"y'know ... China actually bad though"

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    if china had a neighborhood watch like cuba has

    I mean... meh? I don't think Cuba gets bonus points for being poor and lacking the labor surpluses for a professional police force. I don't know if China's bureaucracy would have been able to deal with Bo Xilai's naked predatory corruption if it was operating on the Neighborhood Watch model. I doubt the big corporate institutional actors that have accumulated economic clout in China could have been reined in, either.

    Maybe there really is something fundamentally wrong with large national governments. It would definitely scratch my libertarian itch to reach this conclusion. But "China less bad because large well-funded policing exists" doesn't really get to the heart of why police are bad. It seems to skip over the history, nature, and purpose of western policing forces and simply land on the "ACAB so less is better" ideological principle without asking what role these organizations play in society.

      • Tomboys_are_Cute [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The word was bonus points, which isn't to say its better or worse. I agree with Zifnab25 that its fair to say that the nature and history of policing in China is different enough to question an uncritical ACAB for their police, Chinese police didn't grow from Slave Patrols.

        I also want to talk about how you said what you said. It is cool that Cuba has "resisted corporate capitalist imperialism," so has China. The use of the word "corporate" implies all Capitalism isn't corporate, and "capitalist imperialism" implies there are non-capitalist (or non-young/pre-capitalist) empires.

        Since we're talking China, "if they don't turn to a imperialist police state model" also feels out of place, this would imply China is imperialist, which it isn't. It would also imply China is a police state, which, maybe? Are there strict limitations on things that could create economic disruptions? Yes. Is that a limitation on the negative freedoms we have in the West? Yes. So what? Through the removal of some negative freedoms you gain positive freedoms like a young retirement age, a decent pension, and freedom from absolute poverty. If that is in a country that uses its surplus to participate in economic development in good faith then I fail to see how it is an imperialist police state.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        it’s fine to think about shit theoretically, but in practice, it just isn’t what it should be or could be.

        I agree