Why waste the time over nonsense numbers that are almost certainly doctored in various ways. Your responses? ‘you changed the definition of the term! CIA doctored the information!’ etc. See? waste of time to argue the numbers. they’re essentially meaningless when you’re going to waste time of the definition of the term ‘literacy’ I was literally using the most generous term and accepting china’s numbers essentially at face value. I did pick the value from the WHO as at least thats marginally independent source.

See, here’s where we get into a problem and why you’ve gotten so many responses treating you as either acting in bad faith or being fundamentally unserious.

Are the numbers meaningless or not?

It seems like you state assertions as being based on fact, people press you for examples or evidence, and you ignore or sidestep it. Then you do engage on a very select topic, that you even set the parameters for, and produce something in defense of your assertion. But when confronted with a statistical counterpoint you immediately retreated into western chauvinism and declared the evidence that contradicted your arguement as invalid on the basis of those countries being official enemies.

Of course, others then pointed out that many of the statistics and research for the various points they were refuting there and elsewhere also actually come from organisations actively hostile to these states (the CIA world factbook for example). At which point you seem to declare that all numbers are doctored, meaningless, and discussing the facts is pointless.

As for the accusations that everyone here claimed the same thing in reverse - “CIA doctored the information!” - the only user I’ve seen did that explicitly to point out how ridiculous you sounded reflexively stating that any supposedly ‘pro-China or Russia’ numbers are inherently fictitious. They also made that very clear, which means either you didn’t properly read their reply or you’re deliberately mischaracterising it in a poor bad faith attempt at deflection.

The primary difference is i’m happy to lampoon both capitalists and communists systems; both systems have historical and modern examples absolutely atrocious outcomes for people due to their tendency to collapse into centralized power structures leading to monocultures which always collapse. These are facts of nature and systems. While you can argue with me all you want about it, history has proven this result over and over and over across every centralized governance model, and all centralized systems suffer the same fate in basically every domain, technological, physical, biological, political.

First of all, this isn’t some sort of centrist comedy jam. And even if it was, if you think communists don’t take the piss out of communist states or practices or tendancies then you’ve clearly spent close to zero time with communists or engaged most popular media they’ve produced from classic literature to contemporary video games.

More importantly, pointing to two diametrically opposed systems with radically different conditions and challenges and saying ‘both sides bad’ isn’t any kind of material analysis. It’s also, most here would argue, another convenient excuse to sidestep the issue entirely, because an honest analysis would demonstrate the fact that despite individual failures, the two systems produced drastically different material outcomes for their people.

As for your assertions about “all centralised systems”, would you care to define that or give some examples? What are these vaguely gestured at “facts of nature and systems”?

I’d also point out that it’s historically been the case that all societal systems go through phases of collapse and evolution. (Do you have any examples of ‘decentralised’ ones that don’t?) The importance is in how and why these structures collapse, rebuild, and evolve. Something that given your next point, and your lack of engagement elsewhere, you oddly don’t seem very interested in.

The simple fact is I don’t have to prove these things to you, it will literally just happen.

Wow, that’s an awfully convenient bit of the gnostic belief I began this discussion by pointing out.

That would be an appropriate book end I suppose but…

I suspect neither country will last the remainder of the century given current trajectories.

That’s a pretty bold prediction, that could be interesting if you presented some sort of material reasoning for it.

Nor do I particular care if this group collectively pulls their heads out of their asses and recognizes a generally decent person when they see one.

Aaaaand we’re back to insults and weird parasocial, immaterial fandom stuff again.

plus you know, its nice to see that no new information has been missed due to my own information silos.

How would you know, given that you’ve pretty much refused to engage with any reading or simple material evidence provided to you?

You’ve essentially walked in, called everyone idiots, and on the only points you’ve even been willing to define immediately stated that all the evidence provided is lies and nonsense, before crossing your arms and going See, just as I thought, everyone here is an idiot.