China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen • Hacker News Board

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#451

Post by dageshi » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

ttul wrote: post #8

A friend of mine is leaving HK today - he lives there, so this is not a casual trip abroad. He said the level of fear is making it impossible to live there as a single person. The shops and restaurants are closed. Even his own employer shut its doors indefinitely - and they’re just a video production company. The virus won’t be what ruins China. It’s the panic itself.

Interesting, China's absolute control of media within the country turns into a double edged sword, people don't trust what they're being told on the subject and go with the worst possible scenario's instead.

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#452

Post by BostonEnginerd » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #435

yongjik wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, about half of the comments are "(China/America/government in general) is evil, because (some superficial observation already known by 99% of visitors here and not directly relevant to the current situation)", or some form of generic refutation. I'm also frequently guilty of the same thing, but this is getting out of hand...

Social media websites all suffer from a phenomenon of being flooded low quality content the moment they become popular. Reddit's content quality dropped significantly the moment they deployed their mobile app, though it had been on a downward decline for a while. I've seen HN being discussed at length on Reddit as a better alternative for "adylts", but now we see the same slow decline here. The important questions ar…

Metafilter has maintained reasonably high levels of discussion and civility. Part of this is active mods, the other part is that an account costs some money to open.

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#453

Post by sigil » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

ShorsHammer wrote: post #427

Meta: 185 top comment replies, 278 comments total. The redditfication of this place continues. China articles are essentially broken and there's no point trying to advance the discussion or have healthy debate. Someone should make an extension that collapses all replies and only shows top level comments, think it might be a lot healthier for online discourse.

Reddit has a solution to this problem, and HN should steal it: randomize top-level comment order. This keeps the highest ranked comment from becoming a top-heavy attractor for all further discussion. I agree this is a real problem for discourse on HN these days!

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#454

Post by jancsika » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #139

ithinkinstereo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Chinese saying that's apt here; "山高皇帝远" which literally translates into "mountains are high, the emperor is far away." However, I disagree that this is solely unique to China. You see it in the west too. The water crisis in Flint, MI springs to mind.

Shortsighted politicians exist everywhere, but the political system determines what their short-term goals focus on. In a centralized top-down system like China's, politicians advance their career by currying favor with their superiors by demonstrating plan fulfillment, and if they fail they'll try to fake the numbers to make it look like they succeeded. This affects mostly nationally visible metrics like GDP, povert…

> In a localized bottom-up system, politicians advance their career by currying favor with voters by distributing handouts, like farming subsidies, tax cuts or artificially low prices. The Flint water crisis was at least partially caused by politicians not wanting to improve the infrastructure, because the cost would have to be recouped by raising the water price, which would have been unpopular.

The flint water crises was caused by state emergency powers being abused to take the action of switching to a more acidic water source. The corrosion inhibitors the state-appointed emergency manager neglected to install were necessary because of the lower quality of the new water source. If the water source hadn't been changed, I don't know of any evidence that the corrosion inhibitors would have even been needed.

In other words, your counterexample to a centralized top-down system is in fact centralized top-down corruption of a localized bottom-up system.

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#455

Post by aaron695 » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:56 AM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #435

yongjik wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, about half of the comments are "(China/America/government in general) is evil, because (some superficial observation already known by 99% of visitors here and not directly relevant to the current situation)", or some form of generic refutation. I'm also frequently guilty of the same thing, but this is getting out of hand...

Social media websites all suffer from a phenomenon of being flooded low quality content the moment they become popular. Reddit's content quality dropped significantly the moment they deployed their mobile app, though it had been on a downward decline for a while. I've seen HN being discussed at length on Reddit as a better alternative for "adylts", but now we see the same slow decline here. The important questions ar…

> How can social media sites control quality of submitters.

I'd like to see how a system where downvotes have reasons given works? Slashdot tries for upvotes.

Currently you might be downvoted for being offtopic, but you might just think it's because someone disagrees politically.

It would be an interesting overlay to create for HN

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#456

Post by grecy » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #443

grecy wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Regular citizens in America have a worse life than people in other OECD countires, but you're OK with it, because "rah, rah America". By what measure? The average American house is double the size of the average European house. We have vastly more disposable income: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/ It correspondingly leads the world in household consumption expenditures per capita: https:…

> By what measure?

By all the measures that actually indicate how life is for the average person on the street, not just the ones about how much stuff you use up.

The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility.

In many of those, it's 2x to 5x worse than other countries.

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#457

Post by SmirkingRevenge » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:01 AM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #408

toyg wrote: post #130

Gorbachev used to say that Chernobyl was where the USSR really started to crumble. The disaster made clear how morally bankrupt and technically incompetent the system really was, wiping out any remaining goodwill or trust. Similarly, Katrina was where the semi-fascist US consensus under GW Bush went to pieces. I suspect China will experience a similar moment at some point. This might well be it.

>Similarly, Katrina was where the semi-fascist US consensus under GW Bush went to pieces. What semi-fascist consensus do you imagine existed, and how was it affected by Katrina?

I assume the poster is talking about the post 9/11 climate, where the country was solidly behind President Bush, while the federal government was busy ramping up Guantanamo, the patriot act, water boarding, etc. in the name of fighting terrorism.

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#458

Post by ineedasername » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #160

ineedasername wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe outside of China we see it as "ruled by fear", but that's really not the case in China, at least for the majority: China doesn't try to make it's citizens afraid. Quite the opposite. Their modus operandi is "move along, nothing to see here, everything is fine." Indeed, that was their initial message to the public for this virus. So, the problem and partial cause of panic is when there is a problem that is very…

China is a place where you can be locked to a chair and interrogated by police for social media comments critical of the state. Don't try to tell me it isn't a government ruled through fear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6uy12RpqQc

That is not common fear for the billion+ people living there. I have worked alongside many workers from China, and had a few student workers work for me. They do not view they their government as overly oppressive. They view it as working in the best interests of the people, protecting people from harmful things, like internet content through the firewall: in that case it may be they can circumvent it with some effort, but they view the initiative as coming from a place of wanting to take care of their people.

You are bringing an outsider's view to this, and I'm telling you, it's not how the Chinese people feel, for the most part. I understand how that's confusing. One person was kind enough to indulge me in two hours of conversation on the topic, and it took that and shorter conversations with a number of people to realize that, Yes, the Chinese people have swallowed the blue pill offered by their government. Not that they're particularly unique in that respect, but, well, there it is. They do not live in fear in the way you think.

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#459

Post by stazz1 » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

Liquid injection needs to happen but the hard part is knowing where. Micro injections around the whole economy would be better than huge injections into one-door banks. Bailouts do more for citizens directly than for corporations, as is shown time and time again. Liquid injection is basically another name for bailout, no? And where is this money going? Probably not to the best node where it will make the most travel

Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

#460

Post by fouc » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

sigil wrote: post #453

ShorsHammer wrote: post #427

Meta: 185 top comment replies, 278 comments total. The redditfication of this place continues. China articles are essentially broken and there's no point trying to advance the discussion or have healthy debate. Someone should make an extension that collapses all replies and only shows top level comments, think it might be a lot healthier for online discourse.

Reddit has a solution to this problem, and HN should steal it: randomize top-level comment order. This keeps the highest ranked comment from becoming a top-heavy attractor for all further discussion. I agree this is a real problem for discourse on HN these days!

Hopefully dang sees this ^