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Comment by kinsomo | Hacker News Reader

> I very much doubt it is sustainable. The cost of policing is quite substantial and the productivity lost is hard to replace which adds to the cost.

Why do you think the Chinese government can't sustain the cost? Intensive policing is manpower intensive, and China presently has manpower to spare. They also don't have to deal with democratic pressures to contain the cost and redirect the savings to programs that benefit the general public.

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In my view, they are not sustaining the cost. We are, by buying their products. If totalitarianism becomes universal, that's when it ceases to be sustainable.

The ruling class has luxuries that they could not have developed for themselves without them being broadly available. I'm thinking of things like cell phones, the Internet, and possibly the money system.

Parasites need a viable host.

I love that we're talking about how bad totalitarianism is meanwhile we literally have the upperclass exporting jobs to China for a quick buck and president who campaigned on bringing them back who just betrayed his base (and his country) by helping a Chinese company keep their jobs... Living in the free-ist country in the world apparently means you're free to sell out your fellow man to the totalitarian state overseas.

I think _that_ is the sustainability problem we need to talk about. We're feeding them and starving ourselves.

As automation reduced societal labour requirements, will that make societal repression via human labour more feasible?

>China presently has manpower to spare.

And in twenty years they will not, that is the crux of the issue.

That's correct. Due to the one-child policy and other causes, China is already suffering a worker shortage, and the demographers say it will get much worse in the future.

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