China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline • Hacker News Board

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#71

Post by thepasswordis » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

It's because we stopped focusing on creating things, and instead started laser focusing on making sure that everybody gets exactly the same amount of everything all the time. It's ridiculous. We are trust fund children who don't understand where the money came from, and it will be our undoing.

Twitter, NYT, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and the like have monetized dividing us, and they have a multi-billion dollar a year budget to figure out how to be more efficient at it.

We demonize people who create things. We demonize people who want to form communities, and we even demonize people who might dare to suggest that The United States is rightfully an example for the rest of the world.

We have gutted our education system. Many of my wealthy friends are either pregnant or have recently have had children. 0 of them will send their kids to a school where they learn that math is racist, the united states is completely racist, white people are racist, trees are racist, grammar is racist, and that they should be skeptical and distrustful of their parents.

We've gone from "America is a beautiful project we all create" to "America is a mine with jewels at the bottom, and we need to extract them and make sure that everybody gets their fair share".

It's unbelievably, unbelievably sad.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#72

Post by rakoo » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

mrits wrote: post #10

I'd like to think that extreme racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry won't be a winning recipe. A lot of the advantages China has in their government is beneficial for competing with other nations but will eventually eat itself from within.

> I'd like to think that extreme racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry won't be a winning recipe

It's hard to know if you're talking about China or about the US here

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#73

Post by centimeter » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

j_walter wrote: post #35

They are probably not wrong. When you look at the infighting within the US that is front page news every day...the decline is in full swing. People care less about how to actually improve the country than they do about trying to hold entire professions accountable for the actions of a few (not just cops)...then we are focused on the wrong things. Spending hundreds of days protesting something instead of putting that…

> putting that time toward actually cleaning up neighborhoods or tutoring underprivileged youth

The US has tried again and again these naively optimistic programs targeting “neighborhoods” and “the youth”, to no avail whatsoever.

The terrible reality is that the long-term prospects of a civilization are inexorably dominated by its demographics, and the demographics of the US are spiraling down towards disaster. We have exhausted the Flynn effect and our intelligence levels are declining. We continue to bulk-import millions of people with heritable intelligence levels below those required to sustain the level of civilization we have enjoyed in the past. Those segments of our population that produce enough wealth to sustain our political program are reproducing below replacement rate.

Unless we pull off a massive demographic reversal, which is probably impossible at this point, China is absolutely correct. The future of the US is, optimistically, Brazil, and pessimistically South Africa.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#74

Post by fuckyouandyours » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

j_walter wrote: post #35

They are probably not wrong. When you look at the infighting within the US that is front page news every day...the decline is in full swing. People care less about how to actually improve the country than they do about trying to hold entire professions accountable for the actions of a few (not just cops)...then we are focused on the wrong things. Spending hundreds of days protesting something instead of putting that…

> When you look at the infighting within the US that is front page news every day...the decline is in full swing.

I don’t see how there’s any other option either. At this point there a multiple “factions” who’s end vision of society is actively hostile to certain other factions.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#75

Post by ericmcer » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

EdwinLarkin wrote: post #33

That's ridiculous.China is the one in irreversible decline. Most people in the West get to enjoy freedom and access to utilities money cant buy in China. 1) For once most people in the west have access to safe and good tap water.Chinese urban dwellers dont. 2) Most people in the west live in places with significantly better air quality than chinese. 3) Most people in the west get to enjoy freedoms chinese cant even t…

I think that’s one area they are not considering, in a globalized world being “cool” is actually tremendously valuable.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#76

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #62

EdwinLarkin wrote: post #33

That's ridiculous.China is the one in irreversible decline. Most people in the West get to enjoy freedom and access to utilities money cant buy in China. 1) For once most people in the west have access to safe and good tap water.Chinese urban dwellers dont. 2) Most people in the west live in places with significantly better air quality than chinese. 3) Most people in the west get to enjoy freedoms chinese cant even t…

This is factually untrue. By pretty much every imaginable metric China has improved for nearly everyone (in China) for the past 50 years. Is this also true in the USA? I don't think China is superior to the USA, but to say China is in a "irreversible decline" is ridiculous. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/jmgx/jjxs/t124869.htm https://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-economic-growth-histo... https://www.cfr.org/ti…

[deleted]

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#77

Post by ceilingcorner » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

On an optimistic note, I am not convinced that China is going to win any cultural wars. America, for all its problems, still is essentially a leader for much of the developing world, at least in terms of culture. People watch American shows, know American celebrities, listen to American music, etc. This is facilitated by the fact that these cultural elements are pretty diverse and are open to immigrants. As in, a guy like Akon or Obama can be second generation American with parent(s) from abroad.

This same phenomenon doesn’t exist with China. Most people don’t know any entertainment that comes out of China, beyond a few video games. An African immigrant cannot move to Shanghai and expect his children to be treated as full citizens or even members of the Chinese nation. As long as China remains an ethnostate, I don’t see this changing.

The possible, but worrying scenario is that Chinese capital owns Western cultural production, implicitly (see: Disney or the NBA) or explicitly.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#78

Post by indigochill » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #3

If someone happened to agree with this analysis and was bearish on western liberalism, is there a place they should put their money in order to potentially profit?

Well, we see Chinese money flowing into western companies, so if you're going to invest like the Chinese do, it's into western countries. See Tencent's western purchases, for example.

I've also heard China's investing in Africa. For manufacturing? I haven't looked into it in any depth.

And there's Chinese interest in western real estate, particularly in the UK since the US started a low-key trade war.

I don't know how this compares to domestic investment at all, but you'll have a much easier time investing in similar fields to Chinese investors in the west than you will in China, I imagine.

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#79

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

EricE wrote: post #38

lol - they aren't just betting - they are aiding and abetting through their sycophants in the media, academia and amazingly big business too. While we argue about right/left/dem/republican they continue to divide and conquer through attrition. And we are letting it happen right under our collective noses.

[deleted]

Re: China is betting that the West is in irreversible decline

#80

Post by centimeter » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #52

ceejayoz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so far in 2021 there have been more homicides in Portland than there were in 2017 and 2018 and we are on track for over 100 homicides this year Out of curiosity, have any other items than "defund the police" happened in, say, March 2020 through the present, that might've affected crime rates?

Yes. High poverty is directly linked to an increase in crime. High unemployment leads to that.

Poverty is actually a quite weak predictor of crime rates once you condition on demographic factors such as percent single-parent households.