I guess ask a Chinese person? Like I'm sure many Chinese people aren't happy about the way their state functions, but the vast majority of them live their lives pretty much like we do. I don't know if I would take that as a total invalidation of whatever it is they have over there. Would I prefer a western style system? Definitely, but I'm not sure its so easy to point at China and say "this is an abject failure."

In fact, quite the opposite: most of the poverty reduction in the last 50 years has been in China, for example. Most of the cheap stuff we buy is manufactured there. Being the "factory of the world" doesn't seem like a definitive invalidation of that system.

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ackfoobar 3 days ago | parent [-]

The poverty reduction comes from the Chinese "Communist" Party adopting capitalism.

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nathan_compton 3 days ago | parent [-]

This is a pretty glib way of putting it. The chinese system isn't really capitalism, at least not of the "free market" type. Like I'm not saying that communism is responsible for the improvements in poverty, but I am saying that a significantly non-capitalist system has resulted in big changes. My point is that we often talk like anything that is not a pure capitalism is bound to grind to a halt and be catastrophically bad, but that isn't true.

	▲	ackfoobar 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		On the spectrum between pure communism and pure capitalism, modern China is closer to the US than the US is close to pure capitalism. > has resulted in big changes The change was allowing market forces to align incentives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up