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> Worst case senario the party can print money nonstop to keep the prices from crashing.

History says that that has its limits too.

Not if you're an economic powerhouse like the US, China or the Euro zone.

Being an economic powerhouse does not make you exempt from cause and effect. You can print your way out of a mid-level problem, trying to print your way out of an actual crisis is just going to accelerate and deepen that crisis.

More of the kind of behavior that got you into some problem is usually not the way to get out. Hyperinflation could hit the US, China or the Eurozone in a very hard way. If you do it gradually you may get away with it, do it too quickly and the whole thing will take on a momentum all its own. A bit like pushing a ball of snow down hill. For a while it seems like you are in control and then suddenly you realize you are no longer in control. By then it will be too late to stop it. I was on the fence in 2008. Despite having money in one of the Dutch banks that was hard hit by the sub-prime repackaging I was all for letting them go bust. Instead the state stepped in and propped up the bank. This meant that everybody ended up paying for that and the execs walked.

Hard to make the call on what was the best solution there, it is very well possible that this was the optimum outcome but it set the stage for a repeat, the beginnings of which we are already witnessing today.

If the worry is condo prices crashing, hyperinflation would certainly keep them from crashing...

Hyperinflation is great for those with debts. For everybody else: not so much. Savings, pensions all end up being worthless overnight essentially anything with future value and without an asset to back it turns to dust overnight.

This happened in Poland a while ago. Everybody with debts in old Zloty such as mortgages and so on was ecstatic, they could pay off their mortgage with three months work after the crash. Everybody else lost their life's work.

Those with property ended up neutral.

Banks learned their lesson: they pegged new mortgages to the Mark initially and later to the Euro, but people still got paid in Zloty...

With the social credit system if you can't pay your debts you become a 2nd class citizen. If there is a more serious downturn in China the social credit system will tear the county apart.

> BTW they now teach "politics" in primary schools. The Youth are extremely patriotic and loyal to the party, they are impatient to even let you start your different opinions.

Are they "patriotic" enough to report family members to the regime as political dissenters? If so, China is really in a bad spot as that is reminiscent of Nazi Germany. At least we would have a pseudo-ironic name for the program ("Xitler Youth")

Go look up "cultural revolution" on wikipedia.

An interesting memoir of the Cowshed's of China's Cultural Revolution

https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-prj-co...

Much of this description applies pretty well to western countries, especially the US.

No no no, in which American city does the condo prices wthin it's urban area are no less than 1 million dollars? In Beijing you have it, it's a city full of (multi) million-dollar-property owners, and the majority of them love the CCP dearly for a reason.

Most American cities have condos available for less than 1m dollars. In fact, pretty much all of them do. In fact, pretty much only in certain areas of NYC, SF, Boston and LA are the median condo prices above 1m. In Chicago, the 3rd largest city in the US, condo prices are like 400k-600k for a 30th floor lakeview 2br in a nice neighborhood.

Not in the same way.

The US has had credit collapses before, and has relatively robust institutions to deal with it. Robustness that has developed through major crashes.

This is largely true of most developed economies as well.

China's credit bust will be epic - epicly bad, both for China and the rest of the world, but mostly for the Chinese people.

The indoctrination and politics being taught. Every day children in school stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag and there are constant stories of children being abused for not abiding by it. We're told we're "not being American" if we challenge the official narrative.

The fact that you're being downvoted is just more evidence, people hate being told they're just as indoctrinated into propaganda as China is, but they're just as indoctrinated into their own version.

China has no freedom of speech, the press, religion, or assembly. There is no real comparison of the indoctrination of the people of China to the US to be made. The systems are completely different as to be unrecognizable from one another.

In addition, the Chinese court system is simply a tool of the government to keep themselves in power. Reference the 99.9% conviction rate: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/121932...

> There is no real comparison of the indoctrination of the people of China to the US to be made. The systems are completely different as to be unrecognizable from one another.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. It's true, the two systems are significantly different, but I don't think that rules out that Americans are subject to a form of indoctrination. Look at the stranglehold the two parties have on the electoral system in the US. Just as one example, what happened to Bernie Sanders in the last election barely raised an eyebrow. If you listen to Dan Carlin's Common Sense podcast for several weeks on either side of the last election (particularly after), I'd say it's pretty hard to make a case that the system isn't rigged to a fairly large degree, but how many people are actually aware of this?

I don't know if indoctrination is the perfect word for it, but constantly singing the praises of the system of democracy, while realistically the only alternatives people get have to go through a very thorough pre-screening for "suitability", and almost no one ever asks what the hell is really going on here, seems like a relative of some sort to indoctrination.

Even if everything you're saying is true, the important point is that you and I and Dan Carlin are free to go around saying it. It's my strong impression that this is not true in China; that it's a de facto if not de jure crime for media personalities to say things like "the Communist Party has rigged the system to a fairly large degree" or "Xi Jinping Thought seems kinda dumb and I'd like to read the alternatives".

> Even if everything you're saying is true, the important point is that you and I and Dan Carlin are free to go around saying it.

I'm not so sure about that either. I'd be surprised if the average Chinese person wasn't fairly well aware that they live in a censored world, and that a government that does that might also bend the truth a bit on the evening news. The average American on the other hand, and even the above average judging by most forums I frequent, seem to be under the impression that the US is truly the land of the free, the home of the brave, with a completely free press (not unlike the completely free electoral system), and that what they see and hear in the news is generally trustworthy and comprehensive.

Chinese people may not know the truth, but I'm pretty sure they know it's being hidden from them. People in the West, defenders of the free world, who not only seem unable to see the various pink elephants that are right in front of their eyes, but will attack and condemn anyone who points them out, worry me a lot more than the indoctrinated in plain sight Chinese.

But hey, that's just me.

American newspapers regularly publish state secrets, write about how the people in power are fools, and generally go out of their way to make life more difficult for politicians. That doesn't mean the press says everything true and nothing false, but it's very hard for me to understand how you could look at the situation and suspect the government has some secret censorship power.

It's far from uncommon for a reporter to explicitly say "by the way, the government told me not to disclose this information but I'm gonna do it anyway".

You seem to think in terms of censorship being a binary. Now that I point it out you won't of course, but what about when you (and my downvoters) wake up tomorrow?

No, I’m very willing to bite that bullet. Censorship is indeed a binary. There’s a fundamental and important difference between a system where the government has soft power to encourage stories it likes, and a system where newspapers must not print anything the government doesn’t want them to.

It is certainly true that they're not identical, but my point is that the state in America just maybe might exert some effort in the pursuit of generating an average mindset of ~"all is well with our governance, no need for concern, go about your day". Despite no shortage of fundamental issues in the US (and the west in general), any suggestion that there might be some issues with the current form of the political system itself is typically met with strong resistance. Surely basic human nature plays a part in this, but from reading the way in which the news is presented (the way events are described, which parts are included and repeated, which parts are downplayed or not even shown), I suspect there is some level of persuasion going on. How one couldn't notice this is beyond me, but I seem to be the outlier so perhaps the problem is on my end.

The problem is that you're equating things that aren't the same. There's no way to deny that the American government thinks it's great, and puts in effort to convince people that it's great. That's the explicit goal of e.g. civics education.

What the American government doesn't do is require citizens to believe it's great, or forbid them from saying it's not. If you get on a soapbox and talk about how the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders, a lot of Americans will think you're being silly, but none of them will think that you should be arrested for subversion.

> The problem is that you're equating things that aren't the same.

Actually, I'm not.

If two countries both engage in indoctrination, in different forms and to different degrees, pointing out that one is different, or does it to a lesser degree, is not a proof that they do not do it in the first place.

> There's no way to deny that the American government thinks it's great, and puts in effort to convince people that it's great. That's the explicit goal of e.g. civics education.

I feel like you're implicitly suggesting that's all they do.

> What the American government doesn't do is require citizens to believe it's great, or forbid them from saying it's not.

That isn't a prerequisite for indoctrination, and only a prerequisite for certain kinds of censorship.

> If you get on a soapbox and talk about how the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders, a lot of Americans will think you're being silly, but none of them will think that you should be arrested for subversion.

Of course. But indoctrination and censorship can take many forms, and can be very hard to spot when done well. It also helps if the private sector engages in it so the government doesn't have to.

A reality tv show political outsider was able to become president through the Republican primary system.

Superdelegates in the Democratic primary are the following:

1. Elected members of the DNC 2. Democratic governors 3. Democratic members of Congress 4. Former Democratic Presidents, Vice Presidents, congressional leaders, and DNC Chairs.

The majority of them are elected officials currently holding office. The rest are formerly elected officials, and a minority. It's called an indirect election. That is not 'rigging'. The closest thing to rigging here would be category 4.

> A reality tv show political outsider was able to become president through the Republican primary system.

That this is even possible is as much a criticism of the process as it is a compliment.

Honest question: if you were designing a brand new system to elect the leader of the US, how likely do you expect it would be for someone of his calibre to be the last person standing?

> 1. Elected members of the DNC 2. Democratic governors 3. Democratic members of Congress 4. Former Democratic Presidents, Vice Presidents, congressional leaders, and DNC Chairs. The majority of them are elected officials currently holding office. The rest are formerly elected officials, and a minority.

Was this structure designed by the founding fathers? What percentage of Americans would you say really understand that a small group of undemocratically unelected people like this has the ability to directly block undesirable (to whom we don't really know) candidates from making it to the election? How many people do you think approve of this structure.

> That is not 'rigging'.

For certain definitions of rigged, of course. If the actual nature of this system was clearly explained to the American people, do you think most people would agree with you?

>Was this structure designed by the founding fathers?

No, this is a primary, as in, it is how the democratic party elects its own representative to run for president.

>What percentage of Americans would you say really understand that a small group of undemocratically unelected people like this has the ability to directly block undesirable (to whom we don't really know) candidates from making it to the election?

In 2016, 20 of 716 were in category 4, i.e., those who aren't currently holding office as a result of having been voted in. The rest are currently holding an office for which they were voted in. In other words, democratically elected.

Superdelegates and how they function is common knowledge for anyone following or participating in the primary. It's heavily covered and talked about every presidential election cycle.

>How many people do you think approve of this structure.

According to a poll run by Rasmussen in 2016, likely democratic voters approved of it at a rate of 30%.

>For certain definitions of rigged, of course. If the actual nature of this system was clearly explained to the American people, do you think most people would agree with you?

Americans understand very well how the election system works. 'Rigged' implies deception or fraudulence.

> In 2016, 20 of 716 were in category 4, i.e., those who aren't currently holding office as a result of having been voted in. The rest are currently holding an office for which they were voted in. In other words, democratically elected.

That's actually a pretty convincing argument, I think I'll have to concede victory.