To: TobagoJack who wrote (51683 ) 7/21/2004 5:09:03 AM From: Seeker of Truth Respond to From your post evidently there is increasing danger that the US policy makers will convince themselves that the economy of China is staggering so the Chinese government will need the US consumers so badly that they will tolerate a declaration of independence by the government of Taiwan. Let's look at crony capitalism. No let's first look at crony feudalism. If I march around in the countryside with sword and spear armed detachments to enforce things and hence collect outrageously large taxes, then I belong to the landlord class, parasitic on the peasants, even though I have no title to any land. Fast forward to the capitalist times. If by virtue of my power position(machine guns have replaced swords) I can secretly remove my private share from corporate earnings, then I am a capitalist even though no part of the company is owned by me. Can a society survive with such corruption? Can a dog survive with, of course parasitic fleas? Yes. The corruption must have some limit; it must be overweighed at least for the time being by some huge positive feature of the society. That's exactly the situation of post-war Japan. The ruling party has consistently demanded and received private payments from the companies. Ditto from all the government agencies which are supposed to be spending every yen on their public tasks. The triumvirate of party leaders, gangsters and certain of the extremely rich people, goes on sucking the blood of the economy year after year. Suddenly we hear that the banks of the magnificent Japanese economy have trillions of bad loans. The image is shattered. What was the huge positive feature that covered the corruption for so many years? It was the vast supply of surplus young workers, moderately well educated, extremely obedient, conscientious, careful, perfectionist about their work, in short displaying all the virtues of Japanese craftspeople. All these young workers came from the farm. Now there's no more such supply; the farms have mainly old people. Corruption has no counter weight.
