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    Re: The One Chart That Explains Everything Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on July 15, 2023, 12:17 pm, in reply to "The One Chart That Explains Everything"

    It doesn't explain why I can never find my slippers...



    'Look carefully at the chart above. What do you see?' - It's probably just me, but I see the cancerous spread of industrialism, corporatism (albeit with state guidance), massive CO2 emissions, environmental destruction, human immiseration (albeit with higher GDP) and the total dependence on highly complex systems which will make collapse intolerable for billions of people when the unsustainable drawdown of resources finally brings the whole thing crashing down.

    But putting that to one side for a minute... it's interesting that the network connects up towns & cities within China rather than following the usual model of trainlines leading out to ports, indicating a priority of shipping resources out, ie: bleeding a country dry in the imperialist approach. Probably it will have a more localised effect of smaller towns being pushed into service or dormitory roles for the nearest large cities, but maybe I'm being too cynical and they've got something better planned out?

    I guess my problem with this is that it's still taking IMF and WTO measures of success (raising GDP, people 'raised out of poverty') as a given, and they are still playing by the west's rules in that sense. I don't doubt that the lives of millions will improve - in the short term at least - and it's not for me to gainsay that, but the problem is with the whole model of 'development' that dictates an 'improvement' of forcing people off the land, into a controlled monetary economy and a precarious global jobs market and the never-ending, accelerating treadmill of industrial production and profit-generation for a few at the top of the pyramid. I can't cheer the rise of a new empire at the expense of the old, even if its multipolarity gives breathing space for a while for those who have been under the US empire's jackboots. The planet doesn't care which economic model or which country is top dog - the 'development' is what wrecks it either way.

    cheers,
    I

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