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Re: China

#181

Post by Alex3917 »

adventured wrote: post #174
Alex3917 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.alexkrupp.com/Citevault.html#literacy

Your source proves me right. You're wrong in your claim that the majority of college graduates are not functionally literate. 2% of college graduates fall below a basic level of literacy. 14% of total adults fall below basic on prose; 12% on document; 22% on quantitative. The numbers of college graduates are vastly lower than those. And further, digging into the data, I'd be willing to bet that half of those numbers…

> Your source proves me right.

Are you sure you understand the concept of functional literacy?

Re: China

#182

Post by desdiv »

olalonde wrote: post #27

I look forward to the day where nationalism is seen as an anachronism. I know this probably wasn't the primary message of this post and that YC has funded a number of non US startups but if you swap US and China in this post, I wonder what kind of reception it would get.

OK, I'm fed up. China is really dangerous and way too aggressive. Obviously, its political system is on an imperialist ego-superpower course.

It's spending on its military like crazy. The navy strives to reach a size and power never seen since the demobilisations after the Second World War. Its navy patrols aggressively in foreign waters, often provoking fights and shooting up foreign boats even though China didn't declare war. It's only a matter of time till the aggressive behaviour hits some wrong ships, boats - or maybe an airliner mistaken for a fighter. Plenty invasions of sovereign countries in the last 35 years alone prove it's unfit for lasting peace, an imperialist hyper-aggressive power. This aggressiveness is underpinned by intense propaganda and myth-building at home, with entire service industries inflaming the population against countries they cannot even point at on a map. Racism plays into this as well, with lots of derogatory names for foreigners of exotic looks.

China's gunboat and cruise missile diplomacy with occasional and nowadays frequent bombing of neutral countries is out of control, but a United Nations Security Council veto power protects them against formal repercussions. They even bombed an American embassy 15 years ago and nothing happened! I'm especially concerned about how they now discuss how to wage a future war against the United States. All the public discussions are solely about how to defeat American land-based defences so Chinese naval battlegroups can close with the American coasts and bomb military and strategic targets at will. Unmanned combat drones are an especially favoured tool for this; many Chinese appear to have high hopes for these. The range and stealthiness is apparently at the centre of their hopes.

We shouldn't stand by this and pretend we aren't involved. China's aggressiveness needs to be contained now!

Oh, wait.

Borrowed from: http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.ca/2014/11/its-about-tim...

Re: China

#183

Post by nether »

Afforess wrote: post #55

I disagree with a lot of this. The Chinese value the appearance of working hard, not actual hard work. Cheating among Chinese students is pandemic. Chinese companies regularly publish misleading or outright fraudulent earning statements and quarterly reports. While the Chinese government seems to be taking steps to reverse these trends, it will take a long time to undo their culture of corruption. Contrast this with…

These lazy orientals built the largest high speed rail network in the world in less time than it'd take a US rail bill to even get through Congress. They launched their first space station in 2011 (albeit a minimal one) and are planning a manned moon mission, following their first successful lunar lander in 2013 Starting from a space program that was basically nothing 15 years before. Corruption and fraud are rampant in the BIC (Russia is out of the picture, let's face it) nations but I think it's part of nascent country's development. And let's not forget, Steve Jobs was a huge fan of "great artists steal" quote by Picasso.

P.S. Your characterization of 1 billion people as all knockoff makers is dangerously close to the idea that Chinese are mere "culture bearers," while Westerners are the "culture creators," as said by a great mid 20th century ethnologist. Please don't let HN decay into right wing moonbattery, as most anonymous communities do.

Re: China

#184

Post by melling »

chiph wrote: post #173
melling wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide any support for this statement? I don't believe population directly correlates with the size of your economy. I only ask because if America is going to remain relevant, its citizens need to stop making shit up as they go. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP...

There is a ratio between them based on how productive your workforce is. German workers, for example, are thought to be very productive. But expressed as a GDP-per-person ratio, not as productive as US workers. China is far behind in productivity, yet their enormous population means they're ahead in total dollars. And as Chinese workers move from low-productivity work such as family farming to industrial farming & fa…

How about India? They will soon be the most populated country in the world? Indonesia has about 250m people? Brazil, Pakistan, and Nigeria? All these countries have large populations. They probably have a lot of "growing room" too.

In short, this claim is meaningless:

"China has 3 times the population of the US. As soon as they started growing a middle class, it was inevitable that this would happen."

Re: China

#185

Post by vanzard »

jorgecastillo wrote: post #139

I know at least one metric where China won't beat the US in while: GDP per capita >It’s almost unthinkable for most people born in the US in the last 70 or so years for the US not to be the world’s superpower. But on current trajectories, we’re about to find out what that looks like. Things would have to go so horribly wrong as to make being a superpower irrelevant for the US to lose its superpower status. It's unden…

GDP per capita doesn't matter. PPP per capita is what truly matters when comparing countries.

> US to lose its superpower status

It already lost it. Not only to China, but also to the European Union. Both now equal or surpass the US in terms of PPP per capita.

> Quite frankly China's rise is overrated!

Perhaps you don't realize that an ~8% yearly economic growth means China's GDP/PPP per capita is DOUBLING(!) every 9 years. And it has been doubling every ~9 years for the last... 35 years.

Re: China

#186

Post by 300bps »

nether wrote: post #183
Afforess wrote: post #55

I disagree with a lot of this. The Chinese value the appearance of working hard, not actual hard work. Cheating among Chinese students is pandemic. Chinese companies regularly publish misleading or outright fraudulent earning statements and quarterly reports. While the Chinese government seems to be taking steps to reverse these trends, it will take a long time to undo their culture of corruption. Contrast this with…

These lazy orientals built the largest high speed rail network in the world in less time than it'd take a US rail bill to even get through Congress. They launched their first space station in 2011 (albeit a minimal one) and are planning a manned moon mission, following their first successful lunar lander in 2013 Starting from a space program that was basically nothing 15 years before. Corruption and fraud are rampant…

There was a time when the United States had loose labor and environmental protections. Combine loose labor and environmental protections with an almost complete lack of respect for personal liberty and property rights and it sure is easy to get things done.

P.S. The population of China was 1.357 billion as of 2013.

Re: China

#187

Post by TeMPOraL »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think it's mostly because geeks like effective solutions. Dictatorships, despite all their scary failure modes, have one very good feature democracies lack - they get things done . When there's a new power plant to be built or transportation project to be realized, they just happen. There's no need to pander to clueless people bitching about things they don't understand. No anti-nuclear movements, no NI…

>have one very good feature democracies lack - they get things done. I think this is a misconception. Chaotic system almost exclusively defeat planned systems. A chaotic market will beat communist central planning every time. A chaotic fight for life via evolution will beat robots every time, etc. Humanity's greatest achievements have been done under largely western, open, and democratic societies (for various defini…

While it's true in general that chaotic systems tend to fare better than planned in our world, I think the problem is with limitations of human cognitive capabilities, not with the idea of planned systems per se.

For one, there's a reason that successful designs tend to have one person's vision (even if many are involved in actual construction). We all know "design by committee".

Secondly,

> A chaotic market will beat communist central planning every time.

I am starting to believe that central planning has failed so spectacularly because people can't handle that much complexity in their heads + you actually have a distributed system. If we tried that again, but with computerized economy and a centralized algorithm running global optimization, I think it could fare much better than previously, and much better than distributed market systems we have today. Yes, it will cost us some economic freedom, but this very freedom is what is driving humanity to its grave by destroying the environment and pretending we're not running out of cheap energy.

> A chaotic fight for life via evolution will beat robots every time, etc.

This I strongly disagree with. "Chaotic fight for life" works almost infinitely slower than human mind it crafted. It might have evolved a dog over half a millenium, but Boston Dynamics got halfway there over few years. We can optimize better and iterate faster. Evolution is cool and all, but let's not discount the minds we have and the fact that they, not biological evolution, are now the driving force on the planet.

Re: China

#188

Post by Retric »

Alex3917 wrote: post #181
adventured wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your source proves me right. You're wrong in your claim that the majority of college graduates are not functionally literate. 2% of college graduates fall below a basic level of literacy. 14% of total adults fall below basic on prose; 12% on document; 22% on quantitative. The numbers of college graduates are vastly lower than those. And further, digging into the data, I'd be willing to bet that half of those numbers…

> Your source proves me right. Are you sure you understand the concept of functional literacy?

Sure, the bar of 'fully understanding' is ridiculous. People don't have 100% accuracy with anything. Most people would also fail the same measure if the document was spoken vs written so despite the name it has little to do with literacy.

Note: The bar for functional literacy includes banking paperwork which is intentionally designed to be confusing. If more people understood it they would rewrite it to be less clear. Also, your failure to understand what you linked precludes you from the ranks of 'functional literacy'.

PS: While high, you might reasonably interpret at least intermediate as an acceptable level for college graduates and that's well over 80%.

Re: China

#189

Post by drzaiusapelord »

cyorir wrote: post #108
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have endless impressive growth. Once you're developed its going to hit a reasonable cap. China is still developing. You can't compare the most mature economy to one of least developed. The move from back-breaking farm labor all day to manufacturing is MASSIVE growth. The problem with Western democracies is that we moved past that stage over 100 years ago. Now we're in a service based economy. That just does…

"Geeks always seem to worship autocrats and dictators for whatever reason." I do not think this is entirely correct. You don't see widespread support for the majority of the world's autocrats. I think geeks want technocrats, not simply autocrats. In that sense, it is important to distinguish between different types of autocrats. There is a reason you see more pro-China pieces than pro-Russia, pro-Syria, pro-Cuba, or…

>There is a reason you see more pro-China pieces than pro-Russia, pro-Syria, pro-Cuba, or pro-Saudi pieces for example.

I'm fairly political so I imagine I pay attention to this stuff more than most, but you bet your bottom dollar people here and on reddit and slashdot sing the praises of Cuba, Syria, and Russia. Usuallly the sentiment come from Europeans and others with an anti-US bone to pick. As someone who has done business with both the Chinese and the Russians, its incredible how shitty and dishonest their business culture is. I don't think a lot of the people cheerleading them have any idea what they are talking about.

Re: China

#190

Post by linkregister »

nostrademons wrote: post #131
kirse wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's growth has long since been an organism that feeds on the back of the gorilla of US growth. If the US economy would hit a major recession, China would come crashing down with it. On the other hand, if the Chinese economy would have a major collapse, the US would suffer, but still be able to re-route core-value manufacturing processes to new countries (or back home). I agree with your cheating note, many of the…

FWIW, the U.S. got its start as a major industrial power by a major act of industrial espionage. (Francis Cabot Lowell went over to England for two years, worked in the textile mills, memorized all the details of their workings, and opened the first textile mill in the U.S. in Waltham, MA.) Large-scale American industrial espionage continued throughout the rest of the 19th century. American goods had the same reputat…

I dispute the assertion that American goods were considered cheap knock-offs by the end of the 19th century. By the mid 19th century, the "American Style" of assembly-line manufacturing with interchangeable parts was considered to be the most efficient form of manufacturing [1] and was thereafter adopted in Britain and the rest of Europe. This method was derived from various aspects of the English system and was not invented in America, though it was first widely adopted there. Though there are well-known examples of industrial espionage, American innovation in manufacturing can be attributed a combination of vast natural resources, dynamic social structure, and widespread generalist education (as opposed to the apprenticeship system of Britain at the time) [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_system_of_manufacturin... (the article is sufficiently cited to support the claim)

[2] McPherson, James M. (2003). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-503863-7.

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