Killing sparrows led to famines in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#101

Post by kwere » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

dirtyid wrote: post #78

neovialogistics wrote: post #19

Someone once commented to me that rather than blaming Mao personally, the blame for the negative consequences of The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution should be placed on the systemic forces that legitimised the absence of domain experts in policy making. It's a nice sentiment but I have a gut feeling that these kinds of frameworks - where blame is taken away from people and attributed to abstract concepts -…

Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress wa…

wasnt Mao planning geared toward a "forever war" against the bourgeoisie, to explain putting industrial capacity toward "military" needs in uneconomic areas and/or most of other nation building projects? All obviously limited by Mao dumbness.

Deng Xiaoping regeared the nation apparatus toward a non-antagonistic way in the "hide your strenght, bide your time fashion", kicking the economic boom.

Obviously the chinese top-down approach is showing its shortcomings with the impendent economic & demographic collapse.

India is already at a sustainable demographics growth, only its (muslim) minorities are prospected to grow at unsustainable rates

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#102

Post by CrackerNews » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

throwawaymaths wrote: post #41

kevviiinn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

It's communism (or more specifically, Marxism). This sort of outcome was predicted by Benjamin Tucker as an inevitable consequence of Marxist socialism in 1888, essay: "state socialism and anarchism", long before any implementation of Marxism came to being

If you really want to get into details, it's Marxist-Leninism. Much of the Soviet-style political system came from Leninist theories of achieving Marxist goals. Lenin said it himself, it's state capitalism. (Stalin then called his implementation first stage of socialism.)

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#103

Post by CrackerNews » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

at_a_remove wrote: post #32

kevviiinn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

The ideas of communism are that of the command economy, total centralization. Someone at the TOP decides all of this stuff. This means that if someone at the top (who is not to be questioned, see Mao's other wacky hijinx) makes any kind of error, well, you don't hear about it until it is unavoidably terrible. No early feedback, everyone is afraid to give it to you. In a more decentralized setup, it is bottom-up, and…

The political system was democratic centralism where there are levels of indirect democracy starting from the local levels of factories and villages, which elect up to a legislature, which elects an executive top command. Power is indirect granted bottom-up but decisions are wide-spreading from top-down. Ironically, there's a level of decentralization in China that's tolerated as long as they meet government goals. (I'd say at times it's too decentralized, so bad behavior is too tolerated as long as it achieves economic directive goals.)

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#104

Post by zabzonk » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 3:52 PM UTC

CrackerNews wrote: post #100

zabzonk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people don't start revolutions and try out radical types of government because their lives are going just swell! of course they don't, and i deeply sympathise. but what they always seem to end up with like genocidal maniacs like mao and stalin. both communists. and of course, in the west, we had hitler. but after 1945 i would say human life has improved in the west - more than i can say for china (despite industria…

In the USSR and China, the large scale deaths were linked to failures during economic development. Despite the failures, there were improvements in quality of life. (The CIA factbook about USSR nutrition being on par or better than the West being one example.) They end up being a class ahead of the poorest of the third world. The issue was that the USSR did not catch up to the leaps the West made. China is catching u…

> In the USSR and China, the large scale deaths were linked to failures during economic development.

no, they were caused by ideological stupidity (stalin: look up "kulaks", mao: see cultural revolution and great leap forward), and both states being governed, by terror, by paranoid megalomaniacs. read a history book.

> this was an issue with the USSR and early China.

did the west not provide the ussr and china with enourmous amounts of military, economic and technical aid during and after ww2 (selling the ussr jet engines, for example)? oh, yes, it did!

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#105

Post by dirtyid » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

kwere wrote: post #101

dirtyid wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress wa…

wasnt Mao planning geared toward a "forever war" against the bourgeoisie, to explain putting industrial capacity toward "military" needs in uneconomic areas and/or most of other nation building projects? All obviously limited by Mao dumbness. Deng Xiaoping regeared the nation apparatus toward a non-antagonistic way in the "hide your strenght, bide your time fashion", kicking the economic boom. Obviously the chinese t…

Mao did 101 nation rebuilding on steriods, basic handbook of land reforms, creating mass cultural identity, spam primary industries to get out of agrarian economy. Progress wasn't just limited to Mao's dumbness but the peoples. PRC was a blob of unskilled peasants, shit tier human capital, vs Mao had technocrats advisors. If anything he was smart enough to realize at PRC population scale, he can spam lives for progress. Get millions of peasants involved in industrialization and some/sizable talent will manifest in right of bellcurve. Talent that Deng took advantage of. PRC wasn't going to become factory of the world without Mao raising workforce skill and making sure everyone spoke mandarin - fungible bodies that can migrate to factory work. Mao/Deng external conditions also weren't up to PRC alone, post WW2 west wasn't going to get friendly due to how blocs developed.

>PRC collapse

Still top performing economy in it's class, enviable growth in real terms while moving up value chain. Meanwhile US labels PRC most serious systemtic competitor with capability to displace, while pouring inordinate resourses and adopting PRC style industrial/tech policies to compete. That suggest it's showing it's strength more than ever. Imitation most sincere form of flattery

>demographic collapse ... >India

PRC is in process of exploiting THE greatest high skilled demographic divident in human history. The kind of divident actually involved in building advanced power. Like of all areas CCP top down approach is showing it's strength, it's demographic planning. Reduced birth rate higher than expected but the TLDR is PRC demographers did rub their 2 brain cells together when projecting family planning in 50 years ago and right now PRC is in roughly on course in terms of predicted development phase -> fear get too old before getting rich with too much people, limit births, peasant parents have mobility to work in factories, concentrate wealth to educate/upskill 1-2 kids, educated generation move up value chain.

India is not at sustainable demographic growth. India is trending toward basically the NIGHTMARE scenario that made PRC implement family planning in the first place. PRC system with much more state capacity than India wanted less people because it knew uplifting 1B+ was going to be monumental / impossible task. PRC still dealing with 500M (skew old and resigned) people that got left behind with 5x GDP per capita, with high savings and home ownership rate. India is going to end up twice+ as much unproductive workforce (skew young and rebellious) with fraction of state resources/power to support. Demographics is more than pyramid and TFR. Like the only benefit of Indian population is they're vegetarian (because that's what prolonged poverty ingrains in culture) which is good for food security.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#106

Post by CrackerNews » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

revelio wrote: post #45

kevviiinn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

Killing off sparrows is only one example of crazy/random/destructive policies that are a regular occurrence under communism. Some others (not in any order): - The USSR sometimes overproduced cigarettes, so ran ad campaigns to convince people to start smoking. - The Holomodor, in which Ukraine was starved by exporting (stealing) all its grain, including the grain needed to plant next season's harvest, and when starvin…

The goals of communism are to resolve class contradictions, which "naturally" happened in the case of feudalism ending. Communist states attempt to accelerate and resolve them through stages. This is where they can seem "unnatural".

On the flip side, there may not be anything to inherently prevent capitalism from doing similar things too. The USSR tried to have a much more planned and state managed version of capitalism to progress through the stages of socialism. The central planners decided where profits went instead of private property holders. If these property holders were to have control of a political system, then there is the potential they could enforce similar things.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#107

Post by PicassoCTs » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

CrackerNews wrote: post #98

PicassoCTs wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And after that, rewrite history, to make it seem like an accident. After all, the plan of the party could never be horrible. Same today, building more coal plants, while half of the country in the south is sliding towards a wet-bulb scenario. 400 Mio living in an area, that could become uninhabitable within a human lifetime, and the plan for that? Get rich faster and run, fuck the peasants, obviously. The chinese des…

While there are dangers to bad top-down management, the criticisms laid out in this thread can still apply to the CPC and Chinese mainland society today, but they don't suffer from famines on the same level anymore. I don't think they disagree with the goal and intent of rapidly industrializing China from peasant-based into urban workers. They will still uphold Mao's legacy even if they disagreed with his excesses an…

The lack of famine, is definitely the achievement of the Chinese people and companies. Covid lockdowns showed that even with tremendous wealth a missmanaged government can create starvation..

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#108

Post by CrackerNews » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

zabzonk wrote: post #104

CrackerNews wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USSR and China, the large scale deaths were linked to failures during economic development. Despite the failures, there were improvements in quality of life. (The CIA factbook about USSR nutrition being on par or better than the West being one example.) They end up being a class ahead of the poorest of the third world. The issue was that the USSR did not catch up to the leaps the West made. China is catching u…

> In the USSR and China, the large scale deaths were linked to failures during economic development. no, they were caused by ideological stupidity (stalin: look up "kulaks", mao: see cultural revolution and great leap forward), and both states being governed, by terror, by paranoid megalomaniacs. read a history book. > this was an issue with the USSR and early China. did the west not provide the ussr and china with e…

The ideological stupidities were motivated by the goal of economic development. Stalin thought kulaks' economic interests were holding back the centralizing industrialization of agriculture through collectivization. Mao wanted to move from a peasant-based economy to industrial-based through the great leap. (The cultural revolution was a populist cudgel to make the Western educated intellectuals adapt and submit to the local Chinese conditions.)

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I wouldn't lean on wartime subsidies too much because they are extraordinary circumstances. The USSR focused on self-sufficiency to the point of foreign trade only being 4% of GDP in 1985. China started opening up after Nixon normalized relations.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#109

Post by 0xdeadfa65 » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 3:21 AM UTC

boeingUH60 wrote: post #92

type0 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was a delusional psychopat that was happy to kill as many people as he could

You just described all communist leaders. Fortunately, most of them are extinct at this point.

Yes but there are many wannabe aspirants competing to be the next Mao

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#110

Post by 0xdeadfa65 » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 3:28 AM UTC

dirtyid wrote: post #87

cryptonector wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >worse outcomes long-term > Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette." "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." "By all means necessary." "The ends justify the means." Disgusting.

>Disgusting Yes, but effective. Manifest some destiny. Future generations reap reward. All of sudden it's 5% bad and 95% good. Maybe 10% bad and 90% good during periods of introspection. The sins of founding father(s) are easy to cleanse.

You can commit atrocious evil without reaping rewards. It is extremely doubtful that Mao contributed any good. Read any book like Mao’s Great Famine or any other book detailing Maos life and exploits. He was a psychopath who refused to admit he did anything wrong. He was also an ephebophile, sleeping with girls as young as 14. Did that contribute any good?