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China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

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Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan has nothing to worry about. The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan, signed after WWII, basically means that Japan AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are responsible to ensure the national security of Japan (It's actually mutual with the understanding that the Japanese constitution forbids deploying armed forces abroad). In other words, if china is actually aggressive tow…

And Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons with the understanding the US would ensure Russia never invaded. How did that work out for them?

Obama gave them a good warning about that red line.

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#212
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have a great king, it's among the best forms of government. The problem is that that great king's successor is probably not also great, and under a bad ruler, it's among the worst forms of government, and that bad king can last for your entire lifetime. It's never spectacularly efficient, but the US' form of democracy is meant to be much lower variance. I think it's a good tradeoff.

> When you have a great king, it's among the best forms of government. citation needed

King of Bhutan?

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed nationalization of national resources as an explanation of economic collapse is something a five year old would say.

It was not simply that they "nationalized oil" in my example, as the resources we're already state owned. You seem to not be serious with your comments.

Sorry I'm just trying to understand the five year old's argument. "Their economy was mostly oil, they seized assets of oil companies extracting it." Who is "they" in this sentence and how was all this inevitable?

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chavez definitely dismantled democracy in Venezuela. (If you want to be technical, he started the project, and Maduro finished it.) Specifically, vote count manipulation, the Supreme Court refusing to allow opposition legislatures to be seated, the constitutional committee stripping the legislature of its power... that's dismantling democracy.

Outside observers never saw or reported voting manipulation during Chavez's time. Your lie is easily disproved with a bit of research and I encourage readers to do so. I'm not familiar with the Court/Constitutional Committee issues that your raise but I assume they are post Chavez.

> Your lie is easily disproved with a bit of research and I encourage readers to do so.

When you call someone a liar, the onus is on you to do the research and present your case for others. Asking everyone else to do the research doesn’t cut it. Your position should include citations that provide evidence that what you say is correct. What you have achieved here is essentially name-calling.

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not simply that they "nationalized oil" in my example, as the resources we're already state owned. You seem to not be serious with your comments.

Sorry I'm just trying to understand the five year old's argument. "Their economy was mostly oil, they seized assets of oil companies extracting it." Who is "they" in this sentence and how was all this inevitable?

First ad hominem attacks don't help your point. Second, Google can help you out with some of your questions. Third, "they" is Chavez and his government. Chavez was socialist, socialism implies that the government takes over production from capitalists.

How was all this inevitable? When a government doesn't like that private companies are making money, and steal their property then replace skilled managers with party cronies, maybe things aren't going to work out so well. Maybe other companies will be afraid to invest in the country. So yea, the country gets a short-term boost from acquiring billions of dollars of assets, then all the profits that used to go to the company go to the state. But then it doesn't grow or handle problems properly because no one has the same incentive to work hard and innovate.

If the price of toilet paper is high in America, there are dozens of companies that are going to compete to get that profit, supply will rise and the price will drop. In Chavez's Venezuala, the toilet paper companies get nationalized, and government bureaucrats do their best to make and distribute enough toilet paper. Or maybe they don't and just report that they are doing a good job.

Here's a short list from 2012 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-nation... and you can be sure there were many companies that bent over backwards to comply with governmental demands to avoid being nationalized. It turns out the Venezuelan government, like most other governments, is not good at managing production and providing a prosperous economy without a free market. And when regulations mean a company (for example a toilet paper company) can't make a profit to create what they are selling, they can't make enough of it, and soon they won't be able to make any of it.

It's all about human nature and incentives, and yes most 5 year olds understand that.

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not simply that they "nationalized oil" in my example, as the resources we're already state owned. You seem to not be serious with your comments.

Sorry I'm just trying to understand the five year old's argument. "Their economy was mostly oil, they seized assets of oil companies extracting it." Who is "they" in this sentence and how was all this inevitable?

Okay a good page that goes into depth is history of Venezuela oil Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oi...

The Chávez administration used high oil prices in the 2000s on his populist policies and to gain support from voters. The social works initiated by Chávez's government relied on oil products, the keystone of the Venezuelan economy, with Chávez's administration suffering from Dutch disease as a result.

When prices collapsed they had all eggs in one basket.

Now what was seized and not discussed in the wiki was oil platforms from foreign companies. Sometimes instead of Chavez paying a debt, he would seize the platform and "nationalize it" so this caused foreign companies to be wary of investing.

https://books.google.com/books?id=TFY_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA116&lpg=...

On to hyperinflation

To assuage the oil price decline which began back in June 2014 and continues through to today, President Maduro printed more currency,

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true of the US? I see articles from 2015/2016 about credit rating agencies (FICO in particular) looking into "alternate data" to inform scores, including social media stuff, but it looks like FB was fighting that to some extent (more regulatory burden) and the tone is "this is coming" not "this is here".

Source: worked for an online payday lender. There are a lot of commercial APIs from "Consumer Reporting Agencies," providing public information beyond credit rating agencies, that are in use to determine lending decisions. The Wikipedia article on the FCRA[1] has a brief list of these firms and a summary of the laws around data collection and dissemination. IMO the United States needs to both step up enforcement of e…

I assume, in the case of a payday lender, that that data was mostly used to determine how gullible a potential customer is, and how easy it will be to fuck them over entirely.

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprising at all. In fact, many of the Chinese expats (visitors of mitbbs.com) are pro-china in general. They become less agreeing to western values after spending years in US. (I am one of those examples myself)

One should asume "pro-China" means against dictatorship and presidents for life, right? There is no people or culture on Earth that stands to gain from oligarchy.

What about oligarchs?

Re: China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's amazing to me how China is so effectively creating a 1984-type situation without much stir among the rest of the world. This is perhaps because of several things: 1) That's the way "the rest of the world's" governments and corporate interests want their own countries to go, and have been pushing towards since decades. The rest of the world's leaders (most of them) could not care less for the lip service they p…

Don't disagree with you that nobody else is very different. Way too many "progressive" "change the world" techies are willing to get into bed with governments like this as long as they are making money. It's sickening. Where you are wrong is the suggestion that this isn't entirely different. People bitch about US policy all the time . 50% of the political discussion on HN is bitching about US policy. I can't blame an…

It really is insane to hear the very passionate thoughts of my Shanghainese friends when it comes to how bad the US system is or how bad Trump is. But then I realize they have no other outlet for expression about their own system, So they direct their energy at what they think they know however badly reported to them by controlled media. The only thing people will talk about in very hushed tones on a completely unsolicited basis is how badly their families suffered under the CR. Even X generation kids know what was done to them by their own government. That's why the military police popped up in Shanghai train stations 2 days ago. Government protecting itself from its own citizens.
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