Quote from: DavidC1 on December 17, 2023, 07:05:00then you won't be too motivated to focus on less relevant things such as educating yourself and working hard.
Lack of elected judges and prosecutors, i.e. a complete lack of trust in the judicial system and the personalities in it, as well as systemic corruption, nepotism, theft and blocking of social elevators for reasons independent of qualifications - this is why advanced scientists flee and do not want to work in China.
Also, stupid trolls telling fairy tales about how everything is fine in totalitarian China cause nothing but laughter. If anything, China is much more rotten than the United States and has no chance of rebuilding into an effective system. What everyone will soon see is the collapse of China and the Chinese Communist Party. As well as the collapse of totalitarian Russia, Iran and the like. Nature loves balance; as soon as the pendulum moves away from the energetically efficient state due to the desires of dictators, they quickly lead their countries and societies to complete collapse.
What remains for dictators when everything is already bad inside and the population is angry about the sharp deterioration in living standards? Bingo! Let's go to war against someone - we'll declare him an enemy and the Antichrist.
Ask yourself: why did Putin attack Ukraine if everything was fine with his economy and society? After all, this is complete absurdity - it is more profitable to wait (like the USSR) for someone to attack you, and then this is a pure patriotic war and a completely different situation in the ideological-mental field for the population. But he attacked first, although no one provoked or blackmailed him with an attack on Russian territory recognized by the international community.
It was the growing risks in the economy and the discontent of the active part (real citizens, and not those pathetic sheep who are ready for a slave existence) of the population (Putin was increasingly scolded by ordinary people by the end of 2021) that forced the dictator to attack first, despite the fact that he became the aggressor . As well as the actual collapse of the old economic model that lasted until 2012, forced him to attack Crimea in 2014, immediately after the Olympics.
Now this old fool and the same idiots around him have driven all qualified personnel out of the country, leaving the economy without human capital. And the system built of deliberate degradation of school education will finish off the remaining potential within 5-7 years.
China is larger and the system is more inert, but it is extremely dependent on external resources with such a large population, so in China the collapse of society can come suddenly, extremely unexpectedly for everyone. Because the performance of China's economy has been falling rapidly since 2014-2015. They practically have nowhere to get cheap labor. The population is aging. Sufficiently educated young people refuse to give birth to children in such a system; they are not satisfied with the future of children in an authoritarian country.
The United States is mired in the squabble of its kleptocratic elite, which is finishing off the economy and human potential. And it also needs to channel the anger of the impoverished population (of course from a much higher level than in China or Russia) towards some enemy outside the country. And if it doesn't help, then attack the "enemies" within.
All these methods have long been known from the history of mankind. Nothing new. When system parasites realize that the time has come to answer for everything they have done, they panicky begin to come up with excuses and point the finger at anyone, but not themselves. And naturally, this is only the tip of the iceberg - part of the population is directly to blame for the current situation, which in the case of the United States is most dangerous from the point of view of the outbreak of a civil war.
In China and Russia, the population simply does not have weapons in their hands - they are pure slaves of their kleptocrats, so if rebellion is possible there, it is only due to completely unbearable (literally animal) living conditions. But both the Chinese and the Russians are extremely patient slaves. Here both Russian and Chinese kleptocrats were lucky. Yes, in fact, this is why China and Russia are exactly the way they are (moreover, with the connivance of the West for 30 years).
On the other hand, what is the use of having weapons in your hands (as in the USA), if they have already learned how to skillfully manipulate people mentally? And the possibilities of these manipulations only increase along with the degradation of school education.
The winner will be the system that ensures its internal stability in the next 15 years. The more effective the judicial and executive powers, the more civil society, the more effective the optimization of the system, because in this case meritocracy always wins. In authoritarian, totalitarian countries like China, Russia, Iran, instead of meritocracy, nepotism and maximum inefficiency in any major projects flourish. This was proved by the collapse of the USSR, where educated people by the early 80s ceased to be respected at all in society (their incomes became equal to the incomes of ordinary workers), where total cronyism and inefficiency reigned. The system was rotten from the inside and collapsed by 1986. But the KGB survived and turned the whole country into a mafia. Now the population of Russia are complete slaves and work only on pain of death, men of active age certainly. Much the same as in Ukraine, where men are simply grabbed on the streets and dragged to the slaughterhouse. Only for some reason Ukraine is considered a "free" country, and Russia is considered totalitarian.