Tag Archives: culture

The PRC and Language

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“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

So says the People’s Republic of China government, too. Here’s the State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, on banning puns from news media, other programming, even advertising:

Radio and television authorities at all levels must tighten up their regulations and crack down on the irregular and inaccurate use of the Chinese language, especially the misuse of idioms[.]

After all, puns and idioms could lead to “culture and linguistic chaos.” Can’t have that. Order, dammit. Especially the government’s definition of order. The PRC government’s incumbents do clearly understand that language is thought.

Collective Social Action

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A practical lesson from the People’s Republic of China on societal collective action.

When a fabric company called Jiangyin Xueyuan Textile Co collapsed, the troubles soon cascaded through other firms in this mill town.

A machinery maker, paper producer, manufacturer of faux-wood flooring and textile maker had one thing in common. They had promised, in the event of default, to repay the loans taken on by Xueyuan.

Indeed, they had all guaranteed each other’s loans, promising to pay the lender should one of them fail. Yet in the PRC’s current economy, they’re all having trouble making their own payments, and some have, as a result, refused to honor their guarantees of the others’.

Xueyuan’s court-appointed bankruptcy administrator, Zhang Fuliang, had this to say on the general practice:

[T]he big problem among private firms is that you owe me, I owe you, and in the end, if something goes wrong, then everyone gets tangled up together[.]

A policy outcome likely will look like this one: The People’s Bank of China, the PRC’s central bank, has lowered its benchmark lending rates, in the expectation that “private” and “commercial” banks will lower theirs commensurately and thereby stimulate the PRC’s economy. However,

banks likely will hesitate to lower the cost of loans for fear of hurting their profits.

Those profits aren’t only tied to the spread between the banks’ deposit interest paid and loan interest collected. They’re also tied to the likelihood the loans will be repaid at all. When an individual firm fails, the loan is lost, but the loss is limited to the single firm. When an individual firm fails, and the network of fellow firm guarantors default on their guaranty, the single loan still is lost, but now the bank must worry about the credit worthiness of each member of that network of guarantors. That’s going to hold up interest rates for the entire network as a hedge against the loan’s default—and as a hedge against default on more of the loans the network is guaranteeing for each other. And as a hedge against the loans made to other networks. And….

Hmm….

Another Response to a Desire for Freedom

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[Spain] Attorney General Eduardo Torres-Dulce charged Artur Mas and two other local officials with four crimes each, including contempt of court and misappropriation of funds, saying they had defied a court order by allowing the Nov 9 vote, in which 2.3 million people participated and more than 80% favored independence.

The Region in question, of which Mas is President and the “other officials” are his Vice President and Education Minister, is Catalonia, an erstwhile prosperous Autonomous Community of Spain, a nationality—so designated by the Spanish Statute of Autonomy. Catalonia consists of the four provinces Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona, and it sits in the northeast of Spain, hard against the Pyrenees and the Med.

The reason its prosperity is erstwhile is because it’s been bankrolling the rest of Spain’s regions and provinces as the latter deal with the Panic of 2008 and the six years of aftermath by spending profligately in the finest European (and becoming American) tradition. It’s Catalan-earned money that’s being used, little of it is coming back to the Catalans, and they’re tired of it.

Eighty per cent tired.

But wanting independence, rather than mere autonomy, wanting to be out from under Madrid’s thumb now is a crime. According to Madrid.

Wrong Answer

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At this week’s G-20 meeting in Australia, British Prime Minister David Cameron outlined his proposed restrictions on speech as a mechanism for combatting terrorism and youth radicalization at home.

Cameron told the Parliament the root cause of extremism was not poverty, social isolation from the mainstream or foreign policy.

“The root cause of the challenge we face is the extremist narrative. So we must confront this extremism in all its forms,” Cameron said.

“We must ban extremist preachers from our country. We must root out extremism from our schools, universities and prisons[.]”

This is the wrong answer.

Youth “radicalization” is a part of growing up as children test boundaries, learn more, test more boundaries, and so on. It’s how they learn initiative and individual responsibility.

“Extreme” speech also is a way of pushing boundaries. More importantly, it’s a way of drawing the public’s and government’s attention to this or that problem, and of pushing authorities to take corrective action—where appropriate. The public, after all, is fully capable determining for itself whether the problem described really is worth any hoo-raw.

Most importantly, though, it’s an extremely dangerous thing for government to limit speech or radical behavior. What’s the limiting principle for such limits? In what way government draw the line here, and not one syllable further? In what way can government say this is too radical, but that is not? In what way can government discriminate incitement to riot from a misunderstood speech?

“I know it when I see it,” as a Supreme Court Justice said about pornography, is a poor standard, and it leaves the matter open to government abuse. If this speech is too extreme, then what about that speech? And the next speech? Absent a clearly stated limit—and Cameron appears to have offered none—there’s nothing to keep government from adding limits, extending them, barring, for instance, criticism of government as prejudicial to good order.

No, a better answer is to let the speech fly, let the “radicalization” occur. Give parents and schools the tools to teach better (which begins with holding the parents accountable for their failure to be parents). Let the “radicalized” go join the terrorists overseas—don’t let them come back. Punish the domestic crimes when they occur, don’t make additional crimes through legislation. There is already a sufficiency (and perhaps too many) conspiracy laws on the books which can be used to preempt domestic crime and terrorist activities; enforce these, don’t create more conspiracy crimes legislatively.

Cameron’s proposal is disappointing from the leader of the birthplace of John Locke.

To Gruber

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We’ve seen now a number of instances where Jonathon Gruber, MIT economist and Obamacare architect, is on record as having said we Americans are too stupid to understand Democrat policies and that it’s entirely appropriate for Democrats to lie to us in order to get their policies enacted.

We’ve seen Gruber express regret over his choice of words while explicitly, in a Ronan Farrow interview, standing by his underlying principles: we’re dumb, and it’s OK to lie to us in the furtherance of the greater Liberal good.

We’ve also seen the Democratic Party leadership—indeed, nearly all Democrat politicians—be utterly silent on the matter. By their broad, steadfast silence, they demonstrate that not only do these Democrats condone Gruber’s characterizations and view of lying, they consider these two things, the stupidity of Americans and the propriety of lying to us, to be core principles of the Democratic Party.

Their silence, though, isn’t quite universal. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has come out to deny knowing Jonathon Gruber.

She claimed she doesn’t know who he is, and that he didn’t help write the law. “Let’s put him aside[.]”

Never mind that then-Majority Leader Pelosi extensively cited Gruber’s pseudo-analysis of Obamacare while it was being developed.

Never mind that then-Majority Leader Pelosi cited Gruber by name as well as cited his “analysis” in a press conference she held while Obamacare was being developed.

In short, the Democratic Party, through their national spokesman, Congressman Pelosi, are Grubering the whole sordid affair.