@Che

So it’s only slavery if it’s in China?

Who says that?

Yeah, there are many FOSS organizations in the U.S. like the Open Source Lab by the Oregon State University, the Open Source Software Institute, and many others. I guess they could do it, possibly if some join forces.

I agree in principal with that view, but there was pressure from VW’s top investors (Union Investment, Deka) to clarify the situation in Xinjiang. An audit turned out to be extremely flawed which put further pressure on the management. It’s hard to tell how much this contributed to the decision, but at least some shareholders weren’t indifferent about the situation.

The USA can certainly do this, they have all what it takes. Public investments for such stuff will be hard to get in the next four years I guess, but there could be some private initiative?I don’t know the U.S. good enough in that respect, though.

Strange. Here is the Reuters news about it: https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-proposes-sanctions-against-chinese-firms-helping-russia-bloomberg-news-2024-11-25/

This has long been done :-)

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I am afraid they already did:

Commission concludes that online social networking service of X should not be designated under the Digital Markets Act – (October 2024) Please see the comment by @HK65@sopuli.xyz, I am mistaken here.

I would have loved to see the initiators to go the official way for the petition as I agree that change.org won’t change much. Here we go: https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/engage-eu-policymaking/petition-eu_en

Having read the thread and all the numbers which are very interesting, I can’t help thinking that whatever the economic output is in whatever country or bloc, China must face higher cost for backing Russia in Ukraine.

LOL.

And?

No one talks about Ukraine losing. Any peace deal can only be reached according to Ukraine’s terms, this includes that Russia will have to leave the whole of Ukraine.

https://feddit.org/u/benjhm@sopuli.xyz

But the article says, the core factors are economic.

The article says the factor are economic and cultural. For example, it reads that “online, young people openly discuss their frustrations with societal expectations […] Hashtags related to singlehood, career focus, and discussions around marriage trends regularly go viral, amplifying the voices of those who feel pressured to conform to traditional life paths.”

Even so, as they have built so many surplus apartments, the [real] prices must drop

The ‘surplus apartments’ are the result of a real estate crisis that, among others, has cost a lot of money. Many Chinese has lost their live savings. In the meantime, many experts (inside and outside China) are afraid that the problems in the property sector could severely hurt the financial and banking system and the whole economy in the long run.

I wonder how many years before they are trying to sell the Chinese dream to migrants from Africa or elsewhere.

Regarding migrant, especially from Africa, I suggest your read a release by a rights group (2023), or a very informative expert video (19 min, here is the archived link for this video). The video is from 2022.

I understand. You are right and everyone else is wrong. Classic.

https://feddit.org/u/Deceptichum@quokk.au

I know exactly how the terms are, and I know there is overlap in the exploitation game.

This is apparently not the case. The ‘exploitation game’ is not unique to any of form of capitalism (there are many) as there has been exploitation of large groups of people also in the pre-industrial feudal system, just to name an example.

Unfortunately, we see similar over-simplified narratives all over the web spaces, also on the Fediverse. This is not a grave issue in itself, we all can be mistaken, but very often these narratives are communicated in a very dogmatic and offensive way. This is unnecessary and not very smart, especially as you are wrong here.

You could short individual stocks.

I can’t elaborate on the Dutch, but I feel that your prediction that they won’t hire native speakers/chartered translators will hold true not only for the Netherlands. I used to work for international publishing houses in various roles and guess I have some idea of this industry, and I think they won’t hire experts just for saving money (not because they overestimate their language proficiency). They won’t care about quality as long as the financials are fine, even if such a commercial success has a short life.

The only exceptions I see at the moment are some small media organizations and/or grassroots media. But large publishing houses will use AI to further drive down costs, no matter what.

A user in another thread on this topic has guessed that there will be a ‘parallel economy’ (their word) dedicated to human-made goods, while the rest is AI generated. Maybe that’s the future?

This is maybe a devastating example why centralization and central planning is a bad and dehumanizing act for individuals in a society. There is a good documentary about China’s so-called “Ghost Children”. These are those who were born as younger siblings during China’s One Child policy.

The documentary was made in 2014. It shows how quickly things can change, and how people suffer now and then due to bad politics.

It’s really worth your time.

China’s Ghost Children – (video, 36 min)

Second or third children born illegally during China’s One Child Policy - implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country’s population growth by restricting many families to a single child - are banned from marrying, having children or simply boarding a train. Condemned to a non-life, these ghost children do not officially exist according to the Chinese state. ARTE Reportage goes in search of these ‘Haihaizi’, those children who should not have been born.

[Edit typo.]

In a piece published in November 2022, Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu argues that China’s economy is rotting from the head.

For a while, [China’s leader] Xi, his entourage, and even many outside experts believed that the economy could still flourish under conditions of tightening central control, censorship, indoctrination, and repression [after Xi secured an unprecedented third term (with no future term limits in sight), and stacked the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee with loyal supporters]. Again, many looked to AI as an unprecedentedly powerful tool for monitoring and controlling society.

Yet there is mounting evidence to suggest that Xi and advisers misread the situation, and that China is poised to pay a hefty economic price for the regime’s intensifying control. Following sweeping regulatory crackdowns on Alibaba, Tencent, and others in 2021, Chinese companies are increasingly focused on remaining in the political authorities’ good graces, rather than on innovating.

The inefficiencies and other problems created by the politically motivated allocation of credit are also piling up, and state-led innovation is starting to reach its limits. Despite a large increase in government support since 2013, the quality of Chinese academic research is improving only slowly.

[…] The top-down control in Chinese academia is distorting the direction of research, too. Many faculty members are choosing their research areas to curry favor with heads of departments or deans, who have considerable power over their careers. As they shift their priorities, the evidence suggests that the overall quality of research is suffering.

Xi’s tightening grip over science and the economy means that these problems will intensify. And as is true in all autocracies, no independent experts or domestic media will speak up about the train wreck he has set in motion […]

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