> depended entirely on whose side they were own

I don't believe in 'side-ism'. A crackdown on the GOP would be a benefit for the rule of law while it still being in a perilous position, while a crackdown on the DNC is very a much a prelude to destroy the idea of rule of law altogether.

Destroying the opposition isn't obviously bad. Referencing side-ism implies that removing all the nazis from your government is a bad thing because it gives non-nazis unchecked anti-nazi political power. I view that as a good thing if the definition of nazi reflects reality (like in germany) rather than unreality (like russia/urkaine).

> Destroying the opposition isn't obviously bad.

It's bad. It's what turns a democracy into a dictatorship. And it's always for "good reasons" (by labeling the opposition as Nazi's/corrupt/criminals/etc.).

Now China was never a democracy, but the CCP was not monolithic and was somewhat democratic within the party itself -- except that is now gone.

I disagree here and I don't think it's a point we'll agree on.

Sometimes the label matches. There have been 4 people in high GOP positions who have sieg heiled. They aren't being labeled Nazis, they are objectively and factually Nazis. Germany's crackdown on the AFD is a response to power seizures/white supremacy in America. The GOP strategy writers literally wrote "there will be a revolution and it will be bloodless if the left allows it to be." There has very much been a declaration of "us or them", and that's not the type of thing that can be tolerated. You can't say "yes we'll work together with people who have said it's us or them."

Likewise your argument becomes a defense for pervasive systemic corruption, because the defense is no longer "we aren't corrupt," but "they're attacking us because we're the opposition, this is a power grab."

The gridlock that is a direct result of lack of corruption enforcement "because that would be a political power grab" became the mandate to overthrow the old establishment/ignore the constitution. What is happening in America right now is most influenced of all people by Merrick Garland who failed to prosecute a criminal because he was worried about enforcing the law against politicians which turns the justice system into a political weapon.

Unfortunately a weapon is just a weapon, it is a completely amoral object that amplifies the morality of it's wielder. Police officers carry weapons. It is not the weapon or that a weapon was used, but what the weapon is used to achieve that is worth analyzing.

That's the problem with side-ism, it implies that there are two equal sides with equal legitimacy and equal ability with equal strategies.

Game theory is deeply relevant, because on the two ends of the political spectrum are the cooperators (liberals) and people who think they should defect if they are able to win by doing so (conservatives). Conservatives don't cooperate when they should, and liberals don't defect when they should, and that's how those ideologies largely fail. Conservatives end up power grabbing (which is what I believe you're largely speaking in reference to) and creating dictatorship, while liberals fail to power grab and create dictatorship by ceding power.

I try to be internally consistent, and I don't think I am here. I guess communism is written in my head as an authoritarian movement, but it is re-distributive and comes with a message of cooperation as a means of gaining political mandate. In my post history I definitely state that communism is a pitstop on the way to authoritarianism and can't sustain itself as an ideology, because those who get themselves into a position of re-distributive power tend to choose to redistribute to themselves. This contradicts my post.

On one hand you have people that are incapable of acting in their own best interest because of ignorance/illiteracy, which is largely the Chinese argument that justifies authoritarianism, which I find compelling because America is living through that right now. On the other you have authoritarians that are incapable of acting in any interest other than their own, while simultaneously no one is able to veto obviously bad decisions.

I think my problem with "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is that it says you should not seek out power because it will corrupt you, and I think that is a message that predators wish their prey to internalize.

Parents being authoritarians to their children is not automatically bad, although there is clearly good parental behavior and bad parental behavior, and I think the analysis of the behavior is much more interesting than the status as authoritarian, especially under current global conditions.

My experience/impression is social and as an outsider, so your information/experience is probably much better than mine, although mine is a bit later than yours, but also not current.

> I know, I lived it for a number of years, owned a business there, was deeply immersed in the goings on, and many frank discussions with our circle of well educated Chinese (many of whom were emigrating or at least getting their kids out of the country).

How predictable/arbitrary would you say the operating environment was?

Predictability suggests rule of law, while arbitrariness strongly suggests none. I'm not sure I would buy IP related examples as related to rule of law, and I would also likely try to distinguish between a hyper competitive environment between unequally resourced people and arbitrary executions of power, which I don't quite think are the same.

> faustian bargain

Timothy Snyder is my favorite political thinker, he recently wrote "On Freedom" and talks about "freedom from" vs "freedom to" at length. Money in many ways is freedom. If you don't have money you are not very free. So China getting richer, while in America Wages are stagnant and losing buying power year over year has implications for overall freedom. In many ways China is becoming more free and America less free if you think about "freedom to" and "freedom from" holistically rather than just "freedom from" which is a very American way of thinking about freedom. Chinese policy becomes a lot more defensible in terms of "freedom to" while it is completely indefensible in terms of "freedom from."

Where once I saw authoritarianism in China, now I ask how much of their behavior is actually an answer to the Paradox of Intolerance and how true the argument of the greater needs for ensuring order in a society at that scale (which from what I can tell is definitely propaganda used to sell it internally). Don't get me wrong, I completely see china as an authoritarian state rife with unchecked (and therefore arbitrary) power, but China is also functional in a way the US is very much not and that's become very interesting to think about, for me.

I'm interested in your analysis of China from a "freedom to" perspective.

> no opportunity to mount any resistance, and therefore "mei banfa"

Timothy Snyder calls this "the politics of eternity."

> middle class will support the government

Given what you've said so far, what does it mean for the middle class to not support the government? Consent is the core primitive of western political ideology and foundational idea of 'rule of law,' so the implication of withdrawing consent is certainly interesting.

> what does it mean for the middle class to not support the government?

There's no legal process, so the only option would be mass protests. Believe it or not, this does happen in China occasionally, but not in big cities like Beijing/Shanghai, and it's very quickly put down and not reported in the news (and social media reports are very quickly censored, though Chinese can find ways around this, often using very clever play-on-word techniques which the Chinese language is much better suited to than English; censors are on to it though so it's cat-and-mouse or whak-a-mole).

> I completely see china as an authoritarian state rife with unchecked (and therefore arbitrary) power, but China is also functional in a way the US is very much not and that's become very interesting to think about, for me.

I understand how that can seem appealing from a distance. Much like the way that people who don't live in the US look at it from a distance and think "land of opportunity" (which to be fair, for some people it has been). Live and work in China for years and you understand that the way it looks from the outside is not the way it is. China is no more functional than the US, and in fact, very much less so. The uncertainty created by the lack of a proper legal system is _not_ something you experience in the US. Case in point: We were pulled in by the police for failure to comply with some paperwork (paperwork that couldn't be complied with, a typical catch-22 situation in China that creates a grey zone in which businesses operate within the law but can at any moment also be considered in violation of the law if so deemed). Anything could have happened, from shutting us down completely, to a slap on the wrist. We were first told we had to shut down completely, but the higher up got a call from one of our well-connected Chinese friends and gave us a slap on the wrist instead (see how that works?). Except that the highest investigating officer said that he wanted to be a partner in our business and we ended up giving him 10% of the business to ensure that we didn't get pulled in again. Straight out of Don Corleone's playbook. This is quite common, and none of our Chinese friends were surprised (in fact, they advised us to go along with it, because it's just the way it goes (unless you have enough guanxi). For all its faults, this would not happen in the US (we'd sue).

This is just one example. But articles and books about China don't give you a proper idea of what things are like there because people visit for 3 months (or 3 weeks) and think they understand China. Or they spend 1-2 years there at a Chinese university, or living in an expat bubble, and think they know. Spend 6 years there embedded in Chinese society, and you'll quickly become disabused of your ideas about China.

I also pretty strongly disagree with your take on freedom. It's easy to say that because you don't live in an autocratic country, and neither has Snyder. I've spent years in two highly autocratic countries (China and Russia) and let me tell you, money itself is not freedom. What money does in those countries is buy you a ticket out.

After having lived on almost every continent in a range of countries under different governmental systems, I still agree with Churchill that Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.