Theme: Governance

  • CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER – THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF ASIAN RESEARCH (NB

    CHINA’S VISION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER – THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF ASIAN RESEARCH (NBR)

    by Nadège Rolland

    In my latest report, I dissect the strands of thought underpinning China’s vision for a new world order and study its emerging features

    China’s leadership is determined to alter the norms that underpin existing institutions and put in place the building blocks of a new international system.

    A “vision” is by definition abstract, not fully formed and subject to change. In China’s case, this vision is also buried under layers of propaganda. But if we pay close attention, some key elements are discernible.

    1/ The Chinese leadership believes that the existing order is “unfair” (it should allow China to have a greater role, commensurate with its growing power) and is incapable of offering “reasonable” solutions to the global needs.

    2/ Instead of considering liberal democratic values as essential conditions for achieving global peace and prosperity, the CCP sees the global promotion of “so-called universal values” as the main cause for conflict and chaos – an obvious reflection of its own survival anxieties.

    3/The CCP does not have any appealing substitutes to the existing set of international norms. Even at home, it is trying to bolster its legitimacy with artifices rather than a positive, clearly defined set of beliefs for the country’s overall direction.

    4/The Chinese leadership’s vision for what the world should look like is based in the first instance on a negative agenda – the refutation of liberal democracy as the path to peace and prosperity – rather than a positive view of a desired future.

    5/China does not need to prove that its own system can be applied universally. Demonstrating that no system is truly universal fundamentally undermines the existing international order’s core principles and undercuts any system based on universal values.

    6/Once China has eroded a truly international order, it can hope to carve out a sphere of influence including large portions of the non-Western and mostly non-democratic world where its preferred worldview, rules and norms will be endorsed, followed and respected.

    7/China wants to dominate this parallel system. But the 21st Century Chinese version of hegemony does not seek to replicate the old “Rule Britannia” or “Pax Americana” precedents. Chinese elites reject any form of Western influence, even when they think about models of empire.

    8/Chinese elites are trying to develop modern, softened versions of the traditional sinocentric order, usually by insisting on its benevolent nature (“humane authority,” “great harmony”…). But imperialistic undertones and intimations of domination are not easy to work around.

    9/The various components of Xi’s diplomacy (community of shared future, Belt and Road, global network of partnerships) point to a vision in which China’s leadership is exercised over substantial portions of the emerging and developing world,…

    10/…a space free from Western influence and largely purged of the core liberal democratic beliefs supported by the West.

    11/In this hierarchical system, China would be akin to a massive, dazzling star pulling smaller planets into its orbit without necessarily exerting direct control over them.

    12/Its contours would not be defined along precise geographic or ideological lines, but rather by the degree of deference and respect that those within China’s sphere are willing to offer Beijing.


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-12 19:17:00 UTC

  • if it is a government organization and it doesn’t have a general staff, and cond

    if it is a government organization and it doesn’t have a general staff, and conduct regular war games it needs to be shut down. War games are all that end bureaucratic creep and justify rapid change.


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-12 14:37:00 UTC

  • HMMM…. MY PROMOTION OF ARISTOCRACY IS NOTHING SO SIMPLE —“My impression is t

    HMMM…. MY PROMOTION OF ARISTOCRACY IS NOTHING SO SIMPLE

    —“My impression is that Curt is rather fond of the power disparity that separated the noble aristocracy from the other people, and that he would rather restore that so that aristocrats would have the time to run the world instead of having to bother defending themselves. One reason he likes ancestor worship is because it delineates who is in and out without a fight, in theory.”—Giego Caleiro

    hmm… Some element of truth in there somewhere. But it’s more along the lines of I would prefer I was governed by my betters – successful intergenerational families – than those who are not, because I don’t want to govern all these barbarians and someone has to at last defend decent people from them. 😉

    But the more precise explanation is that the purpose of rule of law, monarchy and militia is to deny ANYONE power, and the purpose of nobility (successful intergenerational families) is to suppress the fashions and passions of the mob that is not successful at the production of intergenerational families, so that we can all keep power distance local and low over our lives, and find meaning in the civil society instead of political warfare..

    The reason I prefer ancestor worship is to maintain intergenerational debt (transfer), nationalism, the willingness of the underclass not to reproduce, and the willingness of the productive classes to redistribute, and preservation of the traditions of western civilization and it’s novel organization that has and will continue to transcend man – rather than tolerate another invasion by the newest sophistm, pseudoscience and lie.


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-11 22:35:00 UTC

  • HARSH WORDS ON CONSPIRACY Let me tell you how the world works. People who need o

    HARSH WORDS ON CONSPIRACY

    Let me tell you how the world works.

    People who need organizations are not those with power.

    People who need ‘societies’ are not those with power.

    People who heed religions are not those with power.

    People who need ideologies or philosophies are not those with power.

    People with power have LOTS OF PEOPLE around them giving them power and asking them for power.

    And everyone giving, getting and distributing power, is working in his or her self interest.

    And the business, financial, government sector is just trying to make make money by keeping people consuming, while academic sector is sucking their dicks, and the military is seeking opportunity to scare people into giving them money.

    Here is what people in power do: They maintain the power economy that keeps them in power. When they meet outside their power economy, they talk on three levels at once.

    – Trivial niceties to signal fitness for cooperation

    – Sharing information about opportunities and risks using subtleties, in order to obtain information that they can use or gain favor on future opportunities by giving what can be used by another.

    – identifying opportunities for minor – cost neutral – changes by each that together would increase the gains of each.

    Average people can’t imagine how simple the world is nor how tediously, boringly, EMPIRICAL the people who run the world are, nor how much the grownups DUMB SH-T DOWN so the morons keep working and buying.

    You live in a world of trivial posturing because you and everyone around you has no power or meaning. People with power have the opposite condition. They are soaking in power meaning and opportunity and can only afford the mental time to invest in the best opportunities for their limited attention. The don’t have to signal or posture like people who have no power or meaning.

    Do you know why? because resources to maintain power economies are always scarce. Because power economies are always in competition keeping the price of power high.

    The world is full of grownups with power

    They have power becuase people gave it to them.

    They maintain power becuase people keep giving it to them.

    People in power are funnels for concentrating power in places where int can have impact – just like the military concentrates forces to win a battle, or just lke a hundred people pass the bucket to concentrate their efforts in a division of labor.

    And those grownups are tediously boring.

    Because by and large they’re engaged in accounting.

    And using accounting as a nervous system.

    And occasionally investing in opportunities that take a long time to bring to fruition.

    And you can tell yourselves all sorts of paranoid lies to convince yourself that you understand the world. But that is all you’re doing.

    Conversely,there are people in activism, media, academy, politics, religion, and the state, and those that seek privileges from the state to VIOLATE reciprocity for one excuse or another. That is the left. The left has no power so it conspires to obtain power. That’s what LEFTIST MEANS: conspire to obtain power by non meritocratic irreciprocal means.

    What’s wrong with the world:

    1. The only thing wrong with the world at any given time is the organization of incentives in relation to human capital – knowledge, norms, culture, and demographics.

    2. Money is how we incentivize people.

    3. Law is how we engineer the organization of incentives.

    4. War (violence) is how we engineer the opportunity to use law to organize incentives.

    Everything else is some sort of kindergarten game. And you conspiracy kiddies don’t get anywhere near the ridicule you deserve.

    (((They))) are following instincts and programming, which we know because women use exactly the same technique via the state as (((They))) use in usury. Instincts are not conspiracies. That doesn’t mean there aren’t conspirators. It means that our idiocy at spreading capitalism democracy and rule of law is just as idiotic as their spreading globalism and socialism, pseudoscience, boating into hazard, and parasitic financialism. The animal follows its instincts until trained otherwise by his betters.

    In general, every person with any power in this world is following obvious rational incentives. All the bad “conspiracy stuff” happens at the bottom and middle where people don’t have power but want to use some stupid cheat in order to get it.

    Most of us feel the need to join organizations of all kinds, whether in our minds, in social, in charity, in business, or in political, in order to obtain some sense of agency control and therefore meaning in our lives – but that is all it is. The search for meaning because POWER DISTANCE IS TOO GREAT FOR US TO HAVE REAL MEANING.

    And that is what I”m out to change.

    Power distance restores meaning and eliminates the opportunity for evil.

    Reducing Power distance it puts the civil society back to work in its self defense.

    Scale is always bad.


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-11 21:35:00 UTC

  • Civil War 2 in America – Will COVID Situation Trigger It? via @YouTube

    Civil War 2 in America – Will COVID Situation Trigger It? https://youtu.be/vGNS3nRDjvk via @YouTube


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-11 15:13:04 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1248992469238394882

  • MORE ADVOCACY OF ORTHODOXY AS A STATE RELIGION (and correcting me) by James Dmit

    MORE ADVOCACY OF ORTHODOXY AS A STATE RELIGION

    (and correcting me)

    by James Dmitro Makienko

    I made a long detailed post on the christian denial of the laws evident in god’s hand.

    Here: https://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle.personal/posts/253632416034919

    James corrects me – as did others, that none of these criticisms apply to orthodoxy only to evangelicals and catholics. I might argue that the church of england might apply as well. (Where I was married)

    I agree on orthodoxy as the optimum political christian religion. I only argue that the evangelicals are closest to jesus’ teachings as a folk religion, and I only make that argument in order to advance some form of nationalist christianity that tolerates the entire spectrum of human cognition: feeling, intuition, reason, observation.

    The only thing I criticize in the slavic sphere (a) intermarium inability to produce commercial and military scale, and (b) russian inability to produce trust at scale, rule of law at scale, and use of rule of law to suppress corruption at scale.

    Conversely, the number of things I criticize in the west middle east and far east are endless.

    I tend to use christianity to refer to evangelical, protestant, and catholic divisions, and I call out orthodoxy in particular. I will try to correct this habit as “western christianity” instead of ‘christianity’ but I think it will be a hard habit to break.

    thank you for the ‘correction’. 😉

    James correctly answers below.

    == From James Dmitro Makienko ==

    To clarify on what you said about Christianity “denying”, NONE of that applies to Orthodox Church.

    Of this set of God’s laws, what does Christianity DENY?

    1. physical laws of nature. – You won’t see any of this “young earth creation” crap in Orthodox churches, they are generally accepting of science now and don’t try to override it.

    6. the political law of homogeneity – Virtually every Orthodox church is nation-centered – hence you have Greek, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Armenian, Coptic Ethiopian, Coptic Egyptian, Romanian, North Macedonian etc – this is why it has such difficulty in multicultural countries like Canada and America to create its own indigenous Orthodox church. We have Armenian and Ethiopian that go to out church, but we are Ukrainian, do our liturgy in Ukrainian, and not destroying our identity because there are people who are not Ukrainian.

    7. the evolutionary law of transcendence – we venerate numerous saints who have transcended through their works, and a lot of them did it through military victories and statesmanship.

    8. the … law of self domestication – there are many ways such as numerous feasts/fasting throughout the year, which toughens you in case hard times hit, rituals you do, which presents a framework for all classes to work together and not go after each other

    9. the … law of competition. – Do you mean economic competition (no Orthodox will have an issue with that, most will be negative towards socialism) or competition on the marketplace of ideas (Orthodox church likes to test things against time, so thats why a lot of things may take a few generations to implement – it is slow, yet it exists and we recognize its importance)

    Now if you apply it to the modern evangelical Christianity you will see that:

    1. Laws of nature – lawsuits against teaching of evolution, “bible parks” that promote young earth creationism – they literally allocate millions of dollars that they fleece from their hapless flocks to promote their anti-scientific falsehoods.

    6. Homogeneity – all the multi-culti crap you hear from liberal media is in evangelical (especially mainline) churches “we’re all the same, in jesus name, god loves you regardless of your skin, lets sing kumbaya for jesus” etc. Canada’s United Church is the absolute worst in trying to cuck to the progressives

    7. Evolutionary law of transcendence – they do the opposite, they love to revel in underclasses, and promote the message of equality regardless of cost or merit.

    8. Self domestication? Not much on this front either, because why domesticate when jesus loves you the way you are

    9. Competition? This is where evangelicals are actually outdo themselves, as they like to latch onto different new worldly ideas and modify them for their needs. It sometimes may come at the cost of discarding doctrine – but who cares about doctrine when to be “saved” in evangelical christianity you just need to say a Shahada(declaration of faith) that “i accept jesus christ as my lord and savior” – just like in Islam (that Mo is the prophet).

    The speculation about an industrial age in the first or second century AD which Christianity allegedly averted makes about as much sense as if ancient Egypt didn’t collapse we’d all be living in the giant space-travelling pyramids heading for nearest stars. We wuz space vikangs and shiet (makes me think of that lost vikings game of the early 90s!)

    It is impossible to combine all of Christianity into one-size-fits-all model. As for the reasons of the collapse of the Roman Empire it’ll just take me too much time to research and argument. In brief, i think you give Christianity too much credit for the collapse of the Roman Empire, as most of the 4th century was spend by Christians coming up with a Nicene creed and confronting Arianism(Jesus created & not divine, non-trinitarian), then confronting Nestorianism(Mary mother of Jesus, dyophysitism of Christ etc).


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-11 13:40:00 UTC

  • “ITS TIME TO CREATE A NEW NORMAL” —“The government has no end in sight for ret

    “ITS TIME TO CREATE A NEW NORMAL”

    —“The government has no end in sight for returning to normal. So why should we? Let’s create a new normal.”—Jesse Daughtry

    ==

    @john mark : possible framing?


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-11 12:05:00 UTC

  • YOUR FRIENDLY REMINDER Revolutions always appear impossible in prospect and inev

    YOUR FRIENDLY REMINDER

    Revolutions always appear impossible in prospect and inevitable in retrospect.

    😉


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-10 20:21:52 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1248707793974177796

  • NATION VS STATE VS COUNTRY Most common errors conflate nation (people), country

    NATION VS STATE VS COUNTRY

    Most common errors conflate nation (people), country (territory) and state (government) because the ‘natural’ order is that these are the same: a body of people, the territory they live in and the government they defend and operate it with.

    HUMAN GROUP

    individual > family > clan > tribe > nation > race > man

    HUMAN RULES

    norms (manners, morals, ethics) > laws > institutions, traditions > arts > myths > religions.

    TERRITORY

    Farm > village > town > city > county – province > country > state > federation (capital) > empire (core state, and capital) > civilization.

    ORGANIZATION

    father > pater familia (extended family or clan) > headman or chieftain (tribe of clans) > king(kingdom) of tribes > monarch(monarchy under christianity) > state (corporation over all) > federation (of states) > empire (heterogeneous states) > civilization.

    LEADERSHIP

    individual > family or clan > oligarchy (group) > democracy (most)


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-10 17:22:00 UTC

  • Probably not obvious, but the eastern orthodox church has succeeded by knowing i

    Probably not obvious, but the eastern orthodox church has succeeded by knowing its place and function, having smaller numbers, and so being less diverse, being a state religion and by proximity to hostiles (islam, turkey, the stans.).

    Catholic church doubled down on (a) rule, (b) bureaucracy, and (c) dogma, and (d) they failed at both rule at home and colonial rule abroad, and (e) the dogma which while elegant could not reform.

    The protestant churches couldn’t reform.

    The evangelicals reformed and restored christianity to it’s origins as folk religion not a political religion.

    Islam can’t reform.

    judaism needs pressure to reform.

    Buddhism hardly needs reform.

    Shintoism is perfect as it is, and a lesson for us all.


    Source date (UTC): 2020-04-10 09:47:00 UTC