2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Grey Fox]

[Jacob]

The ignorance of this forum today is really hard to take. 

I'd say it's about average for languish 

[Josquius]

China  is undoubtedly capitalist.

They are mixed.  Undoubtedly X infinity.

Like every country in the world.

The ignorance of this forum today is really hard to take. 

Sounds like you're quite ignorant on this one if you can't recognise this obvious fact.
Even Somalia and Afghanistan have a limited public sector.

[crazy canuck]

Sounds like you're quite ignorant on this one if you can't recognise this obvious fact.
Even Somalia and Afghanistan have a limited public sector.

A simple definition of a mixed economy is that some economic activities are privately owned and some are publicly owned.  On a very superficial level China meets that definition, and for a while it looked like they might even become a mixed economy with actually private ownership of corporate interests.  But of course that was not to be.  China went hard authoritarian, jailed or disappeared corporate leaders the party did not like etc. 

The state owned part of mixed economy is obvious enough, but I think where you could become a little more sophisticated in your analysis is what private ownership actually means.  In the G7 private ownership is protected by the Rule of Law.  I grant you that it is diminishing in the G7 as well, but at least we have not reached to stage of authoritarianism (and the associated corruption) that defines business relations in China today.   

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't think it is necessary to engage in a terminological debate about "capitalism" and exactly how the special Chinese case fits or doesn't fit the definition.

The claim that the problems associated with global warming lies with "unfettered capitalism" is a claim that the cause of the problem is the relatively free operation of private capital without sufficient policy restraint.

As applied specifically to the 21st century PRC, that claim does not carry because although the PRC has a market based economy, the key decisions on energy and transport are made by the state and the Party.  And that impact has cut two ways. On the one hand, the Party has pursued a development-oriented policy emphasizing raising energy consumption and thus coal.  That has clearly been a policy decision from the Party with state entities in the lead.  On the other hand, the Party also seems to concerned about the potential impact of warming given the population concentration in low lying coastal areas and thus has also heavily directed investment into batteries, solar, and green tech.

Hypothetically, a counterfactual true capitalist PRC would probably end up roughly in the same place: capital constraints might have slowed the breakneck expansion of energy expansion but green tech development might have been slower as well.   As for a hypothetical true Communist regime, both the Stalinist and Maoist models were not exactly known for environmental concerns.  Such a regime would have attempted to do worse in terms of pursuing energy output at all costs, but perhaps not resulted in a worse outcome due to its failure to achieve the targets.

Arguments about capitalism IMO miss the point.  We are where we are because:

1) In the developing world, even those countries facing potentially stark consequences from climate change have tended to privilege expanding energy access to the mass population over carbon control.  The PRC and India being the largest in size but hardly the only examples.

2) In the developed world, democratic political regimes have failed to convince their populations to make economic trade offs needed to achieve the carbon reductions required.  I don't buy that this outcome is entirely or even principally because of capitalist propaganda, but because the mass of the people simply aren't willing to sacrifice present gain for future insurance.

These are consequences of political choices, and focusing on abstractions like capitalism IMO distract from the relevant concerns.