Comment by BiteCode_dev
9 hours ago
While I do believe that China is surpassing the West on many points, I'd like to underline that a cashless society is not a good thing. It's a terrible, terrible idea.
With no cash, the citizen passport and the GFW, the dictatorship has total control of society. It's not that there are no homeless, is that they are pushed to even worse conditions, out of sight. It's not that there is zero crime, it's that the crime is from the state, the mafia, and there is a lot of corruption. But nobody can talk about it because there is no free press.
I do think it's important to state how much China is advancing, and surpassing the West, because they are going to rule the world as the Americans did, soon.
But let's not pretend it's some kind of utopia.
I think you over estimate the control and under estimate the need for flexibility for any society to operate. Let's just say even in China, identity can be a commodity. For example scammers are known to buy bank accounts by paying poor people in remote areas. The system needs flexibility otherwise a majority of people will run into problems all the time.
agree