One of the things to understand about China is that it plays ‘the long game’. In the West we’re hopelessly…

One of the things to understand about China is that it plays ‘the long game’. In the West we’re hopelessly glued to meaningless short electoral cycles, which have degenerated into perpetual populist posturing aimed always at the next election. China thinks much longer term. /1 https://t.co/nrqF6IDySt

It’s partly a cultural thing too, to take a long-duration view of the events in our lives. I saw a demographer argue on the weekend that ‘we’ in the West need to take a more preventative approach to public issues, rather than reactionary. /2

Always that ‘we’ people use. The West doesn’t have a we. It had one between the end of WW2 and the late-1970s, at which point its robber barons swiftly replaced it with ‘the economy’. The idea that we’re all just individuals interacting in markets. /3

And that interaction will magically generate new innovation and wealth and social progress, optimally efficient. Of course the robber barons don’t actually believe any of this Invisible Hand nonsense. It’s just convenient cover for hijacking the State. /4

Our politics since the 1970s has been overwhelmingly and proudly anti-State, pro-economy, ‘small government’ politics. Because we think politics is a thing, all sides of politics either agree with that framing, or use it as a baseline. /5

In reality we’re only reliving the battles earlier feudal societies lived, between nobles and the King, for ultimate power and status. We have lots of nobles now, a proliferation of the billionaire class. But no King. Kings keep the nobles in check. /6

The Chinese meanwhile maintain a proud State-focused society. With all its planning and ‘picking winners’, as our robber barons would say. The Chinese approach of course has its faults. There are no utopias. But *all* societies are more or less equivalently social. /7

They all use mechanisms to regulate status. Except the West now, where status games are endemic and epidemic, a daily ruthless team sports struggle for supremacy. So nothing meaningful gets done. Except trying to win elections. So that the winner can win more elections. /end