Sipsey Street Irregulars: That old Mandate of Heaven thing. "Behind China's woes, myth of competent autocrats."

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

That old Mandate of Heaven thing. "Behind China's woes, myth of competent autocrats."

Like receding tides that expose naked swimmers, decelerating growth in the Middle Kingdom today reveals the incompetence of its economic policymakers -- and the deeper causes of managerial incompetence throughout the system. Among the systemic causes of bad policies, the most obvious culprit is the dominance of politicians in economic policymaking. While there is no shortage of capable technocrats inside the party-state, those who have the final say, from members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo all the way down to the humble county party chiefs, are typical politicians who are more influenced by considerations of their personal political gains than those of economic efficiency.

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Chiu ChunLing said...: Somehow the myth of a CCP deeply invested in peaceful economic development manages to survive every indication to the contrary. It's the Chinese Communist Party. I have no idea how they managed to make the entire world forget that rather important characteristic. Or rather, I can see some of the things that they did which people point to as evidence that somehow or other this meant Beijing was committed to the stability and freedom of the global market...I just don't see how anyone interprets them that way.

Xi focused his anti-corruption campaign on purging the military of wasteful incompetence and graft. It wasn't a laser-focus, there were also anti-corruption purges of economic planning commissions and so forth, but it was a very clearly defined priority to reform the military rather than the economy. Talking about the anti-corruption reforms while ignoring their salient objective is just the kind of delusional architecture that looks at massive currency manipulation and the insane levels of trade imbalance and see a commitment to stabilizing the global market economy.

The recent crash of the Chinese economy wasn't some kind of accident, it was deliberately engineered, and the anger of the Chinese people over their renewed impoverishment is being deftly directed towards "capitalists". Who looks at that and sees "incompetence"?

"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." But the corollary is that some things cannot be explained by incompetence, they can only be malice.

Communism is malice. And Chinese Communism may be the most malicious kind.; February 3, 2016 at 7:23 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

That old Mandate of Heaven thing. "Behind China's woes, myth of competent autocrats."

1 comment:

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