I'm not surprised. At all. This is how communism works.

The real wonder is how did he get in that position. I'm willing to bet that neopotism was involved.

-- Edited by Andrew at 14:35, 2007-07-12

My bet is that he was a scapegoated. And later given 'two taps' to the back of the head.
This is very possible.  I don't think they use juries in China but a panel of judges instead.  I think the defendant stands in a cage during the processings.  The family has to pay for the bullet too!  Environmentalists won't stop their use of nuclear energy!

I doubt in China there are 'special interest' groups and a 'culture' industry built around monitoring, insuring and enforcing manufacturing and recall of defective product like in the west.
The problem was that they got caught and it is going to impact sales of produces involving food and hygiene outside of China.  It probable was to some extent a show trial.  But, they do have a growing market economy and it is very possible that these economic entities did bribe him to look the other way.  In a way China is evolving from a communist state to a fascist state.


What does happen to a Martha Stewart, Enron executives
In my view Martha Stewart got a raw deal from the legal system.  The goverment launchs a major PR campaign claiming that she commited insider trading (which she didn't) then they take her to court on claims that she lied to investigators and thereby obstructed justice.  But  because she wasn't charged with insider trading her lawyers were not allowed to refute the general impression that she did.  The actual "false statements" nit picky as to be absurd.  With the coming in the wake the market collapse and Enron she get convicted and this jury goes out and displays his pretrail prejudices by saying that it was a victory for the little people.

Enron was a major fraud and that is a whole different matter.  But, I wouldn't say their sentences were light but then they weren't prompt executions or slave labor camps either.


-- Edited by John at 01:58, 2007-07-14

A "communist" state tends to collectivize the economic system as much as possible including agriculture.   A fascist state allows the market system to continue to function while regulating it to government goals.  But fascists don't confiscate all capitial and put it directly under direct goverment management in as a central part of their ideology.

Well, the trouble is that Communism in general seems to encourage "Gangster Style" government practices. Any organization calling itself a government that believes that the "Ends justify the means" can end up this way. Look at the Stalinistic era; Mao-ist China; North Korea; the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; even Cuba operated this way...

Not saying that the "...Ends justify the means..." school of though is strictly a communist thing either: look at the Mcarthy era FBI communist witch hunts of the fifties and sixties; NAZI Germany in WWII; and some might even argue that this is current 'fealing' from the White House now. This is harsh 'criticism'--true--but whenever a select group of individuals is given free reign to accomplish political goals, regardless of the consequences, the results are usually far from bloodless.

So to say that China is behaving like a "Gangster State" probably isn't too far from the truth. I think that change will only come because enlightened self-interest takes hold--but they must be vigilant against self-possessing greed and megalomania. Once they realize that these characteristics are bad for the state--then things won't get better.

Remember, Nikita Kruschev was 'deposed' by force of arms by Leonid Breshnev citing the "...dangerous 'adventures...'" Kruschev had taken the country into by fomenting the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That's my 'two cents worth!'

Actually I think Prince Machiavelli was the first to have said that line that "Power corrupts; and absolutle power corrupts absolutely."

It is a very rare thing for someone to be given so much power--to then use it wisely--and then when the crisis has passed, to voluntarily give it up again. In history I can think of only a single person who has done this: George Washington is first and foremost in my mind...

The Founding Fathers of the United States were very fearful of absolute power, and worked very hard and cleverly to ensure that the systems of the checks and balances were effective. They were right to distrust themselves and future generations--and so much of what they accomplished so many years ago is now threatened...

The one property that seems so lacking in society these days, as I see it, is Ethics. Ethics is not taught in a highschool setting, or atleast very rarely taught. It is something which can be learned. And if we try really hard a s a society, we might even achieve some great things by thinking ethically.

We have major problems that we must solve as a society if Western Civilization is to survive the next 100 years. And Ethics may make all the difference...

For if we ourselves do not hold to our own Ethical Standards, how can we expect our elected representatives to be held to a higher standard? On another blog a while back I posited that perhaps our representives were indeed representing us faithfully: with all of our own faults and foibles. That if we truly wish to improve the quality of our representation, and by default, the quality of our own governments, then we must first improve ourselves. By improving the population as a whole, then the representatives who are drawn from that population will generally be of a higher quality. QED!

If we wish to improve the lot of the world as a whole, and that is no small feat, then we must first imrpove ourselves. Agressive investment in education is merely one aspect of this. A robust and exciting (and truly inspiring) Space Program is another facet. International competition can be a friendly and positive effort with other countries: investments in technological solutions--real solutions--to the problems facing us. Why not offer cash prizes--multibillion dollar grants--to other countries that actively take up the challenge to improve their own lot as well. Poltical change will come as a natural result--and such change is nearly always unstoppable.

I do think that ethics plays a big part in correcting corruption. But reality in the nature of been human is very present.
The human if given the opportunity to wield power runs the risk of abusing acquired power. Ethics aside...
This is the temptation, is some cases, 'the thrill of power' unless you can localize the receptors in the brain to neutralize it no ethics training will help-unless you where to develop the fictional 'human incorruptible medication' required to be taken by elected leaders to insure immunity from act out on its own self interest or the interest of a corrupting minority that runs counter to the interests of the majority that elected the leader. 

Short of that, a 'spot check' lie detector/interrogation for leaders they would have to submit to under oath to insure performance levels remain adequate like every year to evaluate performance on the job subject to recall election if failure is detected.

I thought you might enjoy reading this......

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=e4286da7-7124-4450-b546-d05363a774ed
Why stupid voters always get their way
In a democracy, the majority often imposes its economic ignorance on everybody else

The Economist, Sunday, June 17, 2007

Anyone who follows an election campaign too closely will sometimes get the feeling that politicians think voters are idiots. A new book says they are.

Or rather, Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., makes the slightly politer claim that voters systematically favour irrational policies.

In a democracy, rational politicians give them what they (irrationally) want. In The Myth of the Rational Voter, Caplan explains why this happens, why it matters and what we can do about it.

The world is a complex place. Most people are inevitably ignorant about most things, which is why shows like Britain's Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? are funny. Politics is no exception. Only 15 per cent of Americans know who Harry Reid (the Senate majority leader) is, for example.

True, more than 90 per cent can identify Arnold Schwarzenegger. But that has a lot to do with the governor of California's previous job pretending to be a killer robot.

Many political scientists think this does not matter because of a phenomenon called the "miracle of aggregation" or, more poetically, the "wisdom of crowds." If ignorant voters vote randomly, the candidate who wins a majority of well-informed voters will win.

The principle yields good results in other fields. On Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, another quiz show, the answer most popular with the studio audience is correct 91 per cent of the time. Financial markets, too, show how a huge number of guesses, aggregated, can value a stock or bond more accurately than any individual expert could. But Caplan says that politics is different because ignorant voters do not vote randomly.

Instead, he identifies four biases that prompt voters systematically to demand policies that make them worse off.

First, people do not understand how the pursuit of private profits often yields public benefits: They have an anti-market bias. Second, they underestimate the benefits of interactions with foreigners: they have an anti-foreign bias. Third, they equate prosperity with employment rather than production: Caplan calls this the "make-work bias." Finally, they tend to think economic conditions are worse than they are, a bias toward pessimism.

Caplan gives a sense of how strong these biases are by comparing the general public's views on economic questions with those of economists and with those of highly educated non-economists.

For example, asked why gas prices have risen, the public mostly blames the greed of oil firms. Economists nearly all blame the law of supply and demand. Experts are sometimes wrong, notes Caplan, but in this case the public's view makes no sense. If gas prices rise because oil firms want higher profits, how come they sometimes fall?

Surveys suggest that, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to share the economists' view on this and other economic issues. But since everyone's vote counts equally, politicians merrily denounce ExxonMobil and pass laws against "price- gouging."

The public's anti-foreign bias is equally pronounced. Most North Americans think the economy is seriously damaged by companies sending jobs overseas. Few economists do.

People understand that the local hardware store will sell them a better, cheaper hammer than they can make for themselves. Yet they are squeamish about trade with foreigners, and even more so about foreigners who enter their country to do jobs they spurn.

Hence, in the U.S., the reluctance of Democratic presidential candidates to defend free trade, even when they know it will make most voters better off, and the reluctance of their Republican counterparts to defend George Bush's liberal line on immigration.

The make-work bias is best illustrated by a story, perhaps apocryphal, of an economist who visits China under Mao Zedong. He sees hundreds of workers building a dam with shovels. He asks: "Why don't they use a mechanical digger?" "That would put people out of work," replies the foreman. "Oh," says the economist, "I thought you were making a dam. If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons."

For an individual, the make-work bias makes some sense. He prospers if he has a job. For the nation as a whole, however, what matters is not whether people have jobs, but how they do them.

The more people produce, the greater the general prosperity. It helps, therefore, if people shift from less productive occupations to more productive ones. Economists, recalling that before the industrial revolution 95 per cent of Americans were farmers, worry far less about downsizing than ordinary people do.

Politicians, however, follow the lead of ordinary people. Hence, to take a more frivolous example, Oregon's ban on self- service gas stations.

Finally, the public's pessimism is evident in its belief that most new jobs tend to be low paying, that our children will be worse off than we are and that society is going to hell in a variety of ways. Economists, despite their dismal reputation, tend to be cheerier. Politicians have to strike a balance. They often find it useful to inflame public fears, but they have to sound confident that things will get better if they are elected.

In short, democracy is a mess. But dictatorship is worse. Caplan observes that Winston Churchill's aphorism - that democracy is "the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" - usually cuts the conversation short. He does not think it ought to.

To curb the majority's tendency to impose its economic ignorance on everyone else, he suggests we rely less on government and more on private choice. Industries do better when deregulated. Religions thrive when disestablished. Market failures should be tackled, of course, but always with an eye for the unintended consequences of regulation.

Caplan is better at diagnosis than prescription. His book is a treat, but he will never win elective office.

-- Edited by 10kBq Jaro at 12:36, 2007-07-16