/lit/ - Literature

I think economic systems converged because both capitalism and socialism ran into serious problems -- and often surprisingly similar problems in some cases. Or you might not have the political will to do something about certain problems which becomes an obstacle to solving those problems. That was certainly the case in the USSR but that's probably also true in the U.S. today where you might conceivably be able to plan the economy in certain ways that would solve some problems but the political will to do that is nonexistent. There are also hardass economic laws that you can't really do much about with brute-force ideology.

I was also thinking of China as more successful case in a way that runs counter to capitalist logic in some ways. Like, they focus on trade as the primary partner with a lot places that didn't have the infrastructure to exploit their riches. Lots of places in Africa and Asia (and South America too thinking of it) have tremendous unexplored resource reserves because the infrastructure necessary to make them available require massive levels of aggregate investment. This is where one of the biggest ironies of capitalism lie: it would be a productive and profitable enterprise to seek those resources out, but doing so would require a level of general development that is contradictory to just raw imperial exploitation.

The Chinese lived with that in their recent historical memory, so they understand (besides being Marxists) that putting their capital to that benefit has an actual greater general gain than going for a straightforward one-sided deal. Opening new sources of important resources into international trade means... establishing redundancies for their economic supply. Woah, gee. Bauxite supply is going down because Guinea gets couped and Australia is hostile to China? Big whoop, says the CPC, Kazakhstan has a good enough reserve of it, Cameroon and other West African states too, Jamaica has a good supply... While the usual order of things for the liberal countries in the Cold War was to absolutely keep the biggest supplier country in their camp, which must make the BRI maddening to the U.S. because China simply goes "oh well" and moves on to the next interested party while cutting the intermediary bullshit and negotiating directly with governments on favorable terms with capital loans at basically zero interest.

You'd think a bunch of neolibs would be big fans of competition in the market for international finance...