British academic David Harvey lists typical explanations for capitalism’s crisis:

1. just human nature; greed
2. anglo-cultural origins
3. based on false theory; neoliberalism
4. institutional failure requires reconfiguration
5. failure of govt policy
2. He claims these all have truth. Partly human nature, certain parts are nurtured by American/British cultural roots, it features a central theory which is flawed, and it’s now seeing widespread institutional failures with a lack of policy response.
3. He then offers his British Marxist perspective—it’s a problem of capital accumulation, and resultant excess power of finance capital which crowds out labor and other interests. He concludes we have to first admit this system “is crap,” then change our “mode of thinking.”
4. Well, along this “new thinking” line of thought, I’d add that we should logically look *outside* anglo-cultural thought (see #2 above). We can look at history, and other societies who are in real-time experimenting with new modes of thinking.
5. China has been working on cracking this capitalist problem for 100 years now. Why? Because this individual-first mode of thought, successful in many ways, is not compatible with group-first (Confucian) cultural roots.
6. From what I understand Beijing is moving away from the Anglosphere viewpoint that capitalism is an economic system, instead recategorizing it as simply one political interest—namely the interests of capital! Duh?
7. Whoh! This is so simple, and obvious, but this small shift in philosophy changes everything. Under this different way of thinking capital is just one political interest to be balanced in planning a functional society.
8. You wouldn’t cannibalize society itself just to pay off that special interest group, because that would be stupid. Right? But under neoliberalism you would, because “free markets” (the interests of capital) is THE entire rigid socioeconomic model which subordinates all else.
9. Since applicable systems are tied to deep cultural roots it doesn’t work to wholesale apply a foreign system in America, just like it didn’t work to apply neoliberalism in China. Still, it does seem like a good line of thought America could consider. 9/9

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More from @Solzi_Sez

12 Feb
The S&P500 and CPC are both “superintelligences,” but quite different in their goal seek.

Let’s study the world’s two largest systems in terms of how they aggregate, and direct the efforts of, hundreds of millions of humans into their state-corporate systems.
2. First, what’s a superintelligence? “A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the most gifted human minds”—Wikipedia. But contrary to this definition, not hypothetical...
3. S&P500: The modern corporation is a legal entity which arranges humans in a hierarchical structure, for the pursuit of a narrow mathematical algorithm—maximize short-term investor return. Google for example, has 135K workers all focused on this goal.
Read 15 tweets
10 Feb
Western “defending myself” gun people can’t comprehend societies that 1) don’t have guns, 2) have impenetrable gated towers with CCTV and steels door, 3) are filled with civilized Confucian people; rarely a murder.

I can’t even *imagine* his scenario...
How would anyone break into my residence? It’s essentially impossible.

And if they did, how would they get out with my stuff, with CCTV watching?

And if I were there, why would I need to do/say anything? They would just see someone is there and run away.

Different worlds.
Now he switches to “but Tiananmen Square!!” 😂
Read 4 tweets
14 Dec 20
This is it—the core social problem of the Anglosphere this century—there is a deep cultural attitude in the colonies, who still see themselves as superior rulers of the world.
Other civilizations don’t exist, in the mind of the West. Or at least they shouldn’t exist.

All the convoluted reasons given by them for why they hate China, are really just rage that a different civilization still exists.

Yes, the bigotry goes that deep. /2
Check the actual definition of this word, which Westerners often use incorrectly (“racist”). This is the West, in a word...

BIGOTED: having or revealing an obstinate belief in the *superiority* of one’s own opinions and prejudiced *intolerance* of the opinions of others. /3
Read 5 tweets
13 Dec 20
POST-TRUTH ERA—WHY WEST, NOT EAST?

Q: How is it that America finds itself ripped apart by postmodernism (i.e. subjectivism / post-truth era), yet East Asia remains sanely grounded in reality?

Cc: @SRCHicks @ConceptualJames @jordanbpeterson @BryanVanNorden @StatesWarring
Background: public intellectuals in the West have been addressing postmodernism (Stephen Hicks, Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay, etc), yet they find themselves going over the same tired old philosophic ground and not really getting to root cause. /2
Apparently it hasn’t yet occurred to them that Western thinking might not be able to solve this Western problem, if it was that thinking itself which created the problem. 💡/3
Read 12 tweets
1 Dec 20
The #Anglosphere, in the 21st century.

It all goes back to the British Empire. It set up colonies, it set global markets rules, and it assumed itself king of this system forever. But...

...now Anglo exceptionalism faces an existential crisis.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphe… Image
Think about it, the UK set up these colonies. But any colony in Asia (e.g. Australia) is dependent on Asia, period.

There's no way around geography. Australia is in China's orbit. But how can the white-culture superiority complex ever psychologically deal with dependency? /2
Think about it some more, the US set up this financial & trade system. But whatever country becomes the biggest economy, all other countries are dependent on it.

But how can the while-culture superiority complex deal with a yellow-culture taking over THEIR "free market"? /3
Read 11 tweets
2 Nov 20
BREAKING THRU THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY
[US: #Democracy or #CorporateDictatorship?]

On the topic of American democracy being fake, let’s try to remove our minds from decades of state/corporate propaganda and think objectively for a moment...
• DIRECT DEMOCRACY: The U.S. is *not* a direct democracy—at the federal level the people do not get a direct vote on the actions of the state. And at the local level, any choices that do appear are quite limited and rigged. 2/18
• REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: The U.S. is *not* a representative democracy either—the “representatives” are not the people's, they are the representatives of corporations and entrenched state organizations. These institutions have a bigger carrot/stick than voters. 3/18
Read 19 tweets

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