Can't it? Bush was basically a criminal who used a convenient (for him) tragedy to make billions for his pals. Then "change" came and now Obama is making billions for his buddies on Wall Street. The corruption is open and obvious. It's not the same kinds of corruption as China, but it's hard for me to call one evil and the other a beacon of hope.
>The point is you have to trust systems, and the only systems you can trust are ones that are self-correcting, with independent actors and oversight.
True, but my point was that most people simply trust someone somewhere is doing this due diligence. Some of us may even bother reading up on it enough to satisfy ourselves that it's happening. But without actually being involved you can't be certain. Maybe people in China and North Korea think their government also has these kind of due diligence mechanisms.
>Some of it we have already heard about, some of it we'll hear about in the future. For that reason, it doesn't bother me.
This is actually something scary that's happening world wide. Gradually locking down the Internet so you wont hear about these anymore. I hope someone comes up with some good peer-to-peer technology to combat this soon.
>No, that would be impossible to prove. I can claim that I currently believe that I believe very little, but that doesn't really help. I mean, I don't actually know China exists at all.
But you can easily prove China exists by going there and spending some time there. But as long as people aren't willing to look for themselves, what I describe will be very possible.
I used to believe the US was the greatest nation on earth. Then I came to Europe and found it to be much better in so many things.
>Can I also suggest reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_society Obviously there is a trade-off with levels of crime, poverty and so on, but I'd rather live in an albeit imperfect western open society, or even India, than China.
Agreed, but what one has to keep in mind is: what is the end state? How do you want the world to be? Personally I want to live in a world where people only have to work on what they find interesting. Everyone knows that people who love something produce better work in that area than people who don't. This whole site is (or used to be) based around the idea of making a start up and getting rich from it some how. But why? So we can work on what we're interested in, of course. Wouldn't it be nice to just skip that middle part and start working on what you like from the start, without having to worry about financial independence?
Now, which government is getting me closer to that? The US? No, they seem to be rapidly going the opposite direction. China doesn't look good, but they are still in development. Who knows what kind of society they will end up with. Given the track record of humanity, probably not with a very good one, but no other country has anything to offer them.