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China Restricts Minors From Using Virtual Currency
eldavojohn writes "For those under eighteen who play video games in China, life just got a little harder. Not only is gold farming illegal, but starting August 1, virtual currency platform makers are expected to put in safeties that prohibit underage players from using virtual currencies — because doing such a thing might promote 'unwholesome' behavior. The new regulations explicitly 'forbid content advocating pornography, cults, superstitions, gambling, and violence in all online games.' The business papers are picking it up as a number of stocks from companies like Tencent Holdings — which is heavily based in virtual currency in China — fell about 5%, though the company said that the ban on minors will not affect it."
Uh huh, yeah, sure. After all, the young rising up against the system works so well in western democracies where they have full access to information and the right to protest, so I'm sure it'll work just fine in an authoritarian state like China.
So the underage will go work in factory sweatshops and the adults will become gold farmers. I'm sure that's the social outcome they were going for ... another success story of the Chinese gov't.
Hmm... I can't find a single definition of "cult" that's more applicable to communism than to capitalism, but I suppose if you want to apply any and every label you perceive as negative to any and every belief you perceive as negative that's your prerogative.
The point is completely missed.
This law is not being created to control "the people". It is not being made to be enforced.
This law, as with well over half of Chinese law, has only one purpose. To ensure that no one may exist in a fully legal state within the borders of China. Seriously. You can't. It is not actually possible to complete all the legal requirements to exist as a citizen, a foreigner or a company in China without committing crimes in other areas of the countries laws. The classic example being that if you try to migrate legally from rural to urban China as a Chinese citizen it will be noted that you either illegally entered a city to visit the offices of the PSB (police dept responsible for all "person location" aspects of control) to fill in the necessary forms, or that you obtained forms illegally removed from PSB offices.
(The equivalent for foreigners is the medical exam. You may not enter China without a full medical exam. Only medical exams performed in Chinese hospitals are legally accepted.
(Entry with medical reports from foreign (or S.A.R.) hospitals are routinely accepted, but right there they have all the grounds they need to deport you should you ever try to (for example) take someone rich enough to own a car to court for hitting you with said car.)
But why?
Well, that's got two parts to it.
The first is the same as many western states with laws prohibiting things such as "wasting police time", "loitering" and "resisting arrest". Purely so they have something to charge you with if they decide they don't like the look of your face.
The second, closely related, is so that those in power have something to hold over people who they feel are being less than sufficiently forthcoming with the bribes.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Communism is a system of man's exploitation by man, whereas in Capitalism, it is the other way around!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And I'm going to take a wild guess that when an officer says "He disturbed the peace", and the bloke who happened to laugh too loudly when the police officer got shat on by a pigeon denies it, the "punk with a badge"'s word is held as truth by default?
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Except that capitalism allows for self-determination.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And yet, if it was an american parent making those decisions for their children, we might applaud them as more responsible than the average parent who lets their kid get up to anything online, unmonitored.
There is a stark difference between a parent setting such rules for their children and a state doing it on their behalf, and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
The difference between the state and the family is not so clear-cut. The family was the "first" state, and to this day, it can be seen as a "delegee" of the state, fulfilling certain expectations - and losing its privileges to act as a family if they fail to do so. We have, in the West, grown accustomed to a number of stark distinctions - between family and state, between the political and the economic, between the civil and the religious/philosophical - that do not apply in other cultures, and do not really stand up to deep scrutiny in our own.
No, you just like to imagine there's a stark difference. There's a lot of gray area and general governmental complexity, but as other commenters have explained in other ways, the distinction isn't so clear at all. What it all boils down to is that government is an extension of family values; that government is essentially expected to create the kind of society that families want their kids to grow up in.
Not like no country is the free world is evil enough to ban porn for children right? Right?
Get a grip guys. China may do some horrible/stupid things. But this is overblowing things. We have laws preventing commercial entities from selling certain products/services to people underage in north america (and most of the industrial world). We have laws making underage possession of said entities illegal for fuck's sake, and we've all gone out and made arguments based on children's lack of education/inability to take responsibility of themselves, and then went and ahead and accepted the unfortunate coarseness of age based laws.
So don't go out and bash the fuck out of China for this. Yes, they are controlling the Chinese children's freedom. Just like how I wasn't able to buy my own booze when I was 16. There are better things to criticize China for.
If you have a health problem, you are free to work or die.
Liberty isn't freedom from want, it's the freedom to make your own choices in life. I would rather live in a system where I can go broke paying my medical bills than one that compels me to purchase insurance from for-profit enterprises or to receive all of my care from Doctors working under contract with the Government. Collectivism can't exist without trampling on individual liberty and I do not regard that as a fair trade.
But then, in our system, the $6.25 hot dog place has laws passed which prevent the $3.25 hot dogs from being sold or carried to the $6.25 place. Then that extra money is used to further prevent the $3.25 hot dogs from being sold within 20 blocks of the $6.25 hot dog's "exclusive" territory. And so on.
What you've described is not capitalism, it's corporatism. It's responsible for a large number of broken markets in our country, including the market for internet access. The mono/duopoly situation that exists there is written into law in the form of "franchise" agreements that grant one or two companies the exclusive right to use something (the utility easement) that's theoretically owned by the entire community.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Capitalism has spun off plenty of wars, killing at least thousands.
Sure, certain capitalist-leaning countries have committed international atrocities, and no one is trying to justify those actions.
The point is, the capitalist countries are the ones that don't shoot their own citizens for trying to leave.