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Comment by SllX | Hacker News Reader

> This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China. Every year, neighboring countries of China like Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam sent envoys to Imperial China, paying gold, women, and exotic products, in return for recognition of their sovereignty (subject to the supreme authority of Chinese emperor), military protection, and access to trade routes within China.

The most irritating thing is that I specifically didn't want to see a return to form for this for China, but I never imagined that America in the 21st Century would somehow get there first. It was just out of fucking nowhere.

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How could people NOT see this coming?

The prospects for the working class disappeared when you moved manufacturing to China. The population was subsequently dumbed down because there was no money for schools(except for the rich elite).

Neither Trump, nor anybody in the Republican party is, and has never been, and will never be some kind of champion of the working class. If you're in it, you're just a useful idiot to him.

What you're seeing isn't a consequence of the working class finally acting in its interests by getting behind a billionaire slumlord and conman. What you're seeing is the consequence of billionaires figuring out that if you distract the working class with divisive identity politics and plain old bullshit (Trans athletes! The gays grooming your children! Antifa supersoldiers stealing elections! Socialist death panels killing granny!), you can swindle it out of anything.

Trump and his friends would have had no legs in a society that hasn't been thoroughly and irreparably broken by this stupidity and the normalization thereof.

I didn’t say people are acting in their best interest.

Probably because you’re talking about a whole different thing than what I was responding to. America shaking down Japan and Korea to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars wasn’t even on my bingo card for 2025, but perhaps your bingo card was more prophetic.

> but perhaps your bingo card was more prophetic

Usually I read these “how could you/they not see this coming?” statements less in reference to a specific occurrence and more like “Given this man’s profound and enduring disinterest in history, culture, economics and the global political process, along with his demonstrated venality, how could you not see that bad things would happen, this being an example…”

> prospects for the working class disappeared when you moved manufacturing to China

I think the prospects of the working class died with the crisis signaling the end of the USSR and by extension communist/socialist circles. After all it was the only counter-balance that instilled a baseline fear of violent uprising from the workers class in the heart of the wealthy class.

And in a way the final nail came with the free reign liberal policies that followed with Thatcher e Reagan, not so much about offshoring in itself.

>...After all it was the only counter-balance that instilled a baseline fear of violent uprising from the workers class in the heart of the wealthy class.

Are people claiming that the USSR provided a valid counter-balance for the working class? At any rate, if the chances of political violence have actually decreased in democracies due to the end of the USSR, isn't that a good thing?

Yes! Western states had to ensure that life was better in a Capitalist country. Hence unions were tolerated, along with human rights, rule of law, anti corruption etc etc.

Unions have never been tolerated - they seized what little power they have through actual economic force. The kind that no king or government can oppose for long.

Human rights and fighting graft don't have very much to do with the USSR, unless you ignore the centuries or history there before the Communist Manifesto was even written.

The true problem is money in politics. No, this has nothing to do with Musk. Musk is just visible, but it's been going on in the US for a long, long time.

Other countries have limits on campaign donations, for example at the federal level in Canada:

* no donations are allowed by corporations

* individuals may only donate $1750 to the party, and $1750 to the local candidate

* people running for office can donate to their own campaign, to the tune of $5000

* leadership candidates (eg, for Prime Minister) can donate $25k to their own campaign

That's it.

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=lim&do...

All of these donations are heavily regulated, amounts of $100 I think require disclosure.

Another example, lobbyists must be registered. If you have lunch with a lobbyist, they can't pay for your lunch, you can't pay for theirs.

All of this takes corporate influence and most importantly the need for "big money" out of the equation.

Things such as third party advertising are covered too:

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=thi/ec...

With overall limits at the federal level from all third party contributions at $600k, and $5k per district:

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&document=i...

You want the "working class" to have more of a say? Make candidates beholden to normal people to get elected. Destroy the machinery of big-business donations for campaign, and campaign management funding.

That's it. That's the biggest, most significant fix, right there.

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