So you just want an oligarchy?

All you’re doing is finding a bunch of different ways of saying the people who already have socioeconomic power should be the ones who have all the political power. People with the financial means and time to educate themselves on esoteric areas of policy to a sufficient level as to mollify the people put in charge of the tests to access the ballot are the only ones who should be allowed to vote?

No, that’s some anti-democratic bullshit.

You can intend for the governing body that decides the tests to be impartial and apolitical all you want, but what you’re doing is creating a power structure that controls who has access to the ballot. Regardless how well meaning your intentions are, that system will always invite abuse. It’s always going to be easier for fascists and authoritarians to corrupt your well-meaning system to deny access to the ballot to their opposition rather than trying to win on merit. That’s how electoral systems ALWAYS fail. It’s not always a test, but the authoritarians find a way to manipulate the voting system. By creating a test you’re just making the system MUCH easier to corrupt.

History shows quite the opposite. Systems maintained by culture are the ones that last. Systems maintained by force are the ones that breed opposition.

Yes I am. That doesn’t negate the fact that poll tests are a really fucking stupid idea. Indeed, the fact that my country has a pretty disgusting history with them should help reiterate the point that they’re really fucking bad.

You create a culture where people feel ownership over their own communities and services. This isn’t something given to you by a government or business. It’s something you run and maintain in conjunction with the rest of your community for your own benefit. And you keep the focus locally while building a system that can interact on a larger scale. So I and my community have ownership and responsibility over our water system and it can integrate with the water system owned and maintained by the next community over.

Yes.

one needs to pass a simple single choice test before being allowed to vote

You just reinvented Jim Crow!

working off of IOUs.

That’s all that cash is. Currency is just a very elaborate system of IOUs.

I’m opposed to ALL hierarchal power structures. If someone is given authority and power over others, regardless of the method of acquiring that power, the system is evil. That includes political power structures, but also economic and social ones. That includes capitalism, liberal democracies, state communism, fascism, etc, etc. They’re all fucking bad.

The democratic confederalist system in place in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria seems pretty nice, but it’s under VERY heavy attack right now and I don’t know how long it’ll be allowed to remain before Turkey and the new Syrian government (with US support) crushes it.

Investors genuinely did not believe Trump would go through with the tariffs and demolishing the government. Even though he repeatedly said he would during the election, investors just didn’t believe it. They though he’d come in and slash corporate taxes and regulations and that’d be it. So after he won the election they stock market went on a tear. In the week after the election the US Stock Market Index jumped like 300 points and continue to rise until it hit it’s peak just after inauguration.

Then Trump started to actually do the things he’d been promising he’d do all along. It took until ~1 month into the administration (~1 month ago) before investors realized Trump was serious. That’s when the market started falling. It’s only been going down for a month now.

It’s only been falling for a month now, but the US Stock Market Index is already ~100 points lower than it was at the election. Right now it’s at the same place it was 6 months ago. In other words, any gains the US Stock Market made over the 5 months from Sept-Feb were completely wiped out over just 1 month in March.

Just the one right now. I haven’t really found a reason to sign up for more. I also really don’t want the added burden of maintaining multiple accounts. That sounds exhausting.

With public ownership of the means of production (in any public sector industry) it is by definition socialist. By every definition socialist.

It’s only socialist if you accept the framing that the state (ie the government) is the manifestation of the will of the people. This is demonstrably untrue in China given how regularly they suppress protest movements and attempts by workers to organize. They are NOT the will of the people. They are the will of the party, which has always been the case in every state communist country that has ever existed.

And I don’t get my information on China from western media sources. I get it from people I know who live in China and from my own experiences in China.

anyone can join he government and take on the boring admin work, there are checks at every level to reduce corruption and no one person ever has absolute power. Technically “the evil dictator Xi Jinping” could be ousted with a single vote, or multiple lower regional votes. The same is true for all positions. Appointments are democratically placed, so corruption is minimal.

Replace “China” with “The US” here and it sounds exactly like it comes out of a grade school civics textbook in the US describing the American political system. This is the exact same line every single elected government around the world uses to describe how democratic they are.

I meant, how does one run it locally. I see a lot of people saying to just “run it locally” but for someone without a background in coding that doesn’t really mean much.

Over 60% of the economy by GDP including all essential services, is owned by the people state

FTFY

If the state represented the people, why does the Chinese government kill workers who try to organize so damn much? It’s because the state =/= the people. What you described is just capitalism where the state is one of the capitalist class. The difference with the US is that the US government is owned by the capitalist class rather than being one of it.

China hasn’t been a communist country in a long time. That was the whole point of the Deng reforms.

Again, both are shitty. In fact, not just both, but all. All hierarchical power structures are just plain evil. I’m not interested in parsing which evil is more evil. The Chinese government is an evil institution. The US government is an evil institution.

I meant, is hosting it locally something someone without a coding background can do easily

Why do you have to pick one or the other? Can we not recognize that the governments of western nations and the government of China are all evil institutions that cause far more harm than they ever could benefit?

This is just pure Chinese state propaganda. Taiwan has been an independent country since 1949.

No gods, no masters!