I watched this film a couple of weeks ago - maybe you've seen it, but your comment reminded me of it.
Sorry mate, I am in China ,youtube has been banned for years, what's the name of the film ?
My comment comes from what I read from a Chinese professor (his name is Di Dongsheng)
I can paste some paragraphs from his article. Actually, it was a blog post from his Weibo (Weibo is equivalent to Twitter in the Chinese internet world, because twitter has been banned too, we use Weibo, lol^-^.). Translated by computer, if you want to read it.
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Title: About the Underlying Logic of the Real World's Operation
Yesterday, I was invited to attend a seminar on the prospects of China US economic relations. The speeches at the conference were quite impressive, but in the end, there was a small episode. In the interaction before the end, I commented on a few words, one of which was "The underlying logic of this world is actually violence. Only on the basis of violence can politics exist, and economic activities exist within the rules, order, and boundaries of power provided by politics. The market is not a free and independent existence, it is a public good provided by the government." The leader of the conference organizer was a gentle and humble female economist, In her concluding remarks, she mentioned my statement in a polite and frank manner, admitting that she may find it difficult to accept this viewpoint. She believes that the market is spontaneous, and the economy is not determined by politics and violence. Economic activities have their own inevitable laws of existence; Politics does have an impact on the economy, but it manifests more as a temporary interference. In fact, in a professional WeChat group about sanctions and economic warfare where I am the group leader, a similar debate has also occurred. Most people studying political science, international relations, strategy, or history can agree with my viewpoint, while the first reaction of pure economists is, "This is too scary."
Such ideological differences not only reflect the differences in disciplinary attributes between us, but also demonstrate the differences in the underlying logic of basic ideological schools or worldviews. This kind of disagreement can be regarded as an eternal theme in the history of thought. The ideological struggles related to it have been seen in the debate of the Han Dynasty's "Salt and Iron Theory", in the debate between Hobbes and Locke about the "natural state", in the game between mercantilism and liberal economic policies in modern world economic history, and in the "Criticism of Confucianism" movement in China in the 1970s, In the debate between realism and idealism in international relations theory, it has been seen that in the future history of human thought, this debate will continue to be renewed in different scenarios and with different appearances. However, as Comrade Mao Zedong once said in his later years, "Politicians with achievements and achievements throughout history have all been Legalists, advocating the rule of law and valuing the present over the past; while Confucianism is full of benevolence, righteousness, and morality, advocating valuing the past over the present, and reversing history." Economic liberals, idealists in politics and international relations, and Confucians in Chinese intellectual traditions, The world and vision they describe are more in line with the aesthetic or moral sense of the vast majority of people in daily life, but they do not conform to history and cannot explain reality, let alone predict the future.
My personal ideological inclination is realism rather than idealism, and in the coordinate system of Chinese intellectual history, it is closer to ancient Chinese Legalism rather than Confucianism. Below, I will use a few small Q&A to elaborate on the underlying logic of my academic ideas, which can also be considered as a response to friends who have a tendency towards liberalism/Confucianism/idealism.
The first question is, how does government and order arise?
Hobbes and Locke have completely different understandings of anarchy. The natural state mentioned by Locke is actually a village with public order and good customs, not a true sense of anarchy. In human history, the anarchy between groups of different languages, cultures, races, and religions is closer to Hobbes's understanding. When order collapses and resources are scarce and the people are struggling, the constraints of morality and ethics disappear. What ancient Chinese people called a chaotic era without royal laws is Hobbesian anarchy.
In Hobbesian anarchy, where everyone is the enemy, there are those who are more powerful and use violence more recklessly than others, monopolizing resources for survival. While robbery through wandering can certainly obtain survival resources, a more stable and reliable approach is to evolve from bandits to occupying the mountains as kings, and collect relatively fixed proportions of taxes from residents in the jurisdiction under the banner of protecting the environment and the people, or similar measures. So, the relationship between this violent group and its ruling residents went from a zero sum game between the predator and the victim to a symbiotic relationship with a partner color: without the protection of this violent group, the money and body of the residents would become spoils and commodities of other violent groups. Different violent groups compete for their spheres of influence, collude with each other, constantly compete and merge, ultimately forming a balance within a certain area. The larger violent monopolists refer to themselves as kings, while the largest refer to themselves as emperors. In this process, who can most effectively obtain as many soldiers and military resources as possible from their jurisdiction, who can use the most clever methods to transform these semi forcibly mobilized young people into organized combat forces, who can gain greater victory in this cruel game, and ultimately transform from bandits to kings and emperors. Therefore, unless absolutely necessary, it is a foolish, short-sighted, and suicidal practice to fish and prey on the people within one's jurisdiction.
Not only that, violent groups also need to hire professionals, such as wizards, to use divine will to drape the legitimacy of their rule, or to use Confucian scholars to fabricate some moral rituals, or to demonstrate the rationality of their rule through "heavenly human interaction", "the end of the five elements", and "divination and latitude theory". It is not accidental that some scholars in the field of ancient intellectual history believe that the origin of Confucianism was ancient witches, while the origin of Taoism was historians. The idiom "成王败寇（The winner becomes king, and the loser is the bandit.）" describes the fact of dynastic succession rather than just people's cynical emotions. Of course, there is always a cost to deceiving others, and the biggest cost is to fool oneself as well. Rulers who dominate the country are very clear about how their political power came about, so almost all of them are followers of Legalism. Some hypocritical people will dress themselves in the guise of Confucianism, even Buddhism and Taoism to reduce the cost and risk of governance. However, after several generations of political power, the number of people within the ruling group who understood the above background became fewer and fewer. However, if the nobles and grandsons who grew up in the deep palace were primarily theoretical rather than historical, they could easily become overly confident and foolish. Once a more powerful violent group emerges, these "legitimate" rulers who excel in literature and art often write about the pain of national downfall and leave behind some timeless masterpieces after becoming prisoners. Of course, there will also be some rulers who flee to peripheral areas to survive, and as the ruling space becomes cramped, their behavior patterns will inevitably become bandits again, like returning to their ancestors.
The second question, how did the market emerge?
Liberals believe that the place where people trade is the market, and with division of labor and transactions, there is a market. However, in practice, in places where there is no government monopoly on violence, the spontaneous trading order of the market is difficult to maintain, and it is difficult to distinguish between merchants and bandits or pirates. This is the true state of anarchy during the Silk Road or the Age of Discovery. To maintain market order, it is necessary for a government to monopolize violence or rely on agreements between several governments. Moreover, the more complex the high-end market, the more crucial the role of the government. In the first chapter of my book "Money, Power, and People," I argued that "the popularization of education and healthcare can enable healthy and capable workers and entrepreneurs in economic activities. Furthermore, if we can combat behaviors that disrupt social and market order, such as antitrust, anti fraud, and anti counterfeiting, then the efficiency and quality of economic activities can be improved."; Furthermore, if infrastructure investment can be subsidized and its external performance internalized by government actions, then the progress of infrastructure will greatly enhance the competitiveness of related industries; Furthermore, through legal authorization and punishment for dishonest individuals, a sound credit system can be established, which can reduce transaction and capital costs, making transactions and investments easier to achieve; By suppressing the protective tendencies of local governments and various industry forces, a unified national market can be established. Through international treaties and trade negotiations, the country's advantageous goods can enter the markets of other countries. Official efforts to unify and expand internal and external markets can enable the country's core industries to expand production capacity and gain economies of scale and competitiveness; If we want to achieve faster technological progress, in addition to subsidies for technological research and development, we must also provide reasonable and necessary protection for intellectual property rights. Therefore, specialized courts and law enforcement teams are needed. These public goods are all necessary to compensate for the externalities contained in technological research and innovation; The social security system and wealth redistribution system can shape a social structure dominated by the middle class, whose function is not only to expand the overall demand of the domestic market, but also to reduce the political and security risks of the entire society; The reason why the promotion of new business models and new technological routes has a high threshold is because traditional models and technologies have been in harmony and symbiosis with society for many years. To tear apart and reconstruct this traditional operating system will bring pain, obstruction, and resistance to some groups. Therefore, the government must provide necessary suppression, induction, and compensation to them, so as to achieve social and technological progress and governance change. In short, there is a structural correspondence between the various public goods provided by a government and the expansion and complexity of the country's economic activities; The larger and stronger the government, the more sufficient the supply of public goods, and the more complex and advanced economic activities become
