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Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

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Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#501

Post by blackoil »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #380
colechristensen wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic sanctions against Russia really do seem to be creating quite a lot of internal pressure to stop the war in Ukraine which is not going so well. Without those sanctions, it is quite conceivable that a troubled war effort would not be nearly so much of a problem, but because of the trade dependency Russia feels quite threatened by the consequences of war. Not enough to have prevented it in the first place,…

Its the same for Ukrainians since EU big powers want the end of war because of economies even if it means Ukraine giving away their territories. You could argue without globalism and a lot of trade that pressure wouldn't exist.

But without the global support, would Ukraine have lasted this long this successfully?

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#502

Post by mrslave »

MrLeap wrote: post #455
madrox wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. I'm going to be thinking about this sentence for the rest of my life

That sentence stuck out to me too. It makes me wonder if the nature of America's representative democracy lowers the threshold by which our elected officials actually have to do a good job / serve the will of the people. They constantly fall short, even of the narrow interests of whatever their particular constituency is. But there's kind of a floor where we just throw up our hands and say "WELL THEY WERE VOTED IN" D…

Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think[0]

  Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
[0] https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#503

Post by SkyMarshal »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #418
eddieplan9 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the false dichotomy? Does political freedom automatically contradict with economic prosperity for some reason now? Born and raised in China, I fail to see how the last 10 years of erosion in freedom has yielded any better results economically. Please don’t buy the government propaganda that legitimizes everything from stupid to evil as a price that has to be paid to raise people out of poverty.

Nowhere did I say that economic freedom and political freedom are mutually exclusive. What I do protest however is the idea that only political freedom can be considered a legitimate form of freedom. I am making the case that: - economic freedom is an equally valid form of freedom. - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most. As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in Chin…

> The Chinese people have way more right to consider what sort of government is legitimate

The Chinese people have no right whatsoever to consider what sort of government is legitimate. The CCP deliberately, systematically deprives of them of exactly that right. Hence the total censorship of thought and expression and the repression of any group that might remotely offer an alternative to the CCP, even non-political religions.

The CCP is like the Model T of political parties - "You can have any government you want, as long as it's the CCP."

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#504

Post by danielheath »

MrLeap wrote: post #455
madrox wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. I'm going to be thinking about this sentence for the rest of my life

That sentence stuck out to me too. It makes me wonder if the nature of America's representative democracy lowers the threshold by which our elected officials actually have to do a good job / serve the will of the people. They constantly fall short, even of the narrow interests of whatever their particular constituency is. But there's kind of a floor where we just throw up our hands and say "WELL THEY WERE VOTED IN" D…

The way the US electoral system chooses representatives is terrible. Other countries have better methods, but change is very, very hard.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#505

Post by hungryhobo »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #503
FooBarWidget wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere did I say that economic freedom and political freedom are mutually exclusive. What I do protest however is the idea that only political freedom can be considered a legitimate form of freedom. I am making the case that: - economic freedom is an equally valid form of freedom. - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most. As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in Chin…

> The Chinese people have way more right to consider what sort of government is legitimate The Chinese people have no right whatsoever to consider what sort of government is legitimate. The CCP deliberately, systematically deprives of them of exactly that right. Hence the total censorship of thought and expression and the repression of any group that might remotely offer an alternative to the CCP, even non-political…

i disagree, there's absolute nothing preventing an ordinary Chinese from taking a exam and become someone that actually has influence over domestic policies. Elections aren't the only ways a legitimate government can be formed.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#506

Post by lmm »

markvdb wrote: post #460
FooBarWidget wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human rights is more than just political rights or speech. Hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted out of poverty is a huge win for human rights. When you're poor, you're not free. Having grown up with dirty streets and beggars, you can't possibly imagine how big a deal it is for me to see my hometown transforming into a modern metropolis, and how my grandparents-in-law (in a different city, in a rural area) finaly ha…

I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close. Yes, the Chinese state has made some remarkable positive material achievements for most Chinese. No, it does an absolutely shit job for many of them. Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi,…

> I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close.

What about somewhere like Singapore (nominally democratic, but with a single party in power for decades and widely seen as authoritarian)?

> Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a combination of the above.

Those are very visible examples, but if you're applying the veil of ignorance test you have to weight by how many people they actually apply to. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of them put together represented a smaller proportion of the population than incarcerated Americans, say). Every government system has some fraction of the population that it "gives up on", that much is unavoidable.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#507

Post by throwaway2037 »

danielheath wrote: post #504
MrLeap wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sentence stuck out to me too. It makes me wonder if the nature of America's representative democracy lowers the threshold by which our elected officials actually have to do a good job / serve the will of the people. They constantly fall short, even of the narrow interests of whatever their particular constituency is. But there's kind of a floor where we just throw up our hands and say "WELL THEY WERE VOTED IN" D…

The way the US electoral system chooses representatives is terrible. Other countries have better methods, but change is very, very hard.

I assume you are talking about a parliamentary system? Yes, I also prefer it. It is even better if there is a good mix of parties in power -- Germany, Netherlands, etc. It seems like 5-10 parties in parliament forces a good amount of compromise, which results in the most progress possible. I prefer what is loosely termed as a "weak prime minister" where the coalition is multi-party, over a "strong prime minister" where no coalition is required. (Please ignore the scenario of a _constant_ super majority, like Singapore's "People's Action Party".)

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#508

Post by labrador »

wazoox wrote: post #270
ISL wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very important for national stability. A highly-interconnected global economy is arguably better at securing international stability.

That was the main argument for global trade already in 1914. France was Germany's most important commercial partner, and vice-versa. All German rifles had stocks made from French walnut wood! All French locomotives had German-made tubing! This stupid mantra was repeated ad nauseam after 1991, too, with silly op-eds from Friedman and friends about how two countries with McDonald joints in both can't be at war and simi…

Friedman launched what I call Friedmanism: The belief that vapid and banal observations are the best way to understand the world. His McDonald's observation launched a thousand opinion writers to imitate him

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#509

Post by sk0g »

hungryhobo wrote: post #505
SkyMarshal wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Chinese people have way more right to consider what sort of government is legitimate The Chinese people have no right whatsoever to consider what sort of government is legitimate. The CCP deliberately, systematically deprives of them of exactly that right. Hence the total censorship of thought and expression and the repression of any group that might remotely offer an alternative to the CCP, even non-political…

i disagree, there's absolute nothing preventing an ordinary Chinese from taking a exam and become someone that actually has influence over domestic policies. Elections aren't the only ways a legitimate government can be formed.

Democracy means you can alter the future direction of your country by simply voting, which took me 15 minutes.

Don't think joining a party with clear views and goals would let you have any significant effect on its trajectory without decades and lots of luck.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#510

Post by sk0g »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #375
mschuster91 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. And here is the crux of China's zero-covid policy. Follow the Western lead and run covid run its course? That would be millions of deaths even with Omicron being not as deadly, simply because Sinovax is nowhere near as effective as the m…

Actually, Sinovac work as well as Pfizer when it comes to preventing hospitilization and death, but requires sufficient boosters. This is shown by this research paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v... The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose…

> This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media.

Unlike mainstream Chinese media, which always represents facts objectively and doesn't use a headline generator to deflect attention whenever there's some trouble in the country.

I always see this amusing sentiment of "evil Western xyz doing things and stuff", meanwhile it's just something that happens all around the world, and usually even more so in other, less developed places. Maybe the main difference is that I don't get much media from, say, Zimbabwe, but I sure do from the US and even Canada, even if I don't particularly care about the happenings in either place.

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