The Chinese lawyer in Italy I was talking about hosted some lecture at university the other day. She actually praises the social credit system…
I’m really hoping people are smart enough to understand this is complete garbage.
I guess they haven’t read 1984!
There is an army worth of teachers on this board. I sure hope they are doing their part to try and get the kids to be critical thinkers and not sheep.
Over population, waste in a wholesale scale, insanely mismanaged…everything all play their part. Over population is the main one NO one will talk about. Talk about avoiding the issues. This problem, much like cancer, rarely is solved when it is too late. Or, rather, by people that are too late (read: old). The trend with many social animal species is that logical canges over generations. We ought to fight and try, even older generations, but a massive focus should be put on children to allow them to be smart AND intelligent. The millenial generation was proof of our failure to educate. This could easily be called a nation emergency, rightfully an international one…
No, i mean like rats. Almost literally, just not biologically of course. We could talk about fertility going down in recend couple decades ina a couple years. But that is meaningless. Unless the population hits negative growth (which it hasnt i dont think) you need to realize there are 7 billion plus. Even a a tiny growth calculated with billions is a LOT more people. Thats the issue. The biggest issue is how to solve it, cause there is no moral way to do it that i can think of 
Of course Africa will explode. Their inrastructure is increasing and so is food. Much like asia before and until now. The reason poor areas will continue to explkde is the same reason rich areas exploded when they were lifted from poverty. When a place gets luxury, comfort and food, populations always explode. In almost every single species. Be it rats, dogs, monkeys, lizards, fish, humans etc.
We are like rats because our population levels are exactly correlated to food quantity. Which is mostly directly related to oil and the offshoots that industry has enabled: agriculture, transportation/logistics, plastics, heating in cold areas etc etc.
Countries that are poor have populations that explode. They enter into the Scientific Revolution and the death rate collapses while the birth rate stays the same. Then they get wealthier and the population growth drops. It happened in Western Europe, then the Anglosphere, then East Asia, then South America, and now it’s happening in India, the Mddle East and North Africa. That leaves only sub-Saharan Africa where it will peak in about 2050-2060.
Speaking of China- this is that thread- they implemented their One-Child Policy, only to drop it recently- and discovered people didn’t want to have extra babies.
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Why wouldn’t they? For the past 22-30 years they’ve been fooling the west and the western countries have given them a wide latitude. The short term cost savings thinking is biting the west in the ass now. Unfortunately I don’t see much changing. China will do a small bit, pay some penalties and big corporations will continue to manufacture there, appeasing the Chinese.
It’s not as if Apple IBM MS Google FB and others will form a cartel and say fuck China - just don’t see it happening
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Google and FB kind of did by not giving into demands of Chinese censorship. So maybe it’s possible some more firms will push back against China.
Sadly true. However, it is also a clear question of national security. The USA is scared of punishing the CCP right now because they need the PPE manufactured in China. The CCP is threatening The Netherlands with witholding PPE if they don’t play ball. It’s clear what a mess countries who sucked up to the CCP are in right now. I hope they don’t make the same mistake again. They can’t be that stupid. It they are then screw it, let the CCP control the planet.
This was always going to be the fundamental flaw with globalisation. The shittiest government would take advantage.
It’s just eyewash for the benefit of Americans shareholders.
You want to oppose them - put a statement in your website to the effect “we do not do business with criminal communist countries, no matter what the cost”. Do you see that happening?
Heck, the US “funds” Chinese students to come and study there. I’ve never understood this thinking. What exactly do they gain? The students don’t learn an iota of western values, independence in thinking or anything like that. Many of them only make money and go back to work there. I fail to see what the US gains as a nation from educating a single Chinese student?
You know I’ve thought about this and at the end of the day this is never ending. You have to make a decision sometime.
Think of WW 2 what if’s - hypothetically is the nazis has some special protective gear or vaccines for some pandemic of that time. Do you think the Allies would not have still invaded them? I think they would have. It’sa question of survival literally. You have to deal with the problem. If that means suffering some today but gaining in the future so be it.
I just see too much of a paralysis in western policy due to some perceived Chinese threat. I don’t understand why they’re so scared. Let China cut off contact with Australia. Let them cut off contact with every nation. What are they gonna do after that?
The allies only invaded Axis powers in 1943 in Italy and Germany in 1945. I don’t follow your point.
Countries routinely protect agriculture at a loss for reasons of national security in times of future crisis. IMO this is regularly abused, but the basic point is it’s necessary to some degree.
EDIT: I think I get it. Are you arguing that countries should push back against China regardless of any leverage they’ve allowed the CCP to have over them? I was using hindsight to argue that western countries should never have allowed themselves to be in this position. I agree with you, by the way. The PPE China would provide will be shite anyway.
exactly. Think of playing the devli’s advocate. Put yourself in CCP HQ right now… they’re thinking
- Lets dump goods - west won’t care if you appease a few rich guys
- Lets buy over assets in small countries - west wont care
- lets run amok - west won’t care. we’ll pay a small fine and everything will be fine.
- we control manufacturing, minerals - what the west going to ignore us? build their own manufacturing? hahaha… the average Joe is too damn lazy, complacent and frankly a moron to challenge our “hard work”
and why shouldn’t they think this way? They’ve been allowed to do exactly this. The west needs to think OOTB and do things which are uncomfortable, unpalatable… IMHO
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It’s probably legally tricky, but I would look at removing dual citizenship from family members of CCP politicians. You want to screw up your country? Fine, your kids are no longer Chinese/Canadian citizens so they can live somewhere nice in the future. That might hit them where it hurts.
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Exactly right. Abd this why its a bit dangerous to look at very large long term evolutions with a single species in focus only using a couple decades.
We are like rats cause we follow availability (mkst food but also medicine, housing, technology that allows us to live in new places etc etc.
This is my issue. As automation ramps up faster, no one can deny this allows for greater human quality of life. But is is almost all subsidised by an inefficient and unsustainable infrastructure and resources sourcing. As is, we cannot sustain what we live in. If the “under developed” world raises to our [retarded] developed world.standards and logic, it isnt just 7 billion (turning on 9) but a full population burning, consuming, spreading.
Just like cancer… There will be a time we reach critical mass. And making points about a fictional, temporary and ever changing line (= political borders) wont change the fact fact that a line isnt as meaningful as an ideal. Which ccp and frankly most of the world seem to all be sellfishly ignoring.
The new space race is due to lack of planet to sustain our current growth. If we dont at least attempt at changing our habits we wl no doubt end up being a cancer of space just like we currently are on earth. For the TV folk out there. We are the borg. And for some reason we seem to ignore that negative and celebrate it. This is one thing thing most cultures seem to have in kind. Probably time to evolve and practice what we already know to be painfully obvious. But if we keep on this conversation it will basically be the exact situation as is the into to the American movie Idiocracy. Sadly seems true. We are just apes.
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KN95 respirators are regulated by the Chinese government under specifications similar to N95 respirators in the U.S., and have been approved for emergency use in some circumstances by the FDA. (N95 respirators seal against the face and protect the wearer from small-particle aerosols in the environment. Face masks are not form-fitting but protect both the wearer and those around them from splashes and exchanges of large droplets.)
To be clear, a respirator like an N95 or a KN95 has to satisfy a number of criteria, including the ability to form a seal against the face, and we are in no position to certify an N95 or equivalent; that full capacity resides with the federal government. However, high filtration efficiency and low pressure drop are essential properties without which the respirator cannot perform. These two criteria are ones my group has been able to review upon request by the Commonwealth.
Over the past two weeks, our lab has tested — in triplicate — over 40 different KN95s from the MEMA stockpile, at the request of the Department of Public Health. We can compare their performance in our test to that of certified N95 respirators and quickly distinguish those that might pass the N95 certification from those that would not. The latter group is still valuable in noncritical situations, but it is important to know that health care workers and first responders on the front line of the pandemic are getting the best available protection. So far, about a third of the KN95s we’ve tested appear to perform as advertised.
I was once walking around the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and saw one of those Falung Gong guys handing out leaflets on Mainland organ harvesting to Mainland tourists. Some of the Mainlanders even pushed him. Guy seriously did not give a f**k. Gotta admire that.
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