Replacing the UN with a new sans-China organization

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

The UN is basically just the League of Nations but with a new name.

Someone has never compared the League with the UN...

Other than wasting a prime piece of New York property and providing a few laughs by putting fucking Saudi Arabia on the international womens' rights council, since when did the UN have a purpose anyway?

I suggest you read the UN Charter. It’s in there.

Saudi Arabia was elected to the position by the UN general assembly. Blame the countries that voted for it. Which was a good idea, by the way. Because having that kind of state on that kind of council gives them an international stake. As long as they don’t have a voting majority, it just means the eyes of the world are on them. Since being elected, Saudi Arabia has expanded women’s rights, for example. Of course, it should do better, but there is a good reason for having Saudi Arabia there. We didn’t put Saudi Arabia in charge of all human rights everywhere, which is what certain people seem to be thinking.

Isn't that a little like asking for payment before providing services?

With no legally binding agreement that services will be provided, at that?

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Someone has never compared the League with the UN...


I suggest you read the UN Charter. It’s in there.

Saudi Arabia was elected to the position by the UN general assembly. Blame the countries that voted for it. Which was a good idea, by the way. Because having that kind of state on that kind of council gives them an international stake. As long as they don’t have a voting majority, it just means the eyes of the world are on them. Since being elected, Saudi Arabia has expanded women’s rights, for example. Of course, it should do better, but there is a good reason for having Saudi Arabia there. We didn’t put Saudi Arabia in charge of all human rights everywhere, which is what certain people seem to be thinking.

Isn't that a little like asking for payment before providing services?

With no legally binding agreement that services will be provided, at that?

You can’t ask the avalanche to destroy the valley before you’ve thrown the rock down the slope.

Or, in other words, the goal is to get those countries to have a stake in human rights discourse. The result of that is an improved human rights record. The reward for those countries comes in increased soft power.

[Novus America]

Isn't that a little like asking for payment before providing services?

With no legally binding agreement that services will be provided, at that?

You can’t ask the avalanche to destroy the valley before you’ve thrown the rock down the slope.

Or, in other words, the goal is to get those countries to have a stake in human rights discourse. The result of that is an improved human rights record. The reward for those countries comes in increased soft power.

You cannot control an avalanche. They also use the position to justify and normalized their abuses.
It drags things to the mean, they might improve somewhat to get closer to the bar, but they also drag the bar down to get it closer to them.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

You can’t ask the avalanche to destroy the valley before you’ve thrown the rock down the slope.

Or, in other words, the goal is to get those countries to have a stake in human rights discourse. The result of that is an improved human rights record. The reward for those countries comes in increased soft power.

You cannot control an avalanche. They also use the position to justify and normalized their abuses.
It drags things to the mean, they might improve somewhat to get closer to the bar, but they also drag the bar down to get it closer to them.

There is no sign in the declarations of the Council that the bar is lowering.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Isn't that a little like asking for payment before providing services?

With no legally binding agreement that services will be provided, at that?

You can’t ask the avalanche to destroy the valley before you’ve thrown the rock down the slope.

Or, in other words, the goal is to get those countries to have a stake in human rights discourse. The result of that is an improved human rights record. The reward for those countries comes in increased soft power.

Or you can co-ordinate the rest of the world in boycotting them until/unless they shape up. They can't live off whatever they can grow in the desert forever.

[Ayytaly]

Replace internationalism with continentalism. The OAS needs love.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

You can’t ask the avalanche to destroy the valley before you’ve thrown the rock down the slope.

Or, in other words, the goal is to get those countries to have a stake in human rights discourse. The result of that is an improved human rights record. The reward for those countries comes in increased soft power.

Or you can co-ordinate the rest of the world in boycotting them until/unless they shape up. They can't live off whatever they can grow in the desert forever.

Yes, that’s also a possibility. But that just increases the influence of Russia and China, since they will not abide.

[Novus America]

Economically, yes. China really only picked up economical speed in the 90s, which is why you can see all those pictures of large Chinese cities in 1990 and 2010 and see the incredible difference 20 years has made. It was only in the 90s that China tried to participate in international trade, and it boomed.

However, politically, of course, it has always had a very large army capable of exerting force throughout Asia, and in the 70s it had nukes. The combination of the large army and the nukes, as well as its falling out with the USSR, made it an important puzzle piece in the Cold War. Hence, it was given the task to represent China.

The reason the Korean War resolution passed through the Security Council was simply because the USSR was testing its theory that the veto could be cast by abstaining (it could not) and China was represented by US puppet Taiwan.

Their army couldn't even project force into Vietnam successfully and they lacked the ability to deliver their nuclear weapons.

You're being anachronistic, the US only adopted the Sino-Soviet split into its diplomacy after the resolution passed.

The US actually opposed the resolution to give the PRC the ROC’s seat. But was outvoted.
Nixon actually supported a “two China policy”. Never a “one China Policy”.

[Novus America]

You cannot control an avalanche. They also use the position to justify and normalized their abuses.
It drags things to the mean, they might improve somewhat to get closer to the bar, but they also drag the bar down to get it closer to them.

There is no sign in the declarations of the Council that the bar is lowering.

Actually there is:
https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/03/15/w ... y-victims/

Letting the fox guard the henhouse gives the fox a stake in the hen house, but also makes it easier for it to kill the chickens.

[ImperialRussia]

Bye Bye United States Consitution

[Novus America]

Bye Bye United States Consitution

Umm I am not sure what you are trying to say here. That the PRC is a threat to the US Constitution (it is) or that it is Unconstitutional to exclude the PRC from an international organization (it is not)?

[Proctopeo]

Bye Bye United States Consitution

Wrong thread?

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Or you can co-ordinate the rest of the world in boycotting them until/unless they shape up. They can't live off whatever they can grow in the desert forever.

Yes, that’s also a possibility. But that just increases the influence of Russia and China, since they will not abide.

If we isolated them too, coronavirus might not have spread to the rest of the world.

[Tornado Queendom]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmsqeFAlSGA

So there's increasing reason to suspect that China's involvement in the W.H.O. played a key role in why they were praising China's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ANY time is a terrible time to be beholden to a government known for shooting their own citizens for protesting or getting citizens who didn't even protest killed through industrial recklessness. But the world has paid for its complacency by the fact that now it's no longer just the Chinese under threat from their government, but all of us. Every one of us now has far more reason to stand up to the Chinese government; and less reason not to.

So why not abolish the UN; and in turn, its sub-branch of the W.H.O.; and replace them with a new organization beholden to everyone but the Chinese government, such that it could represent the world's interests more, and the Chinese government's interests less?

(Image)

Call it the League of Nations.

Oh wait, that already happened. And it killed itself in World War II.

[New haven america]

People think that the UN's job is too be the precursor to a world government and claim that anything it does that doesn't further world peace is it failing.

That's not its job, its job is to keep WWIII from happening at any cost, that's why it was set up and that's what it's been doing for the past 70 ot years.

[Diarcesia]

By the looks of the discussion, the impression of the UN is that it is the good guys' club.

I repeat, that's what NATO is for. And also that's why there are people that are keen on kicking Turkey out of the club.

[Diahon]

People think that the UN's job is too be the precursor to a world government and claim that anything it does that doesn't further world peace is it failing.

That's not its job, its job is to keep WWIII from happening at any cost, that why it was set up and that's what it's been doing for the past 70 ot years.

walk, chew gum

[Ankenland]

Better to die on your feet than die on your knees.

It would actually be better to worry about recovering from being a second-rate country, instead of picking fights with people on the other side of the planet.

Well obviously we need major economic reform, and neoliberalism as we have practiced it since the 90s needs to end. And is obviously to blame. I cannot really blame the PRC so much fro its economic warfare in the way I cannot really blame the sharks if I dive into a pool of sharks covered in fish blood but I am not going to keep swimming with them.

And there is absolutely a need to discriminate against their state owned companies who are subsidized to engage in state sponsored dumping for the sole purpose of destroying our manufacturing.

And no, phasing out PRC trade would be beneficial in the long run. PRC trade has caused soaring wealth inequality, stagnation of real wages and its a half a trillion dollar deduction from our GDP.
(net imports are SUBTRACTED from GDP you know)

What I propose would not create an economic crisis. A 1% increase a month would give our companies there enough time to switch to alternatives, which there are plenty. Anything made in the PRC can be made elsewhere. They only assemble what we design and engineer. They are fungible. And replaceable.

Yes. America should fix its own system.

It really doesn't matter if the company is state-owned or not, it matters what industry they supply. The steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, targeted a specific thing, and protected a national defense industry from China getting rid of its overproduction at below-cost rates. There is really no percentage or frame of time that can be universally applied to China, there are just industries that must be considered individually for their need for protection from Chinese and other exports.

There is no good reason to treat Chinese imports differently from Malaysian imports, or the imports from any country that is not Canada, or perhaps the UK.

It would, broadly, increase consumer prices and thereby decrease purchasing power, to increase the cost of goods currently imported, and just wait for American industry to catch up. To avoid this shock, American industries themselves need to be subsidized. Other industries are not a high priority for moving back, they can't all come at once, and there will always be some mutual advantage to trading with what is, now, the world's largest economy and producer.

For the things that we could still reasonably want from them, another way to balance the trade deficit would be to just get them to buy more American products, since they are notoriously protective of their own markets.

Some of your problems are solved by industry tariffs, others are solved by industry subsidy, and others are solved by diplomacy. Global trade, properly managed, benefits everyone and is a good idea.

[New haven america]

People think that the UN's job is too be the precursor to a world government and claim that anything it does that doesn't further world peace is it failing.

That's not its job, its job is to keep WWIII from happening at any cost, that why it was set up and that's what it's been doing for the past 70 ot years.

walk, chew gum

Well, it's job isn't to create world peace it's to prevent war.

Maybe they can convene and decide to create world peace, but until that happens, it only has 1 job and that's to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

[Ankenland]

Maybe they can convene and decide to create world peace, but until that happens, it only has 1 job and that's to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

Yes. Talk is cheap, and anyone who complains that the UN has not solved all of the world's problems fails to consider the fact that it also does not consume all of the world's resources. Sending Nikki Haley to go rattle her saber (swoon) in a cushy auditorium is not a big part of the national budget. It's worth the cost purely on the basis of providing us with high-resolution images of her very cute angry faces.

[Proctopeo]

People think that the UN's job is too be the precursor to a world government and claim that anything it does that doesn't further world peace is it failing.

That's not its job, its job is to keep WWIII from happening at any cost, that's why it was set up and that's what it's been doing for the past 70 ot years.

The Cold War did that job at varying degrees of efficiency for 45 years, and there's nothing it could've done to stop a potential WWIII over missiles in Cuba

nowadays it's mostly the interconnection of global economies, and to some extent, the EU and NATO, who further reduce the chances of former rivals in Europe and North America from going at it

[Novus America]

People think that the UN's job is too be the precursor to a world government and claim that anything it does that doesn't further world peace is it failing.

That's not its job, its job is to keep WWIII from happening at any cost, that's why it was set up and that's what it's been doing for the past 70 ot years.

Except nuclear deterrence did that, not the UN.

[Novus America]

Better to die on your feet than die on your knees.

It would actually be better to worry about recovering from being a second-rate country, instead of picking fights with people on the other side of the planet.

Well obviously we need major economic reform, and neoliberalism as we have practiced it since the 90s needs to end. And is obviously to blame. I cannot really blame the PRC so much fro its economic warfare in the way I cannot really blame the sharks if I dive into a pool of sharks covered in fish blood but I am not going to keep swimming with them.

And there is absolutely a need to discriminate against their state owned companies who are subsidized to engage in state sponsored dumping for the sole purpose of destroying our manufacturing.

And no, phasing out PRC trade would be beneficial in the long run. PRC trade has caused soaring wealth inequality, stagnation of real wages and its a half a trillion dollar deduction from our GDP.
(net imports are SUBTRACTED from GDP you know)

What I propose would not create an economic crisis. A 1% increase a month would give our companies there enough time to switch to alternatives, which there are plenty. Anything made in the PRC can be made elsewhere. They only assemble what we design and engineer. They are fungible. And replaceable.

Yes. America should fix its own system.

It really doesn't matter if the company is state-owned or not, it matters what industry they supply. The steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, targeted a specific thing, and protected a national defense industry from China getting rid of its overproduction at below-cost rates. There is really no percentage or frame of time that can be universally applied to China, there are just industries that must be considered individually for their need for protection from Chinese and other exports.

There is no good reason to treat Chinese imports differently from Malaysian imports, or the imports from any country that is not Canada, or perhaps the UK.

It would, broadly, increase consumer prices and thereby decrease purchasing power, to increase the cost of goods currently imported, and just wait for American industry to catch up. To avoid this shock, American industries themselves need to be subsidized. Other industries are not a high priority for moving back, they can't all come at once, and there will always be some mutual advantage to trading with what is, now, the world's largest economy and producer.

For the things that we could still reasonably want from them, another way to balance the trade deficit would be to just get them to buy more American products, since they are notoriously protective of their own markets.

Some of your problems are solved by industry tariffs, others are solved by industry subsidy, and others are solved by diplomacy. Global trade, properly managed, benefits everyone and is a good idea.

Defending against their economic and political attacks is not “picking a fight”.
The fight is already on, we should just start punching back instead of being a punching bag.

Obviously we need to fix our system and fixing it means reducing our economic dependence on the PRC.

All their state owned companies engage in subsidized dumping, and all their money goes to the government but just banning or heavily tariffing their aluminum and steel altogether is fine.

And stop the neoliberals nonsense. Trade can be good or bad, it is a chaotic neutral.

And no, we should obviously treat the PRC differently than places that are not threats.

Getting them to buy enough our stuff is not feasible. They have very high levels of protectionism and want to replace it all long term.

Yes tariffs would increase consumer prices BUT we keep the increase in revenue!
See that is the great thing about tariffs, the extra money just goes to the government. All the money from the tariff could go to a manufacturing investment fund, so the people would get it back in more jobs. Heck you could even cut other taxes. Which would offset any loss of purchasing power.

Set the tariffs high enough like we used to and you no longer even need an income tax.

And increasing the tariffs 1% every month is not getting it all back right away, that is the point, they slowly increase. It would be a few years before they reached high levels.

And I could see granting a temporary exemption on products that could be proven literally available nowhere else, but the company requesting the exemption would have to prove it plus that they are really seeking alternatives. We cannot be strong while relying on tour adversaries and everything we buy from them is a Trojan Horse for their political and economic power to infiltrate our country.

[Ankenland]

And stop the neoliberals nonsense. Trade can be good or bad, it is a chaotic neutral.

And no, we should obviously treat the PRC differently than places that are not threats.

Horses are chaotic neutral, you can ride them or get trampled by them depending on how stupid you are. A country should be able to produce everything it needs, however, it is usually the case that there is always something it wants but cannot produce as efficiently.

It is best for a country to produce its own needs, since those can be leveraged against it, but trade in wants, since those cannot be hard leveraged.

Why is China a threat? Did your nukes stop working?

[Novus America]

And stop the neoliberals nonsense. Trade can be good or bad, it is a chaotic neutral.

And no, we should obviously treat the PRC differently than places that are not threats.

Horses are chaotic neutral, you can ride them or get trampled by them depending on how stupid you are. A country should be able to produce everything it needs, however, it is usually the case that there is always something it wants but cannot produce as efficiently.

It is best for a country to produce its own needs, since those can be leveraged against it, but trade in wants, since those cannot be hard leveraged.

Why is China a threat? Did your nukes stop working?

Okay I actually agree on the first part, that it is important to make the essentials and you can then trade for non essential luxuries IF you are trading with countries generally friendly. Still no need to enrich your adversaries.

Nukes do not magically solve everything, they do not make you invincible.
They do not stop economic and political threats.

They only prevent an outright invasion that seeks to destroy you entirely. But obviously the PRC does not plan to seize DC and burn it to the ground. Because they do not have to to beat us.

That is like saying “why fear Ebola when you have a gun?”

Besides they are a threat to our allies as well.