I mean… They’re not exactly hiding it. The expressed purpose of belts and roads is to invest in their infrastructure and partner with them to build industrial capacity. Conveyer belts and roads. They openly state they’re doing it to build up trading partners and global influence

It’s literally the same thing… Will they be better partners? Hopefully, it’s not exactly a high bar

They’re not Marxist-Leninists at all though… They’re just a highly regulated form of capitalism.

The government doesn’t own Tencent, they just keep a strong grip on them. They have their own billionaires, the factories have owners, companies bid to fulfill government contracts, you apply for a job and get paid what they offer. It’s just capitalism

Their government does a lot more than in the US and has a lot more influence, and they do influence the market more… But that’s just regulation and public services

They basically do what we did to tik tok. The US government can revoke a corporate charter for any or no reason, China just actually uses this authority actively

Yes, the World Bank and the IMF. I’ve even seen it personally, which is what led me to dig down the rabbit hole - I got interviewed by a world Bank employee to explain why I was installing a system for an airport, and they kept trying to guide me to explain why it was helpful…I couldn’t, because it was only useful if the Internet is down, and if that happens it’s probably not useful because the system had to be taken down if there’s bad weather, and the airport regularly flooded during storms anyways

They were constant protests and news coverage of projects being pushed on them, and it was an open secret for the airport workers. It was for things they didn’t need or want, even though they had plenty of infrastructure in disrepair already

Argentina is the classic example, they resisted and had their currency destroyed, which makes international trade hard. Other countries go so deep in debt they have IMF officials installed in their government to implement austerity measures, some even are forced to hand over their currency printing powers

Sometimes countries get into our good graces, like Peru, and they are let off the treadmill in exchange for beneficial trade deals. That’s after having their resource rights sold off and letting in foreign investments to extract wealth moving forward, but mostly they’re kept in perpetual debt as leverage

It’s a wild and very deep rabbit hole. The information isn’t hidden, it’s just spun in a positive light

Belt and roads is China’s attempt to do exactly what we’ve been doing with the global south, invest for influence and put them on a debt treadmill. Build infrastructure, pressure them to take on more debt with new projects, say it’s time for austerity, open up more foreign investments, use pressure to buy up raw resources, etc

It’s worth mentioning Coca-Cola… You can get American products everywhere, opening them up as a new market isn’t a different strategy, it’s part of the process

You’ve got it reversed - click bait slop were the egg that hatched the first chicken

Nah, I pick my words carefully, and usually have a mountain of science behind them

For example, I said 4/5 of RFK’s opinions are actually pretty good, but the 5th is so insane it puts the last 4 into doubt.

Someone calls me out on “they want to put AuDHD people into camps”. I say I’m one of them, and being able to voluntary get out of the modern world for as long as you need is a safety net that would save so many lives

They asked if I had a PhD, so I hit them with the science - behavioral activation, getting away from your stressors, and getting away from modern life (because we’re not crazy, the modern human world is what’s crazy) is the most effective treatment for most mental illness. And I went on to list my concerns about implementation, and how this great idea could easily become a work camp if it’s not as voluntary as advertised

They hit me with “that’s some pull yourself up by your bootstraps shit”

That’s what lemmy has been like. It’s not “um actually”, it’s “if I totally breeze through what you said in the most uncharitable way, I can interpret this as you said something horrible”

I got it instantly, and I cracked a smile

Honestly, people are just scared and looking for a fight. And I mean…shit is fucked. Still sucks that people on lemmy seem to have stopped trying to understand though, things have not been the same here in the last few months

Anyways, /s kills any humor in the joke, I appreciated a little reminder of the absurdity of this timeline. Humor is how we keep it together when everything is on fire

Ironically, the executive order goes on to acknowledge the difference between sex and gender

Days after exposing himself as a fake poser of a gamer, Elon has conveniently (again) reminded us he’s also a fake poser of a programmer

I’ll never forget what it was like to share an officie with 2 other people with adhd. I’d start talking about one topic, jump three topics over because they’re obviously related, and they’d just follow along without needing me to hold their hand. It was amazing