China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media

Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by chongli on Sunday April 21, 2019 @02:51PM (#19713801)

Once you go down the road of totalitarianism, the risks of turning back get worse and worse over time. The playbook of all dictatorships is the same: squeeze tighter and tighter until you can no longer hold on, then collapse.

Sometimes the process is quite rapid, sometimes it drags on. It all depends how long you can keep the elite prosperous and happy and how long you can maintain economic growth.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by 0815test on Sunday April 21, 2019 @02:57PM (#19713827)

> The playbook of all dictatorships is the same: squeeze tighter and tighter until you can no longer hold on, then collapse.

While a common-enough failure mode, this is by no means universal. Many successful monarchies began as the equivalent of dictatorships, and then opened up further and further over time.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by dragonwriter on Monday April 22, 2019 @12:46PM (#19720406)

> Many successful monarchies began as the equivalent of dictatorships, and then opened up further and further over time.

And then there's the Roman Empire, which started as a dictatorship (in the literal sense to which all other uses are metaphorical allusions) and went the other direction.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by spectramax on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:08PM (#19713909)

Please provide examples.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by wutbrodo on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:15PM (#19713942)

Off the top of my head, Britain, Spain, Portugal, and Chile (and Canada and Australia, if you want to cheat). Do you really think that every liberal Western European democracy had their own version of the French Revolution, or that they've been democracies since time immemorial?

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by chongli on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:26PM (#19714015)

None of those places functioned as modern nation states prior to the Peace of Westphalia. Monarchies were in constant flux, collapsing all the time as brother invaded cousin and so on. How exactly does this refute my point?

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by bhaak on Sunday April 21, 2019 @07:14PM (#19715150)

I'm not sure why you're bringing up the Peace of Westphalia when the topic is how monarchies transformed into democracies. There weren't many democracies at that time.

Spain for example wasn't a democracy until the 20th century and the first attempt at democracy failed miserably and only the second succeeded after the monarchy backed dictator died and the king didn't follow the late dictator's legacy as planned.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by wutbrodo on Monday April 22, 2019 @02:42AM (#19717017)

Uh,ok, if you're going to be intellectually dishonest and move the goalposts "here is the single path that dictatorships take (demonstrably not the case in whatever the final dictatorship that transitioned to democracy for each given non-revolutionary countries)...Spain, Portugal, and Chile were all examples from the last half century. How do both this and the general case I described _not_ refute your point?

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by stordoff on Sunday April 21, 2019 @10:18PM (#19715884)

> Britain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War ended with the execution of the Monarch, a brief military dictatorship, and established the principle that the Monarch cannot rule without the consent of Parliament.

Not exactly the French revolution, but hardly a smooth transition either.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by wutbrodo on Monday April 22, 2019 @02:47AM (#19717028)

The parent comment is an exceedingly narrow description: totalitarians always tighten their hold until they collapse. I wasn't making a correspondingly strong counterclaim that the transition was smooth and bloodless for every/most polities. We can quibble about whether Post-Civil War Britain qualifies as having sufficiently transitioned to democracy (and if not, then Post-CW Britain is the polity in question that transitioned without collapse). But it's easy to refute the ludicrous original claim that polities under totalitarians only ever follow a single path.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by enriquto on Sunday April 21, 2019 @06:48PM (#19715065)

I lol'd really hard at your mention of "Spain", here.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by wutbrodo on Monday April 22, 2019 @02:49AM (#19717038)

Not sure I get the joke. Is the claim that Francoist Spain was never totalitarian or that post-Franco Spain still is?

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by enriquto on Monday April 22, 2019 @08:53AM (#19718500)

Current Spain is still francoist Spain. There has been no breach of legal continuity since the Spanish republic was defeated by fascism in 1939.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by chongli on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:05PM (#19713880)

The monarchies of old changed hands and flipped over due to war (civil and otherwise) so often that they're not really comparable to a modern state dictatorship. Tons of monarchs had extremely short reigns, far less stable than the Chinese Communist party.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by joe_the_user on Sunday April 21, 2019 @04:37PM (#19714431)

Also, monarchies began in an era when the state generally was far less developed than it is now. The number of state functionaries and the control they exert was far less.

Louis the 14th of France was one of the first Western kings to have something like dictatorial control of a country rather than being quite dependent on the nobles formally under him (as those nobles were in turn dependent on their vassals).

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by stcredzero on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:19PM (#19713968)

In that case, is it really valid to count those monarchs as different governments and not continuations of the same system?

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by chongli on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:28PM (#19714025)

Yes. It's completely valid, since their borders, their laws, and the identities of the people were constantly in flux. Nothing at all like the continuity of modern nation states through successive governments.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by stcredzero on Monday April 22, 2019 @12:37PM (#19720334)

Yes. It's completely valid, since their borders, their laws, and the identities of the people were constantly in flux.

You've both made a good point and refuted the absolutist position at the same time. In general, if monarchs change and the borders, the laws, and the identities of the people remain the same, then it's really a continuation of the same regime. Really, "it depends."

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by EliRivers on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:44PM (#19714115)

Oh, yes, sure, the old "no true dictatorship" rule. Redefine your argument as you go to exclude counter-examples.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by tjalfi on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:30PM (#19714035)

Absolute power doesn't mean that you can act with impunity. Xi must retain the support of the heads of the army, secret police, and such or he will be replaced. The Dictator's Handbook[0] discusses this topic in detail. The Rules for Rulers[1] is an 18 minute video that summarizes some of the principles of the book.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

edited to add video title to second link

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by devoply on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:33PM (#19714053)

Winnie the Pooh changed all sorts of things for the worse that his predecessor had made progress on. He's an idiot. He should be replaced by someone more wise.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by icelancer on Sunday April 21, 2019 @07:16PM (#19715159)

Progress on what?

It'd be better for who if they just apologized and stopped violating human rights? The people in charge?

People are self-interested.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by NicoJuicy on Sunday April 21, 2019 @04:29PM (#19714382)

Xi seems to be pretty smart though, but his ideals don't align with ours

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by daodedickinson on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:09PM (#19714599)

Julius told Augustus to pay the soldiers well and have contempt for the rest.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by Yetanfou on Sunday April 21, 2019 @02:46PM (#19713765)

Yes, of course. They seem to think that acknowledging mistakes and misbehaviour will rob them of their power since that power partly depends on them never being wrong. They must realise that anyone and his dog knows by now this is a total fiction but for some reason they just can't get themselves to step up, bow down deep like you sometimes see Japanese CxO's do when taking blame for some misstep and humble themselves before their nation. Given that the same phenomenon has characterised more or less al other "communist" regimes it seems to be something in this ideology/doctrine which makes it near to impossible to admit to failure.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by daodedickinson on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:11PM (#19714606)

Occasionally their rulers admit that previous rulers make mistakes. But they don't admit their own. But few rulers do anywhere on our planet.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by maehwasu on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:53PM (#19714168)

How would that help the government achieve its goal of maintaining power, in any way?

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by megaremote on Sunday April 21, 2019 @09:35PM (#19715738)

It might be better for them, it might be worse. It is hard to say.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by coldtea on Monday April 22, 2019 @03:46AM (#19717228)

From "Bill and Ted's political thoughts".

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by daodedickinson on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:07PM (#19714591)

Since the opium wars, the most lenient Chinese rulers have not lasted very long.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by ronilan on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:00PM (#19713852)

If you suggesting China adopts a system in which every government systematically apologizes for what previous generations have done, while laying the foundations of the next apologetic generation; then they can’t do that. It’s copyrighted by the Government of Canada / Gouvernement du Canada.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by daodedickinson on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:08PM (#19714595)

Heh, that form of piracy is rampant, too, then.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by joe_the_user on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:19PM (#19713965)

[sarcasm] Oh I'm sure Canada and other Western nations are offering licenses for their model and indeed one might see this entire enterprise as a long effort to sell those licenses, while China just insists on relying on simpler methods.[/sarcasm]

That said, China's unwillingness to mention Tien Ah Min expresses the point that nation has to adopt a "no apologies, don't talk about this and we'd definitely do this again" position because the state ultimately deals in absolutes. This situation indeed implies a certain fragility.

Edit: Just for clarification, I certainly hope a framework of democracy and freedom of speech prevail but I am still clear quite a few Western interests have entirely selfish reasons for wanting this (and the Western model indeed has its flaws).

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by devoply on Sunday April 21, 2019 @03:21PM (#19713982)

It's funny because China seems to have the mentality that this must be so. And look over to the Japanese and at one time they were similarly minded. And yet look at them now, a pleasure to deal with both on individual and societal level. So it's simply a choice and a mentality which will lead you into all sorts of bad situations. Unfortunately Chinese don't have enough experience with this and instead looking to history to guide their actions, which is a mistake. We simply can't act this way in the world we have built, the consequences are too grave for everyone involved.

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[dead]

Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by icelancer on Sunday April 21, 2019 @07:17PM (#19715166)

>> a protest that happened in China in 1989

Yeah, it was just a protest.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by throwaway55244 on Monday April 22, 2019 @12:31AM (#19716540)

Someone did something right?

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by walshemj on Sunday April 21, 2019 @06:25PM (#19714968)

OK so China will forget about the opium wars then

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by thoughtstheseus on Sunday April 21, 2019 @06:48PM (#19715063)

No way they made fifty cents on that. They'd all be rich based on the volume of this stuff.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by 0815test on Sunday April 21, 2019 @02:44PM (#19713751)

Even if they did, there would be very little certainty that people would trust them, or, more importantly, their successors in the same positions of authority. The only effective "apology" and "commitment" from them would be opening up their society in some way, perhaps along Neo-Confucian lines, i.e. with a sort of assembly of widely-recognized "wise scholars" that could veto/overrule the executive on such matters (Somewhat like the U.S. Supreme Court). But either way, it would be a real challenge to the current setup of authority in China, and any sort of change is inherently hard. So they'll just keep muddling through like this, even in ways that may seem obviously undesirable or even silly to outsiders.

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Re:China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media by kmonsen on Sunday April 21, 2019 @02:48PM (#19713781)

It seems to work well for Russia.

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