My latest TikTok video on China’s economy got an outpouring of critical comments about “worker ownership” in China. People are very concerned that state owned enterprises are not a form of socialism but rather something called “state capitalism.”
But I think we can all agree that if the state is actually representative of the workers, then state ownership is worker ownership.
Here is a video describing the recent history of China’s emerging “consultative democracy,” showing ways the central leadership is embracing the power of democracy.
Please keep an open mind as I tell you now that China has the best “Democracy Perception Index” of all countries surveyed. This index is found by polling citizens of how democratic they feel their society is and subtracting that from how important they feel democracy is to their future.
The reason for the coup was because BP was unfairly extracting Iranian oil, leaving the Prime Minister no choice but to nationalize (☭) their oil. That would be too economically liberating and socialist, so Britain and the US had to intervene.
Supporters of the monarchy staging a CIA-backed coup in Iran, 1953
The brutal rule of the Shah eventually led to The Iranian Revolution where leftists and right-wing Islamic nationalists worked to overthrow the Shah. As we know, the Islamic nationalists took power.
Tehran, the capital of Iran as a major hub in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Iran has also applied to join BRICS, a trade alliance specifically for developing countries. It started with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as a response to the 2008 financial crisis. These countries want to have their economies be less reliant on the US economy. These moves are a threat to US economic hegemony.
Leaders from the BRICS trade alliance joining hands.
With all of the exaggerations and fake news swirling around the protests in Iran, our neoliberal media want us to hate the regime so much that we don’t care what neoliberal might take power after. That, or they want us to welcome indefinite instability, which would be a wrench in China’s plans to unify the developing world with mutually beneficial trade agreements.
Here is more information on (and the source of) the stats and graphic I shared in my video highlighting wage theft in the US as well as the graphic for you to share:
This graphic was created for the dataisbeautiful SubReddit and posted here. The author’s sources are cited here. For wage theft, they used this study of wage theft that surveyed over 4,000 workers in LA, Chicago, and NYC. For the other crimes, they used data from the FBI.
Thank you all for expressing your interest in this important issue that our corporate-owned media hides from us. It’s also important to understand that the ruling class allows this rampant illegal plundering of the working class because it serves their interests.
This is a measurable act of class war. The rich owning class keeps the working class poor and desperate while enriching themselves and buying up our media to control the narrative.
I’ve been wondering what makes reading so impactful, fiction or non-fiction. Compared with watching media in video format, why do people who read feel so strongly about it?
I think it’s because of how conceptual reading is. Words are the building blocks of thoughts. For example, consider how difficult it is to think about those feelings we don’t have words for.
So reading becomes a conceptual link between your mind and the author’s. While documentaries can provide evidence clearly and compellingly, the words of their narration and interviews are what frame that evidence conceptually.
A glitzy TV show can show you a powerful scene with a beautiful setting, costume design, and soundtrack. That level of stimulation can feel infinitely more compelling than words on a page, but an essay can explain why all of that felt so compelling to you.
Reading is what elevates us from programmable consumer masses being entertained by flashing screens to conscious creators and participants in society.
