe some people are superior to others and should get to treat others as lesser. Its simple as that.
You also said “Its ok” and included that “all” have been there but its only you and the bubble community you live in like you are some superior peace of ****
If you say something is simple, then you are actually ignorant,
I didn’t say all of politics is simple. I said right vs Left is simple. Its an classification system made for the sole purpose of making a complex thing simple.
Its like you are getting hostile at me for saying “using google translate is simple” and saying “Translation is super hard. Learning a new language takes years and even then the subtleties of idioms and the nuance of culture play a significant role in how people speak. bridging the gap between two languages is super complex”
You also said “Its ok” and included that “all” have been there but its only you and the bubble community you live in like you are some superior peace of ****
I’m sorry if my tone came off as condescending but is Understanding not superior to ignorance? Ignorance is a natural state. We naturally transition from ignorance into understanding on many subjects through out our lives. There is no shame in that. clinging to ignorance however is shameful. Realizing you are ignorant is the first step to understanding. The next step is finding more information. I was just trying to encourage you. No need to be so defensive.
The part that you see me ignorant is the problem. Just because I don’t believe in socialism or capitalism or left vs right doesn’t mean I am ignorant. You somehow had an exam about leftism and rightism which did not include more standpoints because your exam topic was just left vs right. It feels like you are literally stuck in this one knowledge and can’t accept other statements. Its also called Dunning Kruger effect.
Just because I don’t believe in socialism or capitalism or left vs right doesn’t mean I am ignorant.
Just because you don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You live in a world where the right left political spectrum exists and you exist on that spectrum whether you know it or not. If there was a classification system for how spicy people like their food and someone called you a “spice chungus” your ignorance to the term and rankling scale would not change the level of spice you like or the fact that that has the name “spice chungus.”
You seem hung up on the word ignorant. I’m not trying to say you are stupid. I’m not saying you are ignorant in general. I’m just saying you seem to be ignorant of Politics. Ignorance is the state of not knowing. It does have a negative connotation but that is just because Knowing things is more is generally regarded as better than not knowing things.
Knowing that you don’t know is a good place to start but only if you try to learn more. Again I am just trying to encourage you to learn more.
I was curious what you were talking about as there are only 10 comments through Beehaw so I checked out the original. It’s overwhelmingly coming from hexbear.net which we’ve defederated from.
The irony of someone whose baseline for opinion making was reddit-logo leaving that place and feeling all of a sudden as if the discussion is being manipulated data-laughing
Yea, it feels like 4chan suddenly saw the light and then turned far-left all at once. They act like what the far right imagines the left to be like, but just looks like really bad anti-leftist propaganda, or they’re just tankies :/ some hexbears are ok, though, but most here are just discrediting themselves by throwing the propaganda handbook at the passersby.
Yea, it feels like 4chan suddenly saw the light and then turned far-left all at once
Exactly this. They’re running around spewing barely-sensical insults acting like they’re dunking on people, but all their really doing is turning off anyone who was ever possibly sympathetic to their cause. And are completely un-informed on top of that
Yes. You’re starting to get it. Being willfully uninformed and forcefully pushing that uninformed view in an organized way is suspicious. Ergo the comparison to the Maga’s and anti-vaxxers. 🤦
This isn’t debate club nerd. Nobody is required to be nice to you. We can both offer well intentioned arguements, and also engage in the simple pleasure of calling people dipshits.
Ok when the word “shitlib” is used here we’re referring to smug, rude, arrogant, reddit-brained imbeciles who functionally support imperialism, right wing apologia, and casual bigotry. They also operate in bad faith from the get go.
Uneducated progressive “liberals” who are nonetheless openminded and empathetic are not the people who this term refers to.
Uneducated progressive “liberals” who are nonetheless openminded and empathetic are not the people who this term refers to.
This still feels a little
smug, rude, arrogant
But I’ll take it, I’m certainly not an expert on Marxism. It’s a useful method of inquiry oftentimes, but there are other worthy worldviews and subjects to spend time on that hardly make me uneducated.
I wasn’t referring to you in particular, I was referring to describing types of “liberals” in general. I am not implying that there is something inherently wrong with being uneducated. Everybody is uneducated in a variety of fields outside of their own expertise, such as nuclear physics, foraging, farming, etc. Similarly, most american progressives simply do not know what the terms “left” and “right” mean in a political context, therefore, they are uneducated. Rather, I was implying that these progressives are well meaning, good-hearted people who just need a bit more knowledge as to where they could direct their energy towards political change. I apologize if it came off as condescending, maybe I should have used the term “unactivated” or “new to politics”.
but there are other worthy worldviews and subjects to spend time on that hardly make me uneducated
Thats good, keep reading. If you are interested in politics then I would recommend reading the works of Micheal Parenti.
Yeah, mostly agree, people are kept from thinking and complaining too much by being overworked, stressed, distracted, manipulated, demotivated, denied access, captured by cults, etc :/ sooo … fuck IP law and let’s get pirating, books ain’t gonna read themselves :D
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