Fine China

Can you believe that it's been fifteen years since columnist Thomas Friedman, then and now a columnist for the New York Times, coughed up his infamous "China for a day" hairball?

In case you missed it:

I have fantasized—don't get me wrong—but that what if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment. I don't want to be China for a second, OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.

This fur-and-bile amalgam has been derided and deconstructed countless times since its regurgitation, but those efforts have apparently not been enough.

Behold, this share that crossed my social media feed.

Before I continue, I must note that there is doubt as to the authenticity of the Carter quote. I share it not as the lament of a broadly derided one-term President, but because others are sharing it in admiration of the message.

The sharer, who I will not name, is by all indications a full-on progressive who purportedly attended a No Kings rally.

Quite the irony, that.

Decrying an American president as imperial and dictatorial while embracing a nation with one-party rule, a dictatorial leader, a massive surveillance state, a "social credit score" system and blacklist that keeps citizens in line, a lack of protections for individual liberty, a terrible human rights track record, a long history of religious oppression (Uyghurs, anyone? Tibet??), an aggressively expansionist attitude into international waters, an abysmal environmental record, perpetual saber-rattling at Taiwan, a callous disregard for the health and well-being of its citizens, a rashly xenophobic culture, prohibitions against same-sex marriages and adoptions, censorship of any advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights, no protections for speech or religion or the press or due process or workers rights, no labor unions but those run by the Chinese Communist Party...

Yeah, sign me up for that.

Yes, I believe that America has spent too many taxpayer dollars playing globocop. I believe that, had we not intervened in the Iraq-Kuwait matter, many dominoes would not have fallen, and the West would have been better off. I believe we've gotten little payback for the $7T spent on the Global War On Terror, and that it has done far more harm than good.

But, there is no universe where I praise China in conjunction with those views.

This "China for a day" lament is based on the fantasy of a benevolent despot, of a Solomon-like leader who is immune from the failings of human nature, who is all-knowing and infused with the mountain of wisdom it would take to make all the right decisions, and who could build a government of underlings similarly endowed with super-human resistance to self-interest. It was recently echoed by a reader who admired China's approach to drug abuse, no matter the oppression that approach entails.

It ignores Thomas Sowell's observation.

It ignores the protections of the Constitution and the checks and balances our system has in place to prevent the emergence of a strongman leader. Those checks and balances are actually working, as Jed Rubenfeld discusses at the Free Press.

It also posits that "China is getting ahead of us."

Not so fast. Per-capita GDP in the US is seven times that in China. US median income is 10X that in China. High-speed rail is a forever leftist fantasy that is prohibitively expensive (and even more so when the Left gets involved in its construction, see California's boondoggle) that none but them want (and they want it for others, not for themselves) and that runs counter to the freedom we enjoy with our private vehicles.

Furthermore, the "If we'd used even a fraction of that [$300B] on ourselves, our cities would hum like circuits" assertion is laughable. California wants to build a single high-speed rail line from LA to San Francisco. The initial $33B estimate when it was pitched in 2008 was deemed $100B short last year, and you and I both know the total will just keep going up.

That's just for one infrastructure project. Another, the Hudson River Tunnel project that will expand travel between New York City and New Jersey, is projected at $16B and is just getting under way. Care to place any bets on the final figure? That $300B figure would cover a mere handful of projects, and barely make a dent in the "cities would hum like circuits" fantasy.

But, sure, let's pretend that China is a shining example of how a nation should be run. The pretenders almost invariably love thuggish authoritarianism... when it's used for stuff they want. When it's used otherwise? Gnash those teeth, pull that hair, scream at the sky, and ignore both your own hypocrisy and the myriad warnings about giving too much power to the government. As quipped by Barry Goldwater and Gerald Ford (but not by Thomas Jefferson, for the record),

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.

Milton Friedman was one of many who reminded us that government is people like you and me, not some angels who stand above human nature:

Where in the world are we going to find these angels who are going to organize society for us?

You want China? You get China. Utopia is never an option.

The foolish, naive, and blindly idealistic may still buy into the utopian fantasy of Solomonic rule despite all evidence to the contrary, and they may argue that aspiring for it is a Good Thing. But that fantasy is far from benign. It brings real harm, and it opens the door for disaster. A disaster that the more cynical invite and the power-hungry crave, because they figure they’ll be among the few who benefit.

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The art at the top of this article is verboten in China, because Dear Leader Xi doesn’t care for the resemblance. How’s that for “China for a day?”