Critically somewhere that doesn’t cost money to simply exist in.

Waste sorting

Everything is burnable at the right temperature…

But Japan really needs to focus on producing less waste.

Fair. Thanks mate I know it took thought to write that. I’ll digest if for a while.

using anecdotes

I lived in China mate.

It felt like living anywhere else. I saw poverty daily but I lived a good life with other middle class people. People love their families, pray for more money and love a good drink. They praise the government when a new train station is built, but everyone in my district wasn’t happy because we were below the river that the government had arbitrarily decided divided which buildings were given permits to be built with heating and which weren’t, so we froze in winter.

I loved my electric scooter, I nearly died every day on the roads. The best meals I ever had were at the Buddhist temple where everything was vegetarian. You paid if you could so those who couldn’t could have a free meal.

I’ve also never seen so many elderly people forced to work to avoid hunger and homelessness. From the bicycle parking attendants to the elderly couple who lived in a partition in my buildings garage.

Every country has lifted people out of poverty over the last 100 years. Do you really think Chinese people don’t pay for their houses?

Don’t confuse my criticism of China with an endorsement of America or capitalism. Just a counterbalance to the delusion I see in these threads.

What benefit does trust bring?

Doesn’t a democracy function better under scrutiny? Acting like China is a paradise because it’s better than the US is like pretending the Greek economy in 2007 was rock solid because it was better than Zimbabwe’s.

Nobody here thinks the US is anything other than a shithole (I hope). But glazing the Chinese government like this is just giving them room to be worse, not better.

Thank you for that. I really appreciate this post and it resonates with me. I wouldn’t have stayed there for so long if I didn’t love it too. But I can’t deal with the rhetoric on .ml that acts like it’s a utopia with no justified dissent.

There is absolutely a functioning democracy, but it isn’t immune to nepotism or greed, just like everywhere else. It’s also capable of manufacturing suffering.

The two people who remain in my thoughts the most from my time there were the 80 year old couple who worked as parking attendants in my building so they could stay in a single room partition in the garage with a kerosene heater. This was in 2011, in the center of Kunming. Not one of the rural villages in the mountains. They could have been provided for but they weren’t. It’s not a utopia, but it is a great country full of wonderful people.

And I am unfortunately in contact with real Americans who won’t shut up about the glorious Trump regime too…

The Anna’s archive link on that page is dead unfortunately, I’ll try to find it but do you have one handy?

Memes aside, you know it’s all propaganda though right?

Even if you want to gloss it up as the “the revolution protecting itself” the PRC isn’t going to go out and admit “there’s flaws in our system”, much less “our government is run by a bunch of horny greedy assholes just like everywhere else”.

–edit–

Though I agree the damage those assholes can do is limited by the system much more than the US which is a failed state.

With all due respect, and apologies for not reading the book first (I will get to it when I have time). Have you just read the theory, or have you lived the implementation?

Because unfortunately, they can be different in practice. In my experience of the discussions I’ve had with my Chinese friends, and the amount of gossip I’ve heard about local political dynasties and KTV prostitutes, I think the ideal and the reality is very different. Something you could also say about the US.

with a functional democratic governance

I swear none of you guys have actually lived in China haha.

The Chinese political system is nepotism first, plutocracy second. Just like the US. The only difference is they’re much more sane in public. The benefits of a shame based society.

If anyone can beat 7 years in Kunming, let me know how I’m wrong.