I have serious issues with China. But I also think that there are lessons to learn from many different models.

The ability of the government to take on actors with vast amounts of private capital is, in my view, one of those things worth learning from.

You dismiss the critical importance of following the rule of law to the letter. That is perhaps the only lesson we can take is that the American system's greatest power is its rule of law and the constitution.

Many are worried that America's rule of law is also being slowly deteriorated. Once you go down the path of authoritarianism, there is no turning back.

Only in extremely rare cases like South Korea managed to go from authoritarian military junta that came to power, built up its economy by exploiting and oppressing labor movements, , to a democratic state with civil elections only really started in 1993.

Even now South Korea still has problems with following the rule of law. It used to be that the judicial committee is "independent" from the President but recently the Moon administration has completely destroyed this delicate mechanism that was built to prevent authoritarianism. UNHRC openly calls Moon a semi-dictator now and Moon is getting cozy with the CCP and turning its back on the US. Before, this setup allowed for the arrest of past two military dictators that came to power after Park Chung Hee's assassination by his own spy chief. Now it's gone.

What I'm trying to say is that democracy is truly a gift when it works, its noisy, people fight but thats exactly what is needed but it can easily be taken away.

This is what worries me most about Trump, with the recent military manuevers within the country (squad of apache helicopters, troop transports, Trump heading to a USMC command bunker) makes me suggest this is a man with nothing to lose and evrything to gain with the military and police behind him (police were seen removing the barricades in capitol hill rush).

Sure, once you master the art of eradicating ideas of basic human rights and using authoritarian methods to control an entire nation with literally no independent bodies to check the power. You control the banks, the businesses, the army, the judiciary, the media, the internet, literally every sphere of a society. It becomes an easy peasy thing to do what you say is worth learning.

Our government has the ability to do the same in the US. What's lacking is not ability. It's lawfulness and a consensus of what the goal should be. In China there is little need for lawfulness and certainly much less need than in the U.S. for consensus.

I think you have a more constrained view of what is contained within the word "ability" than I do.

The problem with the US is that the class interests of those whose consensus is important in lawmaking is aligned with the interests of the ultra-wealthy.

Nor do I buy into the mythos that "lawfulness" is something universally applied in the United States. Laws, procedure, delay always play a large part when the interests of people with large capital are threatened, but lawlessness is the norm in many relations that impact ordinary people, like that weird clocking in rule that your boss at your retail job has instituted that is actually illegal under labor law or when the Federal gov't decides they will no longer enforce redlining law by going undercover to investigate racial discrimination.

Lawfulness can most often be found in the U.S. where both sides have vigorous legal representation. There are still miscarriages of justice in those cases, but it is not the norm. Of course, big corporations always have vigorous legal representation, so lawfulness is basically a given when it comes to legal disagreements between them and the government.

Only as a cautionary tale. A government that can silence a billionaire or take away his company for something short of a clear cut crime is too powerful.

When billionaires write the laws, and buy the politicians, police, prosecutors, judges, and executive, this is not the case.

One big difference between the US and China and why the US will never be able to pull off the same success even with the same power is that much of the CCP is led by people with engineering backgrounds, while much of the US is led by people with law backgrounds.

Why is it better for Chinese billionaires to run the country than the CCP? Seems like just trading one master for another.

The conditions that lead to billionaires through business - note the distinction from russian oligarchs - are generally pretty liberal. You still dont want billionaires actually in charge, but there is a correlation between economic freedom and social freedom.

I'd guess that they (the "West" / US and its allies) hoped that Chinese billionaires would be more amenable to the "Washington consensus" / neoliberal policies than the CCP.

Jack Ma is a member of the Communist Party of China.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alibaba-jack-ma-idUSKCN1N...

This is a classic power struggle between ideological and technocratic elements. Jack Ma vs Xi Jinping. Jack Ma, a communist party member, challenged party Chairman. As we can dispense with the notion that Jack Ma lacks the necessary wits, the actual interesting question is why did Jack Ma think it opportune to openly challenge Xi Jinping at this time?

In the US, this struggle is a non-issue as the ideological element (venture capital) finances and controls the technocrats (such as Jack Dorsey). We just however recently were treated to a purported “outsider” ideologue locking horns, via technocrat proxy of FANGs, with the ideological establishment. Given that this outsider also happens to (still) be the head of state in USA, I guess we need not wonder too deeply as to the logic of CPC reminding a prominent party member and fellow travelers of who still calls the shots in China.

There are 91 million members of the CCP. In a country that counts more than 1 billion inhabitants. It's laughably far from representative.

But the actual rubber stamper voting group is about 3000 people.

However, since there was never any real independent and strong opposition (the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan) the only power struggles were very much about succession, and again that's like a minor clash in a royal family, whoever wins, it's still feudalism.

... yes, you said that Jack Ma is a CCP member, but he was nowhere near close enough to Xi in any aspect to challenge him. He's a useful idiot who got a sector allocated to (IT, cloud hosting and web/online/in-app payments), got big thanks to no competition, and thought he has actual power.

How many Americans are members of D or R party organizations?

By membership I do -not- mean registration to vote for a party; meaningful participation in the political organization, from local office, all the way to national committee level, and of course actual elected and political appointments.

I don't have the numbers but wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be an even smaller fraction of total population than the Chinese single party.

Roughly take US as 1/3 of population of China, and then test expectation that 91/3 => ~30,000,000 politically active members of political organizations in US. Again, I don't have the numbers, but I would be shocked if actual party members in US even reached the 1 million mark, much less 30 million people. For fairness, let's throw in 18 million Americans that belong to unions. Let's make it 20 millions in total. That's still less than the required 30 million politically organized Americans to be at par with CCP.

[but p.s. /g! If we throw in the 18 million American millionaires, then we have a system that is a bit more representative than the CCP]

Billionaires can be held more accountable than government because they must continually compete for people's dollars.

Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies and billionaires and can force a change in behavior quickly. There's no feedback loop like that with the CCP, and the US gives citizens more power but having to wait 4 years to vote on a change is a very slow feedback loop.

> Billionaires can be held more accountable than government because they must continually compete for people's dollars.

I don't know what to answer that except that it's the quickest way to get a fascist regime that doesn't even try to hide it's fascist. Monopolies don't need to compete with people's dollars.

> Movements like the Chick-Fil-A boycott and #deletefacebook do hurt companies

None of these movements really hurt these respective companies.

We can and should break up monopolies, or structure taxes and regulations to be unfavorable to monopolies. Current government policies favor large corporations due to both tax incentives and regulatory capture.

Chick-Fil-A stopped donating to anti-LGBTQ groups. #deletefacebook did work but most users just switched to instagram so it had a minimal effect on revenue.

> We can and should break up monopolies, or structure taxes and regulations to be unfavorable to monopolies. Current government policies favor large corporations due to both tax incentives and regulatory capture.

And putting unelected billionaires in charge is going to do exactly that? No.

> #deletefacebook did work but most users just switched to instagram so it had a minimal effect on revenue

No it didn't. Neither case the bottom line of both companies was impacted in any meaningful way.

Putin was elected then used his power to remove term limits. President Xi did the same thing, and look at what Trump just tried.

It's important to have external checks to political power. It's pretty amazing that private companies (Twitter, FB, Stripe) were able to stand up to and effectively limit the power of the commander of the largest military on earth. That has almost never happened without bloodshed.

The US constitution is has worked pretty well, but it's just a document. History has not been kind to those nations that have centralized power by nationalizing companies. Doesn't that get us closer to fascism?

The thought was that billionaires would push for freedom and liberty (like Jack Ma).

The CCP will not be opposed.

That was the propaganda rationale used to justify opening up trade with China. The primary goals were to gain leverage over the Soviet Union and deescalate the Cold War.

turns out the billionaires love the CCP when that system/state sponsored companies is the source of their billions...

One thing Chinese billionaires have is the freedom to leave (at least until they get in trouble). This precedent seems to make it clear that once you have amassed that much power and wealth, it would be crazy to stay in China.

Or maybe in order to archive such success in China one must have connections to people in high places and people with said connections can't imaging their connections turning on them.

Unless something debilitates the CCP first, this isn't going to happen soon. Maybe when Xi Jinping retires.

The one true power in the world is the ability to physically harm others. Therefore given how modern civilization is structured, a head of state with a loyal military and police is always the most powerful person in the country.

we already knew it didn’t work considering Putin imprisoned the richest man in russia and nationalized his oil company.

don’t think the US acrually expected the oligarchs to overthrow china as they are in bed with the ccp.

Nah, they just became landlords.

Yes, they thought China would turn into a plutocracy. Of course they were modeling after themselves.

> Modeling after themselves

This is such a polite way to say that they are idiots, lol

They thought China would in the footsteps of South Korea and Taiwan.

Guys, this is just flame bait. Don't bother engaging in this throw away comment.

My comment isn’t throwaway. It was intended as a counterpoint. If you seek some clarification, then ask.

My point is to paint the picture that leveraging extremes doesn’t work. It is often the case that the west, in particular the U.S., assumes their way is the best and that this way should be applied, forcefully if necessary, elsewhere. In reality, the world’s two most powerful nations, that is the U.S. and China, are at the extreme opposite ends of political and economical ideology. One has corporations controlling everything and the other has the government controlling everything. In both cases, it is an extreme but minority so-called elite group that controls the fate of the people.

My lament is this scenario, because it is clear, at least to me, that the ideal is somewhere in between.

Why do they need to dissolve something they already control and/or own?

Because all the billionaires aren't on the same team.

No, what we have been shown in the US is that it takes a billionaire to challenge the two existing political parties. Parties who through laws and regulation pretty much isolated themselves from other means of being challenged and even go so far as to have us pay for their conventions and even security at times.

The difference in the US is the billionaire was able to challenge the existing parties in control and beat them both, in China your wealth is pretty much meaningless unless you came upon it through your party affiliation; there of course is only one party that matters.

It is working well in my opinion. I would rather live in a world where billionaires are happy to dissolve a corrupt and disgusting politician than other way around.

I wouldn’t. Billionaires can be corrupt and disgusting too, and unlike politicians, are unaccountable to the citizenry. Important difference.

Billionaires can't take your money by force like government can. Government can not just take money by force (taxation), through indirect means (regulation) or by simply reducing its worth (inflation). And while they do that they make you stand in a line and clap for them.

The only way Bezos makes money is if I chose to buy something on Amazon. Surely, billionaires are not angels and are just as corrupt as politicians and would love to force me to buy their stuff one way on another but in every single of those instance they use government as their partner.

USA elected Trump, how much accountable was he to you ?

What you're seeing isn't billionares vs. government, but warring billionaires via government.

Belligerents are difficult to suss out, but the Mercers, Adelson, Kochs, Murdochs, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, possibly Mark Zuckerberg on one side. Bezos, Gates, Steiner, on the other

You’re assuming one came before the other. It is the corporations that corrupted the politicians, or at least catalyzed the process.

Lol no. Countries with the least corporations have the most corrupt politicians.

Corp-to-population ratio suggests otherwise. Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Isle of Man, the Channel Islands including Guernsey and Jersey, Crete, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, and Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, Panama, Hong Kong, and Singapore.