China to begin two-child policy • Hacker News Board

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#351

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

vlehto wrote: post #256

crdoconnor wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL some people actually believe the things Mubarak says.

"Royalists" have been a phenomena everywhere. Then again population of a country is able to change it's mind. Just before WWI lot's of European intelligentsia favored communism. Same happened before WWII with fascism. It is still completely possible that spread of democracy is just multinational fashion trend. And something else will come after it. For any given moment, it's even probable that majority of some countr…

> Just before WWI lot's of European intelligentsia favored communism.

Just to get a real feel for it, I recommend reading through this[0] book review, it may scare one shitless. Also, that belief went for longer than just I WW, it went through the II WW and finally dwindled down when the Cold War started. But imagine this - western newspapers were literally refusing to print bad news about Soviet Union, because it would offend their readers.

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-...

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#352

Post by mazerackham » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #164

funkyy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China managed to succeed in increasing people wealth and loosening laws (still bad for Western standards, but huge step comparing to China 30 years ago). Only because West thinks this is "brutal and cruel" dosent mean our laws would ever worked there. Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it and most of the dictators were much better alternative (still bad, just better…

>Same with China - imagine them exploding with an extra 1 Billion people over next 20 years. Who will feed them? What would be social implications of such a move? Well for one thing, you'd have a billion more potential farmers... Population growth is a pretty old problem, and if recent developed nations' demographic reports show, it solves itself once you reach a certain level of development. China's success is not n…

China's success is DEFINITELY because of the policies they put in place.

Population growth at China's scale is not a "pretty old problem". It's literally the largest population in the history of the world. No one, not even the U.S. government has an idea of what to do there. Then, add in the fact that when these policies were made, China had not even been through an industrial revolution and just had a MASSIVE famine (20-40 million deaths), I think the decision to have a one-child policy made a lot of sense.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#353

Post by vectorjohn » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:14 PM UTC

sethbannon wrote: post #56

From the article "All couples will now be allowed to have two children". So it seems China isn't so much ending its one-child policy, as augmenting it by one to a two-child policy. This means the brutal and cruel enforcement will continue, only it will kick in at the third child instead of at the second.

Am I the only person who thinks population control policies like this are a great thing? This strange notion people have that they should be able to breed without bound is baffling to me.

People talk about the dangers of overpopulation as if they're theoretical. They're not, numbers don't lie. At some point people have to stop having babies, whether humanely by a government mandate, or by the inhumanity of war and poverty.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#354

Post by hodwik » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:15 PM UTC

somebehemoth wrote: post #331

hodwik wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which actually means you have more choice. In the US you generally get one Democrat and one Republican. When you have only one party, it's as though you have no parties, you get to elect from many different candidates.

Look at the unrest in Hong Kong over China pre-approving candidates for political office. In a place that had democracy and is transitioning to Chinese rule it is obvious that very many people don't think they are getting "more choice" with their locked in list of candidates. I am not championing the US system (it has many flaws) but at least Democrats and Republicans have vastly different ideologies that people can…

Looking at what China does in Hong Kong is vastly different from what China does in China.

By the same token, in the States we get say in the president. The same is not true for places under the control of The Office of Insular Affairs & Puerto Rico.

At least the citizens of Hong Kong get to vote.

I'm not saying Chinese government is perfect, it absolutely has massive hurdles before it could be described as modern, but it's not nearly as bad as most Westerners make it out to be. A lot has changed in the last 30 years.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#355

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:19 PM UTC

mazerackham wrote: post #349

humanrebar wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The one-child policy worked. If you ignore the invasive health monitoring, gender selective abortions, forced abortions, and other human rights violations, sure. But I'm not sure this cure wasn't worse than the disease. Especially, as you point out, since fertility rates seem to regulate themselves in developed countries. I guess if you're a pure utilitarian, you could try to make the case that it all was a net ben…

Human rights are not some global constant, but something that evolves from culture & economics. China has experienced unprecedented growth in the past 30 years, never before seen in history. Hopefully its concepts of human rights will evolve with time, but to judge it now by the same measure we do for the West is unrealistic and impractical

It's also worth remembering that the West summoned its human rights by guillotining people until they finally appeared. It took a lot of blood to get there. Let's hope China can achieve it without so much bloodshed.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#356

Post by mazerackham » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:19 PM UTC

nocman wrote: post #246

nsxwolf wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, forced abortions and drownings of infants are sometimes necessary in some cultures. We shouldn't judge.

No, forced abortions and drowning of infants is the result of a godless culture that does not believe in the sanctity of a human life. If you can accept these as being OK because they are occurring in a different culture, then my only response is "God help you".

Plenty of godfilled cultures have compromised just as many if not more violations of the sanctity of human life. Take your god away from me, and help yourself instead.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#357

Post by vectorjohn » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:22 PM UTC

moistgorilla wrote: post #203

kailuowang wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make it clear, these types of enforcement are not norms. The law never suggested such enforcement. The law is that you get a financial fine if you have more than one child, that's it. It's actually against the law to force any kind of abortion. That being said, in some rural area, some officials maybe so greedy to make achievement for their "career" that they "enforce" this policy by breaking the law. Some of…

> Just to make it clear, these types of enforcement are not norms Back up your statement with a citation please. Considering that they explicitly made forced abortions of these kinds illegal (although this is hardly enforced) implies that it was a big enough problem the government needed to step in.

His source is the same as yours, if you read your own source.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#358

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:22 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#359

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

funkyy wrote: post #305

fineman wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone truly doesn't want democracy then they are participating in it. Only some theoretical person without desires could be said to not want a system that lets them express them. Now, it's debatable if a "representative democracy" would seem to offer that, but I wonder that myself from time to time...

The problem is that current democracy is no democracy at all in most countries. It support corruption, the governments are barely changing (same deputies, the name just changes), total detachment of administration from real human problems, hostile approach towards small businesses. The thing is that true patriot and authoritarian government for a decade can fix many problems that democracy cant handle. Once again - n…

> The thing is that true patriot and authoritarian government for a decade can fix many problems that democracy cant handle. Once again - not everywhere though.

Exactly this. And isn't it the reason so many people here are into startups? Technology is inherently undemocratic, and so are tech startups that succeed - but we don't call it that because this is "private land", not "politics land". And even ignoring the profit motive, that's why technology is appealing - a few smart people (backed by enough money) with one good design can force a change on the entire world that would never fly if you've asked people themselves.

And frankly, this might be something that we desperately need for the coming decades. Democratic countries have proven themselves unable to tackle the serious issuses of energy and climate change. They don't even bother making token gestures. On the other hand, if a decade ago they'd just said "fuck it, we're building those nuclear power plants whether you like them or not", we'd all be running on green energy now.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#360

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

fineman wrote: post #262

funkyy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China managed to succeed in increasing people wealth and loosening laws (still bad for Western standards, but huge step comparing to China 30 years ago). Only because West thinks this is "brutal and cruel" dosent mean our laws would ever worked there. Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it and most of the dictators were much better alternative (still bad, just better…

> Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it Does the presence of terrorists in developed countries prove "we" don't want democracy either? Because I didn't see the people (of the middle east) choosing, I saw the same thugs and warlords of the past continuing to make the decision for them.

Are you implying that all those middle-eastern countries were failed states, ruled by hordes of warlords? For instance, I vaguely remember Iraq being a pretty fine country; for decades, a lot of engineers from my country went there, and we had a pretty good economic cooperation. Then the US came and bombed the living shit out of it.

As for Africa, isn't most of the mess the result of Europe coming there, destroying their local governance, abusing them for a while and then withdrawing, leaving a huge power vacuum behind?