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Comment by bransonf | Hacker News Reader

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take.

China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods.

What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months.

I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade imo.

And the author seems to think China will be able to rapidly adapt to change, pointing to global warming.

China is the world’s worst source of pollution. I don’t think they’re going to 180, especially since their economy is built on it.

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A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals, which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West. For the most part, the author’s expectations about crypto are mistaken in that they assume financiers in the west trust China enough to buy into its digital currency. We are bordering on a Cold War; we aren’t about to trust them to keep their promises on crypto.

I think a more moderate take would be suggesting a straddle of the EU - either it strangles itself with clunky bureaucracy, or it becomes more closely unified and a world power in the likes of the US, Russia, or China.

Furthermore, I think we could see the United States grow with the additions of Guam, Puerto Rico, and/or Greenland.

In theory the US could add Guam and Puerto Rico... but how would that ever be politically viable? There's no way this is going to happen if one party in a two party system knows it will lead to their doom.

Add two at once. Possibilities include creating West California, West Washington, South Virginia, and South Illinois.

That works for balancing the Senate, but not really the House.

Adding PR to the House would significantly reduce the odds of a Republican House given that the current GOP makes a lot of noises that often seem like they're racist against Hispanics.

I don't know what "adding Guam and Puerto Rico" means when they are already US territories. Your comment seems to imply that this means statehood, i.e. addition of senators and voting representatives. But the parent throws them in with Greenland, which is not a US territory.

Pretty sure only trump has ever seriously posited adding Greenland to the US. I’d love for a source of that idea though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_State...

IIRC the US tried to purchase Greenland after WWII, but Denmark declined back then as well.

Isn't the point of the electoral college that they can and are reassigned Isn't the point of the electoral college that they can and are reassigned values for each territory periodically? periodically?

I think the article is based on current trends, not on US politics.

I downvoted your for "liberal ideals" when the rest of your post reads like a flimsy cliche of a "non-liberal."

> A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals

Not liberal ideals. Globalist neoliberal ideals.

> which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West.

These aren't liberal ideals. They are globalist neoliberal ideals. Anti-human, anti-american and pro-globalist financiers.

> or it becomes more closely unified and a world power in the likes of the US, Russia, or China.

Simply will never happen as neither the US nor Russia would support this. Only china currently seems to want closer EU integration purely for economic/market purposes. Power is a zero sum game. The biggest loser in the rise of EU would be the US. Having europe turn from a "vassal" to a competitor would represent a significant loss of power for the US.

> Furthermore, I think we could see the United States grow with the additions of Guam, Puerto Rico, and/or Greenland.

Guam and Puerto Rico are already part of the US. I think we should work with native greenlanders directly and have greenland become part of the US. Perhaps a large cash payment for each true native inuit greenlander ( not danish/european/etc settlers in greenland ) and a percentage of greenland's productive output for 100 or 200 years? Seems like something should have been worked out with the native greenlanders a long time.

> Not liberal ideals. Globalist neoliberal ideals.

"Neoliberal" refers to Clinton-style ("third way") liberal politicians. I don't know who you're using it to refer to.

> Having europe turn from a "vassal" to a competitor would represent a significant loss of power for the US.

You forgot to include why you think that's a bad thing.

> Guam and Puerto Rico are already part of the US.

But they can't vote and have no (useful) representation in Congress. Citizens of Guam and Puerto Rico are treated as second class citizens ("US Nationals", not "US Citizens").

>> Guam and Puerto Rico are already part of the US.

> But they can't vote and have no (useful) representation in Congress. Citizens of Guam and Puerto Rico are treated as second class citizens ("US Nationals", not "US Citizens").

It's a similar situation in Washington DC. DC residents were given a few electoral college votes, I believe that was put into effect only relatively recently in the 1960s. They have no vote in the US house and no senators.

> "Neoliberal" refers to Clinton-style ("third way") liberal politicians. I don't know who you're using it to refer to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

> You forgot to include why you think that's a bad thing.

What? I'm just pointing out why the US would be against a EU competitor? Perhaps you need to reread what I wrote and the comment I was responding to. I think "globalist neoliberal" triggered something that made you see things that aren't there.

> But they can't vote and have no (useful) representation in Congress.

All I said was that they are part of the US.

> Citizens of Guam and Puerto Rico are treated as second class citizens ("US Nationals", not "US Citizens").

Sure. But they are still part of the US. I was responding to " Furthermore, I think we could see the United States grow with the additions of Guam, Puerto Rico, and/or Greenland." Blacks and women couldn't vote in NY and the US for a long time. Doesn't mean NY wasn't a part of the US or the US existed.

I think "globalist neoliberal" really got you reading into things. I made specific replies to specific comments. Which you completely ignored.

China is good at things we are really bad at: building up modern infrastructure fast and at reasonable cost, investing in long term projects (payoff in decades so meaningless for election cycle driven politics in other countries).

I doubt China has good infrastructure, which is why they build it so fast. Also it helps to absolute control over your workforce.

They have now have 2/3 of the worlds high speed rail despite starting incredibly late in the game, and not having a ton of people that can afford it.

Turns out, in a communist government you can cut through red tape incredibly easily to advance your goals for the party/country. This is common for communist govs, and not democracies. When you believe land ownership should be private, and everyone has a super strong opinion about things, it’s hard to advance infrastructure at a speed commensurate with societies needs.

Not an argument for communism, just an observation. Likely lacks some nuance, but just do a bit of research on China’s infra, and their heavy investment in that space.

Also good at giving death penalties for white collar crime.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-27/china-sen...

Keep up America!

The US has the opposite extreme of this problem, where we get 6 months for the same white collar crime but there's a minimum 5 year sentence if you grow a specific plant to treat your dehibilating asthma symptoms (http://www.hr95.org/pinson.htm).

I was going to make a quip about how you would probably fare worse in China, but at least according to Wikipedia, the penalty is 10-15 days [0]. On the other hand, legalization is probably imminent in the US. The same is not true of China.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_China

Extreme (death penalty) sentencing for corruption is generally not something you see in regimes that have highly effective regimes of anti-corruption enforcement.

It is however, a highly effective tool for political purges.

I agree except with your last sentence. They have the biggest total pollution, but their pollution per capita is actually low compared to eastern countries, and they are investing and legislating aggressively for clean tech.

Furthermore to your point, I don't think we need to look at pollution from a more holistic point of view. How much of the pollution in China is due to them manufacturing and "recycling" goods for the west? Can we look at pollution that has been "offshored" and calculate that into the mix?

Mapped: The world’s largest CO2 importers and exporters https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

"Despite the large total of CO2 imports and exports, US emissions are only 6% higher and Chinese emissions are 13% lower when CO2 transfers are taken into account." Energy related carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007 in the United States [1]. They didn't just get hidden by imports replacing domestic manufacturing. Even incorporating imports into the national balance, US emissions are down from the peak. This is largely due to efficient combined cycle gas turbines replacing coal plants and -- to a lesser but growing extent -- a larger proportion of renewable electricity in the national electricity mix. Chinese carbon dioxide emissions have not peaked yet.

As of 2017 (referenced above), 87% of Chinese emissions are attributable to domestic consumption. That should moderate hopes that Chinese emission trends could be reversed by CO2 tariffs. It should also moderate anxiety that Chinese emissions are "really" the offshored emissions of Western consumers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...

copy/pasted from another thread

That is a logical stat I never hear about and it looks they they are indeed lower than USA and Canada (and the worst, Middle East):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

However it’s still far worse than most European countries in the list.

Yeah but in this case absolut numbers seem more relevant, per capita will always be low if you're a billion population nation.

Since we all live on earth surface, per land area could be a good measure.

US ~500 China ~1100 UK ~1500 Germany ~2000 Japan ~2000 South Korea ~4000

"What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months."

Wrong Chinese people are very happy. In some rankings they belong to the happiest people. Here they are medium range: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/09/10...

My prediction:

We will see an economic depression, also caused by energy problems. The current quantitative easing is actually the first sign of the problems with energy: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/09/12/our-energy-and-debt-pr...

PS: The US is also pretty good at making other countries unhappy. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran to name a few :-)

"How's life in soviet russia?"

"Can't complain!"

This is the mistake you're making regarding China.

Source: grew up there

Exactly. To say that you're unhappy is frowned upon. I'd assume in China it's both politically and also socially steming from confucianism, (i.e. against upsetting the harmony).

I mean, yeah, being against those in power isn't a good idea in authoritarian regimes. At the same time, people describe living in former east germany as the most easy-going / carefree time of their life. Being taken care of as long as you do as your told isn't all bad and probably was the default state of the smaller communities in the past. Whish we would find ways to achieve this without the authoritarian aspects.

>At the same time, people describe living in former east germany as the most easy-going / carefree time of their life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_attempts_and_victims_of...

People made the best of the situation they had. There is a reason the links above happened, though, and it wasn't because the system people lived in was easy-going and carefree. Keep in mind that the transitional years, after the governmental collapse, but before western institutions stepped in, were worse than regular life when the eastern systems were functional. Balance that against the thought that the eastern system was unsustainable, and had the west not been able to step in when it did, the results would have been far worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine for an example of what happened in a centralized system that didn't have outside assistance when things collapsed.

> Keep in mind that the transitional years, after the governmental collapse, but before western institutions stepped in, were worse than regular life when the eastern systems were functional.

Are you talking about the post war years? Yeah, those generally were pretty hard, especially with the east not having a Marshall Plan. Lots of political change necessarily did make a lot of people unhappy. But I'd be surprised if you'd find many stories of people emigrating in the latter years cause they couldn't make ends meet.

Or do you mean the reunification years? Cause I hardly remember "western institutions stepping in and saving the day" ever mentioned when the days of the Treuhand are brought up. The more common narrative is "west stepped in, destroyed all our industry and left us with little prospects to these days" or some more grounded version of that.

But yeah, while a good king might be the best form of government, the necessity to get rid of the bad ones (=worst possible gov) makes authoritarian systems not very desirable. At the same time is it a good idea to non the less find ways to integrate the strengths of those societies into our own as well.

>Or do you mean the reunification years? Cause I hardly remember "western institutions stepping in and saving the day" ever mentioned when the days of the Treuhand are brought up. The more common narrative is "west stepped in, destroyed all our industry and left us with little prospects to these days" or some more grounded version of that.

It's a convenient narrative, but it isn't, IMO, a correct one. Yes, the Treuhand had to decide quite literally which businesses got to live, and which didn't. Never before had an entire country been converted from a planned economy to a market one. There was no road map to follow. Decades of land and property seizure by both the Nazis & the Soviets made untangling actual ownership rights a Sisyphean task.

But at the same time this transition was occuring, billions and billions of Marks/Euros were and are invested in bringing the East up to the same levels of development. What do you think would have happened with the same governmental collapse, if the Treuhandanstalt hadn't existed? Honest question.

"How's life in China?"

"Great!"

Source: I live there!

This is the mistake you're making regarding stuff you have no idea of.

You're missing the wordplay in the post you're replying to.

>Source: grew up there

Yeah. Because we know that post-soviet Russians are very happy people. Not.

Source: I am there once a month.

I think you are missing the joke...

I imagine that if English is not your first language, it would be easy to miss this, since the joke plays on multiple meanings for the phrase "can't complain".

Usually, in this context, "Can't complain" means "life is good".

However, in this joke, the secondary meaning of "Can't complain" indicates that "You can't complain about life in soviet Russia, because if you do complain, you get in big trouble".

Basically, this indicates that life in soviet Russia was NOT good.

You can roughly divide the Chinese population into the well educated and the rest; the boundary of course is fluid. It doesn't mean the latter category isn't smart or doesn't have college education. It means that those people didn't know the kinds of freedom (speech, assembly, etc) that Westerners think are the pillars of democracy. They didn't live through or have memories of a China on the verge of having a beginnings of a real democracy in the 1980s before the massacre killed it. They didn't know there is a vast Internet outside China so tightly controlled by the government as to be unusable. They didn't know President Xi had been increasingly instituting "red" policies that were worryingly similar to the 1960s. Those are the people who had newly gained wealth and didn't know any better. They could very well equate material wealth with happiness without yet realizing anything more.

difficult to know the truth when the population answers surveys by picking the right answer instead of giving their true opinion.

>We will see an economic depression, also caused by energy problems. The current quantitative easing is actually the first sign of the problems with energy:

One of the only realistic takes in this thread. The current, generationally low price of oil is built entirely upon the output of North American fracking. Fracking is the most capital intensive business on earth at the moment and most players are actually losing money. They are bouyed by the current, generationally low interest rates which are built upon politicized central banking policy. When interest rates rise, fracking grinds to a halt. When fracking stops, the price of oil shoots to 2008 or greater levels and the global economy grinds to a halt. The century scale economic depression that will result entirely invalidates each and every prediction made by the author of the article we're discussing.

america has an interest in making fracking viable, since it's a technology that not many nations can employ (without the involvement of american firms anyway).

Fracking also allows america to place economic pressure to some countries like Russian (by lowering the price of their primary export).

Given the above, it will be unlikely for interest rates to grow in the next decade - since doing so has no advantages (except inflation, which is kept under control by the dollar's reserve status), and has many dis-advantages (such as causing a shock to businesses borrowing, which can precipitate a depression).

So you're saying that Hong Kong is a different country?

Watch a lecture by Peter Zeihan on YouTube. His entire thesis is the US is becoming isolationist. But yea I agree with you about China.

Yeah, the worst thing that could happen to China now is that Li Xinping lives a long life.

We have seen over and over in history that an individual dictator fairly quickly diverges from rational paths.

Many patterns have been observed in nature, until an exception occurs that breaks the pattern.

This pattern has, sadly, been pretty reliable over more than 2000 years.

In addition, Li Xinping has shown very little enlightenment toward those who would oppose him irrespective of their correctness. This is always the first step down a long dark path.

Could you convert "pretty reliable" into a percentage?

Another interesting aspect is they might need to transition into a focus on their middle class or risk pricing themselves out of the labor market. Politically, I would think thats a bit of a catch 22 for the party. Empowering a large group would weaken the party, I would think.

Are you seriously talking about the China of today? This critique belongs in the 1980s. You can't ignore demographics, just look where the population is.

I think it is very hard for us outside of Hong Kong to understand the problem. Speaking to people that live there, (with no reason to be beholden to the PRC), they think it is mainly disenfranchised youth causing problems and dressing up like ninjas (their words not mine) rather than the noble rebellion as portrayed by the media.

None of 4, 5, or 6 are at all likely either.

Funny that IMHO prediction 5 is the most likely and followed by prediction 2.

Prediction 5 is two decades overdue and Amazon Wavelength it just the beginning. Currently I'm working with on a problem that needs 1 TB RAM data processing and analysis. Given that's not raw data, but if a compulsary real-time technology similar to eVLBI (real-time optional), but it requires immediate processing of raw data that will probably be the killer application for the edge or fog computing. Typical web server hosting has transfer limit of few TB of data per month and Amazon cloud is charging by the bandwidth, the only way forward is to move to the edge.

Prediction 2 is quite self evident with the sudden rise of popularity of Elizabeth Warren with her proposed plan for wealthy citizen 2 percents tax [1].

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/31/2020-d...

I can never get what China is doing. One day you hear about solar boost then you see more coal. Strange.

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