This is an absolute no-brainer. If you want Tik Tok in the US, lower your middle finger. Am I missing something?
What would be US leadership would similar to what Ro Khanna is saying with data and personal information privacy standards like a nationwide US GDPR but with the teeth of something like HIPAA. Data brokers should be put out of business.
How about “make economic power and one of our main competitors” does it? Just because China is a totalitarian government didn’t mean they can do the “right” thing.
I mean, sure, go with that. But it doesn't negate the irony.
That story worked out fine until US companies started sending all their IP over to China for manufacturing which resulted in 3 key outcomes that broke the initial strategy:
1. It funded and supported the buildout of China's manufacturing base. China now has the best manufacturing base in the world, and in some cases is the only place in the world certain things can be feasibly made.
2. It guaranteed an export market for Chinese goods which helped to drive their economic engine.
3. It allowed unfettered industrial espionage. There is a reason that nearly every product in existence has a Chinese clone/counterfeit available within a week of launch.
The strategy failed, because the Great Firewall only keeps information out of China that the government wants kept out of China, but any other information goes in, but it prevents pretty much all information from flowing out. Firewalls are not binary, they are tunable with policy, and the Chinese government has historically had a strong strategy and nuanced policy, which has allowed them to see great economic success despite reducing freedom of information. Fundamentally, it's economics that drives the rise and fall of governments.
That's how capitalism works. And it worked extremely well and to most everyone's benefit.
This is not the same thing as copying China's approach to the world
Reciprocation is rational and good
why do you believe so?
i see no reason why rationalism and political pragmatism are mutually exclusive with liberalism. in fact to me it seems they complement each other well
While that might arguably be compatible with liberalism within a society where there is a relatively benevolent monopoly of power imposing a certain number of rights and rules molding the self-interest of all in such a way as to be compatible with civilization, within the international system there is no monopoly of violence, and therefore norms and rights are contingent on countries not acting purely in their self-interest and therefore to maximize their power.
Since modern liberalism is inherently internationalist (arguably since Woodrow Wilson, some called his approach to diplomacy "idealpolitik"), modern liberalism does have to reject realism as a school of thought.
The debate between liberalism and realism as it pertains to international politics is the main topic of contention in international relations theory.
More generally, you can also argue that liberalism assumes the good faith of powerful people not to destroy the liberal system to maximize their own power, but this is far easier to argue against in the domestic setting than in the international setting.
It seems fairly clear to me why this is the case: complex, conflict-prone relationships often involve prisoner's dilemmas, and alignment on fundamental principles is an effective method for avoiding the worst-case outcome of a prisoner's dilemma. Abandoning principles for a purely situational approach to conflict makes the presumptive lose-lose outcome much more likely.
As far as prisoner's dilemmas, its a lot more complicated than that. A purely pragmatic approach can lead to win-win outcomes that would be impossible in a purely idealist framework - realist IR scholars would, for example, argue (and could back it up far better than the alternative) that if it wasn't for Bush and Cheney's idealism, the 2003 Iraq war would never have occurred.
The realist counterpoint to the prisoner's dilemma is that it's not just due to conflict prone relationships, but because it's impossible to know what the intentions of other actors are, which is not something that international liberalism can solve in practice. In theory, liberalists would argue that two liberal states can communicate their true intentions well because their intentions reflect the intentions of the population, but this has conclusively been proven to be untrue in the case of foreign policy (not very surprising due to the way intelligence has to be set up), and therefore the liberalist rebuttal to uncertainty of intentions seems much weaker now than it did originally.
As a result, realists argue that following realpolitik can actually reduce the likelihood of war, as agents will be careful to act in such a way as to avoid seeming as to pose a threat in the absence of knowledge of their intentions, while a liberal actor, acting according to their ideals, would act in a way such that an actor who is unsure of their true intentions would have to perceive as a threat.
This means that you just can't assert easily that realism is more likely to cause lose-lose outcomes. It's a complicated argument where this kind of ironclad certainty just isn't justifiable.
I do agree with you though that the capitalism=democracy experiment was a pretty obvious failure. You can have pretty free markets with or without democracy. The US emerged from the Cold Wa with ideological battle scars which prevent us from doing what’s best for the people because that might be communism. We are gradually finding out that concentrated corporate power is potentially an even greater threat.
Reciprocity isn't the main reason. It's become a legitimate national security problem. We're no longer in the early 2000s where we could delude ourselves into thinking China wasn't a rival. They're clearly revisionist, with their aggressive approach to resolving border disputes and rhetoric about forceful reunification of Taiwan being on the table. They are bolstering strategic reserves of oil beyond normal peacetime levels, appointing Taiwan hawks to the Politburo, increasing PLA presence near Taiwan, running war games involving an embargo of Taiwan. They doubled their trade with Russia, filling in gaps left by sanctions. They are overtly hostile to the maritime sovereignty of a treaty ally of the US.
The world has changed a lot, and few here realize it because they're stuck in this weird libertarian bubble where everyone's interests are the same and foreign policy doesn't exist and it's cynical intentions all the way down. You are all in for a rude awakening to wake you up from your hypnosis just as Europe was back in 2022.
The US will legislate according to its interests, and that is what it's appropriately doing here.
What is the nature of the risk?
> You are all in for a rude awakening to wake you up from your hypnosis...
The risk is information warfare. It's difficult to know whether they've used it for that purpose yet, because there's a lack of transparency, which is actually part of the problem. But regardless, the risk is unacceptable, especially if the Taiwan or Philippines/Vietnam situations boil over. There's no historical precedent of a rival having such massive control over domestic consumption of information. The one thing we do know from the history of conflict is that all available tools will get used for that purpose (e.g. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8197).
I don't disagree, but for clarity, you appreciate this is totally contrary to the (formerly) popular "free speech" meme that used to be a source of pride for Americans?
Isn't it a bit funny that America can't manage to educate[1] its citizens so they are resilient to propaganda? Do you think it is all that difficult to do, if the government set it as a priority"?
[1] It's worse: they can't even try to. To me, this is peak hilarity, doubly so when combined with the conversations in this thread...which themselves are a consequence of the root problem. Oh my, the layers of irony.
Since you imply it's not difficult to do, which country has educated their citizens to be resilient to propaganda?
Don't forget: to accomplish something, you (typically) must first try.
"Making citizens to be resilient to propaganda"?
While we should try to do our best, it's also not mutually exclusive to remove bad propaganda. Yet you make it sound like the 2 actions are mutually exclusive for some reason.
How many have tried, and what did they try?
Contrast this with the attention and funding the war machine gets, or the science machinery.
Regarding education, we should do that too. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.
There might be flaws or other explanations. This is just tentative evidence that should push you in one direction more than the other.
China hasn't fought a war in 40 years. In recent years, there have been some border skirmishes with India between unarmed soldiers (it's not even clear which side initiated them) and some naval confrontations about a few islands with no shots fired, but that's about it. Meanwhile, the US has been fighting wars all around the world.
Agree his policy might many of us not. But player great he is.
Yes: 155 D + 197 R
No: 50 D + 15 R
"We do not want to ban apps like TikTok. What we want – and what the
legislation we support would do – is ensure that TikTok becomes owned by an
American company so that our and our children's sensitive personal data stays
here instead of going to China and so that Americans' understandings and
views can't be manipulated by algorithms potentially controlled by the PRC."That's a sure sign the citizens are getting screwed.
AIPAC wants Tiktok gone because young people are getting objective information rather than the propaganda of mainstream "responsible" media. [1]
Tiktok is not a good thing for Genocide Joe either! He has been an Israeli puppet for decades. Thanks to Tiktok, being an Israeli puppet has become a political liability because Israel has lost its control over American minds.
[1] https://twitter.com/SweatieAngle/status/1725897178038595901
They are very busy trying to get Finkelstein banned from Youtube as a "terrorist sympathiser"[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=norman+finkelst...
You definitely can. International trade has never been a fair field, power balance will be the most impacting element in the deal you get.
I think that's a concept that is thorny enough to merit a word on what we mean by that. I personally don't know what it actually points at (is there any "free trade" ever happening in real life ?), or my naive interpretation would be trade with absolutely no rules, but I assume that's not what you're pointing at.
Many industries wouldn't be where they are without decades long government intervention, and govs will also apply extra scrutiny on who owns which company, and pick up the winners as needed for national interests.
China is the most transparent about it, but being transparent and being the most engaged in it are two different things.
To be clear, I think that's just the natural state of things. Real free markets are chaos and we want countries to actually think about where they're going.
As vague and imprecise as the term "most capitalist" is, it is a blatant ignorance of the way Chinese people (have to) live, especially in cities, to think that it isn't a consequence of an extreme form of capitalism: enormous gaps between the wealthy and the poor and materialism.
China is as much a communist country as Congo is a republic.
Edit: Reading the other comments, it seems like we might all value different aspects of the country to define whether it is capitalist.
Compare with the US where the capitalist class not only has a seat at the table: they are the table. And the chairs around the table, the room the table is in, the building the room is in, the property the building is on, the people who go in and out of the building, and the bullets that shoot anyone who tries to enter the building who isn't supposed to. The US is "more capitalist" in all the ways that count - what might be confusing you is that China has more sustainable and powerful relations of production which is why they're overtaking the US. But that doesn't make them capitalist.
It's a "communist country" in an aspirational sense, not in a descriptive sense. When we call countries "capitalist" by contrast, we usually mean that in a descriptive sense. This tends to lead to a lot of confusion: nothing that China does is "communism", it's at best something that is done with the justification of being part of the pursuit of communism. Whether or not the CCP is truthful or honest in its claims about its aspirations is a different question.
Peace.
Just search for "Uighur genocide" and see how many negative Tiktoks you find.
Now go on any western social media platform, search for any contentious topic, and notice what's banned. It's not stuff that's harmful to the government (eg. Gaza/Israel topics) it's stuff that advertisers think is harmful (racism, unlabeled porn, etc.).
Also, restraining from banning a platform because some people can't be arsed to also post to IG reels or other platforms is their own fault as entrepreneurs.
The prominence of the Chinese guy "denying" the cultural genocide was interesting - I wouldn't assume he's a plant (it's equally likely he's just a rabid nationalist) but the placement of the video does strike me as a little odd. It had 300 likes, but rates higher than the second video which had 5000 likes? Does smell a bit.
This is from Singapore, by the way. I assume geography makes a difference.
I search for "retro pc":
1st result 47k views, 4 months ago
2nd result 457k views, 2 years ago
3rd result 9k views, 1 year ago
4th result 133k views, 1 year ago
5th result 1k views, 5 months ago
Make it make sense!
[1] https://theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/04/how-tiktoks-a...
The fact that people have become dependent is no good argument for keeping the platform around.
And, with that said, if TikTok disappears - a new platform fill its void, as well as other platforms absorbing users. If there's a demand, someone will supply.