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sjk8990 t1_j55uprn wrote

I would suggest dictators lie about pretty much everything.

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legendtuner t1_j588tb7 wrote

Dictators will say whatever they have to say to stay in power, and gain power. With them it's all about power and control.

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[deleted] t1_j58nhry wrote

[removed]

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legendtuner t1_j58nlim wrote

Thank you for your insightful comment. Or lack thereof

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4rt3m1s-06 t1_j58y7zp wrote

The New right? Probably. All republicans? Not so sure

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acebandaged t1_j59xd8l wrote

Anyone who called the last election into question, so the vast majority of Republicans, yes.

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Laktakfrak t1_j59sooq wrote

If so then also all democrats. Hate to break it to you but blue team is just as evil and coupt as red team.

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MontEcola t1_j59vr3n wrote

Not even close.

Trump. Santos. Mitch. Ted. Rhonda Santis.

There is no match for that on the other side. When democrats face a jerk, they remove it from the caucus. Not true republicans, or red voters. Not even close.

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Laktakfrak t1_j5cqlz7 wrote

Yeah righto mate whatever you reckon. Have a bit of self respect and admit that both are corrupt. But yeah go blue team!

Honestly, they are both involved in the same shady deals side by side. Pelosi is just as bad as Romney. If you dontt hink so youre are dumb as fuck or you are just a brainwashed zombie that follows everyone around you for fake social points.

Either way its pathetic.

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MontEcola t1_j5czrgl wrote

I have my complaints with Democrats.

I will agree that Pelosi and Romney are comparable on either side.

The Democrats do not have anyone with extreme rule breaking and disregard for human decency that matches Trump on that level. They do not have a poop thrower like Marjorie Taylor Green, with the disregard for rules and outright lies. They do not have a lunatic like Boebart shooting the neighbor's dog and promoting violence against other people, the do not have a government obstructionist like Moscow Mitch, or Matt Gaetz. Shit. The Democrats don't have anyone who dates teen aged kids in power like Gaetz, or anyone who approves grabbing pussy.

The Democrats has a comedian who pretended to grab women as a comedy act, and then did it in photos, without doing more than had happened on stage. The democrats made him quit. They said, "Get off our team. We don't respect that". Many republicans have done much worse than that, and still hold onto power.

Trump is still in good favor after the pussy grab tape. Goetz is still in power. Santos is still in office with his lies. None of them would last as a Democrat.

Republicans accept scum bags in power, and democrats do not. You have no facts to support a different truth. Truth!

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WilliamMurderfacex3 t1_j58ps3k wrote

By the promise of these things brutes have risen to power, but they lie, they do not fulfill their promise. They never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world. To do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness

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sharrrper t1_j578s6a wrote

Oh, so now you're saying we can't even trust dictators? What's the world coming to!

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AppleSauceGC t1_j59oivi wrote

Dictators dictate, if the people taking the dictation get the transcription wrong who's fault is it then huh? Poor dictators, surrounded by incapable stenographers.

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r2k-in-the-vortex t1_j56non6 wrote

Lulz, now that's beautiful data, no surprise whatsoever on China leading the pack. It's plenty clear on the ground that while there is plenty economical growth there, it's not anywhere as astronomical as official stats claim.

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insufferablyaverage t1_j56pzum wrote

I think light estimates say that china's GDP rn is around 12 trillion usd which is still a really high amount but nowhere near the official figures

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r2k-in-the-vortex t1_j56sfy4 wrote

Well, looking at the chart, the claimed growth over period is something like 380%, light pollution based estimate is more like 175%

The real economic growth is not bad at all, but the lies are just outrageous. The propaganda makes them think they are almost about to catch up to developed world, but in reality they have a very long way still to go while their primary drivers of economic growth are running out of steam.

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the_quark t1_j5768n1 wrote

The worst part seems to be that their leadership is reading their own press releases.

It's the same thing that happened in the Soviet Union. You are given an aggressive target for your five-year-plan. You don't make it, but you fudge the numbers a little to make it look like you did.

Next five-year-plan, they give you an aggressive target from your new baseline (that you didn't actually achieve). There's no way you're making that without fudging, so you fudge away.

Never five-year-plan, they give you an aggressive target from your new baseline - which would itself be an aggressive target for you to achieve in five years.

Repeat this enough and the official numbers become completely unmoored from reality and literally no one knows what's going on.

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General_Chairarm t1_j57ye5i wrote

You can do a five year plan but you have to hold yourself accountable to the results that you get i instead of just forcing it over and over and over ad nauseam in the name of “progress”

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United_Target8942 t1_j597bxk wrote

The results were high economic growth though. I don't think the argument works here.

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AnybodySeeMyKeys t1_j57zzq0 wrote

The problem is that they are borrowing money based on their propaganda, not based on their reality. Ugly things are beginning to happen in the Chinese economy. The fact that they've built 65 million housing units that will sit empty forever because there's not enough population to buy them should tell you everything you need to know.

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kungpaocheese t1_j58l37r wrote

And just like that we found the solution to Americas housing shortage and rental problem. Nothing remote work, really remote, can't solve.

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AnybodySeeMyKeys t1_j58mgbg wrote

Except most of those 65 million housing units are either a) Incomplete or b) falling apart due to maintenance. Just astounding malinvestment.

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kungpaocheese t1_j59p7op wrote

So its like a really big trailer park. We can work with that.

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United_Target8942 t1_j596rlz wrote

It's very uneven growth, China has a massive AIDs epidemic and many in rural China still think Mao is alive and running the show. Their economy won't be first rate unless the rest of the country develops and it sorts it's political problems out.

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[deleted] t1_j57s1sh wrote

I have lived in Beijing for 27 years. Curious how it’s pretty clear on the ground from over there in the US.

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satanmat2 t1_j56kluy wrote

interesting and <cough> Brilliant use for an odd data set to prove -ish a point... neat.

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ovirt001 t1_j577j37 wrote

Which is why China's actual GDP is closer to $10 trillion.
Edit: To the tankie that downvoted, China is estimated to overstate its GDP by an average of 30% every year. When taken into account it nearly halves the official figure.

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arusol t1_j579z81 wrote

There's a pay wall so can't really get into how they got their conclusions but on the surface I'm very skeptical about it.

What reason is there to suggest that streetlights equals economic development? It could just be something people notice in the west that doesn't apply everywhere.

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United_Target8942 t1_j595z2j wrote

Pretty much every society ever lies about economics as well. From my point of view, dictators are complete and utter amateurs when it comes to lying about the economy, though they do tell some pretty ridiculous ones. Interestingly, South Korea went from being poorer than North Korea and a total third world country to a rich country in about two decades. Most of that was under a brutal dictator. I'm not sure if any other medium sized country has ever achieved such rapid growth. (I'm not counting small countries like Nauru).

I'll just give some examples of various lies I've found to be comical or egregious, just from reading what economists and politicians say in their books/talks, ect. You can choose to believe them or not to believe them, hehe. They are off the top of my head. I remember most of the sources if your curious.

The third world had very low economic growth in the 1980's due to policies recommended by economists.

300 ivy league economists wrote in the NYT in 1993 that NAFTA was a great idea because of the theory of comparative advantage. I doubt any one of them even bothered to read what was in the agreement.

William Nordhaus (Nobel prize winner in economics) said that we should raise the global temperatures to around 3.5 degrees Celsius as an economic tradeoff. He said this in his Nobel prize speech. His model claims that forestry and fishing, and outdoors industry are essentially the only industry effected by climate change.

Jagdish Bhagwati (an ivy league economist) said extreme inequality was the best kind because billionaire rich people give money away more than millionaires. Lol. (Isn't that a contradiction? There wouldn't be extreme inequality if billionaires really did that). In any case, it's not true.

My favorite is Thomas Malthus, who said we should introduce the black plague to wipe out the poor, so we can get population growth under control. He argued that the poor should be put in enclosed, crowded area's to help spread disease more early. A bit of a caricature, but he really did say that.

economists in my country said (about 40 years ago) that companies that pay their CEO's too much would fail because other companies could outcompete them by paying their companies less. So companies like Facebook and Google simply wouldn't exist, since by definition there cannot be monopoly.

the British killed over a hundred million people in India and lowered the life expectancy to less than it was in cave man times (it was in the 20's), through endemic deaths from hunger and famine. The policies of exporting food to Britain were praised by free market economists in the 19th century.

Politicians saying automation is a threat to jobs is a deflection away from their policies, which caused unemployment.

If you change the poverty line from $2 a day to $6 a day, the poverty rate goes from about 1 billion to 4-5billion. It's set to $2 a day (last I checked) for no good reason whatsoever!

Trickle down economics. Do I need to explain this one?

In much of the west, since the 1970's, economic growth has slowed to 2% (instead of 3%), financial crisis have become more common, and real wages have stagnated. Milton Friedman said a rising tide would lift all boats. Clearly he was wrong, (and on many other things too!).

The great financial crisis was in large part caused from a clearly false belief in the efficient markets hypothesis. Eugene Fama later won the nobel prize for the efficient market hypothesis.

employment is counted if you work one hour a week in most countries. More and more 'employment' is precarious in nature.

The banks speculated on food prices, driving them sky high, after the 2008 recession. It caused riots and starvation to about a hundred million people in 30 countries. There was a study blaming it on Bush's investments in biofuels. The study was suppressed from publication at the world bank.

Intellectual property rights on medicine have no justification. The lies vary on this one. The original one was that it's profits are needed fund research. However this is clearly not true, as R & D spending declined or stayed the same as patent profits skyrocketed. Millions of people have died because they couldn't afford HIV medicine, it was about fifty times more expensive than it cost to make.

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OneSky8953 t1_j5a9gkx wrote

We elected our first democratically elected president Rhee Syngman in 1948 and since then various government officials in 1952, 1956, 1960, in 1963, 1967 and 1971 and so on. My grandparents participated in all of aforementioned elections, cast a ballot and said they never felt like their opinions were under represented. Yes it had its own flaws (for example, there was a famous mail voting election fraud in 1960 by then vice president Lee Ki boong but people took to the street, did massive protests and in the end overthrew the government. There was a military coup in 1979 but they also eventually resigned after huge civil right movements and protests) but still, it was a massive progress since we were literally either monarchy or under imperial influence where individual people had no voice at all.

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Less-Dragonfruit-294 t1_j57w3lz wrote

Dictators lie about their country’s growth to stay in power? I am shocked! Why would people lie? Don’t they know it’s better to be open and honest?

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Acrobatic-Event2721 t1_j581gg4 wrote

Where does Chile, Brazil, Botswana, Argentina, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cyprus, and Panama fall?

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poisonoakman t1_j58gkb7 wrote

Take that number and double it or he is going to kill us.

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sunnydaysahead2022 t1_j58b6a3 wrote

Dictators lie about everything. They love disinformation. It keeps people under their control.

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MarthaEM t1_j58cn9x wrote

wonder if anyone knows if that applies to Cuba bc they have reported a miriad of great things about their development

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trucorsair t1_j58j4oc wrote

But what would George Santos say?

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hithazel t1_j58z0x8 wrote

He wrote this report and installed all of the lights it measured.

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nujuice17 t1_j5911gr wrote

Are dictators and authoritarians the same thing in this context?

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AzureArmageddon t1_j5fmjg7 wrote

Sidenote: Screw light pollution. Apparently there's places where you can see the Milky Way at night and I don't like that that's not more places.

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robexib t1_j57xmvd wrote

Dictators only speak the truth when it suits them.

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krashlia t1_j58kjsi wrote

No, you don't *say*!

&#x200B;

Who could have *seen* this?

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I could hardly believe my *ears*!

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aminbae t1_j596tny wrote

wouldnt trust anything out of the racist economist

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DicknosePrickGoblin t1_j59qkad wrote

Who gets to decide which countries are considered free, partly free and not free?, sounds like propaganda to me.

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tap_the_cap t1_j57h8gc wrote

Well who would have thought this?! Research also suggest the sky is blue...

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tjeulink t1_j56jdtz wrote

or that economic development and prosperity looks different under those dictatorships than where we got our data from, not necessarily that its different from what they said.

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r2k-in-the-vortex t1_j56t1ri wrote

If economic growth just plain looked different in different places then you would expect the estimate to err on the other side in some cases. There is not a single case in that chart to estimate greater economic growth than officially claimed, all the cases where there is discrepancy, the official figures try to claim more economic growth.

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Northstar1989 t1_j59efdr wrote

You never considered that there are different types of economic growth that generate different amounts of light, did you?

Dictatorships and Totalitarian regimes famously favor Heavy Industry over Light Industry, for instance. A boom in the steel industry does NOT lead to as much expansion in lighting as a boom in home construction and shopping malls to sell an expanded supply of consumer appliances.

This whole argument by the Economist is just plain nonsense, designed to advantage the types of economic growth favored in Western countries.

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tjeulink t1_j56w8ca wrote

why would you expect that? maybe something about dictatorships just causes less lights in their economy than in "free"/"western" whatever countries.

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nekomoo t1_j57375d wrote

Maybe dictatorships are more environmentally conscious than democracies, so use fewer lights?

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tjeulink t1_j5766n4 wrote

or they have more strict rules about resource usage. or they have strict rules about advertising. or they have strict rules about when you're allowed to be outside. or those economic bennefits barely come back to most people and are solidated in institutions.

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jeffcox911 t1_j578dkw wrote

all of them? You're suggesting that every last one of them has the same type of strict rules? That completely beggars belief. Surely it's most likely that countries known for being corrupt and putting out propaganda...put out propaganda?

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tjeulink t1_j579n1e wrote

i'm not suggesting that. they where examples of other factors that influence light pollution.

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Northstar1989 t1_j59erlj wrote

Totalitarian states almost universally favor Heavy Industry over Light Industry, Agriculture and dense tenements over suburban sprawl, and care very little for complaints the streets aren't lit well enough when they'd rather invest in their military instead.

There are systematic differences in the types of growth found in Democratic vs. Totalitarian regimes. I am not saying Totalitarian regimes don't lie (they most certainly do), but this (levels of light pollution as seen from space) is an absolutely nonsense measure of economic growth that has been used by the West for decades now to claim that countries with more Totalitarian governments are poorer than they really are (the reality is much worse: they are better off than portrayed, but the ruling class of Totalitarian regimes often steal immense amounts for themselves such that the economic growth doesn't benefit ordinary people...)

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