Tuukka R

It’s not “luxury” if everyone’s enjoying it.

Correct.
In the case of China it’s not enjoyed by everyone, though. A typical Chinese toilet is a huge hole in the ground with some kind of slabs of concrete over them, with a 15 cm wide slit between the slabs. You go stand on the two slabs and poop into the cavity underneath. There is typically a roof overneath. Homes often don’t have anything on the floors. Just bare concrete.

The people living in opulence are not enjoying something everyone there has. They are enjoying something only the richest 0,5 % among their people has. China is a country where wealth is concentrated extremely strongly to the few.

Sure, if you ignore that the Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.

That happened long before yesterday, though. If you look at decades such as 1970’s or 1980’s or even later, you’ll notice that whatever Mao was striving for, got eventually all undone.

Could you elaborate on what you refer to and mean with this, please?

No nordic country is socialist, though. Having a labour union does not turn a capitalist country into a socialist one. Having a social democrat party does not make a country socialism. It’s not “Socialist democratic party”, it’s “Social democratic party”. Their goal is not socialism and they are not doing socialist politics. They are doing nothing to end private ownership of property.

I went by hitchhiking through China from Khorgos to the Laotian border and was hosted by several local families in their homes on the way. I have seen more of Chinese everyday life than you have.

Your view of China has been trapped in Chinese propaganda.

And also: I would not say that the Chinese that are living a lavish life with a lot of luxury are living a socialist life. They might be an example of how “capitalism makes people happy”, but I don’t think that’s really correct either.

They are more socialist than anything else on this planet. And they are among the few countries that do call themself socialist.

There are no socialist countries on Earth, and have never been, as there’s always been at least some amount of private ownership. But North Korea is easily the country with the least private ownership, so that’s the one least far detached from socialism. It’s a bit ridiculous calling that one socialist, either. But if not even NK is socialist, then what does “socialist countries” even mean in that context?!

The claim was that socialism is “from the countries doing better than you.”
So, what are those countries that are doing better than Finland?

Uh… People in China and North Korea are somehow doing better than me here in Finland? Why? Please do elaborate. Assuming you can.

Uh, wine tasters?

And, de facto also people whose job is to strike deals for a company. And ambassadors, I’d say.

Whenever I’m going abroad within Europe, for a bit over month before that, I start buying stuff only with banknotes. I put all of the coins made in Finland or (other) Baltic countries in a separate pocket and then make sure to use those during my travel.

It feels nice that people get to see coins that they don’t see that often. And at the same time, I’m increasing the relative amount of non-Finnish coins in Finland, which I also think is good, as that helps people here notice that there’s more to the EU than just Finland :)

I would guess it’s unlikely that all that many other people do the same.

Okay, there just was a review that had pretty much the same content you wrote :)

Sticky Mustache, is that you?

Well… I’m using an instance that has 10 active users according to https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list :)

I wanted to move from Lemmy to PieFed, because its development is faster than that of Lemmy’s and because its maintainers have values I have nothing against and because I want to help a cool project grow.

And then I had a bunch of criteria that I wanted my instance to fulfill, and piefed.ee was the only PieFed instance that fulfilled all of my wishes. So, now I’m apparently one out of ten :)

Note that Lifespan is not the same as life expectancy

In this article it is, though. That’s why they use the phrase “average lifespan”. There is no “average” in maximum.
In the article the phrase “average lifespan” is used in the meaning “average life expectancy”.

It’s because the 38 years as average lifespan is skewed by high child mortality. People lived about 70 or 80 years – provided they first made it alive through childhood.

But genetically we come from nomadic tribes, and AFAIK the nomads of a 100000 years ago, had a far shorter average lifespan than after we settled and began farming.

This is mainly because of child mortality. When you get five children, of which two live to be 78 and 89 and the other three die at ages of 2, 14, and 8, your children’s average lifespan is 38,2 years. Typically, you either died very young, or you lived old. And the average is, well, the average of those. Basically nobody died around the age of 38.

Some “fancy” ones do taste different, but the basic ones do share a clearly distinguishable common taste.

Yes, and the taste of what’s in most energy drinks is what’s being sought for here.

I’m a big fan of Shattered Pixel Dungeon!

It’s the second most controlled country in the world, right after North Korea.

A mad place!

Also, almost all places on trains are reserved for party members, meaning that to get to another city you neither need to bribe somebody or book your ticket a month in advance.

I almost completely agree with PM_ME_etc. Even to the part that yes, you are afraid of China and Chinese cultures in ways that are not necessary.

At the same time, it is China’s goal to turn the west towards authoritarianism. Many parts of MAGA’s political goals are coaligned with those of China, even if their goals regarding economy politics are extremely different.

Currently an increasing share of the western consumption is fed by factories in China. We’re currently practically completely able to produce mobile phones without China, because even if the phone is made in Mexico or South Korea, it is still made of Chinese components, such as the tiny torx screws not made in scale in a reasonable quality anywhere else than China.
Eventually China will shut down that trade. It will hurt China, but if as a consequence China can get us under its command, they will gain more than they lose.

Currently it would be extremely crucial to support industrial production practically anywhere outside China, some clear cases, such as NK, of course excluded. An amount of sinophobia is very necessary to make this happen!

This shows very well to what extent China is communist.

• nationalizing industries: yes
• making industries worker-controlled
• private property partially abolished
• workers’ rights even less supported than in USA
• capitalist class being steadily empowered (they are getting increasingly rich and disconnected from the workers, even if their companies do have to follow the state lead than in more civilized countries)
• wealth is being moved to the wealthy (albeit not nearly as fast as in USA)

Of course this only tells whether China is.following its own official ideology, not whether what someone else does fulfills that ideology or not.