It’s the middle 1970’s. I am in middle school.
A couple of cute girls run up to me and pull me out of study hall to go square dancing with them.
One day. Then the next. Then the one after that.
Maybe I wasn’t a football player or a popular Jock, but I was a dancing fool. All the girls wanted to dance with me. And I really loved it.
These square dances were a lot of fun. I loved the attention; and being part of a group. Even then, I did not realize how starved I was for BELONGING.
The girls would look at me, touch me, and talk with me. And it was fun. Fun! And the time went by so fast!
Then I graduated from high school and entered university.
Disco fever hits America.
Still, I wasn’t so much into the movement as I could of been. I was more of an observer. Books and studying were my drivers.
Everyone was “Doin’ the hustle”. Me too. LOL.
I was a party fool.
Looking back, you know, dancing played a major social role in my ability to meet and be with girls. Too bad that there were movements that were trying to remove it for religious reasons.
Silly. Huh?
Now, here I am. In China. Everyone dances. From free impromptu dances on the curbs to KTV’s and clubs. Everyone dances.
Forget social media applications. Go out, put on some music and start dancing. There’s a lot worse things that you can do to occupy your time.
Don’t know how to dance, or are too self consciousness?
Go Zorba the Greek style…
Or, my favorite, Jamaican Rasta-man…
When in doubt go “Grateful Dead” and do the hop to the beat, and pretend that you are stoned.
Today…
What are your views on China almost owning Laos? How careful do other small nations need to be from China?
The word “owning” is not appropriate; it should be described as a win-win situation. Laos is a landlocked country with no ports, only 4 kilometers of railway nationwide, and underdeveloped roads.
In December 2021, after the opening of the China-Laos Railway, Laos has had a direct railway connection with China. This has greatly improved Laos’s economy, with optimistic projections suggesting that Laos’s GDP will increase fivefold by 2030.
(I am confident about Laos’ economic prospects, because it is said that in 2020, the most corrupt bureaucrat in the country only had $500,000! which is much better than many poor countries, If the corruption problem is not big, the economy will surely take off)
The railway has opened up transportation between China and Laos, bringing hundreds of thousands of job opportunities to Laos, and China benefits as well.
China’s agriculture is severely lacking in potassium. Although Russia and Belarus are major potash exporters and friendly countries, having an additional source of imports is beneficial. Laos, with its world-class giant potash deposits, lacks the technology and funds for mining, and hasn’t even begun selling them.
China’s construction of potash mines in Laos, purchasing at reasonable prices, creating local jobs, developing the industry, and meeting its own needs is indeed a win-win situation.
China has a huge demand for durians, and Laotian durians are very cheap. Selling them to China via the railway significantly increases their income, making everyone happy.
China can produce industrial goods, medicines, and other necessities cheaply and in good quality, satisfying Laotian needs. Laotians are also very satisfied.
Moreover, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. conducted 580,000 bombing missions on this non-combatant country, dropping 270 million cluster bombs, of which about 30% remain unexploded. Currently, 80 million small bombs are scattered and buried in Laos, causing deaths and injuries every year.
By constructing this railway, Chinese engineers have cleared thousands of unexploded bombs, at least ensuring the safety of the railway line. This act alone is of immeasurable merit.
China and the West are different in one respect: as a developing country that was oppressed by great powers for over a hundred years, we know very well what that feels like.
Now that we have some money, it is natural to help others while benefiting ourselves through mutual benefit.
2500 years ago, Mencius said, “Only a benevolent nation can interact with smaller nations on an equal footing”—not by dropping 270 million bombs on them.
To take a step back, even if driven solely by China’s own interests, such as buying potash mines and trying to push prices down, the short-term gain might seem profitable, but in the long run? If we don’t consider the other party’s interests, it will ultimately harm our own.
There are areas needing improvement.
For example, on the station signs within Laos along the China-Laos Railway, although Lao script is at the top and Chinese is below, the Chinese font size is the same as the Lao script, which seems a bit inappropriate.
It would be better if the Chinese font were smaller.
I have always been a little worried about hurting the feelings of the Lao people.
However, it seems that Laotians have not raised this issue.
She explains what is going on
Money is NOT value.
Should the USA give one aircraft carrier to each one of China’s neighbors to stop China from bullying its neighbors?
Funnily enough, this question reminds me of an ancient punishment of the Thai Royal Court.
If a Thai king happened to dislike a particular minor noble, that noble would be “gifted” with the finest war elephant from the royal regiment.
Now what could go wrong with that you might think? After all, an elephant is a mighty war beast and also a valuable trophy that kings would fight each other to own.
Well, they are also one hell of an eater, consuming an unholy amount of food and water every day.
want some?
They also need space, care, training, and exercise – all of which requires a lot of people and costs a lot of money. That’s why, normally, only the likes of kings or very powerful nobles could afford their accommodations.
So what happened if some unaccomplished, minor nobles were awarded with one?
In a few months, they would become broke: They couldn’t get rid of the elephant because it was a gift from the king and also could not leave them neglected because of its royal status.
I think something similar would happen if the United States were to “gift” any carriers to the minor nations in the South China Sea.
Just some insight
I love hearing from youse guys about how your affirmations are going. Here’s one from a member of the MM collective. I deleted the queries and personal data. But still, I always find these reports interesting…
I've been on a 3 month on/4 off Intentions Campaign run since summer 2023 when I started my first (late starter, I know-- but I'd old baggage I needed to dispose of before committing to a campaign-- I like fresh psychological starts!). After a quiet start, I'm now halfway through my second break, and the roller coaster ride has just kicked off-- white knuckle, baby. > Yikes!!! > The tell tails have all hilariously manifested, too. Very very strange and uncanny feeling. Things that were calm in my life are now turning upside down and I'm glad-- It was well needed. But stressful. (Have included safety protocols so nothing crazy.)
We were mocking my husband at a neighborhood party until he stood up & told me it’s over forever.
NEVER, ever make fun of your husband or wife.
What can be expected from the meeting between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and China’s top legislator Zhao Leji?
On July 29, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meroni met with Zhao Leji, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China.
Zhao Leji said that the National People’s Congress of China is willing to give full play to the role of the regular exchange mechanism with the Italian Parliament, carry out multi-level, wide-ranging and multi-channel friendly exchanges, and provide legal guarantees for the practical cooperation between the two countries.
Meroni expressed the hope that the legislative bodies of the two sides will strengthen exchanges, promote cooperation in the fields of economy, trade, culture and other fields, and promote the healthy and stable development of Italy-China and Europe-China relations.
Of course, this is all official jargon.
To put it simply, Merloni hopes that China’s National People’s Congress and the Italian Parliament will increase exchanges so that Italian parliamentarians can understand China’s parliamentary model, so that they will not encounter too much opposition from pro-American parliamentarians during parliamentary questioning.
The reason I say this is because of what Italy has done over the past period of time.
- In the recent EU vote on imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, Italy voted in favor.
- The Italian Ministry of Finance issued a statement after the G7 Finance Ministers’ Meeting, saying that the G7 opposes so-called “unilateral actions” that undermine global trade, and implicitly pointed the finger at China.
- Senior Italian naval officials announced that the country’s aircraft carrier will visit the Philippines after participating in Australian exercises to show support for the Philippines.
Last year, the Meloni government’s decision to withdraw from the “Belt and Road Initiative” itself had a huge impact on the mutual trust between China and Italy. Judging from the delegation that Meloni brought with her to China, including Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli and energy group Eni, the focus of her visit to China is obviously to discuss bilateral economic and trade cooperation with China.
Why does Italy still want to do this?
In fact, if we look at the preparations for this visit to China alone, Meloni’s sincerity is still sufficient.
In addition to the luxurious business delegation mentioned above, it is reported that Meloni has also prepared a generous gift for China.
- According to the Italian media “24 Hours Sun”, the Meloni government intends to “transfer” the use rights of the discontinued car brands of the European auto giant Stellantis Group to Chinese companies.
- Italy has specially prepared a working group to discuss cooperation in the automotive field with China. At present, the EU is imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Objectively speaking, if Chinese auto companies can invest and build factories in Italy, they can indeed resolve the high tariffs faced by exports to Europe. For Italy, they can obtain investment from Chinese companies through such cooperation and boost the local auto industry.
This is a win-win situation.
Moreover, perhaps in order to eliminate the impact of Italy’s withdrawal from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, Meroni also announced during his visit to China that he would sign a three-year action plan with China to restart cooperation with China.
We can understand Meroni’s move. This plan is actually an alternative to the “Belt and Road Initiative” jointly built by China and Italy.
Meroni showed such sincerity. In the final analysis, Italy still needs China.
- On the one hand, Italy is currently facing severe high inflation and debt crisis.
- On the other hand, the trade volume between China and Italy last year showed a significant decline compared with 2022.
Since Italy withdrew from the Belt and Road Initiative, it has faced a series of economic problems. If Italy wants to change the status quo, it can only bow to China.
However, Italy is a member of the G7, and it is unrealistic to expect Meloni to completely bow to China.
Therefore, we speculate that Italy’s series of actions against China, either indirectly or directly, before Meroni’s visit to China, may be a bargaining chip prepared by Meroni to bargain with China.
Italy was previously indecisive about withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative” mainly because Italy wanted to maintain mutually beneficial cooperation with China on the one hand, but did not want to bear pressure from Western countries because of the “Belt and Road Initiative” on the other hand.
Before officially withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, Meroni sent people to visit China for consultations, trying to prove that withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative” would not affect Italy’s attention to China.
But it is obvious that Meroni completely underestimated the negative impact of this move on Sino-Italian relations and the “Belt and Road Initiative” — After Italy joined the “Belt and Road Initiative”, China has placed Italy at the top of its foreign cooperation priorities. If Italy can still enjoy such a position after its withdrawal, it will inevitably lead to other countries following suit and questioning the “Belt and Road Initiative”.
Meloni’s preparation of bargaining chips for her visit to China in advance can only mean that although she regrets withdrawing from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, she still has not figured out how to balance the relationship between China, the EU and the United States.
As a major EU economy and a member of the G7, it is difficult for Meloni to sing a different tune from the EU and the United States, at least on the issue of imposing tariffs on China.
But at the same time, Meloni also knows that based on the background of Italy’s withdrawal from the “Belt and Road Initiative”, Italy must show enough sincerity if it wants to restart cooperation with China.
The EU will ban the sale of new fuel vehicles that are not zero-carbon emission from 2035.
China is the world’s largest electric vehicle industry and dominates the global electric vehicle industry. BYD has confirmed that it will open “super factories” outside of China in near the borders of Hungary and Serbia, and Italy could be the location of BYD’s second “super factory”.
Meloni wants to have a certain initiative, so she can only talk about economic and trade cooperation with China on the one hand, but on the other hand, she can find ways to maintain some noise that caters to the United States.
However, in front of Meloni, the Chinese senior officials have made it clear that China is willing to further strengthen political mutual trust with Italy to promote the development of China-Italy bilateral relations in a more mature and stable direction. This is a necessary condition for the two countries to deepen cooperation and achieve expectations.
As for how to strengthen political mutual trust, China has put forward a requirement for Chinese companies to invest in Italy, that is, Italy needs to provide a fair, safe and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies.
If Italy undermines the atmosphere of Sino-Italian cooperation again in the future due to pressure from the United States, the political mutual trust between China and Italy will probably be even more difficult to repair.
Therefore, if Meloni wants to continue the results of his visit to China, he must take practical actions to safeguard the development of Sino-Italian relations.
“All HELL BREAKS LOOSE” (In the Next Few Months) says FED Insider
Barbarism or Civilization
Luca Placidi:
Welcome, everybody. It is a great pleasure and honor to have with us today Professor Michael Hudson. For those who still do not know him, Michael is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and he is a researcher at the Levi Economics Institute at Bard College.
Just to mention a few works published with the help of technology, we want to recall Superimperialism, the Economic Strategy of the American Empire. Its third edition came out in 2021. Then we have “… And Forgive Them Their Debts,” published in 2018. The latest is The Collapse of Antiquity, published in 2023.
Michael is also a former Wall Street analyst, a political consultant, and is hosting the Geopolitical Economy Hour together with Radhika Desai, which is broadcast at Ben Norton’s YouTube channel, Geopolitical Economy Report. Professor, welcome, and thanks again for being with us today.
Michael Hudson:
Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m glad to be able to speak to an Italian audience.
Luca Placidi:
That is very good. Thank you. To kick off our conversation, would you agree that the Ukrainian war and even more the latest NATO summit with its final declaration are showing us that we are now back in a multipolar war, in which the global South it is opposed to the Western world?
Michael Hudson:
Well, it’s more than just a geographic split. We’re really in a civilizational split, and it goes much deeper. What’s at stake is what kind of economy is the world going to have?
Is it going to be a financialized, neoliberal post-industrial economy, which is what the United States and Europe are pushing? Or is it going to be the kind of economy that textbooks talk about, where economies produce agricultural and industrial goods to feed themselves and make everybody prosper? I almost would use Rosa Luxemburg’s phrase, Barbarism or Socialism, because the West no longer has the means of real economic control over trade and production. It only has military force, terrorist violence and corruption to maintain its control.
The NATO West does financial control by having loaded down the global South and even many Asian countries with dollarized debt for the last 70 years. That dollarized debt holds them in a financial neocolonialism, an international debt peonage. Besides that, the ultimate power that the United States and Europe have to maintain their unipolar control to prevent other countries from going their own way and pursuing their own interests is to bomb them and mobilize terrorism.
The NATO West has lost its basic industrial or agricultural control because it has outsourced its industry to China and other Asian economies, and its sanctions against Russia and other countries has obliged them to become self-sufficient instead of relying on the West for a widening range of their basic needs. So these countries are now in a position to use their labor, industry and agriculture to make themselves prosperous and regain control over their economies, not to make U.S. and European investors rich. They want to take control of their economies in a way that will raise their wages and living standards.
That can’t be done if they follow a policy of privatization, World Bank advice and the IMF’s instructions to sell off their land and raw materials, privatize and sell off their public infrastructure, communications, electrical systems and water rights to foreigners while getting rid of government regulation and social-support programs. The West’s demand is to let the private sector run everything without government “interference.” Well, there’s no way that any economy can grow and get prosperous without being a mixed economy with strong public infrastructure providing basic needs at non-monopoly prices.
There are many natural area for governments to operate more efficiently than the private sector. They can provide basic services that otherwise would be monopolized to charge extortionate prices to extract predatory monopoly rents for their owners. If a government doesn’t provide education, the result will be what’s happening in America, where the average cost of a college education is $40,000 or $50,000 a year. If you don’t have public health, you’re going to have a very expensive privatized health care that’s not available to everybody. In the United States that absorbs 18% of GDP, more than any other country. That kind of monopoly overhead doesn’t leave much room for the overall economy to be competitive with mixed public/private economies.
Most important, if you let money and credit be privatized by banks instead of doing what China has done and keep money as a public utility, then you let banks decide where the economy’s credit will be allocated. That makes them the economy’s central planners. Their preference is to supply credit not to finance industrial investment and growth, but to finance debt-leveraging to inflate prices for real estate, stocks and bonds, and for raiders to take over companies and empty them out, leaving debt-ridden shells in their place. like Thames Water in Britain, Sears Roebuck in the United States. That is what has been happening since the 1980s under Thatcherism and Reaganomics.
So the split between the West and the rest of the world, the global majority, is really about what kind of an economy most of the world will have. That’s why the United States is fighting so viciously to maintain its unipolar control. It’s fighting against the global majority today in the same way that it fought against the Soviet Union after 1917. It doesn’t want a rival kind of economic system to develop. So what we’re seeing is a split with the global majority that is trying to decide how to design an economy that’s going to help their member countries grow? That is the global fracture that is occurring, and it’s a civilizational break.
How are Global South countries to grow if they remain obliged to pay all of the dollarized foreign debts that they’ve been loaded down. These debts are the legacy of being obliged to follow destructive International Monetary Fund advice to impose austerity and to privatize and sell off their assets in the public domain in order to obtain the dollars to pay their foreign creditors? The Western model is thus basically a form of financial colonialism. Its anti-government philosophy has devastated the Wes’s economies as well as those of debtor countries.
The rest of the world thus has an object lesson in what to avoid if it does not want to end up looking like the United States, post-Thatcher/Blair Britain or Germany since its anti-Russia sanctions of2022. I’ve discussed this in The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism (2022). Today’s civilizational break is not only against Russia and China. You can trace the break back to the Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations in 1955, seventy years ago.
In 1955, what was called the Third World or non-aligned nations recognized that they were being made poorer and poorer by the rules of the world economy that American diplomats and geopolitical strategists institutionalized with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the dollar standard. That international trade and monetary system was exploitative, first and foremost against America’s potential rivals in Britain and other European countries, and against the former colonial systems of these countries that the United States sought to appropriate and exploit for its own benefit.
The post-World War II order has been a new kind of imperialism. It basically is a financial imperialism, not the European-style colonial imperialism enforced by a military occupation. Financial control has proved less costly and hence more efficient for the neoliberal mode of international exploitation. Non-aligned victim countries couldn’t break away in 1954 or since because Cuba, Indonesia and the other non-aligned nations were not large enough to “go it alone.” If they tried to go it alone, they would have ended up looking like Venezuela has looked like in the last few years, or like Cuba looked like after its revolution. If the United Sates and Europe had imposed such sanctions, countries resisting this system would have been obliged to surrender to the West to avoid economic disruption. But sanctions were not even necessary at that time under “free market” imperialism U.S.-style.
The United States was in a position to treat countries resisting this exploitation it as outcasts. Its threat was to tell countries that acted to protect their economies, and especially their public enterprise, that the West would isolate them if they tried to go it alone. Their economies were indeed too small, even on a regional level, to survive on their own. They felt that they needed U.S. support and that of its IMF and World Bank.
What has changed is the remarkable growth of socialist China since the 1990s and post-neoliberal Russia since the late 1990s under President Putin. Today for the first time, Eurasian nations have enough economic self-sufficiency outside of the United States and Europe to be able to go it alone. They no longer need to depend on the NATO West, which is losing its ability to economically control them.
In fact, it’s the NATO West that has become dependent on China, Russia and the rest of Eurasia, along with the Global South if its people can resist their own client oligarchies to throw off their financial chains and adherence to the self-serving U.S. “rules-based order.”
What is so ironic is that U.S. diplomacy itself is spurring their break-away. One might have expected that China, the Global South and India, Latin America and Africa came to realize just how they’re being exploited, they would have taken the lead in breaking away. Yet it is the United States and NATO that have driven them to break away, by imposing trade and financial sanctions that have forced them to go it alone.
Ever since the war in Ukraine by the United States to break Germany and Europe away from their trade and investment relations with Russia and China began in 2022, the United States has mobilized its European and other English-speaking dependencies to impose economic sanctions that has devastated economies obeying these policies.
The backlash resulting from German de-industrialization and America’s elbowing aside France as an arms supplier (e.g., for submarine sales to AUKUS and in trying to replace France in its former African possessions) is driving other countries away. America and Europe have isolated themselves from the Global Majority, replacing its prosperous trade and investment with Russia and China with economic dependency on the United States for oil and other higher-priced imports.
What’s so amazing is how self-destructive of its own global empire U.S. diplomacy has been. The focus of U.S. diplomacy on locking in its control over Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea by obliging them to join its anti-Russian and anti-Chinese sanctions has obliged these designated U.S. enemies to replacing trade dependency on the West with their own mutual self-dependency.
They realize that they can never depend on the United Stats and European satellites for imports again. That should have been obvious to U.S. strategists. Once a country is blocked from importing its food, what’s it going to do? It’s going to grow its own food. When the United States imposed sanctions on Russia to block European exports of food to it, for instance, Russia was driven to produce its own butter, crops and other food instead of importing it from the Baltics and other former suppliers.
When U.S. officials demanded that its allies stop exporting computer chips to China, it moved quickly to develop its own domestic supply.
Other countries can’t depend on the United States or Europe for their food because they may be cut off again. So they’ll have to become self-sufficient.
They can’t depend on the NATO West for industry or technology because it can try to disrupt their economy by interrupting their supply chains to force it to follow pro-NATO policies. As for Europe, it is left dependent on the United States now that it has let itself be isolated from Eurasia and the Global South.
The global fracture that is occurring in today’s world is not reversible. And it is all happening so quickly. Once a market is lost to countries able to free themselves and provide their own basic needs, that market is not recoverable.
If the United States and NATO Europe stops exporting food and industrial products to sanctioned countries, they will make these products themselves. So when you sanction a country, it’s as if you’ve provided them with tariff protection to nurture their own production. That’s the “infant industry” argument that enabled the United States to rise to industrial power in the late 19th century.
The logic was clearly spelled out by U.S. strategists. (I summarize this strategy in America’s Protective Takeoff: 1815-1914: The Neglected American School of Political Economy (2010). Needless to say, U.S. neoliberal rhetoric has sought to erase this history so as to “pull up the ladder” so that its logic will not be used by other countries to emulate the U.S. economic success – the same government sponsorship of industry that made Germany, France and other countries so successful since the 19th century.
Latin America and Africa are seeing that it is time to liberate their economic from “free-trade imperialism.” Instead of using their agricultural land to export plantation crops to the North, they’re going to use their land to begin feeding themselves with their own grain, their own rice and other food crops so that they no longer have to depend on American and European farm exports.
The U.S. policy of bullying countries by imposing trade sanctions has cut its own economic throat, so to speak. It’s almost humorous to see it dismantle the free-trade imperialism and dollar dependency that earlier generations of U.S. diplomacy tried so hard to impose on the rest of the world.
The meetings this year by the BRICS+ countries under Russian leadership this year and China next year are all about how to plan a trajectory for becoming independent from reliance on the West. That is what U.S. diplomacy itself has driven them to do.
Luca Placidi:
As you were saying, Professor, it seems like the TINA Paradigm has been destroyed because now we have alternatives. It seems that the European political class is hopelessly submissive to the U.S. agenda. This is really disturbing, at least for us in Europe, because the war in Ukraine has destroyed the European economy.
Just think, as you’ve described, how the impact of the sanctions has penalized industrial production especially in Germany and Italy. Yet this has not been enough for Europe to reverse course and pull out of this conflict.
Michael Hudson:
I think that you could call the war in Ukraine since 2022 an American war against Europe, because the great loser has been Germany, Italy, France and the rest of Europe. The United States has seen the writing on the wall and decided that if there’s going to be a fight between North America along with NATO against the rest of the world, it had better start by solidifying its control over Europe as a profitable market and debtor instead of its turning to Asia and being lost by the United States.
Essentially, U.S. strategists are acknowledging that they know that America is not able to produce a real industrial surplus anymore. Its neoliberal trade policy has outsourced its industry to Asia.
The only new market that it can secure if the Global Majority breaks away is that of Europe. That explains why the United States arranged for the Nord Stream pipeline to be blown up, and convinced Europe voluntarily to commit economic self-destruction by not buying low-priced Russian gas, oil and raw materials. While this has driven Russia and China together with their Asian neighbors, the losers have been European.
German industry has been moving out of the country to the United States and elsewhere for lower-cost energy. It’s been emigrating largely to the United States, making it the beneficiary. If you’re a German industrial company, what else are you going to do if its economy is shrinking.
If you look at labor productivity over the last hundred years, it’s goes parallel with energy use per worker.
Energy is really the key. That’s why a central aim of American foreign policy since 1945 has been to control other countries in two ways, starting with oil. The United States, along with Britain and Holland, have controlled the world oil trade so that they can turn off the electricity, turn off the lights of countries that try to break away and act in their own self-interest.
Along with oil, the second tactic that America has used is to control grain and food. Let independent countries starve in the dark. But here once again, the sanctions have mainly been to make Europe suffer.
Remember, America has fought against the European Economic Community ever since it was created in 1958. From the outset, America fought against the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). But for the EEC, the most important aim of integration was to protect its farmers and do for European agriculture what America had done for its agriculture.
Agricultural price supports enabled capital investment to raise farm productivity. Europe rationalized its agriculture and increased its capital investment to make it more productive. The result was that Europe has not only replaced its dependence on American food exports, but has become a major agricultural exporter. But now the expanded European Union is now suffering because of the sanctions not only against importing Russian gas to make fertilizer. And by supporting Ukraine, Europe is letting it dump its low-cost grain in Poland and other countries. Farmers already have staged riots to protest against their farm markets being undersold by the Ukrainians – with U.S. investors trying to buy up this land. That could roll back European agricultural independence and make it dependent once more on the United States or on countries that U.S. investors control.
The effect of this Cold War III so far has been to drive Europe back into the American orbit. The United States insists that there’s no alternative to this neoliberal geopolitics. Western textbooks indoctrinate students to believe that neoliberalism is the best way to run an economy efficiently – by not having a government to protect self-reliance and living standards, not to regulate against predatory monopoly and financial rent seeking. The aim is to let capitalism evolve into monopoly capitalism, which is really finance capitalism, because monopolies are organized by the financial sector as “the mother of trusts.”
Although the United States has said there’s no alternative, there obviously is. But if countries don’t follow an alternative, they’re going to end up looking like Germany. In fact, what’s happened to Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine and U.S. sanctions is an object lesson for other countries to see what they don’t want that to happen to them.
The neoliberal program has broken down in the West just as it has long since broken down for the Global South. Its central aim is to privatize the public sector. Yet for centuries the European capitalist takeoff was funded by industrial capitalists themselves aiming to lower the cost of production so that they could undersell other countries by government subsidy of tangible capital formation.
How can economies lower their cost of production? For starters, if companies are obliged to pay wages high enough for their workers to pay for their own health care and insurance, to pay for their own education, for their own debt-leveraged housing costs, the high price of paying a living wage will eat into industrial profits. To avoid this, European countries, like the United States, had their governments provide inexpensive basic needs so employers wouldn’t have to cover these costs.
The basic strategy of industrial capitalism was for governments to provide education, public health and basic infrastructure that otherwise would have been monopolized in private hands. Governments educated workers, trained them and helped raise their productivity by protecting and subsidizing capital investment. Governments provided water and electricity at subsidized rates so that labor would not have to spend its wages to buy high cost energy, high cost transportation and kindred basic needs.
The result was to lower the break-even costs of labor, so that European and American industrialists could undersell other countries.
Neoliberalism ended this seemingly obvious economic strategy. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan started a class war by the British and U.S. financial sectors against labor by privatizing their public utilities. Instead of England’s government providing clean water, which everybody needs to live, it sold off rent-seeking rights to financial managers raise prices to extract monopoly rents. To make matters worse, Thames Water and other privatized companies borrowed from banks and used the money to pay dividends to stockholders and buy their own stock to raise its prices to reap capital gains.
These rentier charges are now taking a big chunk out of the European wage earner’s budget. That makes employers pay higher wages. You can say the same thing for telephone service and other basic infrastructure utilities that now are privatized and financialized.
Privatizing formerly subsidized telephone service and communications makes workers pay much more. The result is a wage squeeze, but also a profit squeeze because of the high cost of living and doing business in a rentier economy.
So since 1980, the whole European model – in fact, the whole model of industrial capitalism – has been reversed. Instead of industrial capitalism trying to cut the costs of production, minimizing what Marx called the false costs, the faux frais of production, prices charged by privatized infrastructure monopolies have gone way up. Labor’s living standards throughout Europe have been squeezed at the same time that their wages have had to be increased so that they can afford to pay for privatized services that used to be subsidized public services. Following the neoliberal model has made Europe uncompetitive, just as it has deindustrialized the U.S. economy.
The lesson for China has been to have socialism to restore the 19th-century industrial ethic that nearly all economic observers believed was leading to socialism of one kind or another. China’s living standards have soared, yet its wages are lower than that of the neoliberal economies thanks to the fact that socialism provides inexpensive transportation, public health care and so forth as described above.
Most important of all, socialist China creates its own money and controls its credit system. Instead of the Bank of China lending money to financial predators to buy companies and load them down with debt and drive their stock prices before leaving them as bankrupt shells like Thames Water in England, the government spends money directly into the economy.
It’s overinvested in housing and real estate, to be sure, but it’s also invested in modernizing its high-speed railroads, modernizing its communication system, modernizing its cities, and above all its electronic internet system used for monetary payments. China has liberated itself from debt dependency on the West – and in the process, made the West dependent on it.
This could only have been done by government investment and regulation under a long-term plan. The Western financial model lives in the short run. If you’re going to allocate credit and resources to make fortunes by living in the short run by taking as much as you can as quickly as you can, you will not be able to make the capital investment to develop long-term growth. That’s why American information technology companies have not been able to keep up with their Chinese counterparts. Financialized “market forces” oblige them to use their income for stock buybacks and to pay out of dividends. That is the case with U.S. technology across the board.
China’s companies investing in information and internet technology plow their profits back into reinvestment in more research and development. Such innovation has shifted from the West to the East, which has rediscovered the logic of industrial capitalism developed by the 19th century’s classical political economists.
To be sure, China and other BRICS+ countries are trying to reinvent the wheel. They know that the Western model doesn’t work. The question is, what is the best alternative to neoliberalized, privatized and financialized economies?
It is amazing to me that there has been so little discussion of classical economics in the West. The value, price and rent theory of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and their contemporaries came to a head with Marx. That has left almost the only people talking about industrial capitalism’s economic reforms have been Marxists. Universities in America no longer teach the history of economic thought – or economic history, for that matter. It is as if there is only one kind of economy – the anti-government privatized “free market” that has taken over since the 1980s.
Students are taught that there is only one way to run an economy: the free enterprise neoliberal way. So when Asian and African countries send their students to the United States or England to study, they’re not taught about how industrial capitalism took off by raising wages and living standards to make labor more productive. Instead, the learn the economics of class war – from the employer’s short-term view.
Neoliberal trade theory is the most blatant example of today’s junk economics being awarded by Nobel Prizes as if that can somehow legitimize it. The result is the International Monetary Fund’s austerity plan masquerading as “stabilization plans.” Once a country like Argentina or Chile runs up a foreign debt, it is directed to obtain the money to pay this foreign debt by imposing anti-labor policies, dissolving labor unions, lowering wage levels while taxing labor (“consumers”) more, as if pauperized labor will make them competitive enough to earn enough export income to pay their foreign creditors.
When a policy like this has been shown to be destructive for the past century yet is still being imposed, it’s obvious that this is not an innocent error. You might call it a very successful error. It has succeeded in preventing the Global South from earning its way out of debt and from developing is own self-sufficiency in food and other basic needs. It has succeeded in creating domestic client oligarchies whose interests are to become agents of this Western NATO-centered model instead of seeking to develop their own economies.
It is to avoid this destiny that today’s geopolitical breakaway by the global majority in Asia, Africa and Latin America are moving to replace the finance-capitalist model. Their move to reinvent the wheel is following the logic of the original industrial capitalist takeoff that was evolving into socialism. If you look back to the late 19th century’s flowing of classical political economy, not only by Marx but by political parties across the political spectrum, we can see that there was going to be socialism of one kind or another.
What kind of socialism is it going to be? There was Christian socialism, libertarian socialism, Marxian socialism and other kinds of socialism. This classical literature and political debate was rich, but it came to an end with World War I. That was a disastrous turning point in Western civilization.
The rentier classes, the landlords, the monopolists and the bankers had been fighting back against the industrial reforms that were happening in the most advanced industrial economies of Europe and the United States. The wealthy elites were terrified that support for these reforms would lead in Europe to a revolution like that created Soviet Russia. The West was even more terrified of what seemed to be happening in Germany that was looking like it was likely to go socialist.
The vested rentier interests, especially the wealthiest classes, feared that this threatened to end the ability of a wealthy financial oligarchy of the One Percent, maybe even five percent of the population. For the past century it has built up its financial wealth by forcing the rest of the economy into debt. The result has been a social malaise as Western populations in the United States and Europe, have come to believe that There Is No Alternative.
The lack of an alternative has enriched the One Percent. The U.S. economy has polarized, and so has Europe’s economies. The wealth of Europe, Italy included, has been sucked up to the very top, to the financial layer that has taken control of economic planning and public policy as if their privatized self-interest is more productive and efficient than an alternative that would raise labor’s living standards and self-reliance.
Financial elites throughout the world are a cosmopolitan class. It’s not only wealthy Italians but wealthy Europeans, wealthy Americans draining money from their own industrial sectors, the agricultural and the commercial sector. This stateless international class has its law of motion in its drive to force the entire global economy into debt so as to use its debt leverage to foreclose, above all on the assets of the public sector by getting governments into debt.
Backed by the IMF, World Banks and U.S. courts, international bondholders (including domestic oligarchies keeping their wealth outside of their own countries) force debtor governments to sell off public infrastructure. In the case of corporate debt, creditors foreclose on companies and break them into parts.
This behavior has de-industrialized the United States and Britain. Yet while the economies of the United States and Europe have gotten poorer and poorer, the wealthiest One Percent have got richer and richer. That’s why the United States and Europe have not joined the Global Majority but are trying to fight against its demonstration that there is a better alternative for civilization.
The NATO West’s ruling elites have overplayed their hand. By treating the rest of the world as an enemy for resisting U.S.-sponsored control, this diplomacy has driven other countries together to create an alternative. That alternative involves creating alternative institutions to the International Monetary Fund in a BRICS central bank to deal with inter-government balance of payments relations.
It involves a new Bank for Economic Acceleration as an alternative to the World Bank, a bank to finance their own economic development by creating its own credit system to the global majority increase its infrastructure, agricultural and industrial investment. It also requires a new International Court of Justice to prevent oil companies and mining companies from polluting countries and resist being charged to pay for the cleanup costs that they’ve caused in their drive for quick natural-resource rents.
Ultimately, the Global Majority needs to create an alternative to the United Nations itself. All these institutions – the United Nations, the IMF and the World Bank – are subject to American veto power. The United States has long announced that a central tenet of its foreign policy is that it will not join any institution that it can’t control by vetoing if they do something that does not benefit the United States.
In the last few days, President Putin has proposed creation of a BRICS parliament. The aim is to create a large group of countries that will design a new set of the rules of how an international economy should work. President Putin also said that the United Nations has a good set of rules, but the United States has vetoed their application in practice. The fact that the United Nations doesn’t have an army has left it powerless to resist the U.S., Ukrainian and Israeli violations of basic international law.
This emerging alternative BRICS group certainly will leave the United Nations to operate on the sidelines, but the “real” reformed United Nations will consist of the group of the global majority and its own set of institutions, acting as a unit in which the United States does not have veto power. That will transform the dynamic of how most of the world’s economies operate.
All this is an area that economists don’t talk about. Academic economics has become tunnel visioned, with simplistic ideas of government spending, inflation, money and credit, all without a concept of economic rent as unearned income to be minimized rather than made the foundation for financial fortunes.
The Western dynamic of “wealth creation” has been to raise real estate prices on credit. The middle class is told that it is getting richer as its housing prices rise, yet the effect is to prevent new wage-earners from joining the middle class unless they inherit their housing from their parents. The economic discipline no longer talks about how a country can actually enrich itself. So what the Global Majority needs is really a New Economics,
Luca Placidi:
Thank you, Professor. There’s one other topic that is very important and that we are seeing at this moment. That is what is happening in Palestine, between Palestine and Israel and the war that they call “against Hamas” while they seek to drive out or destroy the entire Palestinian population.
Michael Hudson:
When politicians from the United States to Germany and other European countries talk about the Ukrainian war or what is happening to Palestinians right now, there is a uniform a bipartisan alignment. Trump is saying what Biden is saying, and so is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. That is to support Israel up to the end, and also Ukraine.
Yet the whole world has been shocked by the genocide that the Israelis are waging not only in Gaza but on the West Bank. Their brutality, the bombing of the hospitals, the assassination of reporters and journalists so that the world can’t see what is happening has catalyzed the world’s moral outrage that is setting its identity against that of the NATO West.
The attack against Palestinians is with American bombs, just as is the case with Ukraine’s and NATO’s attack on Russian-speaking territories. So it’s not simply Israel that is attacking Palestine. This is primarily an American attack. You can think of it as a logical extension of the U.S. attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria.
The common denominator is the American view that Israel serves as a U.S. landed aircraft carrier to control Near Eastern oil. If the United States can maintain control of the Middle East and its oil trade, it will retain the power to turn off the power of other countries by cutting them off from oil. As I explained earlier, oil has been a key to American power for the past century.
That is the military reason why the United States is backing Israel in dropping American bombs on Gaza, while the U.S. intelligence spy network is telling them where to bomb. American strategists have long followed the strategy that in order to win, you have to bomb the hospitals first.
The idea is not simply to kill the enemy population, but to cripple its members with anti-personal bombs to leave a lasting overhead cost in supporting women and men who are maimed for life. And most important is to bomb the children, so that they will not grow up to wreak retaliation.
The idea of making other Palestinians take care of crippled children who had their legs blown off or lost their arms is so inhuman, so against the most basic principle of civilization, that it has acted as a catalyst for other countries breaking away.
On July 25, 2024, Israeli President Netanyahu was invited to the U.S. Congress to ask for its military support for his planned attack on Lebanon and his hope to drag America into an attack on Iran. He put the issue in a way that I think you and I can agree on: Having killed or wounded as many as 180,000 Palestinians in Gaza and accelerated settler murders and destruction of Palestinians and their property on the West Bank, he explained that, in words reminiscent of Rosa Luxemburg: “This is not a clash of civilizations, it’s a clash between barbarism and civilization, between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.”
I think that this is precisely what is at stake. Netanyahu and his neocon supporters in the U.S. Congress who invited him indeed have thrown down the military gauntlet threatening the world with yet new U.S. and Israeli violence against the Middle Eastern oil-producing countries.
Today’s buildup to such a war threatens the entire world with a new barbarism.
There already was a sort of tendency for the rest of the world, for Asia and the Global South to hope that somehow they could make do without making the enormous intellectual and moral break from the West. The feeling was that somehow they could survive through all this at least for the short run, as if things might somehow go back to some semblance of normal instead of continuing to polarize.
But what is happening in Israel the joint Israel-American attack on Palestine has shocked much of the world into realizing that this is what the United States might to do them, just as it’s what the US/NATO countries are doing to by fighting to the last Ukrainian. U.S. support for exterminating the Palestinians simply in order to use Israel as an arm to keep U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil is what is so abhorrent.
What is not to stop the Israelis from taking over Saudi Arabia and its oil, the Emirates, Kuwait, much as America did in Chile and Argentina to take over their minerals and land while assassinating labor leaders, land reformers and economics professors opposing Chicago School neoliberalism. The joint Israel and Ukraine wars have given a sense of urgency for other countries to realize that they have to act now in order to avoid a similar fate.
Other countries can’t simply be passive, because what is happening to the Palestinians can happen to all of them. That’s the degree to which Americans will go to maintain their global control. That’s why they are funding the Israeli attack on Palestine and the Ukrainian attack on Russian speakers. The Americans are providing the bombs and other weaponry, subsidizing their armies. This is what is creating the sense of urgency that is catalyzing the World Majority to realize that they can’t must act more rapidly and decisively to make a real break.
Luca Placidi:
Professor, I know that you’re extremely busy, so thank you very much. I want to thank you again, and I hope to have more time with you to go deeper on those topics. Thank you.
Michael Hudson:
Well, thank you. I hope we’ll have a chance to have a follow-up for all of this.
Luca Placidi:
We will, absolutely. Thank you very much.
Michael Hudson:
Well, thank you again for having me.
Preppy Tonk and Jon
Submitted into Contest #24 in response to: Write a story set in the dark recesses of space where the two main characters are often at odds with each other in humorous and comedic ways.… view prompt
Charlie Murphy
“Well, let’s have a trace then.”
“Trace?”
“No, a race! Goddamn u, author. Fix your typos!”
“Yeah, you ready, Enourghipool… er, Preppy Tonk?”
“You know it, Jon!” she said and stretched her furry brown legs.
“Your silver eyes look like pools of mercury.”
“Thanks? I guess?” Crouching down in racing position, Preppy Tonk lifted her leg.
“Did you, make a stinky?”
“Yes, … I… did!”
‘”It smells like rotten eggs.”
Preppy Tonk’s face turned red.
“You made a stinky, you made a stinky!”
“Whatever.”
“Ready…” Jon announced as a star shot through space.
Preppy Tonk’s muscles tensed up.
“Set…”
“I know what comes next!” Preppy Oblanka Tonk smiled.
“Go!” Jon whispered.
“Run!”
“Jump!”
“Kick!”
“Touch the stars!”
“Look into the sun!”
“How? I’m blind.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Why did you claim you were blind then?”
“Cuz I’m goofy!”
“But you’re not a hobo dog.”
“Goofy isn’t a hobo.”
“Oh , what is he?”
“A goofy dog, duh!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I know these things,” Preppy Tonk whipped her huge head back with confidence.
“Oh, so you’re a professional now?”
“Yeppers.”
“Good grief!”
“Oxymoron, oxymoron, oxymoron!”
“Hey, that’s not nice!”
“No, an oxymoron is contradictory terms.”
“Oh, why is it called that then?”
“I don’t know. Do I look like an English professor?”
“I’m not sure how to take that…”
The two rivals panted as they ran throughout space. They passed an orange planet, then a blue one made of hot dogs, and finally, Earth.
“Stop describing everything!”
“Who are you talking to, sis?” Jon asked as a drifting robotic Golden retriever passed in between them.
“Our creator again. He keeps describing the scene,” Preppy Tonk replied.
“Isn’t he supposed to do that?”
“Yeah, but it’s getting annoying!”
“So? We’re competing against each other. That’s more important, right?”
“I guess so,” Preppy Tonk said, biting her blue puffy lip.
“Atta girl,” Jon replied and patted her on the back.
“Hey, how can you pat me on my back? I thought you were ahead of me.”
“Uh… I forgot that explanation.”
“Did you?… or did the author forget?”
“I have no cosmic idea, Preppy Tonk.”
“I thought you knew everything.” She raised an eyebrow.
Preppy Tonk glared at her opponent.
“You know, for an alien slug, you sure are fast!”
“Hmm, alien slug…. Where have I heard that before?”
“Maybe in a book about kids who can turn into animals?” shrugged Preppy Tonk.
“Almost at the finish line!” Jon said with glee.
“How can you tell?” Preppy Tonk asked, putting her hairy claws together.
“Checkered line coming up!” Jon pointed straight ahead with his slimy antennae.
“Oh, just cuz there’s a checkered line means the end of the race?” Preppy Tonk said, putting her paws on her brown meaty hips.
“Yes that’s the rule,” Jon said, adjusting his squared glasses.
“Well… OK,” Preppy Tonk said as she scratched her ear.
“Have an itch?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I have an itch, too.”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Yeah-uh!” Jon said, passing a large pink asteroid.
“Well, then, where’s your itch, huh?”
“I don’t want to say.”
“Ew.”
“OK, OK, it’was my arm,” Jon smiled.
“Oh, that’s not bad.”
“It itches more than yours,” Jon said, scratching his arm.
“Nuh-uh, mine itches more.”
“Let’s finish the race!” Preppy Tonk exclaimed.
Jon ran through a hoop, jumped over the fence, and hauled through lava.
“I win! I win!” Preppy Tonk did the macarena.
“You cheated.” Jon pouted.
“No, I didn’t!
“Yes, you did!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“OK, I believe you,” Jon said.
“Knock knock,” Preppy Tonk whispered.
“Who’s there?” Jon asked.
“Dwayne.”
“Dwayne who?”
“Dwayne the bathtub, I’m dwowning!”
Jon laughed like a hyena. “Mine’s better!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, a duck walked into a bar and ordered some quackers. When the waiter asks her how she will pay, the duck says ‘put it on my bill.’”
“Not funny at all, my rival.”
“Humor is subjective, so I win!” Jon blew a raspberry at her.
“How old are you?” asked Poppy Tonk.
“I am an adult.”
“Cool, I’m a kid.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really!”
“Prove it.”
“How?”
“Sing baa baa black sheep.” Preppy Tonk started singing.
“You have a beautiful voice!”
“And?”
“And what?”
“AREN’T YOU GONNA SING?”
“No, why would I do that?”
“I thought we were competing,” Preppy Tonk said and sneezed.
“Oh, yeah, goofy me. I forgot. By the way. Bless you or gazoontite, or whatever.”
“Thanks, wait… Goofy?”
“The author‘s getting tired of ‘silly’.”
“But, he used it.”
Preppy Tonk shrugged. “It’s his story.”
“Oh, OK.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I like that word very much!”
“I do too, but let’s move on.”
“Alright, wanna have a tickle fight?”
“You know I do!”
She tickled his foot. “Geetsa-geetsa… Hey, look, a tree; it’s floating in space,” Preppy Tonk said and floated to it and she giggled. “Stop.” Grabbed an apple. “This will knock your socks off!” She started juggling.
“Oh yeah?” Jon said as he cocked an eyebrow. “Watch this!” He grabbed the tree and shook it until every apple detached and floated into space.
“Impressive?”
“Thank you. I’m the King.”
“King of what?”
“King of Apple!”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really.”
“Well, I‘m the Queen of Blueberry Squash Pie.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Wanna keep going?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“We made it to the thousandth word!”
As a babysitter, what was your, “Okay, that’s the last time I babysit for this family,” moment you had during a childcare job?
When I was about 13, a lady a block over (someone I didn’t know but lived on the same street as other people that I babysat) wanted me to babysit her 8 or 9 yo son 3 days a week over the summer while she worked. The first day was MISERABLE and I told her I wasn’t coming back.
The kid was unmedicated ADHD with no accommodations/schedule/discipline in place. He was a Tasmanian devil – literally bounced off walls, jumped on/hit/kicked you if you said no to something, was destructive to everything. The kids on his block (the ones I babysat for) refused to play with him b/c he was too rough (and these were rough and tumble kids – 7 kids close in age, but they had awareness and empathy for others).
From what I learned later, he’d been kicked out of every camp and daycare that she enrolled him in and school was pretty close. How this mother thought that an 8th grader would be able to handle him for 9 hours every day is beyond me.
I took him to the park where he pushed kids off swings and down the slide rather than wait his turn. We left the park and he proceeded to run into the street b/c he was mad that I said we had to leave b/c of his behavior, after he hit and kicked me when I was holding his hand.
He threw his lunch around the house and smashed it into the carpet, tore up a board game, threw the neighbor kids’ (my usually charges) ball down the gutter when we went outside b/c they didn’t want to play with him, tossed a blanket over me from the indoor jungle gym they had in the basement and jumped on me repeatedly, and so much more!
Then mom was 2 hours later than she said she would be and hadn’t answered the phone when I called. I was exhausted and done.
She paid less per hour than most of the other parents paid for nighttime babysitting when the kids were asleep and then only paid me for the hours she scheduled me for, not the extra hours since she was late. When she got home, I said that I wouldn’t be coming back and wouldn’t recommend anyone.
Now I know that this kid could not control himself and we didn’t have as much information as we have today on ADHD, but the parents were decidedly the problem in this equation – there’s only so much a young teenage kid can do.
ETA: I should mention that this was probably 1991 or 1992 – I don’t remember if it was the summer before or after 8th grade.
Men Are Course Correcting the Dating Market
Why do Chinese users have Zhihu instead of Quora?
I am a Chinese citizen who also happens to be a content creator on both Quora and Zhihu. Zhihu, often referred to as the Chinese version of Quora, once had a similar UI layout and community atmosphere to Quora. As of July 27, 2024, I have around 14,000 followers on Zhihu. This is because I have shared over 500 answers on family education and adolescent learning issues over the past year. While 14,000 followers is not a number to boast about, it at least indicates that I am a dedicated Zhihu user.
However, if we look solely at the growth rate of followers, my follower count on Quora has increased significantly faster than on Zhihu. This month marks my third month of writing on Quora, though my writing has been occasionally interrupted by work. For instance, I took a break from Quora writing for the past 14 days due to a family trip. Despite this, I have gained 1,200 followers and accumulated 1.5 million views. I am quite satisfied with these numbers, especially considering my limited English proficiency and reliance on translation tools for complex sentence structures. I can only attribute this success to the large number of friendly users on Quora. They are willing to read my articles about Chinese life, tolerate my poor English, and often put up with sentences that have a machine-translated feel. Nonetheless, they encourage me and provide detailed feedback and suggestions.
Even some users who are biased against China have written lengthy comments on my posts. Although I often completely disagree with their views, I still find their input valuable. Writing lengthy critiques at least shows they are real, communicative individuals rather than bot accounts. Therefore, I also want to express my gratitude to those who criticize me.
In this regard, the community atmosphere on Quora is better than on Zhihu. Zhihu’s official policies seem more focused on directing traffic towards profitable content. Of course, I do earn some income from my writing on Zhihu each month. However, this profit-driven community model brings some issues. The main problem, in my view, is that genuine, selfless sharing rarely gets sufficient traffic, which discourages many high-value users. It’s hard to imagine a community that doesn’t encourage serious writing being favored by knowledgeable individuals.
My most popular article on Zhihu received 60,000 “upvotes” and was bookmarked 130,000 times, bringing me millions of views. But I consider this an anomaly. In many cases, I need to rely on luck rather than writing quality to gain significant traffic distribution on Zhihu.
Chinese commercial apps are involved in intense market competition, and most users’ leisure time is consumed by short videos or live streaming. Fewer people are reading text content. While I know Quora is also affected by this trend, the impact is more pronounced on Zhihu.
To my surprise, I found that some older users on Quora seriously read my articles and give enthusiastic responses. I am flattered by this. In China, many elderly people are stubborn and never admit their mistakes, leading to many family conflicts and hindering young couples from establishing good family relationships. Moreover, those over 70 in China were teenagers during the tumultuous period between the end of the ROC and the establishment of the PRC, making them almost illiterate.
However, the elderly users on Quora seem to remain passionate about understanding others’ perspectives and updating their knowledge. Just from their writing, it is hard to tell they are seniors. This has given me the best impression of elderly people in developed countries since I joined Quora. I am convinced this is a state only achievable in a highly developed society. In China, we may need to wait a few more years to reach this level.
Additionally, some Quora space administrators have invited me to join their spaces and share my articles, encouraging me to keep writing. It has been many years since I felt this kind of sincere interaction on the internet, where people come together out of interest rather than profit.
In summary, I will continue writing about parent-child relationships and adolescent learning issues on Zhihu. There are always people waiting for my writing, drawing inspiration from my words, and solving their life problems. I take pride in helping others.
At the same time, I will also continue writing on Quora because it allows me to experience the genuine interactions of the early internet days.
If I had to compare, I would say Quora is a community that cares more about its creators than Zhihu.
China Just Won the Future of South America With THIS New Move!
BRICS+ plus BRI
What was something that someone said or did that has changed you forever?
Back when I was an eleven-year-old in the 6th grade, I lived in a poor mountain community in Northern California. Most of the townspeople relied on the lumber mill to provide for their meager income. There were a lot of people barely scraping by on what little money came in.
Times were tough.
A lot of times the mill shut down and families were forced to move out of town to find employment elsewhere.
I lost a lot of friends that way.
Kids went hungry. There were a lot of skinny children up in those mountains. A lot of those kids were wearing shoes with holes in them.
In the snow.
Desperate times.
Judge Richard Eaton was an “old-timer” in Shasta County. A pioneer. He was an octogenarian with a kind heart and a flush bank account. He married my grandparents!
He was an avid outdoorsman and angler. He enjoyed coming up to the mountains to fish. Sometimes, he would stop by our small classroom and give nature lectures.
He would bring in a stuffed raccoon, or a taxidermied owl and set it up on a desk in front of the class and give his talks. We would sit wide-eyed, fascinated, listening to him describe how the animal hunted for food, or built a nest or comfortable burrow, warm enough to survive during the winter snows. He was a natural storyteller and had a way with words.
We would raise our little hands and ask question after question, enthralled and intrigued with his wisdom. We were always thrilled to have Judge Eaton stop by. We hugged him goodbye when it was time for him to leave. I’d see his wrinkled face break into a big grin as tears welled up in his eyes, hard to break away.
I could feel his pity for us skinny little waifs.
One day, a letter was sent home to all the parents in my class.
It said we had the opportunity to attend National Environmental Education Development (N.E.E.D) Camp for one week at no charge to the parents!
This was an expensive gift to attend a weeklong camping adventure, what with meals, transportation, insurance and staff provided for an entire crop of school children!
The generous gift of partial scholarship, provided by Judge Richard Eaton, in cooperation with the Shasta County Board of Education, made it a possibility for every single child to attend, no matter their financial circumstance!
Exciting news!
N.E.E.D Camp was a place where the kids learned about the environment; survival skills in the wilderness, wildlife, geology, ecology, plant identification, weaving fish traps and shelter building, as well as learning how to use a compass and reading topographical maps. It was all covered in the week-long school.
Before we left for camp, we were given a three- day supply of “ImmunOak” in our daily orange juice. Poison oak didn’t grow in the mountains, but was plentiful at N.E.E.D Camp. Back in those days, the FDA hadn’t yet banned the magic elixir, so I drank down my disgusting anti-venin like a good girl, and to this day, thirty-something years later, I still am immune to poison oak!
The day we departed, we were packed into a bus with all our gear, kids, teachers and high school counselors, and made the hour-and-a-half long journey to the camp. We arrived at camp, got our cabin assignments, and settled in for our first time away from home.
Goodbye Mommy!
It was great!
We caught tadpoles and learned about their development. We hiked seven mile loops, through caves (filled with bats) and over waterfalls, collecting specimens to write our reports in the field, amidst trickling creeks and wildflowers. We took water samples from the natural watershed and observed fish in the streams as we tried our hand at catching some in our homemade traps.
We didn’t have any luck.
We watched the deer feeding on the grass right outside our cabin, and learned to identify species of birds. We glassed bald eagles and spied on squirrels and raccoons.
We were even dropped off, solo, without a light, on a pitch-black trail one dark night, and had to hike back, in the dark woods, alone, to find our way back to the rest of the group by ourselves. Frightening!
I was proud of myself that I didn’t cry.
This is stuff “city kids” don’t learn about in the classroom.
This wasn’t any regular classroom!
Judge Eaton spoke at the camp. He gave a slideshow on bears. It scared me to know I was out in the dark with them. It also made me proud. I learned survival skills at a very young age from N.E.E.D Camp.
Afterwards, while he was packing up his projector and the other kids had finally moved away from him, I got up the nerve to approach this gray-haired icon.
I said hello and introduced myself. I told him my grandparents names and told him he had married them long ago. He pretended to remember. He smiled at me kindly.
I thanked him for giving me a scholarship to attend N.E.E.D Camp. I told him I had learned so much and that I was very appreciative.
His eyes got wide and he looked shocked. He pulled me into a hug and knelt before me, eye-level.
“Child, in all these years I’ve been providing this fund, you’re the first young person to say those words. I appreciate hearing them, but I always want you to remember, that whenever you give a gift, you should never, ever expect to hear a word of thanks in return. Ever! Because the gift is in the giving, itself. Not in the praise we receive for giving it. Do not expect to be congratulated for it. Do you understand me?”
I nodded my head and turned away, disappointed in the rebuff.
What a weird, old guy!
Of course, I didn’t understand him, then.
I was only a child.
But I thought back to that moment over the years, and one day, I finally caught up to his wisdom.
I understand perfectly what he means now.
Beautiful.
Those simple words changed me forever.
When I give a gift, I don’t expect to receive accolades or thanks. I don’t expect the recipient to express gratitude or overwhelming graciousness; my heart already feels thankful for the beautiful blessing I’ve bestowed. And that’s a gift in itself. A gift I’ve given to myself.
By the time I had made it to high school, I had garnered such respect for N.E.E.D Camp, that I went back and volunteered as a camp counselor when I was seventeen.
Somehow, I was assigned a cabin of little boys, instead of girls.
Those little guys were a handful, but it was a great experience all over again.
Today, it is part of the curriculum of most Shasta County schools for their students to attend the camp. It is a requirement as part of passing the grade level.
Over 70,000 students have attended the camp over the years and have acquired basic outdoor skills other students in classrooms throughout the USA will never be required, nor even think are important to learn about!
Because those students aren’t mountain kids.
They probably don’t need to worry about being lost in any area bigger than a mall!
Like we do.
I’m thankful to both Judge Eaton and the Shasta County Board of Education for making a difference. N.E.E.D Camp quite possibly played a part in saving my life later on in life. And the experience changed me forever.
The Record Searchlight (April 11, 2011)
Since 1971, more than 70,000 students have increased their knowledge of environmental science after going through the weeklong camping experience at the Whiskeytown Environmental School in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the school will host a free barbecue with live music and a history lecture Saturday.
Sponsored by the school and the Shasta Historical Society, the lecture will cover topics of interest before the school arrived amid the environmental revolution in the beginning of the 1970s. Clinton Kane, park ranger, will be the main speaker.
As a general campground in the mid-1900s, church youth groups seasonally used the area for a camp. Before this period, the land served as a stomping ground for the American Indian community. The history, Kane said, has yet to be fully recovered. “It’s still a work in progress in terms of learning about the history and putting it together,” he said. “I’d like to go as far back as to the mining use of the history, but it’s kind of sparse.”
During the Gold Rush era, the area became a major transportation route for miners heading toward Weaverville from Redding. Inside the park, miners, along with farmers and ranchers, worked on the mining hot spots during the 1850s.
The school, a National Environmental Education Development (N.E.E.D.) camp, specializes in improving environmental education for elementary and middle schoolchildren. “Facilities and institutions like the N.E.E.D. camp provide a special dimension to the youth of our community,” said Pat Carr, Shasta Historical Society lecture series coordinator. “Oftentimes, they aren’t going to get it in the classroom. This is an opportunity to take the classroom outdoors. And the fact that this has been going on for 40 years with 70,000 students makes us appreciate these extraordinary treasures that are in our mist.”
Fifth- and sixth-graders across several counties make reservations at the school for the overnight trips where students stay in cabins and enjoy campfires. During their stay, they build onto what they’ve learned of the environment in the classroom with hands-on activities with naturalists. This usually lasts a week. The school offers day camps for younger children starting at the kindergarten level.
With generations of children and later their children heading to the camp, Kane said it has become somewhat of a tradition for north state students.
“It’s kind of a tradition in Northern California,” he said. “But, unfortunately, with the budget crisis happening on the state and federal level, we don’t know if the school will continue as it did back in the day.”
A downward economy and budget cuts have decreased revenue for educational programs like this one. Whiskeytown may be one of the few N.E.E.D. camps left in the country, Kane said.
US American Reacts – Are We the Baddies?
What screams “I’m upper class”?
- Good posture. If you look at how upper class people walk, they stand perfectly straight and have a graceful swing to their step.
- Being very respectful with staff, waiters, taxi drivers etc.
- Eating all sorts of different food and not being fussy about food. This is a very tell tale sign again, someone who’s reluctant about trying new food or has never tried foreign food is usually not upper class.
- Being able to make small talk with basically anyone. This is an important skill to have and that we’ve learned by attending a lot of formal events.
- Having impeccable table manners. This is the ultimate test and it will betray you instantly. Sitting up straight, no elbows on the table, knowing which cutlery to use, keeping your voice down etc. If you want to know within the very first seconds, look at whether they have put their napkin on their lap (correct) or left it on the table (rude) immediately after sitting down to eat. EDIT: Other table manners include: Not spreading out your elbows (keep them closed at all times), no singing, bringing your spoon/fork to your mouth and not the opposite, not cutting potatoes or salad with a knife (you fold the salad and use your fork to cut the potato), making small talk with your right hand neighbour at a dinner (they’re your official conversation buddy and the table plan will probably have been set up with this in mind) and not having a young or newly married couple sitting right next to each other during a formal dinner. An old fashioned one is also not to peel any fruits with your hands. One of my mom’s friends often mentions how, during her first dinner with her in laws, they offered her a peach for dessert and watched expectantly to see if she would know how to peel it using only her fork and knife.
- NOT doing the “baisemain”. You know, that very supposedly classy way of greeting a woman by kissing her hand. There are very strict rules for when you are allowed to do it. It should be in a private environment and to greet a married lady only. Oh and your lips are not supposed to actually touch the hand. Otherwise it is considered very tacky and rude.
- Not asking huge favours from other people. This is a weird one but it’s a “faux pas” that I notice all around me. It is not upper class behaviour at all to ask too much of a big favour from other people. You can ask someone to send you their notes for example, but don’t ask them to bring them to your place or type them out for you because they’re handwritten. Basically any favour that makes things too convenient for you and too much of an inconvenience for the other person is a no no.
- Not showing off your money or luxury goods. It is not considered classy to wear anything that features the name or logo of a brand in a very ostentatious way. That is “Nouveau Riche” behaviour. Being upper class is all about being understated. That also applies to luxury hotels and exotic holidays. We don’t post about it on social media.
- Being agreeable, polite and social. One of the most important things my mother taught me when I was a kid is that being shy is not an excuse for being rude. And it is definitely something that will make it very obvious whether you had an upper class upbringing or not. When you are talking to someone you know and a friend joins you but your interlocutor does not know them, you interrupt your conversation and introduce them, then make an effort to help them integrate the conversation. This might sound basic to a lot of you but I’ve noticed a lot of my middle class friends fail that test. Keeping to your own at social events is also not acceptable. Not thanking your host after a meal is not acceptable. Basically, get over your shyness.
- It’s about experiences, not goods. Upper class people are well travelled, have done internships abroad, are doing all sorts of different activities outside of school, go to summer camps and are not afraid of taking risks.
- They won’t tell you they’re upper class. Bragging about your social status is, again, Nouveau Riche behaviour.
Some MM art constructions
The theme is anointing,,,
This next one is my favorite of the entire bunch.
Why do people believe China’s economy cannot recover when their onshore manufacturing industry is intact, and they are also improving on their high-end manufacturing?
Don’t look at the headlines
Look at what they are saying in the paragraphs
They are saying China can never go back to the days of higher growth
They are saying that China cannot go back to 12–14% growth that it had for a decade or so
The Headlines say Chinas Economy can’t Recover
Yet when to look at what RECOVERY MEANS, it’s always the old days of 12–14% growth
The Headlines are always misleading
China slowdown woes continue
This is the headline
Yet if you see slowdown, it always references to 2015/16 and comparisons
The common theme is China which once grew with double digits can’t grow beyond 5% a year today
It’s true of EVERY ECONOMY ON EARTH
The US has been growing at 1.5% – 2.5% a year for a long time whereas it grew at 9% in the 1960s and 7% in the 1970s
Likewise China grew at 12% when it’s economy was $ 6 Trillion. Now it’s $ 19 Trillion and three times larger so obviously growth will slow down to 5%
Maybe without the Real Estate Reforms it would have been 6% or 6.25% but that would have caused a long term headache
So look beyond the headline
Look at what they say
Except a few people like Gordon Chang or Serpentza or Peter Zheihan – 99% of the Economists always talk of Chinas underlying strength while saying it can’t go back to the old days
And the Mainstream Media keep deliberately manipulating the headlines
Parents Have MELTDOWN At Wedding When Son Exposes Them For Covering Up Brother Sleeping With Ex Wife
I love how men are supposed to humiliate themselves to protect OTHER PEOPLE’S image.
Who are some famous intellectual badasses?
It is quite hard not to admire Mark Twain. The man was incredibly clever and skilled in deconstructing damaging narratives and social constructions… everyone always speaks of the now-controversial “Huckleberry Finn”, but he also wrote another great book — the now shamefully forgotten Pudd’nhead Wilson.
In Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain takes apart the “one drop rule” myth of black ancestry, and does so beautifully… two boys are mixed at birth, one fully white, the other of distant black ancestry. Twain dives into things like scientific racism, racial superioty, all themes incredibly controversial for his day and age — his Pudd’nhead Wilson was published in 1894. Huckleberry Finn was published ten years earlier, in 1884. And there, too, he deconstructed myths and humanized a part of the population (black people, former slaves) that too many in society saw as “lesser”.
Above we see Twain with his best friend, a former slave named John T. Lewis on whom he based some of his black characters. I would label Mr. Twain every inch the “intellectual badass”. If only for amazing quotes such as: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” Or: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it!”
Mark Twain was the sort of no-nonsense, straightforward, razor-sharp wit that comes around perhaps once a century, if even that. He was the real deal. And he didn’t give a damn about what society thought of him — he was the very rarest of creatures: honest, genuine and true intellect expressed with eloquence unmatched.
Russia’s Harsh Response┃Putin Is Sending ZIRCON Long-Range Hypersonic Missiles To CUBA and VENEZUELA
Do you know anyone who won the lottery & what did they do with it?
I know a great man who won $3 million on a scratcher while Covid was coming on full swing.
At the time he was living in a small one bed apartment with his girlfriend, working part time at a gas station. They shared a beat up, out of date vehicle that drew attention from every police officer on the road.
Four months before this, they were hotel hopping weekly and barely able to feed themselves.
The day he got the check from the lottery office, he went to the bank and got set up with an account and an advisor and put 75% into a stock portfolio and used the rest to buy safe vehicles for himself and his girlfriend, as well as a home for the two to build a life in.
His main goal with his winnings is to never be homeless again and to always be able to provide for his family without worry. He set up a monthly transfer between two accounts to “pay” himself a budget and the rest is in a long term portfolio is designated for their retirement.
Two weeks later he left his job. Three weeks after that his girlfriend left her job and they moved into their new home.
They spent some time enjoying this weightlessness and traveling.
Four months after he cashed in, he proposed to his girlfriend. The only thing preventing him before was their lack of financial stability.
This august will be the 2 year anniversary of my husband’s winning ticket purchase.
I am back to working full-time now at a new job, which is a choice he knew I’d make quickly because of my own pride and desire to be productive.
My husband still enjoys his free time, and has been spending more time in nature and with his ‘brothers’ who need a positive male figure in their lives.—- -brothers by choice who ended up being wolves coming from the woodworks———edited 01/2023.
To this day, my husband will tell you that “God” didn’t give him that money. The “devil” did. It was a failed attempt at claiming his soul, but if the devil(evil) is out there, so is God(light/love). My husband chooses love and light every time.
—- update: it is now the beginning of 2023 and we are finally settling into where we want to be with finances and working toward new goals. We set ourselves up for low monthly bills in that first year, so that we can maintain our home and bills on our typical income with a little help from investment dividends. (I also highly recommend reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki).
We have had a huge gear switch in mentality as we are expecting to expand our family this year! We are beginning another round of reviewing our finances and spending habits in order to reframe our budget and prepare for what is to come!
Our “luck” has exposed many wolves that came rushing out of the woodwork and has left my husband’s circle dwindled. We found much strength in family, as well as solitude. We wish you all much love, light, and peace in the upcoming year!
The Divine Purpose of Cats | 6 types of cats that expel negative energy from your life!
Why hasn’t communism worked except in China?
The fucked up thing about this identify politics is to shoot the arrow first and draw the target later.
It’s an arrow called “this is communist” and wherever it is shot, it must be communist. It doesn’t matter if the target is communist, but it has to be, because there is an arrow called “this is communist” on it.
Western definition of communism is fucked up, for starter.
Communism is supposed to be, in the theory of Marxism, the ultimate form of human society. It can only be reached when the productivity of human race is in an unthinkable high level, where people wouldn’t be worried about survival anymore but can focus on distributing to the society.
It’s not that “communism will come and confisticate your private property and make you poor”, it should be that “when communism became feasible, people would not have to own private properties”. However, everything can be interpretated from different angle and perspective, thus came up with different conclusions.
USSR was socialist.
Vietnam is socialist.
Every so called communist country in human history is actually socialist, and so is China.
The very foundamental rule of social format is that the social structure must match with the social productivity.
If somehow a liberalism and capitalism believer time travelled to 5000 years ago, to a slavery society, would it be possible for this person to apply capitalism there? Assuming they could communicate.
The answer is No. A big, fat NO.
Because the social productivity of a slavery society simply cannot support the foundation of capitalism, mass production.
Same reason when China naively tried to practice communism to accelerate the development in 50’s. It’s called the Great Leap Forward, and we all know that it failed.
Public ownership of means of production in socialism is the result of productivity development, not the cause of it. Productivity cannot be raised by simply forcing people to contribute their personal belongings to the country.
Communist party of China learnt that through some painful lessons, and decided to embrace capitalism, hence the reform and open in 1978.
Karl Marx had written in his books that human society should be developed from capitalism to socialism and eventually to communism. Capitalism, in the period of low productivity, is very good to stimulate people’s motive and creation. But it also has its downside, such as the
Matthew effect:
It’s because the rich has means of production, which actually creates value.
Say a crafts person made a 500USD sword from a 50USD steel, 450USD got created through the smithing.
One the other hand, financial market doesn’t create value, but only to re-distribute the wealth from some people to the others.
For those who relying on the salary to live, all they can do after getting paid is to spend the money, and the money would flow back to the capitalists whom sell everything. However, the capitalists cannot spend all their money, thus the rich getting richer.
To solve this, China decided to keep the state-owned enterprises.
Their highest priority is not to make more profit, unlike every private company, but to maintain the control of the government over senstive and critical industries, and to provide social welfare. such as public transporation, water, electricity, etc.
China’s water, natural gas, and electricity prices are extremely stable, not long throughout a year, but can be stable for years. Because it’s closely related to the living standard of every Chinese, and can cause instability in society.
China Railway still executes the price standard of 2000’s for passengers. Chongqing North to Zhengzhou East, 1068KM, and the price for a second class seat in bullet train is 512RMB, or roughtly 70 USD. If taking the regular 120KMPH train and the regular seat, the price is 156RMB, or roughly 20 USD.
Government doesn’t care if China Railway loses money on passenger business, because it’s almost certain negative profit. As long as it keeps the punctuality and other service qualities, the government will be satisfied.
Farmers carrying their vege and other products going into the city for better prices. 40KM distance, it used to take them over 2 hours and 2 transit buses, and now is 22 minutes and only 1 USD.
There is another train in Hunan Province, specifically for farmers, which is free to take.
It’s not charity, but only the social responsibility of state-owned enterprises.
In China, after a natural disaster, say earthquake, we expect the government to establish tents within days, preferablly within the same day.
State grid would restore the electricity in a few hours to a few dozen hours.
China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom would re-establish cellphone network also in a few hours to a few dozen hours.
People’s Liberation Army are expected to be at the center as the first external rescue force, and they usually are.
Because of the constant investment in infrastructure from the state-owned enterprises, I haven’t experienced a blackout for years. The last time I remember having a blackout is probably 2013 or 2014. It was a summer night, and I slept in my car instead.
Sometimes, their service attitude may not be the best, but we can always count on them.
As for some other state-owned companies, they are also to be expected to have more profit, such as China National Machinery Industry Corporation, China State Shipbuilding Corporation, Sinochem Corporation, etc.
However, they also have another duty which is to lead the tech development of China.
China is the leading country in electricity related technology, especially ultra high voltage trasmission,
because China has the needs to move the electricity from the west to the east.
If the government decided to do so, the state-owned enterprises would have to execute the plan. There is no room for negotiation.
Also, with the rich renewable and clean energy sources in west China, state-enterprises had to develop their state of art electricity generation technologies. Some creations are already out of this world and entered Sci-Fi area, like this melt salt tower plant.
Besides all the critical sectors, China went full-on capitalist mode.
There are already some leading Chinese private companies being very active on world stage, such as:
Each of them is a pain in the ass for the US government, because of being too competitive.
There are many more, but most of them are not well known to the general public.
China’s real structure is socialist bones with capitalist flesh.
It’s certainly not communist.
Because communism is the ultimate goal, not the process.
China’s Malls are OUT OF THIS WORLD!
Wine exploration Maps
AIR SUPPORT – Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, 1966, Mixed Film Parameters, Style Experiments
What is the most regrettable thing you’ve done out of curiosity?
When I was in eighth grade, I had a “friend” (She declared us as friends, and I didn’t deny it) that couldn’t feel “the hot stuff on the stove”, meaning she wouldn’t get burned when touching a stove top.
Well, at least that’s what she had said.
One day, she decided to self invite herself to my house.
“Amon. I’m coming over to your house after school. Text me your address”.
“Uhh, okay?”.
But before the story unfolds, you need to know that I have an electric stove:
(The exact one)
On the glass, there’s a little light in the center that turns red when the top is hot, to give a warning.
Anyway.
I went home, cleaned, ordered food so I wouldn’t have to bother anyone to cook (So I wouldn’t have to do the dishes, too).
After about 2 hours, she had finally showed up.
We did normal things; talk, prank-call people (*67, y’all), use the PlayStation, etc etc.
“I don’t want to sound rude, but do you have food?”, she asked.
“Duh”.
“…Well gimme some”.
I rolled my eyes and brought the Taco Bell I was hiding in the kitchen to my room.
“Wait- I don’t eat fast food…”, she told me.
“Bruh, why are you te- ok, fine; more for me. What do you want?”.
“I want to COOK! By myself!”, she yelled.
“Woah, woah, girl. Chill, I’m not trying to do the dishes when you leave, okay? Let’s just thin-”
“Please? Don’t worry, I’ll clean them after”.
I glared, and after a while, I agreed.
Surprisingly, she was actually a great cooker…er, chef.
She knew what she was doing on the stove.
Once she had finished using it, she turned it off, but the little light was still red.
“By the way, do you know I can’t feel things, like, hot things?”, she told me.
“What’s wrong with you, what the heck? Prove it”, I demanded.
“I’ll show you later; let’s just eat now”.
I decided to lie to her.
“Me too, I can’t feel them either”.
“Oh yeah? Then put your entire hand on the stove”.
I laughed, wondering if I should just run, and walked to the stove.
One, two, three! I placed my entire hand flat on the stove.
“Hey, se-”.
Cue the screaming.
Thankfully, my hand was okay, and wasn’t burned at all.
I learned to a) Not invite that girl over again, and b) not trust every word people say.
Yeah, there are a few people who actually can’t feel pain, but she definitely wasn’t one of them.
I learned it the hard way.
Edit: Lololol, stop calling me dumb omg lmao, I knew it was hot, and I didn’t lose my common sense. I just didn’t want to admit that I was lying to her.