It's safe to build OBSCENE wealth in the states.
It's safe to build wealth in PRC, plenty of 10-100 millionaires.
It's also safe to build OBSCENE wealth in PRC, but it comes with more political caveats. Like not trying circumvent regulators by launching irresponsible fintech.
Which system is better depends on how much you value checking billionaires.
At low levels people buy politicians, at high levels politicians shake down the wealthy.
"why buy the cow for the milk?" etc. etc.
In the USA you can transfer it out of the country if you want to.
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3212414...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/china-s-rich-are...
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-banks-waits-072...
https://harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/getting-money-out-o...
https://www.afr.com/world/asia/smurfing-strangers-how-china-...
https://agbrief.com/news/china/24/01/2024/china-tightens-con...
https://www.uschina.org/china%E2%80%99s-capital-controls-cho...
Jack Ma is dumb, he's an arts student. Elon is top level smart, a physics student. Watch their "debate" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3lUEnMaiAU Jack Ma is embarrassing.
The citizens love Jack Ma, he's a success. The citizens hate Elon Musk he's a (real) hacker/nerd who solves hard engineering problems. He's who you beat up at school. The jocks are pissed he made it while they sell shoes or are low level IT and can't even script.
> it is safe to build wealth in the US
Elon recently had a fair $55 billion compensation package voided. There are plenty of other examples of problems.
Your point is not real strong.
China a totalitarian nightmare != US is obviously true. But the Chinese can actually still build railways. The US is corrupt in other ways.
That's bad for entrepreneurs, but also means that they can have the entire power of CCP behind them. There are tons of example where a small company started by stealing from western competitors then suddenly produced a huge pile of cash out of nowhere to bought those competitors and took over their marketshare in the west.
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-th... https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ousted-arm-china-...
> Marxism–Leninism was the first official ideology of the CCP.
Mao Zedong Thought was some time ago and since then various directions the CCP has taken have been criticized as being un-Marxist and a betrayal of basic Marxist values.
The Authoritarian edge has always been there in the CCP, ebbing and flowing with the years .. but that part is distinctly un-(classical)-communism.
Like Capitalism "Twue Communism" has never really existed, even the big names in modern "communism" have said on the record that they represent authoritarian "on behalf of the people" (sort of) socialist control as a neccessary means on the way to a true workers paradise (barf) .. you know, a classic bait and switch to mask a system being just another variation of top down control.
Though clearly what happened in the USSR in the 20s was something different from what he wrote. What you saw in Russia in that period was a response to an ongoing civil war, followed by the rise of Stalin.. who, yes, really did believe in brutal authoritarianism.
All these Stalinist states (and I would classify China this way too) will pay lip service to Leninism as a way to seek ideological legitimacy. But their "official" readings of Marx and Lenin are very... creative... shall we say.
But it's 1:30am and I should no be getting into this argument.
Stalin rose through the ranks by being a seemingly "competent" administrator who restored the power of the old Tsarist bureaucracy to "get things done."
But in general, Lenin gets a bad rap for the awful things his successor did.
You'll note that Putin admires Stalin but loathes Lenin. Even bizarrely singling Lenin out for his positions on Ukraine and the national question etc in his crazy speech justifying their aggression on the eve of their invasion.
It's a horrible tragedy of history in which millions died and all of eastern Europe fell under a terrible dark iron curtain which took the name "communism" but the name is effectively irrelevant. What it really was was a broken down highly authoritarian single party state that used the badge of "socialism" to lend itself legitimacy while doing very awful things in the name of Russian nationalism, certain individuals, the Party, etc. etc. Kleptocratic clique under the guise of a revolutionary state.
As we can see in China today the actual economic political model doesn't even matter. They'll use the name "communism" even when what they're doing is absolutely savagely market driven, or something else, like the quasi-theocracy in North Korea.
What they labelled as socialism in the East bears almost no resemblance to what socialists in the West advocated. But the label of "communism" will forever be marred by what these people did.
EDIT: A good classic book on this topic is "Leninism under Lenin" by Marcel Liebmann (https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/908-leninism-under-leni...) -- now, whether that old book can stand the test of time now that more historical records from that period are open, I don't know. I'd be curious to see a (non-ideologically motivated) Russian historian with access to records from the Revolution take it apart.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1975/xx/liebman.html
The only societies where communism works without authoritarianism are communes like the Longo Maï where people come by choice, not by force.
All new systems are introduced by force, even capitalism. Do you think that at one point in the past everybody in Britain decided that the state should be capitalist and so everyone, on their own accord, moved from communal land so it can be passed in to private hands?
And my original comment clearly shows that capitalism also had to be imposed for what once was communal needed to be confiscated in order to be redistributed.
> Almost all of the Soviet states transitioned to market economy democracies without any conflict at all
Indeed, a state capitalist society transitioned to market capitalism. Nothing needed to be taken from any one person but the state. Not really a new system, just new owners.
That is correct, and I was pointing out that it isn't specific to communism: any government or economic system will have at least 1 person who doesn't like it, but the system being created nonetheless requires imposing it by force, and maintaining it by force, which nearly every government does to this day.
Since we're already knee-deep in nitpicking terminology, this is describing the general philosophy of anarchism, not capitalism.
Also, what is natural in me owning a factory on the other side of the world when I never left the city I live in?
Achieving communism necessarily entails authoritarianism because you need an authoritarian state to seize the property of existing landholders and business owners, and to prevent the creation/operation of new private businesses.
They would force CCP member into the board and setup CCP organizations within the companies. Anyone who deals with China's companies would need to understand this. You are always dealing with CCP behind it
Take "fines" for example. They are the cost of doing business and never actually dissuade the behavior (in the USA). This in effect allows the government to act as a shareholder (fines = dividends) under the guise of domestic legal enforcement.
Then they turn around and protect the same corporations intellectual and physical property abroad.
They are solidly state capitalist since Deng, and since Xi I would classify them as far-right revisionist and even possibly fascist, with a strong focus on order, aesthetic, collective responsibility towards nation, and restoring the homeland, where homeland is defined on ethnonationalist not civic nationalist lines.
This is such a beautiful life isn't it? Im not saying China is any better, but come on man. Have some empathy for all the people that have been crushed by this system whether its the poor, the people on the receiving end in Gaza/Iraq/Iran/Pakistan/Venezuela or just the people unlucky to not be born at a competitive level.
To me there's nothing 1984 or dystopian about this. The guy was building a company that was hurting the people. If anything we need more of this in the US.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/07/tech...
Being a Venetian banker or Chinese tea exporter wasnt that safe. What about prospecting for gold in Colorado river valleys where bears hang out? Moving trains of camels thru the Sahara? Chasing whales around for years at a time without going home.
Today is way better.
It is interesting to compare-and-contrast Jack Ma and Elon Musk who seems to me the nearest analogue in the US. How their host countries treat them says a lot about the real cultural differences between Washington and Beijing. For all America's problems - at least up to Trump level annoying the politicians - it is safe to build wealth in the US.