Monday
I just turned off a monologue by somebody who was assuming that China was the emerging economic superpower in the world. It is a common theme and, like many other ‘everyone knows’, wrong.
The world is full of misinformation to the degree that truth anywhere about anything is almost as rare as hen’s teeth. No wonder that entering the adult world – growing up – is so difficult. Children are naturally attracted to truth; their minds are not filled with the misinformation necessary to impede its passage. Truth slips in easily.
The teenage years involve the incremental rejection of everything that they have learned about life up to that point. Growing up involves the rejection of integrity in favour of bullshit. Looked at another way, it is the rejection of self in favour of some other dominant theme. Most make the transition reasonably painlessly without seeming ever to yearn for the discarded truths of their youth.
China’s Xi has taken personal control of the economy and is busy telling businesses how they must operate – or else. That should ensure a successful future – ahem.
With regard to truth, one of the senior truths of governments is that they are convinced that the problems of regulation can best be solved by more regulation. Yes, the concept is amusing, but no, the results are not. It will bring devastating to the lives of hundreds of millions of families.
Rather than being the next economic superpower, China is more likely to be the world’s first significant domino to fall.
Xi’s meddling will be a replay of the catastrophe of The Great Helmsmen. Mao’s hubris was directly responsible for the death by starvation of at least sixty million people. To comprehend that number of people, imagine a thousand full major sports stadiums. That’s about the amount. Xi’s machinations are likewise doomed to failure and are guaranteed to collapse China’s middleclass.
The problem with politicians in all countries is that the vast majority have never been in business and they just don’t understand how markets function. They truly believe that markets can be managed/guided. They cannot. They are either free and create prosperity, less free and create less prosperity, or they lack any freedom, which brings about poverty, starvation and death.
The Chinese people, who are hard-working and entrepreneurial, deserve better.
The determination with which politicians, not just China’s, are destroying the world’s economies ensures that the inevitable distraction of war draws ever closer.