Three lessons on Chinese culture and politics

Posted on December 1, 2020 by Paul Frijters

The animosity between the Chinese and Australian authorities is heating up, so we Westerners need to understand some of Chinese culture and politics. I do not have all the answers, but some 10 years of working and teaching on China have taught me about three traits that I hope might be of use to my fellow Australians in their interactions with the Chinese. Be aware that my Chinese friends find my descriptions hopelessly simplistic.

One, the individual IS the collective in China. Two, Chinese politics makes an absolute distinction between Chinese and anything else. Three, one can currently only be friends with the Chinese government if one is totally submissive on the issue of personal insults to its leaders (the rest is negotiable).

These three traits sound simple, but they are not easy to understand because ‘we’ are entirely different. We are individuals and don’t even know what ‘a collective’ means. We have shades of us and them, allowing for strangers to become part of us in a matter of just a few years. And our political commentators continuously insult politicians, both at home and abroad, without this being important for friendship between countries.

Let me attempt to explain these Chinese traits by sketching the kind of pressures that gave rise to them. The first two traits should become clear via a stylised story that very roughly tells you where Chinese collectivist culture comes from. Please ‘zoom into’ the story before you ‘zoom out’ again and consider what you might have learned from an Australian perspective.

How ‘I’ became ‘the collective’

Imagine you live in a village far away from the centers of power in your country. You and the entire village are simple peasants growing rice or wheat. You live and die in that village, as have your ancestors you worship for many generations. Tax collectors, bandits, rains, tradesmen, etc., come and go over the centuries. The one constant is that the whole village is held responsible for their dealings with the authorities. You are co-responsible for the taxes of the whole village, for delivering warriors when needed, and for following the law as a village. That collective responsibility is absolute and involves life and death.

So if your neighbour’s son goes to the imperial court and severely embarrasses the emperor, for instance by rebelling, it is not merely he who is killed, but you and your entire village are killed as well. Continue reading →

Posted in History, Life, Science, Social, Society, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Histories of the Great Panic.

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Paul Frijters

How will Western historians in 2050 remember 2020? In scenario 1, “The Great Panic, a lost generation”, I sketch my best guess. Scenario 2, “A job well done” is the one I imagine many current Western governments hope is told. Scenario 3, “The dark path of the Great Panic”, is one of my main fear scenarios.

How Past Plagues & Pandemics Have Shaped Human History | PocketOne should of course not take any of these too seriously, but they do help put some perspective on matters because constructing a future history of today forces one to detach from current concerns and nominate long-term forces that might come to the fore.

 

                   H1: The Great Panic, a lost generation.

In 2020 a new coronavirus appeared that health authorities and the media whipped into a huge panic that went viral around the world. Forced by their populations to pretend to be in control, governments instigated lots of highly damaging restrictions on the movements of their own citizens. Whilst this did very little to the spread of the virus or the eventual death toll from it, it opened enormous opportunities to governments to extend their powers, sidestep parliaments, and rob their populations.

The ideology of the Great Panic was an echo of the Fremdkörper ideology of national socialism of the 1930s: an ideology in which the country was seen as an organism that could only function if the ‘elements alien to it’ were excised. This ideology reached great popularity in 2020 when it was directed towards the new coronavirus, but, as in the 1930s, the ideology morphed when the coronavirus ceased to be a threat to include all infectious diseases and large groups of citizens. Zero-covid became zero-other-things. Increasingly draconian and destructive policies were rolled out in the 2020s by governments eager to hold on to the power they had amassed.

After the period of initial shock in 2020, an unholy alliance between opportunist local commercial interests, the global ambitions and immediate interest of Big Tech, the virtue industry, and governments emerged that thrived on continued restrictions. The surveillance state they instigated survived the end of the actual pandemic which had run its course by early 2021. New viral threats were identified to justify massive random testing regimes, with the inspectors who could use those test to order lockdowns of whole regions becoming feared figures of derision. Immunity passports became compulsory for most international travel. Masks became compulsory everywhere outside.

The disruption and ideology inherent to the Great Panic formed the kernel of its own eventual demise. Continue reading →

Posted in Coronavirus crisis, Cultural Critique, Dance, Geeky Musings, Health, History, Humour, Innovation, Libertarian Musings, Life, Philosophy, Politics - international, Politics - national, Public and Private Goods, Social Policy, Society | 88 Comments

Demarchy 2020: by John Burnheim

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Another post from John Burnheim who wrote this following up on having received some questions from some Spaniards. (Reminding me of the title of John Lennon’s book, or perhaps it was just a joke of his somewhere: A Spaniard in the works)  NG

Demarchy is not a comprehensive plan for reshaping existing public institutions in the ordinary course of social change. Most institutions change sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for worse.

All states are pressed towards privatising public institutions because the electorate demands more from them, but is also clamouring for relief from taxation. Privatised institutions are often capable of good performance in the short run but fall into inadequacy as they pay more and more attention to profits, try to rid themselves of obligations and resist the attempts of politicians and activists to penalise them for causes that have popular appeal.

The demarchal remedy for this problem is to make these institutions subject to rigorous but impartial audition and review. That move should be initiated in most cases by specific forums in each case that identifies the procedures and objectives in existing institutions and invites proposals to remedy them.

I would suggest that in each case these proposals should be assessed and authorised by citizen juries comprising the main groups with positive or negative interests in the results of what the particular proposal is likely to affect substantially. Once such an institution is chosen it would be required to submit a professional auditor, that would assess the efficiency of the institution in bringing about the improvements it proposed. The audit would be examined by a citizen jury like that which authorised the privatised institution.

Continue reading →

Posted in Democracy, Sortition and citizens’ juries | 1 Comment

How culture war is destroying public reason: COVID edition

Posted on November 17, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Cross-posted from The Mandarin (and written about ten days ago, so it fails to mention Adelaide’s latest snafu).

Lockdowns, border closures, masks, apps and eradication. Where do you stand? 

One can’t sensibly address any of these issues without knowing more about context. But we don’t do context any more. Each of the issues is now its own little culture war within the larger culture war. 

At the head of this queue is lockdown itself. One can reasonably argue that lockdowns generate more economic and human costs than benefits, including the deaths they cause. That’s not just in the countries locking down themselves, but also in low-income countries that trade with countries whose economies tank as a result of lockdowns.

I won’t be that surprised if those opposing lockdowns in a principled way end up being right in hindsight. I am surprised that those who I respect and like – like Paul Frijters – don’t express themselves with more caution and humility, that they find it so hard to believe that they might be wrong. 

After all, it’s almost impossible to specify the counterfactual – to say what would happen without lockdowns. That’s because so much of the economic impact comes from people locking themselves down, rather governments requiring it. But that’s a separate matter. They are at least doing us a service in arguing the case (if not in the way they sometimes argue it).  Continue reading →

Posted in Economics and public policy, Health | 137 Comments

WELLBY cost-benefit calculations for the UK and the Netherlands

Posted on November 13, 2020 by Paul Frijters

Last week I gave a masterclass lecture at University College London on the costs and benefits of lockdowns and other covid-policies in the UK. A recording is here (Passcode: [email protected]$?y9J9 ), and the powerpoint slides are here. A key piece of evidence was the sudden 0.7 drop in life-satisfaction during the lockdowns observed in the UK:

A cost-benefit analysis on the Dutch covid-policies, which were much less intrusive than the British ones but still had cost at least 20 times bigger than the benefits, was published yesterday in the ‘Economische Statistische Berichten‘, basically a monthly magazine for economists in the Netherlands. A version of that article is here (for those who can read Dutch), and the lengthy appendix discussing the literature on many of the issues involved (such as IFRs, scenarios, long-covid, the problem of health service displacement, suicides, mental health, etc.) is here.

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

The vaccine and the COVID culture war

Posted on November 10, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Kind of a fun graphic

Well, we look like getting a vaccine!

Of course managing the policy response to the virus could know of this only as a possibility. But, looking like it is coming to pass, that possibility seems to produce a final scorecard well in favour of the competent lockdowns in Australia, New Zealand and China and against the incompetent ones in the UK, Europe and the US which vacillated between publicly supported lockdowns and ideologically supported lockdown scepticism and ‘balancing’ the health and economic welfare of their populations.

Sweden will have done relatively well economically, though not much better if at all than its near and equally competent neighbours. But it’s had ten times their death rate or something like that. So I’m calling for more good old-fashioned ClubTroppo humility from ClubTroppo’s own #LockdownSceptics.

Posted in Economics and public policy, Health | 117 Comments

Ought Anchored to Is: Morality As A Spontaneous Order

Posted on November 8, 2020 by Antonios Sarhanis

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

It’s a supreme finding of Hume’s clever reasoning that ought cannot be derived from is. The claim is so irrefutable that it has become a truism that acts as a bulwark against proponents of the status quo. But like a lot of reasoning, it refutes a whole swathe of assumptions without anything substantive to say about how we do or should live. Reason in this case is destructive, not instructive, an amoral tool that has no bearing on our core moral principles even if its boosters would like to claim otherwise.
 Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy | 23 Comments