I don't understand your reasoning, how does the rise of the corporate sector in developing nations put deflationary pressure on developed countries? Wouldn't competition from new economic centres dilute the value of development in Western countries thereby causing inflationary pressure?
He said recently on Trevor Noah that he pays $7 million per year for sustainable jet fuel.
Edit: Also he claims his family's travel will be fully offset this year
If you are poor and have views that in some way threatens the current ruling class and it's narrative, you get cancelled.
What they mean by "cancel culture" is when the poor and marginalized use new technologies of communication like twitter to put people in power in the spotlight.
If the mob is angry, it's up to the government to find out why and resolve the issues.
This strikes me as an alarming defense of the most destructive parts of our current epoch. The culture in question usually does not take the form of speaking truth to power. More often it is unreasonable people destroying the lives and livelihoods of mostly innocent people because of an abstract and usually imaginary offense. A person can be smart but groups of people are not.
Call-out culture is bullying disguised as benevolence and empathy. It is doing more lasting damage than any of us realize. The bullies from school now believe themselves to be the virtuous ones BECAUSE of the bullying they engage in. And the only way to be moral in their eyes is to hold onto power and exercise the maximum amount of control possible over others.
Partially, but that's a very low-res version of what I mean. Drilling a resentment-based ideology into the minds of young people, and inundating universities with it, is the most destructive part of our epoch.
Universities are either dead or dying, for all intents and purposes, and they are filled to the brim with extremist-leftist-manufacturing departments that teach students that the entire structure upon which they now stand is immoral, evil, hateful, bigoted, etc.
Look at any grievance studies department's website, and maybe some sociology departments too. Chances are they'll say something about "dismantling systems of oppression". What's a system of oppression? Oh, that's all of Western Civilization.
We're allowing the teaching of literal destructive revolution ("overthrow the state and seize the means of production," basically) in universities. That is NOT sustainable.
Am I overreaching, or am I trying to warn the West against allowing resentment-based ideology to take hold?
Read about Soviet dekulakization, and ponder how that could've happened. It started with "this whole society, the shoulders of which I now stand upon, is wholly bad and corrupt, irreversably, nose-to-tail, and we must destroy it all (so that nobody else can gain the influence over society that I have achieved)."
When you believe that the only moral position is for "your side" to hold power, and to use it against the other side, you'll justify any atrocity.
It's a great example that you brought up, dekulakization, because it illustrates exactly my point.
Pre-Soviet Russia was indeed an atrociously brutal an unjust place to live. Is it any wonder that resentment and revolt ensued, and that people exploded in a murderous rage? Not good, but very understandable. Maybe if the Czars had actually worked towards a more equal society instead of crushing millions of peasants under their yoke there wouldn't have been a dramatic reaction to the state of affairs, don't you think?
Likewise today: improvements in quality of life have stagnated in huge parts of the world, wages are falling in real terms, inequality rises to Gilded Age levels, democracy is backsliding. Is it any wonder there is "resentment"?
I vouched you up if only because I'm a sucker for more feeds of interesting information; even if they are compromised. The twitter link is intriguing, if more than a little questionable.
For others: this poster has a rather China-friendly post history and negative overall karma for it.
While I think you have an interesting underlying point ("there's an enormous amount of USD used to transact oil") I don't think everyone getting out of oil would cause a revolution in the US. The US and the dollar abroad are involved in quite a bit more than oil.
I do wonder what percentage, very roughly, of the money supply that is, and what the actual consequences of selling that would be. Anyone have some rough estimates or places to look?
The best argument for low oil prices crashing the US economy would be in any changes to US debt interest rates. While this would certainly change a lot about US politics and finances, one could not count on continuing to borrow indefinitely at sub-inflation levels, America could almost certainly pay it off if it found the will to do so. The fact that America has a large and diverse non-oil economy that would be strengthened by dropping energy prices is certainly a factor.
KSA meanwhile is a rentier state, with 67% of the budget coming from oil sales. Their non-oil economy is badly underdeveloped, and they depend almost entirely on oil money to keep their population fed, occupied, and suppressed. You’ll notice that I said “occupied”, since at a first glance the Saudi economy doesn’t actually include Saudis; 2/3rds of those employed in KSA aren’t Saudi (90% if you exclude oil), and only 30-40% of working age Saudi’s in KSA either have or want a job.
If the oil money were cut off from KSA, the lifetime of that regime would be measured in hours.
> If the oil money were cut off from KSA, the lifetime of that regime would be measured in hours.
Are you sure about that ? both Putin and Xi would jump to make a deal for future oil exports in exchange for meeting Saudi social / security needs.
> America has a large and diverse non-oil economy
So does India, China <-- not superpower or depend heavily of foreign borrowing.
Pulling the plug on the dollar would materially make Americans poorer, independent analysts have put 50% of the value of the dollar arising from WRC status.
Americans can't handle that level of lifestyle change, without it being turned into a revolution.
Russia is an exporter themselves, suffering greatly right now due to the low oil price. They are no less dependent on oil for their economy, and some say regime change is closer now than it has been in a long time.
Xi is different, but its a big question whether the Saudis would agree to their usually awful terms.
Why would Americans turn against their own state instead of just fighting a war with Saudi Arabia? If a leadership change is all it takes then Americans can just voice their opinion in the next election.
> Are you sure about that ? both Putin and Xi would jump to make a deal for future oil exports in exchange for meeting Saudi social / security needs
Xi maybe, but that would be a lot of money for future benefits; I doubt China can afford it.
Putin is aligned with Iran, Saudi’s enemy, and would also be in a lot of trouble in a hypothetical collapse in oil prices. He’d be in no place to help.
Also, the Russian economy is actually kind of small; Italy would actually be better positioned financially to bail out KSA than Russia.
> Americans can’t handle that level of lifestyle change without it being turned into a revolution.
Debatable. But between “My lifetime earnings have been halved” and “I can’t get food tomorrow”, I’ll tell you which one will trigger a revolution faster.
our "revolution" would just involve voting in Bernie Sanders at the ballot box. In Saudi, it would literally be an Arab Spring type event. It's no coincidence that the Arab Spring corresponded with low energy prices.
Another interesting tidbit: when Saudi allowed women to drive, oil was in another mini-"bust" cycle. A half-measure to stave off larger social change.
That’s silly. Low oil prices are great for America’s economy, and oil has a lot less to do with the value of the dollar then our other exports, or our tax/regulatory environment.
When was the last time a political decree lead to change in who gets to be leader in what ?
The modern Chinese supply chain can only be replicated in few other places in the world.
I don't see what the problem is to let China do what it does, and focus everybody else's goal on other more important things - like reducing global C02 emissions.
You could generate millions of jobs just by doing that.
> When was the last time a political decree lead to change in who gets to be leader in what ?
The creation of the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Advanced Research Project Agencies undoubtedly had a profound impact on the direction of both the US economy and the rate of scientific progress during the mid-late 20th century.
> I don't see what the problem is to let China do what it does, and focus everybody else's goal on other more important things - like reducing global C02 emissions... You could generate millions of jobs just by doing that.
You’ve gotta admit, their high speed rail network is very impressive. And it all runs on electricity.
Granted, most of the current electrical production comes from coal I think. At least until they can phase that out for natural gas, solar, and nuclear.
And 10 years ago, the western media was a laughing at China, and declaring that their high speed rail network was a commercial failure, because most Chinese people couldn’t afford the expensive train tickets.
But then, fast forward to today, and their high speed trains are running at maximum capacity. At least before the virus. They cannot run anymore trains, because of clearance requirements, so they are building newer dedicated tracks.
The median Chinese person’s income had increased in the past few years, that more of them can afford the travel and vacations, and can pay for a high speed rail ticket.
And the interesting thing, is that the newer dedicated tracks will run on the even faster maglev technology, that they indigenously developed, which can run almost as fast as an airplane.
This new maglev technology was not stolen from Japan or Germany, or gasp, the United States. Unless they have a time machine too, and stole it from future American technology. LOL.
The other interesting development is that they built a low speed maglev intracity rail to move people around. But this doesn’t get as much attention as the faster trains.
>When was the last time a political decree lead to change in who gets to be leader in what ?
What, China became number one in manufacturing by accident? Was it possible that Deng Xiaoping, the supreme leader of a Communist one-party state, might have made a political decree or two? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping#Three_steps_to_e...
There were reports that suggested Mao wrote a letter to FDR or Truman, to combine American financial capital with Chinese labor. The Chinese would mass produce all the consumer goods needed by the western world.
Granted, a lot of the source of that American financial capital came from the illicit smuggling of opium into China, during the prior century.
But, the American side was too stuck on politics, that this wasn’t even a consideration. Then, the two got stalemated in the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Until Nixon finally relented, and changed directions for America.
Demographics is not destiny, if it were true, Pakistan would be more powerful than Russia.
How you organize your society matters much more, Japan/SK has fraction of the global population, and somehow maintain their economic importance.
India has all the problems of a democracy without much of the benefit. It's more likely that India becomes a CCP style country than stays a democracy.
If India was so great it's smaller immediate neighbor wouldn't be so hostile towards it, and friendly to CCP.
CCP was able to organize G77, so they have the numbers on their side, it's just that poor people don't have a voice, China is providing hard power to the masses of humanity against the interests of G7.
It's a major shift in world power, whether G7 likes it or not.
I am no fan of CCP, nor is CCP a fan of how they do things ! but its the world we live in, where the state department can just overthrow the govt of a major country if it likes, you need the use of hard power to survive.
> If India was so great it's smaller immediate neighbor wouldn't be so hostile towards it, and friendly to CCP.
I'm assuming by small country you meant Pakistan. If so, this couldn't be further from truth. Pakistan isn't hostile toward India because India isn't great; the reason is in the reason of its creation and a relentless need to justify that reason. Pakistan came into existence based on an idea that Muslims couldn't survive in a democratic nation with majority Hindu population as Hindus would be a de-facto rulers. (Although this argument has turned out to be a completely false as in India the population of Muslims have grown from 8% to 14%+ after independence. On the other hand, minority population - Hindus/etc. - have declined considerably in Pakistan.)
Be it culture, history or language, Pakistan has most things common with India. If there's piece between both, people would soon start questioning reason to stay separate - together both can be a great powerful nation on the world. Many outside interests (read super-powers) wouldn't like this to happen so they keep fueling aggressive elements. Similarly, rulers of Pakistan can't allow this to happen for obvious reason. Till date, you can hear their leaders justifying separation from India in their speeches by highlighting some stray incident happened with some Muslim in India.
Spot on! Don't you think it's interesting to see the current Chinese ruling class's propaganda on HN always harping on their dreamed up superiority of top-down social organisation? Completely oblivious to the value of chaos. One hope they will learn.
Not to mention (West) Pakistan waged a genocidal war against its coreligionists in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) when the East Pakistani Awami League political party won the elections.
That said, the fears of Jinnah and the Muslim League were far from unfounded. While Gandhi was not hostile to Muslims like the VHP/RSS who ended up murdering him, his vision of India accorded them a subordinate role at best, as with the untouchables.
India has always been a pluralist place, and it is not ethnically homogeneous like China (genetically India is composed of a few hundred population clusters that have endogamy higher than 99.9%, higher than Ashkenazi Jews, for example). That's why India is unlikely to ever get a strong centralizing state like China. That also why democracy is a hardy weed in India, and may prove more resilient than the authoritarian Communist regime based on naked force on the other side of the Himalayas. Even the worst disturbances in modern Indian history, around the time of Partition, pale in comparison with the death toll of Mao's Great Leap Forward or his Cultural Revolution.
> India has all the problems of a democracy without much of the benefit. It's more likely that India becomes a CCP style country than stays a democracy.
What is the basis for this? People have been predicting fall of democracy in India for decades (especially in the West), but nothing of that sort has happened. The closest incident was the state of emergency under Indira Gandhi in 1975-1977. India successfully recovered back then when the populace was far less educated and far less exposed to the outside world. It's not likely that anything like that is going to happen again.
Media and Judiciary are important pillars of democracy, but they are tightly controlled by the Government in India.
Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by President (Current Government) [1]:
A judge dies right before court case hearing of the top leader of the ruling party. [2]
An Indian Police Service officer [3] is known for his role in filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court of India against the then Chief Minister of the Government of Gujarat, Mr. Modi, concerning Modi's alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. On 30 September 2011, he was arrested due to a case, the Supreme Court suspended the case in April 2012. On 20 June 2019, he was sentenced to life in relation to another case dating back to 1990.
A 27-year old pregnant lady has been lodged in Jail for participating in the anti-CAA protests and denied bail as the judge finds 'no merit' in her bail plea. [4]. She is accused of "planning to hold protests".
A gunman fired shots at protestors during the same anti-CAA protests [5] and gets bail within a month [6] by the court:
A ruling party leader who gave a hate speech during the same anti-CAA protests on camera while police officers standing with him on stage is free and still part of the ruling party. [7]
Throwing in a bunch of complaints (sometimes valid) doesn't mean India is not a democracy. Do the people still choose the government via elections or not? If you don't like policies of the current government, organize the opposition and vote them out. That's not being curtailed by anyone.
How will I organize if government will slap a case against me and will put me in jail? In my previous comment I have shared examples of this happening to people who raised a voice or tried to protest.
Rest aside forming an opposition, I dont even feel safe to comment against government by using my real handle.
How are literally hundreds of political parties existing and contesting elections in India? What case will the government slap on you if you want to canvass for an opposition, start a political party or contest elections?
Nice try. None of the cases filed are for forming a political party or participating in democratic exercises. They range from criminal cases to defamation. The "newly formed" political party has been in power in Delhi since 2015 and has won the last two state elections. You are proving my point.
You cite National Herald. You know that the opposition party in India owns this. In fact, they took over vast reals estate property using their influence over this paper. The case in in the court and the top leaders are out on bail.
News media is a business and unfortunately favors the party with more money. There are news media that favor the communists and the main opposition party too. At any rate, please dont cite national herald.
Democracy means people’s will, which may not be our personal will. People elected this government twice consecutively. They feel hopeful that there would be positive changes in the country.
Lastly, let’s try to overcome our pain body. We will have to do it some time for our own happiness.
Having one-party rule for 60 years is no democracy.
You don't have a democracy when the state controls all the TV media.
> What is the basis for this
The basis for this is the level of grinding poverty in India, live in a Indian slum for a year and then come back to me, and spew the virtues of "democracy" vs economic freedom and rights.
Poverty is organic propaganda for extremism and communism.
> Having one-party rule for 60 years is no democracy.
Er, what? Democracy means people can choose the government. There were several political parties in those 60 years of Congress rule. They just weren't big enough to win elections. In any case, you just have to look at the last 20+ years to see how government has alternated between political parties.
> You don't have a democracy when the state controls all the TV media.
[citation needed]
> The basis for this is the level of grinding poverty in India
270 million lifted out of poverty just in a decade (2006-2016), second only to China. Existence of poverty means democracy is not the right form governing? You make no sense. What is the alternative?
> live in a Indian slum for a year and then come back to me, and spew the virtues of "democracy" vs economic freedom and rights
I have lived in India for better part of two decades. I don't need lessons from you on what poverty looks like, thanks.
> You don't have a democracy when the state controls all the TV media.
Please share some data points when you make such tall claims. India sure does has Fox and Breitbart equivalent of its own. But that doesn't imply that the state controls 'all the media'.
This article shows a nice summary of topics of news on major tv channels in India
Literally 0 discussion on anything that puts government in bad light. 0 discussion on issues like health, education, unemployment etc. Most of the discussion are on breaking communal harmony (which is in interest of ruling party) and bashing opposition parties.
Please don’t cite national herald. This is an enterprise that is owned by the opposition political party and used to grab prime real estate. You will get the same content in some other newspaper sympathetic to the opposition parties. Please cite that.
India has news channels castigating the govt everyday. Wire, NDTV are 2 examples.
Attempts to bring a constitutional amendment (NRC, CAA) which discriminated against 1 religious community was vehemently opposed and stopped. People took to the streets.
How many political parties does the beacon of democracy in the world have ? How does such an example of democracy end up choosing between a tyrant and a senile ?
Authoritarianism and right wing leaders are on the rise around the world. India is also fighting the same challenges.
Poverty and lack of education are primary reasons of corruption, India is growing organically like a democracy of its size should, fighting the challenges it has.
The only reason India has a voice against China is because of its Nuclear capability, had it relied on the goodwill of the west, India would be bowing to China like other ASEAN countries.
China is at par with US today because of over dependence of the latter on the former. The US can continue to enable a authoritarian, non democratic power, or support a country which believes in its democratic values in becoming its ally against China and stabilize the world.
What do you think will happen to democratic values of the world when China reigns supreme ? (A Uyghur would like to say Hi!)
China has made big short-term gains because of an authoritarian rule. But, for a sustained growth, like that of USA, you need an open, democratic society which allows people to express their newly find voice. As people gain wealth, exposure and education, they gain new intellectual capabilities. This capability can be used for innovation but that requires people don't have undue pressure - they feel free to express their ideas and thoughts.
If you're in constant battle with your own people/government, lot of energy is wasted that could otherwise be used to do more important things that can take you and yoru nation further.
> where the state department can just overthrow the govt of a major country if it likes
That's an extraordinary exaggeration. The state dept does not have that power at all, not even close. Show me all the examples of this happening to a major country, much less a major democracy, in the last 50 years.
It's incredibly difficult - nearly impossible - for the state dept to overthrow the government of a major country. That's why Saddam Hussein, the dictator of a very weakened non-major nation, was so hard to remove.
Iran? Overwhelming proof of how hard it is to topple the government of even a mid-major nation. The state dept has wanted to change the government of Iran for four decades now and can't do it.
If the US could topple countries so easily, Putin wouldn't be ruling Russia as a dictator. Chavez wouldn't have continued ruling Venezuela as a dictator (and Maduro wouldn't be in there now). Fidel wouldn't have ruled Cuba as a dictator for so long. China wouldn't be operated the way it is now, ruled by a dictator. North Korea wouldn't be run by the Kim dictatorship. Bashar al-Assad wouldn't still be ruling Syria as a dictator. Although it is interesting what all of these countries have in common.
> How you organize your society matters much more, Japan/SK has fraction of the global population, and somehow maintain their economic importance.
They maintain their importance by being creditor nations, i.e. they are productive and save.
> India has all the problems of a democracy without much of the benefit. It's more likely that India becomes a CCP style country than stays a democracy.
There is a fundamental distrust of power structures in India. This is due to multiple waves of colonization by foreign powers, first by the Mughals and second by the British East India Company.
India is likely to be a liberal democracy far longer than the United States. It’s current fascination with populism doesn’t necessarily lead to authoritarianism. Rather it is giving a voice to the most disenfranchised in a country, typically those who are now economically obsoleted by automation.
> If India was so great it's smaller immediate neighbor wouldn't be so hostile towards it, and friendly to CCP.
That is due to political history and infighting between secular and religious figures in India’s independence movement.
Everything you have mentioned is true, but it misses the point.
India needs to go through a period of "communism" to get anywhere, the type of land reform needed to reduce poverty won't happen without somebody brutal enough to go against the interests of the wealthy in India.
India is still mostly a feudal society, that was thrust into the 20th Century from the 16th Century.
It was robbed of 4 centuries of social change.
> infighting between secular and religious figures
and who do you think instigated it ? how was India able to have different religions living side to side without communal violence until the Brits showed up ?
India could fix it's issues with it's neighbors by being more empathic as a regional hegemon, CCP understands this.
It's more likely that the Indian Communist Party comes into power before 2030, and all of Eurasia switches side and forms a cartel against the G7.
India traded with Muslim nations far before the Brits showed up. British East India Company had to fight Muslim and Hindu rulers in India,by pitting them against each other, to establish their hold. There are documents of Indian saints living under rule of Muslim kings and vice versa.
Please read more about Colonialism and Indian history.
Any comparison of India with China generally leads to this sort of conclusions. If India and China were students in a class, China would be the topper of the class. India is a good student, just not a topper.
India has been making great progress on most fronts, just not as big leaps as China did.
Well yeah sure, except China is the student that's cheating by faking their grade results. But seriously, how can you call a country's rulers that were so stupid as to implement the one child policy, inclusive of forced abortions, ""winning"" ???
I was actually arguing for India by the point I made - as in, India when compared to China comes out to be a super under-developed country that people consider India to be a basket case; which it is not.
It was an economic basket case, however. That’s why so many Indians left during the socialistic policies of Indira Gandhi. It was due to socialism that India regressed and fell behind China. Had India adopted state capitalism earlier, as it has now, it would have grown at a much faster rate.
> That’s why so many Indians left during the socialistic policies of Indira Gandhi.
don't know, i think more people leave India now than ever, but that is not necessarily a bad thing (in net).
> It was due to socialism that India regressed and fell behind China.
Questionable, even at the height of cultural revolution in China, India was growing slower than China. Perhaps India had more societal issues that it needs to solve, perhaps China has inherent advantages, in either case, this sort of question is for the historians to discuss.
> Had India adopted state capitalism earlier, as it has now, it would have grown at a much faster rate.
> It's more likely that the Indian Communist Party comes into power before 2030
The Communist parties of India (CPI and CPM) currently have 5 seats out of 543 in the 2019 national elections, down from 10 in 2014, 19 in 2009 and 53 in 2004. Do you spot a trend? And you think they are going to be in power in 10 years? You are way, way off the mark and you have little to no understanding of Indian politics.
Git isn’t a great role model, however. It still uses the “blame” terminology which ascribes a needlessly negative and confrontational tone whenever you need to tell someone how you discovered the author of a line of code from your team’s codebase. This kind of vocabulary debt is something we should be paying off more of, more regularly, since it’s just as important — arguably more important — than functionality.
Healthy business rivalry is good, systematic theft and cloning of superior products is what we’re talking about here and huawei absolutely deserves the “corporate death penalty” for its behavior.
What if the Chinese government is working overtime to prevent the superior companies from reaching their markets? Should the Chinese people be stuck with inferior products? I'm not condoning it at all but this is about more than just Huawei. China is doing this with more than just Huawei, anyway, just take a look at what COMAC has been doing.
That's a losing battle, there's no point in fighting for the Chinese market since it's not a real market. The winner there will always be a state controlled entity until the political environment changes. But Chinese companies should absolutely be barred from doing business outside of China as their influence is toxic to democracy and freedom.
Meanwhile, "Europe's listed firms expect to glean $514 billion in revenue from China."[2]
I just don't understand where people get this idea that Western companies can't do business in China. They have a massive presence in China, unmatched by the presence of any Chinese company in the US or Europe.
Nationalistic flamewar is not allowed here and, in this vitrolic a form ("it is an evil, vile country?" good grief) will get you banned from HN. Do we really want HN to be a place where Chinese users and users with China-related backgrounds are hounded out of here on racial grounds? Can anyone believe that I even have to ask this? No more of this, please.
Edit: you've posted ethnically/nationalistically-tinged attacks to HN before, and personal attacks before, and we've asked you to stop these before. If you do it again we will have to ban you again, so please stop.
I'm happy to try to help you understand if you're asking in good faith, but those questions are somehow too open-ended for me to efficiently answer. If you can make them more specific I can take a crack at it.
My family had been at the receiving end of such countries. Twice.
I dont believe in a policy of appeasement. At all.
China is too similar to Nazi Germany for me to ignore it.
It is an evil, vile country that has deception and absolute disregard to human rights deeply rooted at its core.
The youtuber SerpentZA only scratches the surface of what this country is doing to not only its people.
And this is not an overstatement. To compare it to countries like Korea and Japan would be doing disservice to these countries. They are both objectively racist. Are they evil?
Well not at the moment. Imperial Japan was evil. Current Japan is just hypocritical.
These judgments about entire countries are much too grandiose and strident to count as thoughtful comments here. No matter how you feel about policy there are always many people in any country who are not part of it. Some of them are on HN. Those readers have a right to come here and not see comments denouncing their country and often (by implication if not explicitly) their ethnicity, and in a way their families too. Moreover, since such comments are pure flamebait, they are a vector toward this site destroying itself with flamewar and we have a duty to prevent that.
I appreciate what you say about the history of your family. I'd be interested to hear more about that, if there were a good context for it. Still, we need room for more gradations of behavior than extreme words like "appeasement" allow for. If the logic here is "China" -> "I don't believe in appeasement" -> "China is evil", that's far too blunt an instrument to smash into HN conversations with. You're not doing any good by fighting battles in that way. You're just adding, in a small way, more violence, and giving people a good reason (emotionally if not rationally) to retaliate.
I think it would be best if you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and try to take the spirit of this site more to heart. You're welcome here. But those guidelines are not an arbitrary hodge-podge of tonal tastes. They're carefully designed, through deep experience over many years, to try to prevent this forum from destroying itself, the way that internet forums traditionally have. That was the founding intention of this site [1], and it's no small matter. Internet discussions have a strong tendency to flamewar, and internet forums turn into scorched earth by default [2]. We're trying to stave that fate off for as long as we can [3]. For that reason, we have no choice but to ban accounts that refuse to help protect the commons here.
I think if you would stretch a bit to understand this, and see why the rules are the way they are, you'd realize that it's in your interest to participate in the community in a different way—one that is less bludgeoning. It's in your interest because that's what keeps the community interesting, which is the only reason any of us comes here. You can still make all your substantive points if you switch from a denunciatory/flamewar style to a thoughtful/curious one. Indeed, they'll be better for it and will probably lead you to new insights that make for better comments yet.
>These judgments about entire countries are much too grandiose and strident to count as thoughtful comments here.
They are not really thoughtful comments. I dont know how productive they are but I guess some people appreciate them.
I dont want to contribute to a circlejerk of "we hate china". For sure not.
I usually get carried away though.
>Those readers have a right to come here and not see comments denouncing their country and often (by implication if not explicitly) their ethnicity, and in a way their families too. Moreover, since such comments are pure flamebait, they are a vector toward this site destroying itself with flamewar and we have a duty to prevent that.
Sure do I have the right not to be dismissed by "americansplaining"?
I dont really disagree with anything you have said I just find it incredibly difficult to discuss controversial topics on the internet.
I've rarely seen this kind of hiperbole on hn. Who is we? What does it mean to defend? What exactly is the connection to Western civilization here?
> I would rather China to collapse than to see it replace the US of A.
Is this in any way pertinent to the topic being discussed? Is there a risk that China would collapse if Huawei gets into business trouble? Is there any risk that China would "replace" the US if Huawei doesn't get into trouble?
Guarantee you're going to catch downvotes for this comment, but you're 100% right.
The evils of the US and China are not even comparable in the modern era. A million plus in concentration camps, secret police disappearing journalists/doctors/dissidents, absolute authoritarian control over citizens lives, replacement of ethnic minorities en masse, organ harvesting, wholesale theft of IP and technology, etc etc etc.
It's such a tired and played out argument of "but in 1973 America did [bad thing]".
America still does bad things to this day, and they can definitely be compared to China's bad things...but one may far outweigh the other. I agree with the GP's sentiment but there's no reason we can't offer criticism on both.
Between this comment and the ethnic attack in your other recent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23277011), I have to tell you that any more of this will get you banned here.
Wage equilibrium around the world is inevitable with the rapid increase in integrated markets and improvement in telephony technology.
What this means for workers is far less important that what it means for capitalists.
We talk about race to the bottom for workers, completely ignoring race to the bottom for landlords / corporations and governments.
landlords around the world have to now compete on a much more even footing.
Rise of the corporate sector in China / Russia / Africa puts deflationary pressure on developed countries.
Governments that do not offer much, would watch the young and skilled flee to live under better government structure.