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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

I don’t follow the logic of “China does something that we think is bad, therefore we must do the same thing that we think is bad.”

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I think the principle of regulatory reciprocity is fairly standard. If country X has tarrifs on your goods, it's fairly standard to bring up the same tarrifs on their goods into your country. Same with visa laws. If country X defacto bans certain products and companies from operating/selling in their country on the basis of national origin and not product type, then I would assume eventually the same would happen on the other side.

Without reciprocity, the other country has little incentive to come to the negotiating table to reciporically remove those tarrifs, bans and visa restrictions.

I think it’s not obvious that you can directly apply the logic of tariffs to (largely free) internet services provided by companies in other countries. You could make the argument that they should be treated the same, but I think the argument needs to be explicit rather than assumed.

Also, this entire mode of argument doesn’t address the idea that this is a national security or privacy issue.

> I think the principle of regulatory reciprocity is fairly standard

In this case, since it's a communication tool, this is more freedom restriction reciprocity than regulatory reciprocity. Communication freedom is not the fire you want to fight fire with.

> I think the principle of regulatory reciprocity is fairly standard. If country X has tarrifs on your goods, it's fairly standard to bring up the same tarrifs on their goods into your country.

We agree that it’s standard. The interesting question is whether it’s sensible.

Personally, as citizen Denmark, if Italy puts a 50 tariff on Danish sausages, I would prefer that Denmark not put any tariff on Italian sausages.

Tit-for-tat has been found to be the most effective strategy in prisoner dilemma type situations. If China lets us into their markets then we will let them into ours. This was the whole point of letting China join the WTO, but China has completely ignored any rulings against it by the WTO courts. It not playing fairly. These individual trade sanctions by the US are the only way to make China keep up its end of the deal.

Trade is basically the opposite of a prisoner's dilemma, though. Cooperation dominates defection.

I think the main idea in the prisoner's dilemma is that in the defect/no defect case the defector has great gains and the non-defector has great losses. Who gains and who loses is the key and that is what China has been doing to the West since entering the WTO in 2001. Tit-for-tat quickly eliminates the gains for the defector.

This doesn’t seem like a prisoner dilemma though, because I think there’s a good argument that the US is better off cooperating (allowing Tik Tok) than defecting regardless of China’s actions.

The US is announcing aluminum tariffs against Canada. Canada's PM announces that aluminum tarrifs are a bad idea and hurt everybody, but until the US gets rid of them, Canada will match them dollar for dollar with its own aluminum tarrifs.

Do you follow the logic in this case?

Good example of how the US is hurting itself by picking petty fights with friends instead of unifying against China.

I don’t follow the logic of “China does something that we think is bad, therefore we must just ignore it"

Ignoring it and doing the same bad thing are not the only two options.

Clearly that doesn't make any sense as you stated it, however the premise that "we must do the same thing that we think is bad" is a false premise. All else equal, barring companies from operating is a bad thing, that makes all of us worse off. But when China is doing that to us, "all else" is not "equal". The same goes for when Chinese companies are effectively appendages of a genocidal Chinese state -- all else is most certainly not equal.

A very simple analogy is to that of interpersonal violence. All else equal, it's bad to point a gun at someone. But if they're threatening you with a gun first and unjustifiably, then it's no longer bad. In fact its bad not to fight back, since to not do so would allow wickedness to flourish. And any argument along the lines of "two wrongs don't make a right" is of course absurd.

So then how do you stop China from doing the bad thing?

Is that relevant? Do you think this will make any difference in China’s internal policies?

It make difference to your country's companies to make business there.

One assumption as to why "do the bad thing" is "because it will make China behave in the manner we want".

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