Very interesting and helpful post. A little bit off of your topic, 3 large companies in South Calif conspired in the 60's to prevent public transportation in Los Angeles. Very successfully. Their fine was a pittance, even for that time
Great post! Can you elaborate on your comment: "the Soviet Bloc provide an interesting counterpoint" regarding post WW2 development of metro systems in those countries?
Hi! From my understanding of Soviet bloc Metro construction, they were less swayed in their vision and execution by the postwar economic prosperity like the West and more notably US-allied Asian countries (Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc.). Metros in, say, Prague or Kiev or St. Petersburg were constructed as a state vision of what a communist city should be, rather than wholly dictating it based on demographic demands or to alleviate commuting capacities. And the urban migration which accelerates need for better public transit with huge capacity occurred in the Soviet Union before the War.
Includes single, secure entrances, and what reads like Baghdad Green Zone level installations - probably no wonder no renders were provided in the above article.
Really depressing - maybe what we really need are roving social workers. Unfortunately, there are few supports or even housing for people with mental health issues. Society is freying.
The 3 companies that conspired to interfere with public transportation were Standard oil, Firestone tire and General Motors. I meant to put this in my response.
"The Academy of Social Sciences, CASS, with four-thousand full-time researchers and fifty research centers covering two-hundred sixty social disciplines, uses questionnaires and grassroots forums to initiate and evaluate all legislation. Teams tour the country, appear on TV, hold meetings, listen to local opinions and formulate proposals.
"Congress commissions scholars to evaluate, and economists to budget their recommendations, says a CASS planner, “Computers have made huge improvements in collecting and analyzing the information. Still, thousands of statisticians, actuaries, database experts and technicians with degrees in urban, rural, agricultural, environmental and economic planning invest thousands of hours interpreting and analyzing this vast trove of data, statistics and information. Needless to say, for a continent-sized country with over a billion citizens, it takes hundreds of thousands of people to develop a Five-Year Plan”.
China’s Brains Trust, the State Council, publishes draft Plans and solicits feedback from employees, farmers, business people, entrepreneurs, officials and specialists, and feasibility reports from the twenty-seven levels of bureaucracy responsible for implementation. The Finance and Economics Committee analyzes Plan budgets and, after the State Council signs off, Congress votes, once two-thirds of members indicate their support. Discussion is then suspended (and may be enforced by the Chief Censor) and experimentation and data collection begin.
Procter & Gamble Democracy
China’s democratic process resembles Procter & Gamble more than Pericles of Athens. Surveys reveal problems, solutions solicited, and the most promising are test-marketed everywhere, says venture capitalist Robin Daverman: "China is a giant trial portfolio with millions of trials everywhere: innovations in everything from healthcare to poverty reduction, education, energy, trade, and transportation are being trialed in different communities. Every one of China’s 662 cities is experimenting: Shanghai with free trade zones, Guizhou with poverty reduction, twenty-three cities with education reforms, Northeastern provinces with SOE reform, pilot schools, pilot cities, pilot hospitals, pilot markets, pilot everything. Mayors and governors, the Primary Investigators, share their ‘lab results’ at the Central Party School and publish them in State-owned media, their ‘scientific journals.’
Significant policies usually begin as ‘clinical trials’ in small towns, where they generate test data. If the stats look right, they’ll add test sites and do long-term follow ups. They test and tweak for 10-30 years, then ask the 3,000-member People’s Congress to review the data and authorize national trials in three provinces. If those trials are successful, the State Council [China’s Brains Trust] polishes the plan and takes it back to Congress for a final vote. It’s very transparent, and if your data is better than mine, your bill gets passed, and mine doesn’t. Congressional votes are nearly unanimous because reams of data back the legislation.
This allows China to accomplish a great deal in a short time because your winning solution will be quickly propagated throughout the country. You’ll be a front-page hero, invited to high-level meetings in Beijing and promoted. As you can imagine, the competition to solve problems is intense. Local governments have a great deal of freedom to try their own things as long as the local people support them. Various villages and small towns have tested everything from bare-knuckled liberalism to straight Communism”.
Thousands of Trial Spots generate immense volumes of data. Says author Jeff J. Brown, “My Beijing neighborhood committee and town hall are constantly putting up announcements, inviting groups of people–renters, homeowners, over seventies, women under forty, those with or without medical insurance, retirees–to answer surveys. The CPC is the world’s biggest pollster for a reason: China’s democratic ‘dictatorship of the people’ is highly engaged at the day-to-day, citizen-on-the-street level. I know, because I live in a middle class Chinese community and I question them all the time. I find their government much more responsive and democratic than the dog-and-pony shows back home, and I mean that seriously”.
One of the earliest democratic Trial Spots began spontaneously in poverty-stricken Yiwu in 1978 when China first embraced market economics, and Huaichuan.."
Why China Leads the World: Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottom.
Sure. I don't believe that China as the state regularly takes legal aspects such as whether passive body scanners at a transit stop, arguing that what is deemed as a “mass” on an individual is not enough for probable cause to conduct a search, or whether the same scanners minimize profiling of any one group over the other are taken into consideration as stringently as the United States. However, I am not a Chinese constitutional scholar and admit to blind spots. Let me know if I am wrong, and I will correct this passage expediently.
No government on earth comes close to China's level of citizen consultation. The PRC carries out more opinion surveys each year than the rest of the world's nations combined. It consults about everything and it follows 96% of people's wishes. As you can see from the links below, there's plenty of public discussion and regulatory adjustments in FR.
More to the point, however, are two facts:
1. The Chinese trust their government and always have.
2. The Chinese overwhelmingly approve of FR.
The links:
China’s top court announced this week that consumers’ privacy must be protected from unwarranted face tracking. “The public is increasingly …https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/facial...
Debate on Facial Recognition Technologies in China
Thank you for that. I have revised the sentence in question. I can see it was accusatory without a solid basis, which is what I strive for every sentence.
Very interesting and helpful post. A little bit off of your topic, 3 large companies in South Calif conspired in the 60's to prevent public transportation in Los Angeles. Very successfully. Their fine was a pittance, even for that time
Great post! Can you elaborate on your comment: "the Soviet Bloc provide an interesting counterpoint" regarding post WW2 development of metro systems in those countries?
Hi! From my understanding of Soviet bloc Metro construction, they were less swayed in their vision and execution by the postwar economic prosperity like the West and more notably US-allied Asian countries (Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc.). Metros in, say, Prague or Kiev or St. Petersburg were constructed as a state vision of what a communist city should be, rather than wholly dictating it based on demographic demands or to alleviate commuting capacities. And the urban migration which accelerates need for better public transit with huge capacity occurred in the Soviet Union before the War.
Good to see you back, and with a great article. Someone else beat me to the punch and posted your link on nakedcapitalism.com https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/04/links-4-8-2023.html#comment-3872648
St Louis' LRT system is upgrading its stations to major security status: https://www.masstransitmag.com/technology/facilities/shelters-stations-fixtures-parking-lighting/press-release/53058992/bistate-development-agency-of-the-missouriillinois-metropolitan-district-st-louis-metro-stations-have-been-selected-for-first-two-packages-for-st-louis-metros-secure-platform-plan?utm_source=MASS+NewsViews+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS230501092&o_eid=2012G1247156D6G&rdx.ident[pull]=omeda|2012G1247156D6G
Includes single, secure entrances, and what reads like Baghdad Green Zone level installations - probably no wonder no renders were provided in the above article.
It's already here, Mike. Kinda unbelievable. Eagerly and despairingly waiting to see how these work.
Really depressing - maybe what we really need are roving social workers. Unfortunately, there are few supports or even housing for people with mental health issues. Society is freying.
The 3 companies that conspired to interfere with public transportation were Standard oil, Firestone tire and General Motors. I meant to put this in my response.
"The Academy of Social Sciences, CASS, with four-thousand full-time researchers and fifty research centers covering two-hundred sixty social disciplines, uses questionnaires and grassroots forums to initiate and evaluate all legislation. Teams tour the country, appear on TV, hold meetings, listen to local opinions and formulate proposals.
"Congress commissions scholars to evaluate, and economists to budget their recommendations, says a CASS planner, “Computers have made huge improvements in collecting and analyzing the information. Still, thousands of statisticians, actuaries, database experts and technicians with degrees in urban, rural, agricultural, environmental and economic planning invest thousands of hours interpreting and analyzing this vast trove of data, statistics and information. Needless to say, for a continent-sized country with over a billion citizens, it takes hundreds of thousands of people to develop a Five-Year Plan”.
China’s Brains Trust, the State Council, publishes draft Plans and solicits feedback from employees, farmers, business people, entrepreneurs, officials and specialists, and feasibility reports from the twenty-seven levels of bureaucracy responsible for implementation. The Finance and Economics Committee analyzes Plan budgets and, after the State Council signs off, Congress votes, once two-thirds of members indicate their support. Discussion is then suspended (and may be enforced by the Chief Censor) and experimentation and data collection begin.
Procter & Gamble Democracy
China’s democratic process resembles Procter & Gamble more than Pericles of Athens. Surveys reveal problems, solutions solicited, and the most promising are test-marketed everywhere, says venture capitalist Robin Daverman: "China is a giant trial portfolio with millions of trials everywhere: innovations in everything from healthcare to poverty reduction, education, energy, trade, and transportation are being trialed in different communities. Every one of China’s 662 cities is experimenting: Shanghai with free trade zones, Guizhou with poverty reduction, twenty-three cities with education reforms, Northeastern provinces with SOE reform, pilot schools, pilot cities, pilot hospitals, pilot markets, pilot everything. Mayors and governors, the Primary Investigators, share their ‘lab results’ at the Central Party School and publish them in State-owned media, their ‘scientific journals.’
Significant policies usually begin as ‘clinical trials’ in small towns, where they generate test data. If the stats look right, they’ll add test sites and do long-term follow ups. They test and tweak for 10-30 years, then ask the 3,000-member People’s Congress to review the data and authorize national trials in three provinces. If those trials are successful, the State Council [China’s Brains Trust] polishes the plan and takes it back to Congress for a final vote. It’s very transparent, and if your data is better than mine, your bill gets passed, and mine doesn’t. Congressional votes are nearly unanimous because reams of data back the legislation.
This allows China to accomplish a great deal in a short time because your winning solution will be quickly propagated throughout the country. You’ll be a front-page hero, invited to high-level meetings in Beijing and promoted. As you can imagine, the competition to solve problems is intense. Local governments have a great deal of freedom to try their own things as long as the local people support them. Various villages and small towns have tested everything from bare-knuckled liberalism to straight Communism”.
Thousands of Trial Spots generate immense volumes of data. Says author Jeff J. Brown, “My Beijing neighborhood committee and town hall are constantly putting up announcements, inviting groups of people–renters, homeowners, over seventies, women under forty, those with or without medical insurance, retirees–to answer surveys. The CPC is the world’s biggest pollster for a reason: China’s democratic ‘dictatorship of the people’ is highly engaged at the day-to-day, citizen-on-the-street level. I know, because I live in a middle class Chinese community and I question them all the time. I find their government much more responsive and democratic than the dog-and-pony shows back home, and I mean that seriously”.
One of the earliest democratic Trial Spots began spontaneously in poverty-stricken Yiwu in 1978 when China first embraced market economics, and Huaichuan.."
Why China Leads the World: Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottom.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Q9PN8SV?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420
Could you elaborate on "For China and proponents of China’s security measures, such legal matters are unnecessary to discuss"?
Very few laws or regulations are promulgated in China without months or years of discussion.
Sure. I don't believe that China as the state regularly takes legal aspects such as whether passive body scanners at a transit stop, arguing that what is deemed as a “mass” on an individual is not enough for probable cause to conduct a search, or whether the same scanners minimize profiling of any one group over the other are taken into consideration as stringently as the United States. However, I am not a Chinese constitutional scholar and admit to blind spots. Let me know if I am wrong, and I will correct this passage expediently.
No government on earth comes close to China's level of citizen consultation. The PRC carries out more opinion surveys each year than the rest of the world's nations combined. It consults about everything and it follows 96% of people's wishes. As you can see from the links below, there's plenty of public discussion and regulatory adjustments in FR.
More to the point, however, are two facts:
1. The Chinese trust their government and always have.
2. The Chinese overwhelmingly approve of FR.
The links:
China’s top court announced this week that consumers’ privacy must be protected from unwarranted face tracking. “The public is increasingly …https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/facial...
Debate on Facial Recognition Technologies in China
https://mit-serc.pubpub.org/pub/public-debate-on...
Thank you for that. I have revised the sentence in question. I can see it was accusatory without a solid basis, which is what I strive for every sentence.
> . The PRC carries out more opinion surveys each year than the rest of the world's nations combined.
I've never heard for this. Any sources?