China's New Internet Plan

eldavojohn writes "The internet in China is diverging rapidly from the state that the rest of the world enjoys it. Recent news of China's leader, Hu Jintao, has revealed a strategy to distort it even further. Jintao is tackling the issue his Communist party is having with the youth of China that are too young to remember Chairman Mao and the fanaticism the populace had for him. A strategy he is proposing is 'cleaning up' China's internet & lacing it with a little propaganda like the need to 'Consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere' online. The meeting notes also declared that 'Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance.'"

Comments

Re:Human Nature

[Loundry]

And how many businesses, exactly, has George Bush run that were profitable?

That question is symptomatic of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

That's why it's called capitalism, and not "work harderism." It's all about who controls the primary capital

You and I have different definitions of "capitalism". The USA is *not* a capitalist country. It has a mixed economy, and it becomes less and less capitalist every day. Capitalism is that which exists when individual property rights are protected by government and individuals refrain from depriving any other individuals of property through force or fraud. Hence, individuals exist as traders, trading value for value as they see is mutually beneficial. It's a society of making win-wins, not a society which supports thieves, liars, moochers, and looters.

I hope I'm not shattering your world here or anything, but New York is a pretty liberal heavy city. That means the majority of victims of 9/11 were probably liberals.

(I'm quite aware that there are boatloads of pompous liberals in NYC, and I have to resist hating NYC for it.)

Whether or not a person is "liberal" has nothing to do with whether or not they were able to work hard, make good choices, and reap the benefits from it. Think about Google and Apple. Those are both very "progressive" companies, but they function (mostly) as capitalists, trading value for value, working hard, making good choices, and being rewarded for it. (In other words, they're hypocrites.)

You actually do need government intervention to support the rules of capitalism. For one, ultimately governments enforce contract laws.

Please note that I didn't write anything about government enforcing laws. What I wrote was that government "never solves anything". The word I chose is "solve", not "enforce", and the word choice is very important because "progressives" think that "society" is filled with "problems" that require a government "solution". (Please forgive my egregious use of scare quotes, but Marxist ideology has infected those words and I don't want you to infer that I share that revolting ideology simply because I use those words.) I maintain: government solves nothing. The enforcement of contracts, which exist to protect individual property rights, is a legitimate and necessary role of government.

The EPA ensures that the mill up the river doesn't pollute it so much

Likewise the FDA ensures that beneficial drugs get to the market, and the DEA ensures that there are no drugs on the streets. Style over substance, form over function, right? It's no small wonder that so many artists and movie-makers, who deal solely in the imaginary, fanciful, and superficial, are "progressive".

Some of these things are so essential for the functioning of capitalism that they are frequently taken for a given. But they're not: they're achieved via government.

You have faith in government much like a Christian has faith in Jesus Christ. What's the point of showing you how broadly and deeply government fails? For you to accept it would require you to deny yourself, and that takes strength and peace of mind that few people will ever have. As an Ex-Evangelical Christian who has since become a Eudaimonist, I can honestly say that I do not suggest that others follow my path. Life is too short for that kind of pain.

This is the point where you will write, "Likewise, you have faith in the free market." That accusation only makes sense if I see the world as a "society" that has "problems" that need to be "solved". I don't see it that way because you and I have drastically different values.

A truly free and open market isn't free

That is useless and self-contradictory rhetoric. We need to agree on what "freedom" means (I prefer "individual liberty", as you might imagine) before we can use it with each other and have it mean anything.

In this equation, the government is the ONLY entity that is at least theo