• ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    The silver lining of autocracy.

    Why would a democratically elected leader plan for the long term if their sucessors, possibly from an opposition party, can claim credit for it.

    In a dictatorship, they can plan for the long term, since they know they will be in power.

    Also, the hyper-individualism in western countries doesn’t make “working together” as a country easier. Just look at the anti-maskers and anti-vax people lol

    And also, the big population in China would never allow for a “car culture” in the firsr place, since there just isn’t room for that many cars, public transit is a must for a densely populated country.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      the hyper-individualism in western countries doesn’t make “working together” as a country easier

      I’d be careful with overgeneralizing that. Even though Latin American cultures also push for individualism to some extent, we do have tight-nit communities regardless because of the unified cultures that we have.

    • Pregnenolone@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      And also, the big population in China would never allow for a “car culture” in the firsr place, since there just isn’t room for that many cars, public transit is a must for a densely populated country.

      I’ve been to China plenty of times, I promise the car culture is alive and well.

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        Eh, parking costs is a huge problem.

        Its probably the reason why my parents never got a car when they were in China.

        Its the same in NYC tbh. I mean, brooklyn, maybe, but if you wanna go to Chinatown in Manhattan, yea… good luck finding parking. Its not even that “Public Transit is good” (NYC subway is filthy compared to China’s subway, and also there’s no safety barriers in NYC, feels sketchy to wait for a train/subway because you get the feeling like some racist is about to push you 😕), since missing a scheduled subway/bus is gonna make you like 30 minutes late. Its just that having a car is so inconvienient in a crowded city, so much so that even the terrible public transit system is better than having a car.

        Now in philly, there is street parking, and malls with parking lots… so… yea we got 2 cars in the family… 🤷‍♂️

    • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      “China has good railways because China bad” is one hell of a bad take.

      China isn’t an autocracy any more than the US is, getting to vote which party gets to erode your rights and enact genocide on your behalf isn’t democracy

      • PiousAgnostic@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Xi Jinping’s third term is literally autocracy. President Cheeto would kill for that much power.

        America as fucked up as we, are can bash our president and resist his power grabs as much as our oligarchy allows.

        In China, you can’t even post a whinnie the pooh cartoon because making an autocratic dictator look bad can’t fly.

        China doesn’t have rapid shifts in infrastructure because China bad, it’s because China has an autocratic dictatorship which allows for massive investment of resources without argument.

        • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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          6 days ago

          The US has massive investment of resources without argument too when it comes to the military industrial complex or to rescuing banks that have committed fraud, or to genocide Palestinians. The fact that it doesn’t do so with basic infrastructure is because the oligarchs in the US don’t want that, not because of a lack of oligarchs in power. They make it theatrical in congress, but look at the defense budged and the speed with which they approve multi-billion expenses that go into bombing kids in the middle east, suddenly the American democracy works expediently.

          • bluGill@fedia.io
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            2 days ago

            People talk about it and complain. there was and is debate on all those topics. You have lost in all the topics you are talking about, but it was fair and square.