Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests • Hacker News Board

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#521

Post by Mirioron » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #366

josephdviviano wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that the dictator would still win. The rebellious citizenry would live a life of absolute misery, just as those in the middle east do. The 2nd amendment made a lot of sense when weaponry consisted of horses and rifles, not computer-guided missiles. If there was ever a true US dictator, the 2nd amendment would mostly be used by the oppressed to rob, attack, and oppress one another.

You're talking about maybe a million combat soldiers, before the massive attrition due to fighting against the Constitution, against 10's of millions of insurgents, all with a surplus of light weapons. It's not like those computer-guided missiles will have a target, as like most insurgencies there won't be many set piece battles.

And even if you have a target against the insurgents, the target is likely going to be next to some service member's home.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#522

Post by Thriptic » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

swarnie_ wrote: post #505

Thriptic wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely the case that an armed populace acts as a check against tyranny. You can argue that this is not enough of a benefit to warrant private gun ownership given the societal costs and low probability of a tyrannical government in the US, but this benefit definitely exists.

How do you think almost ever other country in the world with more mature and developed democracies manage to maintain human rights without hoarding firearms? I'm genuinely wondering.

I am not making the claim that private firearms ownership is required for maintaining human rights. My claim is that it is an additional control against tyranny, which it is. It is more difficult for a tyrannical government to enforce it's will on an armed populace than an unarmed populace.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#523

Post by jtms » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

Yes.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#524

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

dev_dull wrote: post #355

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

Yes I absolutely do. It’s especially frustrating that politicians speak endlessly about Russia when China is clearly the larger threat to US dominance. Even stories like “senator’s driver of 20 years is Chinese spy”[1] are basically ignored. 1. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-spy-w...

[deleted]

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#525

Post by throwaway77976 » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

> the US has some founding morals and principles they do not forget.

It took the US around 200 years to fully live up to those founding morals and principles.

The PRC is a relatively young country. Only 70 years as of today. Give them a hundred more years and perhaps it’ll change drastically.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#526

Post by elsonrodriguez » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

hnuser54 wrote: post #222

markstos wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Armed Forces is made up of people, many of which would not support a self-appointed dictator attacking their own people.

The rise of killer death robots like Boston Dynamics definitely changes this dynamic. A handful of people in charge of the robots could order them to murder whomever with little oversight or room for ethical qualms on the part of the "soldiers".

It's not so much the murder-bots, as it is the murder-bots in combination with the farming-bots, builder-bots, and general servant-bots.

If the rich and powerful consolidate autonomous labor under their control, this removes the self-interest of keeping people around, and would allow them to unleash whatever level of violence is needed, all the way up to genocide.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#527

Post by cryptozeus » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

nvahalik wrote: post #18

> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".

do you mean imagine as in how in "May 1970, the month in which four students were shot dead at Kent State by national police"

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#528

Post by sho » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #140

program_whiz wrote: post #13

Sure, the kid was swinging at the officer, and I suppose that warrants the officer acting in self-defense. But another question is, what are the protesters supposed to do? The government has all the power, and can simply snuff out any resistence. If you just stand in the streets, they really don't care, they are going to take your freedom. Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator that just decided they were going to…

Sadly, right now a US presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke, is promising to violently remove firearms from law abiding US Citizens.

Yes, because what idiot would want to reduce America's world-beating 40,000 gun deaths per year?

HK's homicide rate is almost 20 times lower than the USA's. To catch up with the US murder rate, adjusted for population, the HK police will need to kill about another 350 protestors for this year.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#529

Post by YayamiOmate » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

braindead_in wrote: post #456

bdamm wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The belt and road initiative is fascinating, including their cultivation of Africa. The scheme where they lend poor nations money to build ports and then when the port authority fails to fulfill the repayments, they simply take over the port and basically establish a Chinese base is rather diabolical. From a business perspective it is brilliant but it does seem rather obviously predatory. I consider that expansionist…

Yanis Varoufakis has an interesting take on Chinese economic imperialism. According to him, the Chinese are a benevolent imprealist, trying to achieve the same dominance but with loans rather than guns.

It's interesting to consider it benevolent from his perspective, since he called German financial institutions malevolent when it played out very similar in Greece. Except geopolitical influence expansion was not a main goal.

Maybe he said something like "it looks like benevolent, because they use finance instead of guns" or that compared to using military force it's relatively benevolent, but after watching some of his talks, I highly doubt he'd call it a generous ethical policy.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#530

Post by jhedwards » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #500

jhedwards wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Present-day China essentially has no ethics Source? I lived in China and didn't ever feel like I was in a place without ethics. Different ethics, sure, but it really looks to me like you simply don't know or understand China. The Great Leap Forward had nothing to do with routing out values, it was about hyper-fast industrialization, and it failed. There are real problems with modern China, and, separately, with the…

If you kill political dissidents and harvest their organs as part of an active genocide campaign, you lose any claim at behaving ethically. Ethics are measured by the actions you take that you'd rather not advertise.

Part of my point is that this is being done by the CCP. If you want to say the CCP doesn't have ethics that's a different argument than "China doesn't have ethics", and I don't think that's too pedantic too point out.