Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

nobelprize.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 234 posts

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#121

Post by ideal0227 »

pavlov wrote: post #112
dis-sys wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what I said is something well known, widely reported - he got jailed for a completely different matter. if you couldn't bother to even search for that, what is the point joining the discussion? let me know if google.com is too hard for you to use.

You're clearly trying to seed doubt about why Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was condemned for "subversion", a vaguely defined crime that doesn't exist in democracies, but has been a popular legal tool in dictatorships.

eh...

Liu was not sentenced due to this

And, yes, what you just described is also well known. No one in this thread said Liu should be sentenced. And no one in this thread said they agree with what Chinese gov did.

What we suggest is that some of Liu's opinions are not acceptable by Chinese people. And he is not well respected as people might think. Some facts are provided in this thread.

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#122

Post by rrrryhffyhg »

codefined wrote: post #113
factsaresacred wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be frank, we didn't abolish slavery, we just outsourced it to make it more acceptable. As Joan Robinson said, "the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all." Being paid for work you do not have to do is not slavery. You see we built this thing called civilization whereby instead of starving when crops fail, dying at age 30 with dysentery and livi…

As a point, what are your thoughts of a Meritocracy as a paradigm to follow? Nationalise everything, pay everyone an equal amount, to begin with, but based on their "merits" boost their pay. Seems to have all the advantages of capitalism, without the perceived negatives of communism equally a dictatorship or "fat cats", which could be managed by the government.

Who decides how "meritable" someone else is

What is to stop people in power putting their family/friends into high unelected positions (see Trump)

What stops positions from being secretly traded

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#123

Post by reitanqild »

codefined wrote: post #113
factsaresacred wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be frank, we didn't abolish slavery, we just outsourced it to make it more acceptable. As Joan Robinson said, "the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all." Being paid for work you do not have to do is not slavery. You see we built this thing called civilization whereby instead of starving when crops fail, dying at age 30 with dysentery and livi…

As a point, what are your thoughts of a Meritocracy as a paradigm to follow? Nationalise everything, pay everyone an equal amount, to begin with, but based on their "merits" boost their pay. Seems to have all the advantages of capitalism, without the perceived negatives of communism equally a dictatorship or "fat cats", which could be managed by the government.

Who measures the merits?

I'd say very soon you'd see fat cats sitting and deciding that on average their friends do better than the rest and here we are again.

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#124

Post by Nition »

codefined wrote: post #113
factsaresacred wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be frank, we didn't abolish slavery, we just outsourced it to make it more acceptable. As Joan Robinson said, "the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all." Being paid for work you do not have to do is not slavery. You see we built this thing called civilization whereby instead of starving when crops fail, dying at age 30 with dysentery and livi…

As a point, what are your thoughts of a Meritocracy as a paradigm to follow? Nationalise everything, pay everyone an equal amount, to begin with, but based on their "merits" boost their pay. Seems to have all the advantages of capitalism, without the perceived negatives of communism equally a dictatorship or "fat cats", which could be managed by the government.

Feels like one of those nice ideas that would never work well in the real world. Any defined measuring system would be gamed (Goodhart's law), and any undefined measuring system would be abused by nepotism/cronyism ("my brother adds tons of value").

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#125

Post by ideal0227 »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #115
dis-sys wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "certain views should never ever be publicly stated", and suddenly I need to defend such position? If you live in a society that allows you to publicly state anything without consequences, I'd say that is horrible. If you live in the US, try talk about some racial stuff and bring in the same colonization elements in, see how that is going to end. Time to grow up talk like an adult.

I think the consequences should be decided by the people, rather than an what must be a very insecure central power

Right. And you still know something is not acceptable by the people, and you probably wont go across that line. Same thing in China. Many of Liu's opinions are hated by Chinese people in general, not by the central power.

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#126

Post by wyager »

codefined wrote: post #113
factsaresacred wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be frank, we didn't abolish slavery, we just outsourced it to make it more acceptable. As Joan Robinson said, "the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all." Being paid for work you do not have to do is not slavery. You see we built this thing called civilization whereby instead of starving when crops fail, dying at age 30 with dysentery and livi…

As a point, what are your thoughts of a Meritocracy as a paradigm to follow? Nationalise everything, pay everyone an equal amount, to begin with, but based on their "merits" boost their pay. Seems to have all the advantages of capitalism, without the perceived negatives of communism equally a dictatorship or "fat cats", which could be managed by the government.

Why would you ever trust the government to decide how meritocratous people were? "Why yes, commissar, the merit department thinks you did very well and deserve a 3000% bonus this year. Please remember this when looking at my nephew's resume, as he's applying to your division. Ah, sorry comrade Bob, you don't get any bonus this year. (That's what you get for cutting me off in traffic last Monday!)"

The incentives in capitalism actually work out. When you can only spend your own money, and you have the freedom to choose how to spend it, markets are stochastically optimal for a huge range of allocation problems. Any sort of centralized system that tries to have only "the advantages of capitalism" usually fails because it doesn't make any sense game-theoretically or from an optimization perspective.

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#127

Post by pmontra »

hunglee2 wrote: post #108
maaaats wrote: post #74

As an aside, even though the Norwegian government has nothing to do with the prize, China quickly ended lots of relations with Norway, losing Norwegian companies billions. Now, the government is too afraid to publicly speak about Liu, to not sour what they have spent years trying to fix. Weak.

The weakness is democracy. The Norwegian governing party - whoever it is - now knows that China's default position to perceived outside interference is disproportionate economic punishment, leading to pressure on the living standards of the voters they depend on. Autocratic states have discovered a critical weakness in the representative democracy and there's little we can currently do about it

What if Norway was another autocratic state? Economic punishment could have made them bent anyway. Maybe your point is that autocracies bend less than democracies and you could be right: dictators usually don't care about economic sanctions because what they care about is to stay in charge. A poor or wealthy country doesn't matter much. Actually sanctions help them to build a narrative of world against the country and strengthen their grip.

I'm not aware of what happened in Norway after those Chinese sanctions. They could democratically decided that it was ethically worth losing those businesses. Any Norwegian people here?

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#128

Post by ideal0227 »

jaggederest wrote: post #65
dis-sys wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about just focus on the core issue here? the core issue here is how come someone with such an extremist style view got awarded a nobel prize. or you may want to explain to me how this whole "China needs to be colonized by the west for 300 years" crap is not extremist style.

That is not even close to the core issue. The core issue is that the Chinese government locked someone up for stating an opinion. An opinion not much different in substance than then ones you are stating in this thread. Would you consider it just for you to be imprisoned for your views alone? I would not, and I think that is also true for other people.

There are two core issues:

1. Liu is not acceptable by a lot of Chinese people due to his aggressive words on colonial and slavers.

2. Liu was sentenced by the gov due to "subversion".

So to judge Liu, we have to look from at least two different angles, not just "he was sentenced".

Few people thinks 2 is right. I, personally, do not agree on 2 too.

And I am now thinking why most people outside China only know about 2 when they try to judge about Liu?

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#129

Post by DanBC »

yurofish wrote: post #119
dis-sys wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what? saying "certain views should never ever be publicly stated" is outrageous? what a joke.

It absolutely is outrageous. You cannot put any limits on free speech in a free society. The people should monitor their own behavior, not the state.

> You cannot put any limits on free speech in a free society

But that doesn't exist anywhere in the world. The closest is the US, but even their extremist version of freedom of speech has government imposed limits.

Re: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

#130

Post by withholding »

hunglee2 wrote: post #108
maaaats wrote: post #74

As an aside, even though the Norwegian government has nothing to do with the prize, China quickly ended lots of relations with Norway, losing Norwegian companies billions. Now, the government is too afraid to publicly speak about Liu, to not sour what they have spent years trying to fix. Weak.

The weakness is democracy. The Norwegian governing party - whoever it is - now knows that China's default position to perceived outside interference is disproportionate economic punishment, leading to pressure on the living standards of the voters they depend on. Autocratic states have discovered a critical weakness in the representative democracy and there's little we can currently do about it

Democracies can choose not to trade with dictatorship.
Post reply on HN