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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>…</b>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Tara Maya via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] chinese fires, was:RE: book review<o:p></o:p></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>During the Great Leap Forward, regional authorities each wanted to look good to the top. So they competed with each other to claim a bigger harvest. It didn't matter what did this did to the people below them, what mattered was looking good to the people OVER them. The result was probably the largest famine in world history. <o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>I suspect something similar is happening now. Each regional authority wants to prove that they are even more zealous in enforcing Covid rules than the next.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>It's not so much a display of power as a display of subservience, but that subservience is to the CCP bosses, not to the people. If people cry, starve, burn, so what? If the middle ranks disappoint the upper bosses, their own families will be the ones to cry, starve and burn, so it's worth it to them to prove their fanatic loyalty.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Tara Maya<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Tara I do thank you for that most insightful comment. It explains so much, I chose to leave the whole post in there unedited. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>My knowledge of the Great Leap Forward is supplied by my neighbor who was age 8 when local mobs ripped down a heavy metal gate off of a sturdy stone column after hearing a speech about how the commies needed metal. This gate was a huge ornate work of art in addition to being a swinging barrier. The mobs tore it down, and hauled it by hand by around twenty men, hurled it into a pile which contained stolen bicycles, cookware, anything they could find, melted it to make tanks. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>These tanks would be unsuitable for battle of course because scrap metal contains impurities (such as copper) which make recycled metal more expensive than the ore-extracted, if one insists on having the same physical characteristics. This is one reason why “pot metal” is cheap and brittle.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><br><br><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></body></html>