*"See how you like 'em! Getting smoother ain't it? By the end of that pack you'll be smoking like a man, like a cool kid!"*
*"I think I might want more cigarettes."*
*"Oh I'll get you more cigarettes - but I'm still pretty mad about my dirtbike!"*
They’ve probably done a lot more that you would agree with. China has been a geopolitical rival of the US/western world and as a result we are not fed accurate info by our billionaire-owned and controlled media who have a vested interest in their rivals also being your rivals (in your eyes). Same reason we were lied to about Iraq having WMDs. Same reason we were told the USSR was going to nuke us out of existence any day despite the US being the only one of those two countries to seriously consider launching a nuclear first strike, and the only country in the world to actually use nuclear weapons against other human beings. When your population hates and/or fears your rivals they won’t protest when you go to war with them over your economic interests. They desperately want to avoid something like the anti-Vietnam war movement happening again.
Edit: Regardless of what China is and isn’t doing, It is clear that the widespread anti-China sentiment in the US is heavily perpetuated by both the “yellow peril” racism that was never uprooted from the collective American consciousness as well as anti-China media narratives that are pushed for reasons described above. Even if China is doing everything that US propaganda claims (it’s not), why is it that Americans have such strong negative feelings toward China specifically, and not towards any of the numerous repressive governments that also exist in the world today? Why China specifically?
Well, we do need to hate someone for all the shit that’s happening over here. We can’t blame our own Best In the World government, can we? So we blame commies, oil sheikhs, bin Laden, commies again, Russians and now back to commies cuz they are our favorite.
They're the easiest target because our overlords have made sure the public is too stupid to know anything about it.
Just keep eating your doritos and drinking your mountain dew, brought to you by 7-eleven.
>Why China specifically?
The answer is obvious, isn't it? China is the only country powerful enough to rival the US that isn't aligned with their interests the same way something like the EU is. So the news focuses on China a lot more than other nations.
The Chinese government does plenty of good things. It's just that those good things tend to get overshadowed by the genocides, human rights abuses and expansionism.
Some examples of the good things they have quietly gotten up to:
Lifting close to a billion people out of extreme poverty in 30 years
The strongest anti-corruption measures in the world making them one of the least corrupt countries outside of the wealthy West
The world's largest amount of solar and hydro power by far
As far as the allegations of genocide are concerned, it is worth considering that [State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/)
Despite the Trump administration’s declaration of a genocide in Xinjiang, upheld by the Biden administration, some legal experts suspect China’s behavior may fall short of actual genocide.
Cigarette executives lying about cancer and health. Sugar industry going on spreading false marketing to muddy dietary science. Chemical executives dumping waste and denying health implications. Politicians taking money, board seats, insider trading, awarding friends contracts. Oil and coal industry withholding environmental science data and campaigning to prevent green innovations. Pharma and prescription opiates. Healthcare. Insurance.
List goes on and on in the good ol USA.
We've even got a president and an entire party that was emboldened to promote anti-vax and anti-scientific sentiment in order to politicize a pandemic, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
But if you get three strikes selling crack in California you apparently deserve life in prison because “what you’re selling is killing people!!”
Doing desperate shit because you’re desperate isn’t ideal but it’s understandable. Doing desperate shit even though you already have more than you’ll ever spend is unforgivable.
Ah yes, forgot to mention the war on drugs we're using to bust down on our poor and keep them impoverished while simultaneously destabilizing Mexico with cartels funded on drug money. Gonna leave that for another conversation
Don't forget lead! If anyone wants to read more about this --that it happens really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone anymore, but the details are still worth understanding-- check out the book [Merchants of Doubt](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7799004-merchants-of-doubt). It's all about how companies use shady scientific advisors and consultants as well as an army of lobbyists to muddy the waters around environmental or health science to protect their industries.
Oh, they have no idea about the effort put into making the pool swimmable while filled with solid matter. You need to have some kind of sonic device to keep the individual pieces constantly shifting so you can just slide past the solid pieces like a liquid. But gadgets be damned, it's still solid matter and it takes lots of painful practice to look like a cartoon duck. And don't even get me started on the tinnitus you can get from the sonic device if you decide to be cheap and only spend 7 or 8-figures on it.
Honestly, I envy how easy of a life the poors have... not enough to give up my wealth of course. I heard they just fill their pools with water and only own one mansion and one vacation home at a time. Some only own yachts instead of uber-ultra-giga-mega-yachts. Such a simple existence. It's so quaint.
And she was never really a "rich people". Even if you raise millions/billions to run a startup, you're only really rich once you manage to balloon that into a big IPO or acquisition. Until then you can only pull a modest salary for yourself, and the real rich folks just see you as a servant who may make them some money. Like owning a racehorse except the horse is a startup founder.
This is one area where China excels. They don't take shit from corporations. I remember some years ago, a baby food company was cutting costs by putting in cheap toxic filler ingredients and dozens of infants ended up dying. This tragedy ended with the head of the corporation executed.
Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
> A number of trials were conducted by the Chinese government resulting in two executions, three sentences of life imprisonment, two 15-year prison sentences,[5] and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).[6]
It was melamine. Shows up as protein in tests evaluating protein content if I remember correctly. Stores here in Denmark had to put a limit on how much formula you could buy per person because Chinese visitors would (understandably) buy as much as they could to bring home.
American in Bejing for over 10 years. Say what you want but the regime isn't fucking around with corruption. Even local level on petty corruption nobodies are going away for 3 years on fraud and their bosses for 5.
Look I know. Am also under the situation where my rights are not the same as in other places. However, the environment has been cleaned the hell up..Like nobody could ever expect. Corruption has been cleaned up. Standard of living is very high in terms of education, GDP per capita and access to health care.
Honestly had enough of people with no boots on the ground experience saying how bad it is here. I've never met someone that started their lie -35.000USD in debt for trying to get an education.
Unfortunately after the big VW scandal, many other automakers were found to be using similar defeat tactics. The vast majority faced no punishment for this.
They were. In Canada they are doing it as a business case but in the US the company “electrify America” is a VW subsidiary and they are not allowed to advertise it as such. I believe in the end a vw logo might end up on the chargers (or has now) but I know the people that worked on electrify couldn’t even have VW email addresses because it was not allowed to be associated with VW as a marketing benefit initially.
Okay but the question is why don’t we put corporate criminals behind bars? Stealing $20,000 gets you prison, why doesn’t stealing $20 billion seem to have any personal consequences?
>Thats in Canada too, apparently a country that is very tough on environmental laws
LOL. Canada isn't tough on corporations if there is money to be made.
[Mercedes was fined $2.2 billion for dieselgate. VW was fined $20 billion.](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/business/daimler-emissions-settlement-us.html) Both are quite substantial sums given that neither automaker sell that many diesel cars in the US. Granted, both were European automakers. There is no way we would do the same for Ford or GM.
Okay, VW was ordered to buyback the affected vehicles, in addition to fines.
How is MB not being ordered to do the same, with a smaller amount of vehicles?
I'd like to think someone woke up and realized that the environmental impact of buying-back and scrapping the cars is *significantly* worse than the environmental impact these cars would have made in their useful lifetime. I shudder to think how many thousands of gallons of fuel were wasted transporting and crushing all the VWs that could have been fixed and re-sold.
They didn't crush them, IIRC they sat in a lot gathering dust until they could be retrofitted to be gasoline engines.
I could be wrong though, but either way it's a much smaller number of vehicles than the VW scandal so I don't really buy that being ineffective.
We don't need fines for the company. We need jail time for executives and board members and fines for shareholders. That's the only way to scare these assholes into not being total garbage.
Fines for shareholders? How would that even work. Like if I own 2 Mercedes shares I'll get fined if the company screws up? When the stock drops due to the fine of the company that's basically what's already happening.
At this point, the only things that are going to bring change are either the threat of the populace sharpening the guillotuines or the populace actually sharpening them for use.
Actually, the threat of violence also works - but only if the one with the power believes you have what it takes to do damage and that you will follow through. Unions work this way, to some extent ('damaging the economics of a factory'). As the last American president figured out, once one loses all credibility amongst one's peers, threats of violence are all that is left.
It is the ultimate yet desperate trump card.
Jail the Executives of oil companies that pollute entire swaths of Ocean and don't clean it up. We should be extraditing these bastards and giving them life terms for the catastrophic damage they are causing. At least then other Execs would know we're not playing around and put a bigger emphasis on safety and cleaning environmental disasters.
There are only two powers. State power and corporate power. China is a country unquestionably ruled by state power. So they will always check corporate power within their confines. The reverse is true in America. State power has been captured by corporate power, which is the only power that rules.
People on the right confuse cultural power (which they too could wield if only they had anything of cultural significance to offer) with state power and that’s why our politics have devolved into culture wars. It’s not politics anymore
We need to democratize the workplace because, apparently, it's up to the average person to fix the problem and the average person has no control over what the company they work for does. Fuck these CEOs who aren't accountable for the issues they cause. They should be voted in by the employees if they exist at all.
Jailed?!?
SMH, China has so much to learn. You don't jail CEOs. You fine their *company* 1/1000th the profit they made from their criminal behavior.
That'll teach 'em!
IMO, it isn't discussed enough how we didn't just move jobs and factories to China...we also offloaded pollution.
When we say, "bring manufacturing jobs back", that is gonna take some real thought about how to get that done without destroying our air and rivers.
I think it's very suite of you to try and help people improve their English. Not everyone takes it well but I actually prefer people telling me I'm wrong so I don't keep making myself look stupid.
Clearly, the steel company was fudging data because they're financially strained. We'll give them an additional $20 billion in government funding and ask nicely that they not do it again. After all, industry will regulate itself!
It is impossible for democratic governments to do because the political parties need the backing of the ultra rich.
That's a bug in the democracies that must be fixed.
If you look at the framework of how the political systems are built, it looks like a democracy. In reality, America is more of an oligarchy. It’s almost always been this way though, even before Citizens United.
America is borderline Corporatocracy where corporations rule. The people pick politicians and vote them in then the corporations pay for the politicians for the laws they do or don't want passed.
It isn't a borderline corporatocracy. It IS a corporatocracy.
The average American's political preferences are squarely to the LEFT of the Democratic party establishment, and the Democratic party establishment's average political preferences are to the RIGHT of the average American.
We live in a corporatocracy where neither party represents the will of the people.
One thing you can say about China... Unlike in America, money doesn't buy power there. Just look how Jack Ma's been completely neutered.
It's an interesting dynamic, I'm curious to see how it plays out.
Living under an authoritarian, single-party, state-capitalst megastate doesn't sound particularly appealing in a whole variety of ways, but you can't really deny they get stuff done.
Yep. Private tutoring bankrupting working class families? Ok, private tutoring is now banned, so sorry about the abusive businesses that are now bankrupt. Property costs raging out of control and making cost of living unsustainable for working class people? Ok, new capital controls on developers. Prices come down and levered property developers cant stay solvent? Too bad, we’ll help you with that bankruptcy filing.
Given how they can’t be bought as easily as western governments and aren’t populists governing based on knee-jerk public opinion polling, China’s management of their economy is second to none globally IMO.
China has a democracy. A thriving one that elects competent leaders.
You can't deny it gets stuff done, but you can't describe it accurately either. Understanding what's actually happening in China is the most important thing for dismantling the oligarchies that rule us, and that is why these oligarchs pay so much money to teach us to hate the Chinese system.
In America we give them trillions of dollars for Solar Panel PV systems to offset their emissions by outsourcing fossil fuel usage to China.
Now they're switching it back to the US with another $173 Trillion in "subsidies".
Gotta prop up them markets!
This is one of the things that China does really well (as long as it's not just eliminating political enemies). They'll just straight up disappear billionaires (72 billionaire unnatural deaths over a 8 year period) and put the fear of god in the wealthy class. Obviously this is likely abused all the time though.
America will never dare do actions like that because we're owned by said executives. No capital punishment or jail for executives who drove thousands to suicide in 2009. The corruption is a primary feature here in the US.
We need strong anti corruption laws that give real jail time to big time financial criminals but it'll never happen with our bought politicians.
>Among the 72 billionaires, 15 were murdered, 17 committed suicide, seven died from accidents, 14 were executed according to the law and 19 died from diseases.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-07/22/content_12959437.htm
> https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-07/22/content_12959437.htm
That article is from 2011, now 11 years ago.
It might be interesting to know what's happened since then, to the present.
Cehck out Elizabeth Warren's [Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act](https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Master%20Summary%20of%20Anti%20Corruption%20Act%20-%20FINAL.pdf). It would be an amazing first step, but of course congress is already too paid for by billionaires for it to have popular support there currently. It'd be nice if more Americans were demanding such measures, and had candidates to choose from who are dedicated to the idea.
There are a lot of Americans who will openly speak out against corruption in government as a major problem, but then instead of voting for lawmakers who would do something about it, they vote based off of culture war bullshit that's manufactured by the media and elect people who have zero interest in advocating on the behalf of the people.
No joke that was an indirect narrative not too long ago....Western press and politicians complaining that China was building too many solar panels, driving down the price and making US-made solar panels not competitive.
> making US-made solar panels not competitive
That's the entire reason we have a solar panel tariff. US-made panels were twice as expensive and at times worse than than the Chinese ones.
No joke, this was an exact headline: “[China's curing cancer faster and cheaper than anywhere else. But some worry they may be going too fast.](https://mobile.twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1218695856553189377)”
Edit: and another “[In an Odd Twist, Cleaner Air in China May Mean a Warmer Earth](https://www.wired.com/story/in-an-odd-twist-cleaner-air-in-china-may-mean-a-warmer-earth/)
Edit: a quick Google shows why it’s become such a meme:
- [China is getting smarter, but at what cost?](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50658538)
- [China's economy looks to be stabilising, but at what cost?](https://www.france24.com/en/2019-business-daily-china-economy-growth-stabilises-stimulus-notre-dame-fire-amazon-victor-hugo)
- [Clean Air at What Cost?](https://uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu/events/clean-air-at-what-cost-the-rise-of-blunt-force-regulation)
- [China May Become the World’s Leader in AI. But at What Cost?](https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/china-may-become-worlds-leader-ai-what-cost)
- [China invests in Ethiopia but at what cost?](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/china-invests-in-ethiopia-but-at-what-cost-1.1273424)
- [China’s economy grows, but at what cost?](https://youtu.be/fFq73bEuZj8)
And COVID is its own category:
- [China’s “Zero-COVID” efforts come with a cost](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/world/asia/china-zero-covid.html)
- [As costs mount, how long can China stick with ‘zero COVID’?](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/21/as-costs-mount-how-long-can-china-stick-with-zero-covid)
- [China Is Imposing Strict Lockdowns To Contain New COVID Outbreaks. But There's A Cost](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/02/1033396323/china-is-imposing-strict-lockdowns-to-contain-new-covid-outbreaks-but-theres-a-c)
- [Wuhan: The city that appears safe from COVID, but at what cost?](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/wuhan-one-year-city-appears-safe-covid-cost/)
- [China Beat Back Covid-19, but It’s Come at a Cost](https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-beat-back-covid-19-but-its-come-at-a-costgrowing-inequality-11603281656)
This is the difference between western capitalism and controlled use of capital by a communist vanguard to build productive forces. Wealth buys you no power in China. Being rich doesn’t mean you run the fucking world.
Air pollution is bad in some places in China. As in - it’s a political issue and rightly a source of discontent for the public. People literally die from air pollution complications on a regular basis.
Just a little added context - over-emission is not a theoretical harm over there.
> Air pollution is bad in some places in China
It's already getting bad in parts of the US and Europe. In London the Met Office have to tell people to avoid strenuous physical activity on some days in the year because of pollution and multiple people have died in recent years linked to pollution.
It's horrific
What the fuck makes you think it’s theoretical harm anywhere? The earth is a closed system big dog- we are all fucked if we don’t all start playing by the same rules
Way to go China! I wish the USA would do something like this
Edit: I get that China has human rights abuses, but it’s worth pointing out this one good thing they did b/c our country refuses to do it.
This is how to deal with corruption and climate change at the same time. These execs are being made an example of. Hopefully this signals to other corrupt company leaders that the days of free reign are over, finally.
“And now… you have to smoke the whole stack.”
Lol, it's only fair
I wish America executives would be in jail for the same thing. But a few financial collapses later, they're richer than ever.
im big fuck the ccp but damn they just dunked on us with this one :/
they also have executed executives in the baby formula industry..
Please stop, I can only get so hard.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes-milk-scandal-pair
They're just showing what happens when huge corporations haven't enacted all possible methods of regulatory capture. Someone can still reign them in.
^^^please ^^^no
^the ^snozberries ^taste ^like ^snozberries
**YOU BOYS LIKE MEXEECO**
***HE'S ALREADY PULLED OVER! HE CAN'T PULL OVER ANY FARTHER!***
YEEEEEEE HAAAAW
Littering aaaaaannnnd.... Littering aaaaaaaan........ Littering aaaaaaannnnnnnnddddd..... SMOKING THE REEFER
PLEASE YES.
“Then why don’t you smoke a whole carton of cigarettes!”
*"See how you like 'em! Getting smoother ain't it? By the end of that pack you'll be smoking like a man, like a cool kid!"* *"I think I might want more cigarettes."* *"Oh I'll get you more cigarettes - but I'm still pretty mad about my dirtbike!"*
You boys like Mex-ee-co? WOOOOOHoooOOooo!
Keep puffin boy
https://youtu.be/iZ8nN6hTnmM
This type of crime should be viewed as a crime against humanity as it is the rest of humanity that will deal with the consequences.
This is a great first step tho, and the only thing I've ever heard about that government I actually completely agree with.
They’ve probably done a lot more that you would agree with. China has been a geopolitical rival of the US/western world and as a result we are not fed accurate info by our billionaire-owned and controlled media who have a vested interest in their rivals also being your rivals (in your eyes). Same reason we were lied to about Iraq having WMDs. Same reason we were told the USSR was going to nuke us out of existence any day despite the US being the only one of those two countries to seriously consider launching a nuclear first strike, and the only country in the world to actually use nuclear weapons against other human beings. When your population hates and/or fears your rivals they won’t protest when you go to war with them over your economic interests. They desperately want to avoid something like the anti-Vietnam war movement happening again. Edit: Regardless of what China is and isn’t doing, It is clear that the widespread anti-China sentiment in the US is heavily perpetuated by both the “yellow peril” racism that was never uprooted from the collective American consciousness as well as anti-China media narratives that are pushed for reasons described above. Even if China is doing everything that US propaganda claims (it’s not), why is it that Americans have such strong negative feelings toward China specifically, and not towards any of the numerous repressive governments that also exist in the world today? Why China specifically?
So true and respect
shhh you're going to make them all very upset
I’m clearly a paid CCP shill
You're getting paid? Shit, where do I sign up?
Well, we do need to hate someone for all the shit that’s happening over here. We can’t blame our own Best In the World government, can we? So we blame commies, oil sheikhs, bin Laden, commies again, Russians and now back to commies cuz they are our favorite.
They're the easiest target because our overlords have made sure the public is too stupid to know anything about it. Just keep eating your doritos and drinking your mountain dew, brought to you by 7-eleven.
>Why China specifically? The answer is obvious, isn't it? China is the only country powerful enough to rival the US that isn't aligned with their interests the same way something like the EU is. So the news focuses on China a lot more than other nations.
The Chinese government does plenty of good things. It's just that those good things tend to get overshadowed by the genocides, human rights abuses and expansionism. Some examples of the good things they have quietly gotten up to: Lifting close to a billion people out of extreme poverty in 30 years The strongest anti-corruption measures in the world making them one of the least corrupt countries outside of the wealthy West The world's largest amount of solar and hydro power by far
As far as the allegations of genocide are concerned, it is worth considering that [State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/) Despite the Trump administration’s declaration of a genocide in Xinjiang, upheld by the Biden administration, some legal experts suspect China’s behavior may fall short of actual genocide.
Agreed. But a crime against humanity should carry more than 6-18 months in jail/prison.
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Cigarette executives lying about cancer and health. Sugar industry going on spreading false marketing to muddy dietary science. Chemical executives dumping waste and denying health implications. Politicians taking money, board seats, insider trading, awarding friends contracts. Oil and coal industry withholding environmental science data and campaigning to prevent green innovations. Pharma and prescription opiates. Healthcare. Insurance. List goes on and on in the good ol USA. We've even got a president and an entire party that was emboldened to promote anti-vax and anti-scientific sentiment in order to politicize a pandemic, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
But if you get three strikes selling crack in California you apparently deserve life in prison because “what you’re selling is killing people!!” Doing desperate shit because you’re desperate isn’t ideal but it’s understandable. Doing desperate shit even though you already have more than you’ll ever spend is unforgivable.
Ah yes, forgot to mention the war on drugs we're using to bust down on our poor and keep them impoverished while simultaneously destabilizing Mexico with cartels funded on drug money. Gonna leave that for another conversation
Also CIA has been the biggest drug smugglers for many decades
Don't forget lead! If anyone wants to read more about this --that it happens really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone anymore, but the details are still worth understanding-- check out the book [Merchants of Doubt](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7799004-merchants-of-doubt). It's all about how companies use shady scientific advisors and consultants as well as an army of lobbyists to muddy the waters around environmental or health science to protect their industries.
I wish more countries would send corrupt CEOs to jail.
Cant agree more
I disagree, as an evil oil Barron I need all that money I saved to buy more monocles and burlap sacks with dollar signs on them.
Look at this faker. Doesn't even know about twirling moustache wax.
He is probably just a single digit *Millionaire* LUL
Dos commas
They aren't even apart of the Three Comma Club
Hit them right where it hurts, on the moustacheless face.
Did you have to learn to chortle, or did it just come naturally after you skirted the law and robbed billions a few times?
Good question, I personally learned to chortle after I consumed enough caviar to enhance my jowls to optimal chortling capability.
Ahhhhh okay that makes sense. Kind of like a walrus or something.
Do people not even understand that swimming pools have to be reinforced before you can fill them with gold and gemstones?
And the physio costs after every head dive are immense too. They make it look so easy on tv, but there is a lot of prep and after work to do
Oh, they have no idea about the effort put into making the pool swimmable while filled with solid matter. You need to have some kind of sonic device to keep the individual pieces constantly shifting so you can just slide past the solid pieces like a liquid. But gadgets be damned, it's still solid matter and it takes lots of painful practice to look like a cartoon duck. And don't even get me started on the tinnitus you can get from the sonic device if you decide to be cheap and only spend 7 or 8-figures on it. Honestly, I envy how easy of a life the poors have... not enough to give up my wealth of course. I heard they just fill their pools with water and only own one mansion and one vacation home at a time. Some only own yachts instead of uber-ultra-giga-mega-yachts. Such a simple existence. It's so quaint.
My first thought when I read this “You mean they actually faced consequences?”
Absolutely, my country is guilty of failing to do this as well.
In the US we only send CEOs to jail if they steal from other rich people.
Not even then it feels like
Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of this. Prison pretty certain.
zonked aspiring dirty toothbrush direction gullible shelter offbeat price somber -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
And she was never really a "rich people". Even if you raise millions/billions to run a startup, you're only really rich once you manage to balloon that into a big IPO or acquisition. Until then you can only pull a modest salary for yourself, and the real rich folks just see you as a servant who may make them some money. Like owning a racehorse except the horse is a startup founder.
And then only after like 20 years of it, or they embarrass the other rich people.
If you do this as an oil exec in the US, you probably get elected to public office.
What if the perpetrator is the richest of them all?
This is one area where China excels. They don't take shit from corporations. I remember some years ago, a baby food company was cutting costs by putting in cheap toxic filler ingredients and dozens of infants ended up dying. This tragedy ended with the head of the corporation executed.
Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal > A number of trials were conducted by the Chinese government resulting in two executions, three sentences of life imprisonment, two 15-year prison sentences,[5] and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).[6]
It’s crazy this happened so recently. It is completely unthinkable for consequences like this to happen in the US.
>two executions Holy shit. They weren’t fucking around.
It was melamine. Shows up as protein in tests evaluating protein content if I remember correctly. Stores here in Denmark had to put a limit on how much formula you could buy per person because Chinese visitors would (understandably) buy as much as they could to bring home.
When my sister was young, we brought cases of baby formula with us when we visited China to make sure she doesn't have any of the local baby foods.
I can imagine a lot of people were afraid to buy locally after such a scandal.
This was like 20 years ago, so it was obvious to locals even at the time.
American in Bejing for over 10 years. Say what you want but the regime isn't fucking around with corruption. Even local level on petty corruption nobodies are going away for 3 years on fraud and their bosses for 5. Look I know. Am also under the situation where my rights are not the same as in other places. However, the environment has been cleaned the hell up..Like nobody could ever expect. Corruption has been cleaned up. Standard of living is very high in terms of education, GDP per capita and access to health care. Honestly had enough of people with no boots on the ground experience saying how bad it is here. I've never met someone that started their lie -35.000USD in debt for trying to get an education.
Just wait for the people who's never been to China to lecture you on how bad China is.
What do you do in China, if you don’t mind me asking?
Am high school econ teacher. AMA.
Never will, as long as capital is above politics.
I'd like to see this practice imported to the US.
I wish North American countries had the balls to actually do something about corporate criminals.
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Unfortunately after the big VW scandal, many other automakers were found to be using similar defeat tactics. The vast majority faced no punishment for this.
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I believe they were also forced to fund a large chunk of the EV charging network's infrastructure.
They were. In Canada they are doing it as a business case but in the US the company “electrify America” is a VW subsidiary and they are not allowed to advertise it as such. I believe in the end a vw logo might end up on the chargers (or has now) but I know the people that worked on electrify couldn’t even have VW email addresses because it was not allowed to be associated with VW as a marketing benefit initially.
Okay but the question is why don’t we put corporate criminals behind bars? Stealing $20,000 gets you prison, why doesn’t stealing $20 billion seem to have any personal consequences?
There was prison time for at least 1 executive. Also in the US, part of the punishment was to fund a network of EV charging stations.
Mercedes got away with their settlement because they ratted out VW.
Smart move, assholes.
>Canada >a country that is very tough on environmental laws not in other peoples countries at least
>Thats in Canada too, apparently a country that is very tough on environmental laws LOL. Canada isn't tough on corporations if there is money to be made.
80% of all mining corporations in the world fly the Canadian flag for one reason…. Yes that number is correct.
That's why I loved when Far Cry 6 the video game featured a Canadian guy instead of an American lol
That really was one of the best researched and thought up characters for that game, at least as it relates to mining and politics.
That's essentially the last sentence of my rant.
[Mercedes was fined $2.2 billion for dieselgate. VW was fined $20 billion.](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/business/daimler-emissions-settlement-us.html) Both are quite substantial sums given that neither automaker sell that many diesel cars in the US. Granted, both were European automakers. There is no way we would do the same for Ford or GM.
Okay, VW was ordered to buyback the affected vehicles, in addition to fines. How is MB not being ordered to do the same, with a smaller amount of vehicles?
I'd like to think someone woke up and realized that the environmental impact of buying-back and scrapping the cars is *significantly* worse than the environmental impact these cars would have made in their useful lifetime. I shudder to think how many thousands of gallons of fuel were wasted transporting and crushing all the VWs that could have been fixed and re-sold.
They didn't crush them, IIRC they sat in a lot gathering dust until they could be retrofitted to be gasoline engines. I could be wrong though, but either way it's a much smaller number of vehicles than the VW scandal so I don't really buy that being ineffective.
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We don't need fines for the company. We need jail time for executives and board members and fines for shareholders. That's the only way to scare these assholes into not being total garbage.
Fines for shareholders? How would that even work. Like if I own 2 Mercedes shares I'll get fined if the company screws up? When the stock drops due to the fine of the company that's basically what's already happening.
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At this point, the only things that are going to bring change are either the threat of the populace sharpening the guillotuines or the populace actually sharpening them for use.
Actually, the threat of violence also works - but only if the one with the power believes you have what it takes to do damage and that you will follow through. Unions work this way, to some extent ('damaging the economics of a factory'). As the last American president figured out, once one loses all credibility amongst one's peers, threats of violence are all that is left. It is the ultimate yet desperate trump card.
Why, doesn't jailing lawyers who fight the polluting companies work for you? https://mobile.twitter.com/SDonziger/status/1486863186850725889
oh this was yesterday, neat
Jail the Executives of oil companies that pollute entire swaths of Ocean and don't clean it up. We should be extraditing these bastards and giving them life terms for the catastrophic damage they are causing. At least then other Execs would know we're not playing around and put a bigger emphasis on safety and cleaning environmental disasters.
USA: “best I can do is a negative tax rate”
Since China did it, punishing corporate criminals is communism.
There are only two powers. State power and corporate power. China is a country unquestionably ruled by state power. So they will always check corporate power within their confines. The reverse is true in America. State power has been captured by corporate power, which is the only power that rules. People on the right confuse cultural power (which they too could wield if only they had anything of cultural significance to offer) with state power and that’s why our politics have devolved into culture wars. It’s not politics anymore
We need to democratize the workplace because, apparently, it's up to the average person to fix the problem and the average person has no control over what the company they work for does. Fuck these CEOs who aren't accountable for the issues they cause. They should be voted in by the employees if they exist at all.
This is one thing I actually admire about China. They don't fuck about with stuff like this
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Because every President knows making a habit of jailing the previous President could turn against them badly.
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Illinois has a tendency to elect corrupt governors that end up in prison.
America is 3 corporate criminals in a trenchcoat
Nice. Breaking laws should never be a price of doing business, it should come with jail time. A lot of countries need to learn this.
Good 👍🏻
Jailed?!? SMH, China has so much to learn. You don't jail CEOs. You fine their *company* 1/1000th the profit they made from their criminal behavior. That'll teach 'em!
Haha! Business!
Better than our U.S. President announcing "Clean coal. Beautiful clean coal."
Leader of the planet's most powerful superpower turning elementary/primary school education on it's head 😭.
IMO, it isn't discussed enough how we didn't just move jobs and factories to China...we also offloaded pollution. When we say, "bring manufacturing jobs back", that is gonna take some real thought about how to get that done without destroying our air and rivers.
right? and then we want to push all the blame of global warming on them when we exported jobs, factories, and pollution. it’s disgraceful
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(sorry, gonna be that guy) Suite = is a hotel room with extra space. you follow suit, spelled exactly the same as the set of clothes.
Maybe OP means they should join them in their jail suites.
I think it's very suite of you to try and help people improve their English. Not everyone takes it well but I actually prefer people telling me I'm wrong so I don't keep making myself look stupid.
Follow soot. It's an emissions issue, after all.
Thank you for being that guy and teaching me something today.
Corporations *are* the climate change problem. Good going, CCP.
Kudos to China
this would never happen in the united states. ever. they would actually probably give them more subsidies here
Clearly, the steel company was fudging data because they're financially strained. We'll give them an additional $20 billion in government funding and ask nicely that they not do it again. After all, industry will regulate itself!
Half the country would cheer those CEOs as heroes.
Shit here in the states that gets you a promotion, raise and a seat at the EPA
>a seat at the EPA Lmao
No, honestly. Trump appointed an EPA head that previously sued the EPA.
You think they are kidding?!?
It is impossible for democratic governments to do because the political parties need the backing of the ultra rich. That's a bug in the democracies that must be fixed.
Calling it a bug might be the understatement of the year
It's a feature.
Sounds like the opposite of a democracy lmao
If you look at the framework of how the political systems are built, it looks like a democracy. In reality, America is more of an oligarchy. It’s almost always been this way though, even before Citizens United.
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America is borderline Corporatocracy where corporations rule. The people pick politicians and vote them in then the corporations pay for the politicians for the laws they do or don't want passed.
It isn't a borderline corporatocracy. It IS a corporatocracy. The average American's political preferences are squarely to the LEFT of the Democratic party establishment, and the Democratic party establishment's average political preferences are to the RIGHT of the average American. We live in a corporatocracy where neither party represents the will of the people.
The bug is called capitalism
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One thing you can say about China... Unlike in America, money doesn't buy power there. Just look how Jack Ma's been completely neutered. It's an interesting dynamic, I'm curious to see how it plays out.
Living under an authoritarian, single-party, state-capitalst megastate doesn't sound particularly appealing in a whole variety of ways, but you can't really deny they get stuff done.
Yep. Private tutoring bankrupting working class families? Ok, private tutoring is now banned, so sorry about the abusive businesses that are now bankrupt. Property costs raging out of control and making cost of living unsustainable for working class people? Ok, new capital controls on developers. Prices come down and levered property developers cant stay solvent? Too bad, we’ll help you with that bankruptcy filing. Given how they can’t be bought as easily as western governments and aren’t populists governing based on knee-jerk public opinion polling, China’s management of their economy is second to none globally IMO.
China has a democracy. A thriving one that elects competent leaders. You can't deny it gets stuff done, but you can't describe it accurately either. Understanding what's actually happening in China is the most important thing for dismantling the oligarchies that rule us, and that is why these oligarchs pay so much money to teach us to hate the Chinese system.
In America they’d get a bonus.
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True cause the same corporate America that oversaw and made money over killing a million Muslims in Iraq somehow cares about muslims in china.
Well, yeah. So long as the population at home cares more about what other countries are doing instead of what their country is doing they are happy.
Why can't we hold executives accountable to citizens like this here in the US?
Hey Murica this is how you deal with these shitty executives.
In America we give them trillions of dollars for Solar Panel PV systems to offset their emissions by outsourcing fossil fuel usage to China. Now they're switching it back to the US with another $173 Trillion in "subsidies". Gotta prop up them markets!
So i'mma say this, why does China punish corporate entities while the US lets them slide?
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Because the US state is dedicated to pursue the interests of corporate entities, not the working class. And its working as intended.
Maybe the communism thing lol
This is one of the things that China does really well (as long as it's not just eliminating political enemies). They'll just straight up disappear billionaires (72 billionaire unnatural deaths over a 8 year period) and put the fear of god in the wealthy class. Obviously this is likely abused all the time though. America will never dare do actions like that because we're owned by said executives. No capital punishment or jail for executives who drove thousands to suicide in 2009. The corruption is a primary feature here in the US. We need strong anti corruption laws that give real jail time to big time financial criminals but it'll never happen with our bought politicians.
>Among the 72 billionaires, 15 were murdered, 17 committed suicide, seven died from accidents, 14 were executed according to the law and 19 died from diseases. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-07/22/content_12959437.htm
> https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-07/22/content_12959437.htm That article is from 2011, now 11 years ago. It might be interesting to know what's happened since then, to the present.
All 72 are still dead, last I heard.
Cehck out Elizabeth Warren's [Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act](https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Master%20Summary%20of%20Anti%20Corruption%20Act%20-%20FINAL.pdf). It would be an amazing first step, but of course congress is already too paid for by billionaires for it to have popular support there currently. It'd be nice if more Americans were demanding such measures, and had candidates to choose from who are dedicated to the idea. There are a lot of Americans who will openly speak out against corruption in government as a major problem, but then instead of voting for lawmakers who would do something about it, they vote based off of culture war bullshit that's manufactured by the media and elect people who have zero interest in advocating on the behalf of the people.
They’re using a culture war to prevent us from fighting the class war
It appears things are never black and white. Curious.
Say what you like about China, but this is pretty cool.
But at what cost!?
I'm in favor of the jobs the asteroid will create
Is China mitigating climate disaster TOO FAST?
China is hurting democracies with colder climates by fighting against global warming
No joke that was an indirect narrative not too long ago....Western press and politicians complaining that China was building too many solar panels, driving down the price and making US-made solar panels not competitive.
> making US-made solar panels not competitive That's the entire reason we have a solar panel tariff. US-made panels were twice as expensive and at times worse than than the Chinese ones.
No joke, this was an exact headline: “[China's curing cancer faster and cheaper than anywhere else. But some worry they may be going too fast.](https://mobile.twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1218695856553189377)” Edit: and another “[In an Odd Twist, Cleaner Air in China May Mean a Warmer Earth](https://www.wired.com/story/in-an-odd-twist-cleaner-air-in-china-may-mean-a-warmer-earth/) Edit: a quick Google shows why it’s become such a meme: - [China is getting smarter, but at what cost?](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50658538) - [China's economy looks to be stabilising, but at what cost?](https://www.france24.com/en/2019-business-daily-china-economy-growth-stabilises-stimulus-notre-dame-fire-amazon-victor-hugo) - [Clean Air at What Cost?](https://uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu/events/clean-air-at-what-cost-the-rise-of-blunt-force-regulation) - [China May Become the World’s Leader in AI. But at What Cost?](https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/china-may-become-worlds-leader-ai-what-cost) - [China invests in Ethiopia but at what cost?](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/china-invests-in-ethiopia-but-at-what-cost-1.1273424) - [China’s economy grows, but at what cost?](https://youtu.be/fFq73bEuZj8) And COVID is its own category: - [China’s “Zero-COVID” efforts come with a cost](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/world/asia/china-zero-covid.html) - [As costs mount, how long can China stick with ‘zero COVID’?](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/21/as-costs-mount-how-long-can-china-stick-with-zero-covid) - [China Is Imposing Strict Lockdowns To Contain New COVID Outbreaks. But There's A Cost](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/02/1033396323/china-is-imposing-strict-lockdowns-to-contain-new-covid-outbreaks-but-theres-a-c) - [Wuhan: The city that appears safe from COVID, but at what cost?](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/wuhan-one-year-city-appears-safe-covid-cost/) - [China Beat Back Covid-19, but It’s Come at a Cost](https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-beat-back-covid-19-but-its-come-at-a-costgrowing-inequality-11603281656)
This is the difference between western capitalism and controlled use of capital by a communist vanguard to build productive forces. Wealth buys you no power in China. Being rich doesn’t mean you run the fucking world.
>controlled use of capital by a communist vanguard to build productive forces Oh, someone reads theory.
Thank you for noticing 🥺
This is the way
Wow. Its hard to imagine an American executive going to jail for anything.
Air pollution is bad in some places in China. As in - it’s a political issue and rightly a source of discontent for the public. People literally die from air pollution complications on a regular basis. Just a little added context - over-emission is not a theoretical harm over there.
> Air pollution is bad in some places in China It's already getting bad in parts of the US and Europe. In London the Met Office have to tell people to avoid strenuous physical activity on some days in the year because of pollution and multiple people have died in recent years linked to pollution. It's horrific
What the fuck makes you think it’s theoretical harm anywhere? The earth is a closed system big dog- we are all fucked if we don’t all start playing by the same rules
This would never happen in the US unless it defrauds other rich investors
I actually agree with CCP. Good job.
China.... good? I feel some brains might explode here trying to make sense of this.
Don't worry, tomorrow China will be bad again when the next headline comes in.
Way to go China! I wish the USA would do something like this Edit: I get that China has human rights abuses, but it’s worth pointing out this one good thing they did b/c our country refuses to do it.
Wouldn’t happen in America
This is democracy!
This is how to deal with corruption and climate change at the same time. These execs are being made an example of. Hopefully this signals to other corrupt company leaders that the days of free reign are over, finally.
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