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Comment by funkyy | Hacker News Reader

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 - to clarify).

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?

Our freedoms are not always applicable in other parts of the world.

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There is a lot more at play in the middle east than "they never really wanted it".

As I wrote elsewhere, it's hard enough in a vacuum to overthrow a dictatorship and start a free and functional democracy. It's even harder when there are a multitude of foreign powers interfering in your country preventing this from happening. Democracy is failing in the middle east because there are a lot of powerful people and nations who don't want it to succeed, want the region to remain unstable, and want the region to remain within their respective spheres of influence.

And finally, how does anybody know "what they really want" unless you ask the entire country in a free and fair manner? This is the big fallacy behind "the people prefer the lesser evil of dictatorship." You can't say that. You don't have a clue what the people prefer. This is the whole point: if the people want a dictatorship, give them a free, fair, democratic vote and let them choose dictatorship.

> And finally, how does anybody know "what they really want" unless you ask the entire country in a free and fair manner? This is the big fallacy behind "the people prefer the lesser evil of dictatorship." You can't say that. You don't have a clue what the people prefer. This is the whole point: if the people want a dictatorship, give them a free, fair, democratic vote and let them choose dictatorship.

It's not even that easy. Ask the entire country in a free and fair manner and you'll quickly discover that people's opinions are not independent and do not exist in a vacuum. They may say to you they prefer living in a dictatorship because of a combination of not knowing anything else and pro-dictatorship propaganda. Or they may say "democracy!" because they drank the kool-aid.

I'm starting to believe that the only way to reach democracy as a stable state is for a society to naturally evolve towards it. Just leave it alone, let them figure things out; after a few generations they will probably sort out their culture and then they'll have a democracy that's sustainable because it'll be backed by decades of cultural growth. Trying to speed this transformation up is a dangerous game. Trying to speed it up with tanks and guns is just crazy.

> Trying to speed it up with tanks and guns is just crazy.

No, that's dictating.

> China managed to succeed in increasing people wealth and loosening laws

To be clear, do you think that killing children or forced abortions were major contributors to that? Or does it just so happen that the two happened at the same time?

It seems like a bit of a logical stretch to me to say, "America installing democracy didn't work in Iraq, so we shouldn't be worried if China kills or forcefully aborts children."

Maybe instead of building camps and fighting between A and B consider option C? I am not saying its OK by my standards but it seems that this was only way for China to properly handle this issue at the time when they made this move.

Your assumption is a stretch. You are putting words in my mouth and that's just below level of conversation one should expect from HN community.

That's reasonable, but that's not what your comment said.

I still disagree with your overall point, but I was responded to what you wrote, not what you had in mind.

>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 necessarily because of the policies in place by the government. It could very well be in spite of them.

a billion more potential farmers yes, but land and water are finite resources

Details. We'll just build multistorey farms.

If you're going the technical route, you can automate a lot of the farming. Still might not need more labor.

The quantity of the available resources is not nearly as much of a problem as the allocation. Subsistence farmers are not as productive on the same plot of land as industrialized commodity farmers.

We have more than enough land and water to feed everyone, but the (simplified) problem is that when one person does all the farming for the whole world, nobody else can afford to trade for any of it from them.

Surely the farmer needs clothing. So he will trade with the sole cloth maker. Surely the club maker needs threads and dyes, so she will trade with the due maker and the thread spinner... And ad infinitum.

>China's success is not necessarily because of the policies in place by the government.

Please enlight us then; Knowing that in china government is present in EVERY aspect of a life (religion, state, education, internet) I cannot see how their success is not because of the policies of the government. Any place that has an exploding growth is in deep shit just look at the whole africa. better off countries with exploding growth, turkey or maghreb countries are also in deep shit with big parts of the population immigrating to europe to survive this.

It won't be anywhere near a billion.

China already has an average of ~1.7 children per family [0] if you factor into account that the policy is enforced at a provincial level, and depending on that province, it may be the case that (0) people of certain backgrounds (e.g. farmers, minorities, parents with disabilities or medical conditions) can be exempt in some areas, (1) affluent people sometimes just pay the fine and have a second child, (2) in the most recent version of the law, if one parent is an only child, they were permitted have 2 children, (3) Chinese citizens who have resided overseas for some period of time may be permitted to have 2 children.

A lot of people may go from 1 to 2 children. Not that many people will go from 2 to 3 children. Children are very expensive for most families.

[0] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

imo you are not including the fact that Chinese culture is quite different to other parts of the world. It would be better to compare them to India and Vietnam rather than world statistics.

Development is not something that happens naturally if you just leave people alone. Overpopulation hinders development. They most certainly wouldn't be as developed as they are if they had grown faster than their economy could sustain.

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.

> 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 - to clarify)

That is highly contentious statement.

Some parts of the world are not grown up to handle democracy or make social decisions. Those worlds usually have only three options, forced dictator, forced democracy or domestic war.

We could go in to the detail but I assumed my point was clear on this one.

>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 - to clarify).

A mistake was made. It was not understood that people in war-torn countries want peace and stability above all else, and are willing to hand in their liberties for it. It was also not understood that among people who don't trust news or words of any kind (justified in this case) it is rational to support the candidate that's closest to yourself genetically.

The link between democracy and wealth, stability and trust flow both ways, and it's easier to start with wealth, stability and trust than with democracy.

It was understood <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_need..., nobody cared. I have my own beliefs on the matter, but I'll save us the argument.

Also, there is a lot more at play in the middle east than simply whether the people want democracy or stability. There is plenty of foreign interference going on from USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc... it's hard enough to overthrow a dictatorship and set up a free and democratic replacement. It's even harder when several foreign powers are fighting to prevent this from happening.

For more background on what emergentcypher is talking about, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq-Syria_pipeline

As I understand it (probably needs some correction):

This is a cold war being fought over who will supply Europe with natural gas. Russia, the current supplier, makes a ton of money off the current arrangement and it gives Russia influence over Europe. Europe has largely stayed out of the fracas publicly, to avoid antagonizing Russia, but supports the US's efforts to get the pipeline built to have an alternate source for the energy they need. I'm unclear as the role of the US in all this, but we're tightly allied with Western Europe, so I imagine we're representing Europe's interests by proxy. But what is clear is that it's no coincidence that the countries where all this craziness is happening are the countries along the planned route for the pipeline. Seen through this lens, everything starts to make sense, including Russia's endeavors to support Assad, an opponent of the pipeline.

Expecting stability in a region where one superpower wants a pipeline built and another doesn't isn't reasonable, no matter how ready the population is for democracy. Add in that the region has a ton of people who believe in a medieval religion that advocates violence against non-adherents, and what little hope there was vanishes.

Democracy is typically a thing that is grown at home, not a thing that is "given".

It should be that way. But some cannot understand that some countries do not want Democracy. Its not that they don't matured - they just don't want it. Even in some European countries we can see the move to shift much more power to presidents (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland).

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 country does not want democracy. There are ~200 countries and several somewhat convincing ideologies.

> 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-...

>"Royalists" have been a phenomena everywhere.

As has barefaced lying to the populace about their own dislike for democracy.

It seems particularly common in Egypt where the idea that "the people just aren't ready for Democracy yet like they are in the west" is commonplace among the country's elite.

>It is still completely possible that spread of democracy is just multinational fashion trend.

Nobody's ever voted democracy away and it's not fashion that causes it to end, it's violence.

If I would find a country where people voted out democracy, you would probably just say the election was rigged.

Only if there were evidence of vote rigging.

There is always some kind of "evidence" for vote rigging. How about Egypt? Turkey? You don't vote Muslim brotherhood into power while thinking they maintain democracy. German federal election, March 1933, over 50% of population voted for either NSDAP or communists. And then there is Bhutan.

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 - not everywhere though.

In Libia for example most people loved Kadaffi. Yet, he was removed by revolution that would surely fail if not for major help from west. Kadaffi while violent man, managed to make Libia in to blooming example of African country that can distribute prosperity to majority of people.

Let us check Singapore - did it work? Sure. Was it bad for people? Not really. Obviously there will be some affected by strong power, but devastating majority seen their lives skyrocketing comparing to Malasia.

The issue is that majority of strong Leaders are either military man, or democratically chosen governments that refuse to give power away - and they are often bad news.

> 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.

Sure, in many places, for some time, a benevolent dictator in tune with the needs and desires of their people might best approximate a democratically chosen ideal. And in other times not.

The point though, is that nobody can choose to not have the freedom to choose. And as such, we all wish to choose the best government for us - whatever form that may appear. But when it stops serving us...

Oh hell like anyone wants to shift power to president in Poland. Or as if anyone believed presidents have any power over anything (even the US president doesn't have any real power; you don't get to be in that position if you're a wildcard that is likely to do things against your party or the rest of administration).

If anything we have a conflict between people who want the country to be more Catholic and the ones who want it to be less Catholic, and a secondary push against any government because people seem to believe that entrepreneurs are force of good that is being murdered by the Evil Government through means like taxation.

Democracy is strong here - people are being indoctrinated in it since early childhood, and it's especially effective since we have the boogeyman of comunist USSR to scare them with.

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

Couldn't the argument be made that the parents, in effect, did it to their own child? They knew the law and flaunted it.

Not saying the law is just, but the parents did it to themselves.

> Couldn't the argument be made that the parents, in effect, did it to their own child

No, it couldn't. The person responsible for killing the child is the person that enforces the law and the person that created the law.

Iteresting.

It follows then the person that kills a death row inmate is responsible for their death, not the inmate for committing a crime in the first place.

When a death row inmate is killed the executioner is without doubt responsible for the death. Just like the judge that sentenced him is responsible. Now whether they were justified or not is a different question (which many would argue there is never good enough justification for the death penalty)

Anyway, it's not interesting, the only thing the parents are responsible for is having a second child and breaking the law. What people do to enforce the law is their responsibility not the responsibility of the parents that broke it, the same applies for the murderer on death row.

Just because something is legal doesn't absolve you of responsibility. The same way soldiers "just following orders" are responsible for the actions they commit at the behest of their superiors. Both the superiors and the soldiers are responsible

If you don't consider any punishment the responsibility of a criminal, then I think you're using a different definition of 'responsible' than most people, and this might actually be a semantic argument rather than anything meaningful.

> responsible : having an obligation to do something, or having control over or care for someone, as part of one's job or role.

The criminal is only responsible for breaking the law, the only thing he had control over before he was caught (assuming he was caught for the sake of argument). We as society are responsible for dealing out the punishment.

How could the criminal be responsible for the punishment when he is not the one inflicting it on him/herself.

edit: To make my argument slightly easier to understand I'm going to give an extreme example

Let's say it's illegal to be a certain religion. Is it the insert religion here person's responsibility that he is punished and sent to a death camp?

I think most people would say that if the punishment is justified then the responsibility is transitive.

The punishment being justified depends entirely on whether or not the law itself is just (e.g. capital punishment is largely considered to be a legal injustice). Whether or not responsibility is transitive a separate, but important, matter.

As it turns out, responsibility for statutory laws is only transitive when applied to a party to the statute (e.g. a lawmaker or the enforcer).

A thief is responsible for restitution because depriving someone of their property is violation of natural law. A party who breaks a contract is responsible for fulfilling the terms they agreed to, because they made that agreement.

A thief, or a party who breaks a contract, is not responsible for a _statutory law_ enforced against them (unless they are a law maker or the law enforcer).

The creators and enforcers of the statue are responsible for creating it and enforcing it. They are responsible for its outcome, whether that is a dead murderer or a dead baby.

And if the contract is "you can live and work here if you don't have a baby"? Let's say a hypothetical government doesn't touch the woman, but they insist the woman do something to avoid raising too many children.

Honestly curious: Are you making an argument that laws and punishments for breaking them are wrong across the board? Or are you saying that the laws might be just in some cases, and the punishment a necessary evil, but that even in those cases you think it's important to place responsibility on the enforcers of those laws?

The latter. If people took responsibility for their actions I believe injustices like forced abortions wouldn't happen as often. I can imagine it's very easy for somebody that is forcing a woman to have an abortion at 8.5 months pregnant to rationalize away what they are doing as upholding the law and that the government is responsible for what is happening.

Yes, they are responsible for killing them. It's a conscience decision an executioner makes to kill those the state deems worthy of execution.

Right, because if nobody killed the inmate they'd still be alive.

Your "need" to kill them because they crossed some line is your need, and you're the killer. (For better or worse...)

You have to punish the defectors if you want to have a stable society. If you set up a law that says "X is punishable by death" and someone does X, then you have to deliver death to that person, or else the law loses all its coordinating power. If the law itself is not just, then you're responsible for unnecessary deaths, but a person committing X in full knowledge of the consequences is responsible for their own death.

It's really similar to jumping out of the 10th floor window. It's the dv/dt that actually kills you, but it's you who is responsible for your own death.

Sure, you just can't sugar-coat it. You're deciding to kill someone for that goal.

If I was holding your fist, pushing it into your face, can't it be said that you were beating yourself up?

Why won't you stop hitting yourself?

This assumes that China has a strong legal system and that government officials won't abuse the system to meet arbitrary quotas. Neither of which are true.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-04-15/china-past-due-one-chi...

tl;dr Couple had the legal right and license to have a second child, but the local family planning officials were over quota so they made up some bullshit about her license being expired and forced her to abort her 8-month old fetus.

Does the government allow a newborn to be transferred to a family that's under quota?

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.

I'm 99% sure that nsxwolf was being sarcastic with that comment.

"Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it"

You have a lot of exciting history reading ahead of you if you have the will to learn.

> Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it and most of the dictators were much better alternative

Is that what they teach in American schools? Let's see how you cope with this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

These are two different issues -- democracy and human rights. There's nothing wrong with having a king, for example; but there's something very wrong with state-mandated infanticide -- and it would be just as wrong if it was imposed by a democracy as by any other form of government.

> 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?

Iraq after the invasion sort of was. No civil society existed, but there were plenty of bands of guerillas and local religious extremists who'd been fighting Saddam; they inherited the state when we destroyed the Baathists. (The CPA tried to create a civil society, but that can't be done artificially.)

_The Prince of the Marshes_ is a good book to read on this subject.

Please don't recommend me any more books today. I already bought one because of this discussion[0].

But more seriously, thanks for the recommendation :).

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10474120.

While Iraq was being a fine country they were gassing hundreds of thousands of people.

And theocracies and kingdoms are slave states by definition, so most of what was around them is the same or worse.

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