All: please don't spoil this thread still further by taking this kind of bait. If you want a poster child for what happens, look below for a reductio ad absurdum in two steps: (1) bickering about wars of aggression (yes they were no they weren't); (2) relitigating Vietnam. If this is what you want to do on the internet, Hacker News is not the site you are looking for.
Well over a million people have been killed in U.S. wars of aggression (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) and there are very direct ties between SV high tech funding and the Pentagon. Exhibit A: DARPA.[1] Even more direct than in China. A lot of what SV does is commercializing military technology developed at taxpayer expense. Autonomous vehicles and Siri are just a couple recent examples.[2][3]
[1] https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-history-and-timeline
The French agreed to leave and support elections with the Geneva Accords. The U.S. propped up a dictator and organized a campaign of brutal suppression and terror, then outright bombed the hell out of peasants in the south starting in 1962 under JFK to block a political settlement. That's as aggressive as it gets.
1/3 of male African American are locked up in U.S. prisons. Think about that. One third.
Huh, no. I agree it's much too high, but it's more like 2.3% according to the 2010 US census: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_Afr...
(I think that includes women too, but still nowhere near 33%)
Even if you were to avoid explicitly giving money to Chinese businesses, it's probably impossible to buy any moderately complicated manufactured good without indirectly supporting China's economy.
Why do new accounts pop up to shittalk China every single time someone writes a piece like this. Paid Taiwanese shills?
Get real. I don’t want to live in China right now, but evil? I live in a country that has destabilized country after country after country in the name of ideology, fear, and greed. This country kills civilians on a regular basis, and calls it acceptable.
We’re all evil, if you want to be hyperbolic about it, or human I’d you want to be realistic. Pointing fingers at external “devils” is just a non-starter to anyone with a rational bone in them.
you seem to be a young jewish man who lives in US. I hope you will look up reeducation camps for Uighurs in China, and look up concentration camps that maybe your relatives have been in. And have some empathy.
"How do you do, Fellow Kids?"
I don't think a single regular poster here unironically refers to themself as a "techie."
I can choose to ride my bike to work when its convenient. Oil companies will lose a little bit of money. I can choose not to eat meat 3 days per week. A few more animals will live (or not be born), and slightly fewer greenhouse gasses will be emitted.
Likewise, I can choose not to purchase something made in China when a meaningful alternative exists, and I will be ever so slightly hurting China's export industry, and thus the tax receipts and influence of the Chinese government.
Most things like this work on a sliding scale.
I'm definitely not part of the China Internet Defense Force that seems to troll many parts of the web but I find it interesting that whenever China comes up on HN some green username usually shows up to chastise everyone for not participating in a boycott that is 100%.
Question: What did you type this on?
I just liked the keyboard question.
[0](see page 9) https://todhartman.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/michel-foucau...
- whatshisface, but posted on an alt so I don't have to feel bad about points. ;)