historical materialism : sanitary paper edition

With the global capitalist panopticon in the midst of history’s largest financially engineered caustic death spasm, it seems prudent to switch sides. Yes it’s maybe opportunistic, but damnit I’m greedy and power hungry. As such I’ve enrolled in Wuhan University’s PhD seminar on ‘Marxism and Modern Scientific Theories of Socialism‘* (Dep’t of Economics). Professor Wang was explaining Chinese interpretations of Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice,’ and noted that prevailing ideas about economic equality are context sensitive. He did however offer up this gem:

You know, even in the ostensibly capitalist West, most of the public toilets have toilet paper anyone can use. There’s no great fear of the proletariat just running off with all of it, like there is here! Just imagine, all the sanitary paper you could ever want… So even in non-socialist countries, you can see the forces of scarcity at work…

In the interests of diplomacy, I did not blurt out “Comrade**, the very abundance of which you speak was made possible by <insert germane classical liberal argument here. oh! better yet a slippery slope argument: the sanitary paper slippery slope: you can never have enough. time for an essay – ‘on the optimal allocation of sanitary paper: experimental algorithms’>.” 

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queue arbitrage

So you plan to spiritually purify yourself by not using the internet for 48+ hours; and your blog gets spammed. My favorite was “horny goatweed Wal-Mart” – my own order of this wonderful substance is being FedExed to China as I write.

As of yesterday, however, wireless high speed is now broadcasting all throughout the Tony-Caeli Fulbright Safehouse in Wuhan. The fellow who came to install it was extremely friendly, and seemed tickled that he was conversing with a bunch of unwashed foreign-folk speaking semifluent Mandarin. Covering a number of topics, he noted that, “these health reforms are trash. Health care here is horrible. Have you ever gone to a doctor in China? Don’t. We are all terrified of getting sick.” Health care reform is one of the major planned changes that came out of the last CCP plenary session. Most of the common criticisms of healthcare here revolve around a skewed incentive structure whereby Doctors are primarily compensated for the amount of medicines they prescribe (through various legal and illegal kickbacks from local pharmaceutical corporations). 

Upon further inquiry, he revealed that queues are usually so long that some people are able to make a living selling queue numbers from hospital queues. Woho! The market wins again. Wait…

我们都是共产主义 [ lit. 'we are all believers in communist ideology' ]

It’s a catchy propoganda song, and this guy agrees (via Club for Growth) – he says the U.S. is more Communist than China. I alluded to this the other day while frothing at the psuedo-civil-libertarian mouth. It’s not really the case. Regardless, he specifically mentions ‘China’s free market in housing.’ This is a teachable moment, because Chinese property law is fascinating:

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world hell handbasket?

The infosphere is abuzz with news about the imminent bailout of Frannie, in time for Monday morning here. And with good reason – the Chinese hold a fair bit ($376 billion) in US agency debt, most with Freddie and Fannie. This August 22nd article from Bloomberg describes the potential fallout if the situation worsens:

A failure of U.S. mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be a catastrophe for the global financial system, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to China’s central bank.

 

“If the U.S. government allows Fannie and Freddie to fail and international investors are not compensated adequately, the consequences will be catastrophic,” Yu said in e-mailed answers to questions yesterday. “If it is not the end of the world, it is the end of the current international financial system.”

The end of the world? Mortgages are so much less climactic than nukes or killer plagues. Regardless, it does seem to be an increasingly popular meme that China (and other foreigners) might maliciously dump the bulk of their USD denominated investments.

This hasn’t been reported, so it’s either anecdotal, or not widespread enough to register: a fair number of people here are saying “sure the banks could try to sell – but who would buy all of it?” I mean, it’s obviously possible – they just seem more skeptical that it would be as logistically easy to tank all of their USD denominated investments. Or at least are more realistic about the zero-sumMachiavellian implications involved. 

Contrarily, it seems that the current regime will likely continue, precisely because they’re in so deep. This NYT article elucidates:

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