The Secret Document That Transformed China • Hacker News Board

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#21

Post by xiaoma » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 5:54 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #14

I'm getting down voted to oblivion for this... Even in the year 2012, after all these years, Americans still need to hear stories that directly outline why communism doesn't work, and good old competitive capitalism is the way of the future. I wonder how many of you reading this in America even stopped to think about the message you're being fed. I wonder how many of you reading this in America have absolutely no clu…

>Even in the year 2012, after all these years, Americans still need to hear stories that directly outline why communism doesn't work, and good old competitive capitalism is the way of the future.

Making sweeping generalizations about Americans contributes nothing good to this discussion. It's needlessly incendiary, and it's more likely to lead to an argument than an interesting discussion.

Please have a look at the first, third and final sections of the HN commenting guidelines.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#22

Post by maxvu » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 6:03 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #14

I'm getting down voted to oblivion for this... Even in the year 2012, after all these years, Americans still need to hear stories that directly outline why communism doesn't work, and good old competitive capitalism is the way of the future. I wonder how many of you reading this in America even stopped to think about the message you're being fed. I wonder how many of you reading this in America have absolutely no clu…

Woah woah woah. You have a downvote button?

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#23

Post by pyre » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 6:16 AM UTC

tnuc wrote: post #18

coryl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? So you think this is nothing more than propaganda?

Pretty much everything written by one country's media about another country is propaganda. There is just as much propaganda in American media as there is in Chinese Media. Does Rupert Murdoch support SOPA or is it the fine informed editors at the Wall Street Journal? Rupert wouldn't use his media as a propaganda network for his own benefit would he? There is no propaganda in American Media, none at all. It's only the…

  > Pretty much everything written by one country's media
  > about another country is propaganda.

You say this, yet you only attack American media for propaganda. Would you say the same thing about a BBC article on Iraq? A French article on Spain?

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#24

Post by tnuc » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 6:36 AM UTC

pyre wrote: post #23

tnuc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everything written by one country's media about another country is propaganda. There is just as much propaganda in American media as there is in Chinese Media. Does Rupert Murdoch support SOPA or is it the fine informed editors at the Wall Street Journal? Rupert wouldn't use his media as a propaganda network for his own benefit would he? There is no propaganda in American Media, none at all. It's only the…

> Pretty much everything written by one country's media > about another country is propaganda. You say this, yet you only attack American media for propaganda. Would you say the same thing about a BBC article on Iraq? A French article on Spain?

In general, yes I would say the same thing. I am certain a German article on the economic situation in Greece is going to be quite different to an article in a Greek newspaper.

My intent wasn't to attack Americans or American media so much as to outline an example as to how Rupert Murdoch (and others) uses the media for his own gain. This is by no means limited to the US. He has a multinational media network.

People like Kim Jong-un also write propaganda but are limited by the reach of their media network.

My apologies if I offended any anyone, this was certainly not my intent.

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#25

Post by derleth » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 6:42 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #15

jacques_chester wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root flaw in Marxism is the labour theory of value. It just doesn't lead to a workable theory of economics. That wasn't clear at the time he wrote Das Kapital , because the leading summation of economics was Smith (which I believe Marx worked from), and Smith got it wrong also. The concept of repeated crises of capitalism leading inexorably to socialism relies entirely on a slender reed that turns out to be broke…

whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Not to be elitist, but rather to protect the community from those who would abuse it.

> I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members.

Then you have a dictatorial state socialism, also known as Stalinism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. It's been done.

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#26

Post by derleth » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 6:46 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #16

re_format wrote: post #11

If everyone works hard, everyone gets to keep more. Because more is produced. If only some work hard, then the whole group cannot produce as much. Perhaps every worker has a different threshhold for what they will settle for in terms of what amount of the harvest they would like to retain. All the HR people reading HN know exactly what I'm talking about.

You're missing the classic game theory element. If everyone is working hard, everyone gets X. But if I decide to slack off, everyone gets X minus some tiny fraction, including me . Game theory tells us this kind of system will fall apart practically instantly. I forget the details, but I think Marx tried to dismiss that problem through an appeal to nationalism.

Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care.

He further believed that a government can 'wither away'.

Marx has been proven wrong in ways that have nothing to do with how well Communism/Socialism works as a system.

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#27

Post by learc83 » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 7:35 AM UTC

tnuc wrote: post #13

The article is well written but a little light on facts. From my bad and distant memory; The terms of the contract stated that you had to give X amount to the collective from your land, anything over and above this you kept. The X amount was originally set to be the same as the previous years harvest. The local collective had to raise the amount X a few times so it would appear that they where role models within the…

>"The officials swore at him, treated him like he was on death row."

Presumably since they interviewed him, this is his account of the story, not an American slanted version.

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#28

Post by gphilip » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 8:04 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #26

sliverstorm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the classic game theory element. If everyone is working hard, everyone gets X. But if I decide to slack off, everyone gets X minus some tiny fraction, including me . Game theory tells us this kind of system will fall apart practically instantly. I forget the details, but I think Marx tried to dismiss that problem through an appeal to nationalism.

Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care. He further believed that a government can 'wither away'. Marx has been proven wrong in ways that have nothing to do with how well Communism/Socialism works as a system.

> Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care.

Could you provide some reference to support that, please?

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#29

Post by x3c » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 8:05 AM UTC

This article makes a good case for capitalism and private property. But using this article (or this line of thought) to justify unregulated free market is just as dangerous as pure communism.

Free market soon gets distorted to ugly oligarchic, one where (extending the farmer analogy) the more a farmer grows, the more he's entitled to from the common pool (besides his own earning). And that is current course of free market. Consider this like an unstable equilibrium. At the top of inverted-U curve, natural tendency of a point is to escape the stability, and it does not correct itself.

The correction can happen either incrementally by a healthy regulatory body, like government, or by a more drastic measure when things go really off the rails and an upheaval/revolution restores the system back to the unstable equilibrium.

This represents the economic balance of the system and, since, money is directly proportional to power, political entities go through the same motion too. Hard to get the causality right (political to economic or the other way round), but that is the state of human society since times immemorial.

Re: The Secret Document That Transformed China

#30

Post by pizza » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 8:34 AM UTC

maxvu wrote: post #22

grecy wrote: post #14

I'm getting down voted to oblivion for this... Even in the year 2012, after all these years, Americans still need to hear stories that directly outline why communism doesn't work, and good old competitive capitalism is the way of the future. I wonder how many of you reading this in America even stopped to think about the message you're being fed. I wonder how many of you reading this in America have absolutely no clu…

Woah woah woah. You have a downvote button?

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