Your prosperity is built on wars & slavery
The following from a twitter thread by josh wolfe:
Interesting POV from Chinese billionaire friend who made his money outside of China and felt safe from reach of Xi (as he invested in China, but sold his companies to non-Chinese so he never ‘took money out’ of China). He got the number’s wrong but the point was clear…
He asked me the first “democracy”. I answered: Greece. He said what was population of your great democracy. i said ~150,000. He asked how many were slaves? I did not know. He said: ~100,000 slaves rules by ~8,000 Now what about your beloved Rome?
What was the population of Rome? I guessed roughly correct 1M He asked: and how many slaves? I guessed 10k. He said it was closer to 500k around 50% of the population. He asked––rhetorically––what the current population of “democracies” in the world today?
He asked rhetorically the democratic population in the world today? And answered: 700M. 300M in US. 300M in Europe. 100M in Japan. And said 7B people were ‘slaves’ serving the 700M. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the furniture + design, the technology we use…
He noted when Deng Xiaoping + Jimmy Carter met in 1979: Deng said “we must be friends”. he saw that all the countries that were friends with the US were RICH (S. Korea, Japan, Europe, Canada) yet all the countries that were enemies with the US were POOR (cuba, russia etc)
During that year, 1979, the per capita GDP of China was $184 when it was $11,600 in the US. Today the per capita GDP of China is ~$10,000 while it is $60,000+ in the US. Xi’s interest is POWER. But the power doesnt come from the 500M people who…
Xi’s power doesnt come from the 500M people who live on the coasts and live like Americans with tech jobs + tutors. high-end schooling. It comes from the 1 billion ‘peasants’ in the center of China. And as he takes from the 500M (or the 1% of them) the 1B people applaud him
His point was that the inequity that exists in the world since “your great democracy of” Greece supported by actual or defacto “slaves”—continues TODAY. And that concentrated power will seek to please the poor masses and turn them on the elites whenever needed—over all else