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Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

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Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#61
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP isn't "badmouthing" China, that description applies to every non-democratic country, one leader with the power, not the people. Autocracies are great in the hands of a competent leader who plans the economy long term, and the grows of the country for the benefit of the country and society (look up "benevolent dictators"). They are not afraid of long term plans, or pleasing the population in the short term. He can…

I don't think this democratic vs autocratic framing is entirely correct; most of the commenters here fail to mention the political ideology of capitalism. Pre-2000 several European nation had long term plans despite being democracies. The move to further integrate into the EU meant added political pressure to adopt more liberal postures like breaking state ownership of essential industries and that meant also no more…

Good point but the scale and success rate of the way China does it compared to any other democracy, or any country, in the past puts them in a different league entirely. They are on their 15th 5 year plan and look at the results.

A successful planned economy needs an autocratic leader, or a majority of people with foresight and willingness to delay gratification working together. There were very few moments in time when this intersection happened.

The last time someone had real planned economy in Europe was in communism time, with the 5-year plans and those were a joke, paper exercises to please the leaders. Those economies slowly failed. The planning you talk about post-'90 was relatively minor, more like a few ongoing projects.

Populists and corruption invaded the scene and promised the world now, making realists/idealists look even worse. Promise of short term gain is such an easy sell that it organically became the tool of choice for would-be leaders. Worse even, once the former opposition got to power they tore down what was built by the predecessor, started over to shape it in their image, brought in their cronies. This is human nature, the US didn't invent short sightedness or gullibility, they just exploited and monetized these common flaws in people.

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#62
One interesting thing is it's encoding system. Unlike Unicode that unified Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, TRON had a different code points for characters that have the same root but are written differently in the different languages.

Unicode claim it's the same character and you need to use different fonts for different languages.

So TRON made it much easier to mix Japanese and Chinese, for example have a citation in Chinese in a book otherwise in Japanese.

It also had a lot more characters. Unicode dropped some of the older or rare characters, meaning some people can't write their last name with the correct character on a computer with Unicode. They have to use a similar but different character. With TRON, they could.

That said, this might be an example of why TRON didn't succeed (rather than this bullshit about the US government). They remade everything, which wasn't great for interoperability and compatibility with other systems.

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#63
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. That's not "hype".

You're confusing "ally" and "vassal". Allies are countries that send troops to help you in war.

So many dead lads from both my countries fighting American wars, for zero gain to our peoples. That's vassalship, not an alliance.

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual reality of how China works is much more complicated than this "select from a dropdown menu" system you are implying. For one thing it's made up of fairly autonomous provinces that all compete between each others, for another the actual strategy has been heavily relying on extensive local experimentation to find growth models that can be applied nationally.

Nah he's correct, local government compete on implementation details, not overall strategy that is monopolize by the central government. Which has the same pitfalls (-see zero-covid or the debt crisis owing to gdp targets)

Also if any of the local governors / entrepreneurs cross a line they just disappear to focus on reading. Some of them might reappear after a decade having thoroughly understood the textbooks.

For example Jack Ma reappeared after his successful re-education.

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#65
post #8

Great to see these screenshots. Thanks for posting! Nintendo joy cons run a version of micro TRON. And the software IntelligentPad used a lot of TRON concepts. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/05/17/intelligentpad-co...

There are bits of TRON all over the electronic musical instruments segment, as well ..

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual reality of how China works is much more complicated than this "select from a dropdown menu" system you are implying. For one thing it's made up of fairly autonomous provinces that all compete between each others, for another the actual strategy has been heavily relying on extensive local experimentation to find growth models that can be applied nationally.

Nah he's correct, local government compete on implementation details, not overall strategy that is monopolize by the central government. Which has the same pitfalls (-see zero-covid or the debt crisis owing to gdp targets)

China doesn't have a debt crisis.

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#67
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The financial center of the world selects its winners nearby. As simple as that. Businesses outside of the US have never had much of a chance. China does the same now, as the engineering center of the world. And they have to because the financial center is hyping them as a threat.

A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. That's not "hype".

Democracy is when you drop a ballot every two/four years, and the elected officers ignore you while they take millions of donation from wealthy donors. Dictatorship is when the unelected representatives work their ass off to better the lives of the average citizens, because they're afraid of a revolution.

(P.S.: Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister, but I don't see people calling the UK a dictatorship.)

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#68
post #59
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. That's not "hype".

On the other hand, we can't tell if the US has a goal or not in the middle east or if destabilising countries is the geostrategy unto itself. People really need to dial down the hype, engage with the real world where large countries get to have a sphere of influence and start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable. I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given wh…

> why we keep hitting the Russians

1) "we" (the US) are not hitting the Russians, "we" (Europe including the UK) are providing them with weapons for their self-defence, since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. I am no longer clear what, if any, assistance the US is providing. It is also very important in this that no NATO or EU forces are engaged directly with Russian forces yet, despite persistent incursions into EU airspace and occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe.

The UK is developing special US ITAR-free missiles for this purpose: https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Lo...

2) "start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable": I think we're past the point of pretending that international law applies evenly, and back to Mao's "power comes out of the barrel of a gun".

If we go back to a Cold War multipolar world between China, the US, Europe, and Russia, the only one of those which hasn't made public statements threatening European territorial integrity is China.

(at this point I would expect India to start asking whether they get to be a world power or not and what they're going to do with that, too)

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#69
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. That's not "hype".

You're confusing "ally" and "vassal". Allies are countries that send troops to help you in war.

[deleted]

Re: Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

#70
post #67
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. That's not "hype".

Democracy is when you drop a ballot every two/four years, and the elected officers ignore you while they take millions of donation from wealthy donors. Dictatorship is when the unelected representatives work their ass off to better the lives of the average citizens, because they're afraid of a revolution. (P.S.: Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister, but I don't see people calling the UK a dictato…

The UK PM change happened indirectly as a result of poor performance in the local elections. It does actually matter that the UK has multiple parties that effectively compete, even if some of them are blatantly sockpuppets for overseas millionaires.
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