Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I’d pay for HN
How much?
China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
491–500 of 560 posts
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
... a one-party state, Homeland security, Judith Miller, two wars of aggression on foreign soil (one completely illegal), the President choosing not to enforce laws he didn't like, every critical voice being labelled "unpatriotic", every media channel bleeding nationalism 24-7... the sort of thing that in other countries we'd call "a regime".
A regime of 4 "good" years maybe, before it started getting real blowback for all of its excesses. In regimes more properly called regimes - those good years last for decades, or the lifetimes of their supreme leaders. So.. at least we got that going for us.
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 effor…
Stated with a western perspective here, but I wouldn't be surprised if anybody who lived under an oppressive regime would openly admit they fear it, for fear of the repercussion. Can you meaningfully distinguish those who genuinely don't feel any fear (because they're bold, or ignorant, or possibly both), and those who superficially state they don't fear their government?
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#494Meta: 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!
I mean HN still doesn’t have proper replies and notifications so I’m not holding my breath
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#495Gorbachev 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.
The comparison to 80s/late-90s USSR is poor. I think this epidemic is showing the opposite, at least in terms of technical competence. The response from the central authorities has been massive and relatively well executed. The comparison is also off because the day-to-day living situation on the ground (for the average citizen) is totally different from _both_ a political and economic perspective.
Do you think we know the truth about anything? The cause? The response? The scale?
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a huge difference between "manufacture of consent" type propaganda, in which the citizenry is complicit in its own indoctrination, and Soviet-style propaganda where there was no free press and people were killed and jailed for criticizing the government. Wondering aloud if the Soviet system might not be better "because at least people were aware of it" is shocking and cruel.
The “everybody is the same” rhetoric lacks basic credibility. We’ve lived through three years of the media calling the chief executive a nazi, racist white supremacist, foreign agent, the harbinger of the downfall of the country. Can you imagine that happening in Russia or China?
Im not an American but it can be argued the US was not built from the same social situations Russia, China or any post colonial emerging power was built from.
US for almost all practical purpose for most of its existence is an extended Britain. And for the remaining part the best result of European colonialism. The US is basically Europe. There are now differences of course, but the bigger story is this.
By and large Russia and China are the result of revolutions, that were attained in the climate of what was then the dominant political and economic narrative of the time.
The fact that countries like China and Russia have done whatever they have done what it took Europe and its colonies centuries to do is in itself a huge proof of success, if you want to measure it that way.
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Make downvotes and upvotes an economy. You can't downvote what you don't have to spend. You can't post if your bankrupt of points.
Idea might need fine tuning.
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#498The Chinese government's response to this situation (after some initial dithering) has been to move swiftly with big moves. I suspect that the force that overcame the initial delays in local response were powerful central government actors who could some in and simply shut cities and entire areas down and not fool around. There appears to be at least one emergency prefab hospital with about 1600 beds under constructi…
What people also should realize is that China is likely the only country of this size and might in the world that is even able to pull off a response like this anymore -- perhaps Russia could also be a candidate -- just in terms of handling the population. The same approach would likely fail in Western democracies starting with logistics and then individuals being too much out of line.
I believe any advantage this may have created is likely offset by China's extremely high population density compared to Western democracies.
Re: China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
... a one-party state, Homeland security, Judith Miller, two wars of aggression on foreign soil (one completely illegal), the President choosing not to enforce laws he didn't like, every critical voice being labelled "unpatriotic", every media channel bleeding nationalism 24-7... the sort of thing that in other countries we'd call "a regime".
A regime of 4 "good" years maybe, before it started getting real blowback for all of its excesses. In regimes more properly called regimes - those good years last for decades, or the lifetimes of their supreme leaders. So.. at least we got that going for us.
Which is exactly the goal of our system. Now if only we could get term limits for the Senate...