Was Hong Kong better of when the British were there?, absolutely! Ask my friend who moved there in 2007 (when I was considering joining him) who decided to move out in 2019 despite setting up his operations there. He told me a lot of stuff that was happening behind the scenes that never made it to the press, including the fact they had Chinese agents literally fomenting violence in the protests to justify the crackdown. And this was not some guy who is anti-China at all, at least before that event. Most of his business deals with Chinese companies. He knows it well. He was the first who told me China is not what you expect before I visited there.
What self determination in the people of Hong Kong have now? The people literally have no say. Only Chinese imposed leaders are allowed to govern. At least under the British they had local elections. They had their own laws. Would it be better that it was independent?, absolutely! But I would prefer what they had before versus the clamp down the Chinese pushed on them in 2019. Even when I was there in 2014 the people were very unhappy with Chinese rule and there were non violent protests. There was nothing like that in 2007, and inflation was noticeably much higher in 2014.
Ask the Taiwanese what they want as well. They just had an election that showed the will of the people, and I knew two people living there now (including the friend who used to live in Hong Kong) and trust me, both would get out ASAP if China took over. One of them told me they literally have the TSMC factories set to be blown up internally if China takes over - that is how much they do not want to come under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese. And neither like the policies of the West either. One even commented to me he did agree with the way Xi was handling the cultural issues and how stupid the woke stuff had gotten. But you can admire the latter and recognize that there are also severe problems with basic freedoms in the same country.
I don't get this idea that just because the US is evil, everyone who is opposing them has to be good. I would not want to live in either the US or China (but if I had to chose, I would chose the US even though I left the US, because I value freedom of speech and control over my own life, and the US is still better than China, if but barely now...). Both are horrible models. Russia would be better than both. Putin I like. Xi I cannot stand. His predecessor Hu Jintao was much better, and the country was actually progressing towards more freedom under him.
I don't see how bringing the WEF into this not relevant either. The Klaus Schwab openly praises the Chinese model. WEF wants "stakeholder capitalism" which is basically the state (through the corporations) controlling and managing all the resources of the people, just like is done in China. They want to clamp down on free speech, just like behind the great firewall of China.
I support the BRICS movement because the US dollar system needs to be crushed. I also agree, that the US deserves some massive karmic payback. That being said, I want a global order that is multpolar with no more globalist powers doing any bullying and each country left alone to pursue their own interests - the interests of their people. And I very much hope my suspicions are wrong on this.
Let me give you an idea of how decentralization can work. Say you have a case of corruption. You have standing grand juries that any person, not just a prosecutor, can bring evidence to. They then vote on an ordered list of all the cases that should be prosecuted with the most heinous crimes at the top, with the ability to hire independent attorneys to prosecute if state attorneys are not willing. That way the most violent crimes are prosecuted first and victimless crimes do not make the threshold.
What happens now if a corrupt official wants to go after someone like Assange. It is rubber stamped by a corrupt prosecutor, and then a judge. If you take it through the grand jury process above (using cryptographically secure selection, not the current "Magic Wheel" used in the US to profile the pool to assure a conviction) the people would not indict (a proper grand jury system with adversarial roles so you cannot "indict a ham sandwich"). Even if they chose to indict, the severity of his "crime" would be so down the ordered choice priority list it would never be tried. So you prevent normal people from being persecuted by the state. In China if the state wants you behind bars, you have no hope. It basically the same in the US (maybe slightly better because innocent targets do occassionally get acquitted).
And what happens with corruption. In China or the US corrupt prosecutors are not going to bring a case against the true insiders. Hunter Biden anyone? But if you had this system, any person could bring the evidence and the grand jury could hire a private detective and private lawyer (not beholden by Biden) with a history of public interest work to take on the case. They bring it back to them, the indictment goes forward if there is evidence, regardless of what the President thinks.
But this only happens with decentralization. If you have any system where "elites" have top down authority to pursue cases they have an incentive to be bought or blackmailed. That is much harder to do in a decentralized system, even if you don't think people know what they are doing. I think the average person off the street, in most cases, when presented with the right information will make better decisions that psychopaths who have higher IQs due to the integrity issue. In short, I believe decentralization and better mechanisms of government are the only government solutions to political ponerization. The more centralized the system, the more potential for corruption.
But you can put in systems like this throughout the government to make it work. But you can only have such a system if you have a free society WITH FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. Most governments, especially China, could never allow a system like the one above because they could not convict people of thought crimes - juries would not rubber stamp it.
Instead of joining one authoritarian faction or another, the people need to unite in principle against the elites that run all the governments.
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