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

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

#241

Post by j_walter » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

status_quo69 wrote: post #169

newdude116 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, you’re suggesting that the USA is in decline because marginalized groups are demanding equal treatment? Some demand equal treatment, some demand better treatment and other not only accept their life-style, but to consider their niche life-style as something more desirable than an average life style.

> but to consider their niche life-style as something more desirable than an average life style. I don't see how this follows as a rebuttal of the gp comment, if anything it says (to me) that the US is _not_ in decline because we're willing and able to have conversations and make progress on what should be accepted in modern society. This comment feels like a soapbox to me rather than contributing to any sort of disc…

The way it's being done is the problem. No one can have a discussion about things anymore. It does us no good to be living on the moral high ground as our borders are invaded and our technology stolen. I'm not saying people shouldn't be treated equally...however the actions of a few don't speak for the entire country (this goes for bigots, radical islamists, mass shooters, rogue police officers and many others). Everyone loves to be offended by something now...but it's not the majority and passing more laws won't make people less racist.

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

#242

Post by kwere » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #120

I just don't see how the US keeps together. The disconnect between the two sides is, on the one hand, not based on anything concrete. So maybe we can patch it up somehow. Like, before the Civil War, slavery is a real thing with real human and economic effects. Today though, conservatives are mad about what exactly?… It seems like they're mad about a generalized disrespect which the mainstream culture has towards them…

yeah, blue good, red bad

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

#243

Post by newdude116 » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

shatnersbassoon wrote: post #215

newdude116 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"China is net food and energy importer." Chinas wealth is based on neither. So what? Many rich countries import energy. BTW, China is serious about fusion and thorium reactors. " China has an aeging population, and it's already a rapid shift." Most countries do and this can still Change. "- China's infrastructure isn't as well built as other countries and it will start degrading, and maintenance is a pain." I am sure…

> the US fighting was negligible. This is either ignorant or dishonest. Just because the US wasn't insanely profligate with lives, doesn't mean they didn't make a huge contribution to defeating Germany. Multiple German armies were defeated by the Western allies in Africa, Italy, France, the low countries and subsequently Germany. Germany's war production was crippled by USAAF and RAF bombing, and its transport was al…

Africa was never a major theater. Landing in the Normandy was in 44 (?). The war was lost in 42.

For starters: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/

Start at 4:45

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

#244

Post by kwere » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

benjohnson wrote: post #226

justinzollars wrote: post #118

The West is in total decline. We are living through the complete collapse of the old order and the values of Western Civilization are being replaced before our very eyes. All of our advantages are being withered away and there is really nothing special about the West. China is confident and is executing a plan to grow very quickly. They have embraced markets and their people are growing wealthy. Personally I'm bettin…

I not bullish on the West - it’s being replaced by other cultures quicker than it can adapt. However the West still has a lot to offer the world from mRNA to SpaceX to Seneca. Frankly, China’s success had come from copying western civilization and while the west may not survive, the spark will endure. Just elsewhere.

yeah but they built a nasa clone in 10 years. Till now they have managed to get everithing done on a scale unimaginable for anyone in the west. Our only hope is that hey will collapse from recent overheating of economy and political authoritarianism that is plaguing china from early 2010'

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

#245

Post by satellite2 » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #179

Daho0n wrote: post #23

It's very hard to disagree IMO. The west is in decline and unless something catastrophic happens in PRC or war breaks out (also pretty catastrophic) I can't see any future where the PRC isn't going to at least become on par with the US soon but most likely it will succeed it as top dog. The only question in my mind is where do the EU end up in all this and if Russia will become closer with PRC or EU. IMO the biggest…

The US's antiquated and ossified political system with its focus on minoritarianism and gridlock-as-a-design-objective are a major cause. As long as it's possible for ~30% of the country to drag everything to a halt, not a lot is going to get done. The push to restrict voting rights only amplifies that, but the real problem is that the US system is not built to produce a "mandate to lead", it is designed with an exce…

This is exactly democracy.

Democracies that are actually constantly changing micro dictatures are failed democracies.

It is perfectly reasonable to stop to discuss and aim for consensus when you are not able to reach an agreement.

Otherwise each party just spends time and resources undoing what the other has done until then.

Good democracies are actually those that go even further and try to incorporate the needs of even smaller minorities/opinions in their decision making.

Reaching a consensus is a hard task but it is the cost of an ideal democracy as envisioned by Rawls for instance.

Look at countries that have high trust in their government, those are the most productive countries in the world.

China is definitely not an exemple in that regards, they have the numbers only because of their population. But on a per capita basis their productivity is abysmal. And that's without considering that most Chinese work 12h a day.

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

#246

Post by vkou » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

ceilingcorner wrote: post #198

paulmd wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US's antiquated and ossified political system with its focus on minoritarianism and gridlock-as-a-design-objective are a major cause. As long as it's possible for ~30% of the country to drag everything to a halt, not a lot is going to get done. The push to restrict voting rights only amplifies that, but the real problem is that the US system is not built to produce a "mandate to lead", it is designed with an exce…

There are a ton of issues with your thesis. - The US is a impregnable continent with oceans on both sides. Poland is a flat plain surrounded by historical enemies. Congress isn't the Sejm and a single veto doesn't halt legislation. No one is going to invade the US and significant legislation still gets passed regularly. Poland also didn't have the entire apolitical infrastructure of the CIA, FBI, NSA, state governmen…

> The US is a impregnable continent with oceans on both sides

This must be news to it, because it constantly acts as if it is existentially threatened by one foreign adversary or other, from Grenada to Venezuela to Iran/q to Mexico, and so on and so forth.

> Congress isn't the Sejm and a single veto doesn't halt legislation.

I believe the parent poster used that as an example of the absurdity of a checks-and-balances system, taken to the extreme. In the current state of the US, the checks-and-balances system results in pretty extreme outcomes.

> significant legislation still gets passed regularly.

Got to have to disagree there. The sole lasting legacy of a presidency, a supreme court, a senate, and a congress owned by the Trump party between 2016 and 2018 was... A lot of judicial appointments. [1] Its legislative efforts were not very successful - neither were Obama's[2] between 2008 and 2010, and I expect the same for Biden 2020-2022.

> Misinformation has always existed. The idea that somehow everything was true and honest back when we only had 3 TV stations is naive at best. The media has lost control of the narrative and they no longer have the power they once did to control information. It's as simple as that.

Now, I wasn't alive back in the sixties, and I am well aware of how media propaganda works... But you should spend some time interacting with true believers of QAnon, and you'll observe that something has fundamentally changed about how information spreads.

It feels like a qualitative change to me, you may argue that it's merely a quantitative change. Even if you are right, the point is not that the media 'simply' lost control of the narrative. Someone else has gained control of the narrative, at its expense, and the outcome is not pretty.

People were optimistic that the internet, and social media would let a thousand flowers of culture bloom. This... Did not happen. What we got instead, was an open-air cesspit, with a hydra's heads peering at us from the surface.

[1] It developed a bit of a legacy in the tail end of 2020 as well, but it's not exactly a legislative one, and there's still a slim hope that it won't be a lasting one, and that we won't have to go through it again every time a president loses an election.

[2] Whose sole lasting legacy is passing a Republican healthcare reform, which the Republicans have been gleefully attacking for the past decade. But at least it's got his name on it, so that counts for something.

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

#247

Post by paulmd » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

satellite2 wrote: post #245

paulmd wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US's antiquated and ossified political system with its focus on minoritarianism and gridlock-as-a-design-objective are a major cause. As long as it's possible for ~30% of the country to drag everything to a halt, not a lot is going to get done. The push to restrict voting rights only amplifies that, but the real problem is that the US system is not built to produce a "mandate to lead", it is designed with an exce…

This is exactly democracy. Democracies that are actually constantly changing micro dictatures are failed democracies. It is perfectly reasonable to stop to discuss and aim for consensus when you are not able to reach an agreement. Otherwise each party just spends time and resources undoing what the other has done until then. Good democracies are actually those that go even further and try to incorporate the needs of…

I don't think anyone considers, let's say the UK or Canada as a "micro-dictatorship". The UK and other parliamentary systems have fewer checks and balances with a deliberate orientation to producing a government with a mandate to rule, for example the leader of the executive branch is always of the same party as the legislature. I think the US system is probably a de-optimization from that approach.

This is just fetishism of the US system as taught in 3rd grade social studies. Everyone with a different system is not a "micro-dictatorship". The US system is actually not particularly good compared to other western liberal nations, due to the aforementioned frequent inability to form a government with a mandate to lead. The founders had lots of ideas, some of them were good, some of them didn't work, and some were harmful from the get-go, and any critical analysis of any system needs to be able to acknowledge the existence of flaws in the execution or even design of a system.

The US system was a fairly early example of a democracy and most other governments saw the mistakes and chose not to repeat them. The US also chose not to repeat them for those countries whose constitutions we wrote (eg Germany or Japan).

Everyone realizes it's a bad system, but reform is too difficult, and decline and collapse is the alternative. So that's what's going to happen. It's quite likely that voting rights will be reduced over the next 2 years, cementing minority control of the government for an indefinite period of time, and we already saw what happened over the last 4 years with that minority rule.

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

#248

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

k_sze wrote: post #140

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…

How many Mainland Chinese do you actually know? Have you talked to them? My in-laws are all Mainland Chinese. They have access to safe and good tap water, either back in their home town literally in the mountains or in a big city like Wuhan. Air quality is not great, I'll give you that. But it's also not the worst, at least not in every measure. E.g. many big cities in China had lower NO2 levels than other big cities…

> The majority of the people in China don't care about the kind of freedom you talk about. As a nation, they seem to have a very singular goal: follow the Party, make progress, and beat the rest of the world.

Sure. The people of Russia didn't care about freedom and just wanted to follow the Party, too. Until they were given the chance, and it turned out that they actually wanted freedom and didn't give a rip about following the Party, because the Party was denying them the freedom they wanted, and was feeding them a perpetual diet of lies in the process. And despite all the lies, they could tell that it was lies, and that it wasn't freedom.

Now, it didn't work out in Russia. They didn't wind up at freedom. They wound up back with lies. But the point is, however much it looked in Soviet years as though everyone wanted to follow the Party, that was just a facade.

Are the Chinese so different? Do they really not care about freedom? Do they really in their hearts want to follow the Party? Or can they tell that it's all propaganda, and they just are going along on the surface?

The one difference is that China has delivered a fair amount of prosperity to a lot of people, which the Soviet system didn't. That might buy the Party in China another generation. But then the next generation sees that as the baseline. Can the Party continue to deliver improved prosperity? And will that be enough to keep people from wanting actual freedom?

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

#249

Post by medium_burrito » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

inter_netuser wrote: post #225

medium_burrito wrote: post #49

They have some massive negatives to deal with: - China is net food and energy importer. Look at last year for a preview of future food. The land they leased in Africa won't help in terms of climate shift, locusts, etc. Who is the number of one food and energy exporter? - China has an aeging population, and it's already a rapid shift. - China's infrastructure isn't as well built as other countries (see their most impo…

"US soon being able to just stack depleted uranium telephone poles in orbit to protect it's dependencies" Rods from God is actually real? Thought it was a failed research project?

It's a question of economics.

A 20,000 kg rod costs $200m to launch into LEO at $10k/kg. At $200/kg it's only $4m.

Uranium price per kilo seems reasonable at $60/kg, so we're getting to a point where the raw material cost is not that different from the getting the damn thing to LEO.

If you can get each complete rod down to say $200m, ie the cost of a cruise missle for the DOD, that's a pretty impressive capability.

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

#250

Post by blub » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

ceilingcorner wrote: post #77

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…

Judging by the race turmoil in the West, being an ethnostate is the only sane thing to do.

China's taking care of China and the Chinese, while the West are busy repenting for the crimes that happened hundreds of years ago.

And as you've noticed yourself, China's happy to manipulate Hollywood into publishing what they want, no need to create their own.