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Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

But, but, but... they're not democratic! If only they'd put more power in the hands of the common man, they too could enjoy such luminous choices for statesmen as McCain vs. Obama, Bush II vs. Kerry, Bush II vs Gore, Dole vs. Clinton, Bush I vs. Clinton...

...we gotta keep saber rattling that our way is better than theirs. Boo China, boo.

Edit: To the downvoter - okay, I'm joking around. But which of these premises do you disagree with?

1. The United States has more electoral politics in choosing its leaders than China.

2. The last 20 years of leadership in China show a much more nuanced understanding of policy and statesmanship than American leadership, where charisma and mass appeal tends to be more important than "hard credentials."

3. There might be a cause-and-effect relationship between point 1 and point 2.

Disagree with any of those? Yeah I'm joking around, but it's worth thinking about, no? Or maybe it's upsetting to think about... that I sympathize with...

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Right. To add to this, in the US system:

-- the vast majority of bureaucrats with power over the average man are not elected or even subject to firing

-- we do not truly have a system of one man/one vote. the guy who writes the new york times headlines on election day literally controls at least a million votes.

-- the candidates who are dubbed "serious" by the media are not chosen at random. By any quantitative theory of political voice, that up front winnowing from 300 million to ten or so is more substantive than the election itself.

-- in the business sector, power is wielded with far more responsibility. there is a CEO and an identifiable company behind a product, which can go out of business if it displeases its customers, and which is subject to feedback on an instantaneous basis through purchases. by contrast most govt projects are products of committees, with permanent funding and diluted accountability only in the form of the 2-4 year election cycle.

in short, voting with your wallet or voting with your feet means far greater efficacy and voice than going through the ceremony of voting with a ballot.

-- Rule by an elite is inevitable. The process by which that elite is selected is everything. The US used to be much more aware of this, referring to itself as a "republic" rather than a "democracy".

-- The Chinese model is a lot easier to understand when comparing it to Apple. Should Steve Jobs choose his successor through a plebiscite in which he ostensibly has the same voice as a retail store employee hired yesterday? Or should he choose a leader who he thinks will follow his path? In the latter case legitimacy among Apple employees ultimately rests on the bottom line success of Apple, with the necessary safety valves being exit (freedom to quit) and market (revenue growth) rather than voice (noisily protesting Jobs' successor).

In the same way, most Chinese believe that Deng was the best qualified person in China to choose his successor. And legitimacy comes from continually posting solid bottom line numbers, something the US has not done for a while.

Communist governments have usually attracted intellectuals to higher levels of power -- the results so far haven't been uplifting.

I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce a clear "winner", only a list of pros/cons whose weighting will be shaped by your perceptions and bias.

The explosive growth of China hides most of the warts of the system. When you have economic growth so fast that new, uninhabited cities get built, there's obviously some excess and policy issues at play.

The US is an imperial power, and the conduct of policy and statesmanship changes in that role. While the President is the front-man and sets the agenda, the work is done and policy is made by anonymous officials in the sprawling bureaucracy. And I betcha if you analyzed a Chinese and American bureaucrat, you would find that they look, act and think alike.

Nuanced comment here, good analysis. I agree with a lot, but two nitpicks about the first point -

1. I'd say Communist movements attract intellectuals. Communist governments usually do not employ those intellectuals for very long after taking power.

2. Despite the name and symbols, I don't think China is actually Communist any more. I don't know what to call them. If they remain a world power and continue to thrive, I'd bet quite a lot that a new word will be coined for their precise political/economic/geographical/military mix - there's quite literally no comps in history for what they're doing right now.

I agree that China no longer fits the traditional definition of "Communist". Then again, Maoism didn't quite fit the mold either. China has a strong societal tradition that is different than the west.

While they may not be ideologically communist, China does continue to practice the governance style of communist governments. Think about the Soviet Union's model -- a major part of the Soviet story was purging the old in favor of the new, "scientific" way. China is doing a similar thing, but through different means. The "science" may have been quakery (witness the Aral Sea), but the central planners saw themselves as guided by logic and science, not petty feelings or popularity.

Thanks lh. Might be worth noting how many communist governments invoked an "Owning books is counter-revolutionary treason" policy after taking power, too. Not really something for the intellectuals.

It's pretty much impossible for a government to remain Communist after formation.

According to Marx, a Communist state should disassemble itself after organizing society in such a way that it can sustain egalitarianism in a classless manner. Because dictatorial power is necessary to reorganize society from the top down, this power will be acquired by a Communist state. Unfortunately, every institution is self-serving and self-preserving, so ostensibly-Communist states are inevitably unable to complete the self-destructive process. When have you ever known a state to give up power? It just doesn't happen unless the state feels threatened in some way, and the state is unable to destroy the threat.

A Communist state will relentlessly attack any non-hierarchical movement attempting to organize a classless egalitarian society, because such movements are a threat to the state's power. Examples of this are present in both the Spanish Revolution and the Russian Revolution.

Bakunin was totally right. http://i.imgur.com/ijQEp.jpg

It is a bit strange to see a comic that I've seen dozens of times before on /new/ posted on HN.

For number 2. you could argue that they are mercantilist. Most of the enterprises are state backed, much like the Dutch or British East India companies. So the state takes a pretty big role in determining which companies will succeed.

You could argue that the Chinese state as a whole is in fact a large corporation.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need(s)."

A leaders best ability is to lead. Hence, you would end up with intellectuals, scientists, economists and others who have a strong grasp of complex theories and systems. Opposed to having actors and political pretty boys leading.

Marx's saying goes even further with the corporate metaphor. The lower the 'worker' in the 'corporation' the less they get 'paid'/'need'. How is there any real difference with how Walmart views its minimum wage workers to how China views its farmers or sweatshop workers? From the top they're all just pawns to make a profit.

> the results so far haven't been uplifting

10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

> I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce a clear "winner"

It's likely that one of these two countries is going to end up dominating the world. Of course, it's not so much about countries as social systems: both have their strengths and weaknesses.

> And I betcha if you analyzed a Chinese and American bureaucrat, you would find that they look, act and think alike.

I'm sure you're right.

Global domination is a funny thing. Did Britain impose its ways on the world and change it forever, or did the world change it?

The answer is "all of the above". Of course many Brits got rich at the expense of the others.

> 10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

They are catching up to status quo. Mostly because they squandered the previous decades scientifically hunting down sparrows and enemies of the state.

Which is so different from the War on Terror and the Patriot Act.

The War on Terror, foolish and wrong-headed though it has been, can't be placed on the same footing of destructiveness as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Not by several orders of magnitude. And you have to come through Stalinism and the Holocaust en route to making that comparison, so let's keep things in perspective here.

I guess I was responding to "hunting down sparrows and enemies of the state" rather than the revolution specifically, so I will accept they are in a different league.

Still, I'm not sure killing around 3% of Iraqis is something that can be dismissed as "foolish and wrong-headed" either.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,863327,00.h...

As misguided as the Patriot Act is, it pales in comparison to the Great Cultural Revolution and other acts of horror insanity that devastated China after World War II.

> They are catching up to status quo

Yes they are catching up. Three quarters of the countries in the world are catching up -- or trying to -- the most advanced countries, and that's been roughly the situation since the industrial revolution. The difference is that China has been more successful than anyone else at catching up; to the best of my knowledge no other country has ever managed as good a performance (except for poor countries that discover oil, which doesn't really count).

> 10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

It's not that impressive when you're chasing tail-lights and the folks ahead are (mostly) helping.

Come on... Simply holding together such a big country is really a daily miracle. I live there and I can tell you Chinese people are not what you think, they are VERY HARD to govern. They never stop inventing ways to break the rules, they have a tendency to suddenly and unexpectedly jump all together on the same side of the boat. A daily miracle, I tell you, and most of this miracle is based on the rock-solid traditional education given in the country-side.

I'll tell you, the Chinese hard even harder to govern than the French. (I'm French, I know both.)

> Come on... Simply holding together such a big country is really a daily miracle. I live there and I can tell you Chinese people are not what you think, they are VERY HARD to govern.

You've identified the problem, but it's not the problem that you think that it is.

Why do you assume that "holding together" and "govern" is a good idea? More to the point, what would happen if the Chinese govt stopped trying to do so?

It's not like China is going to be invaded.

I was going to write something about keeping the gangsters in check, but then I remembered that official corruption is a huge problem in China, and most of that stems from this "govern" thing that you value so highly.

> They never stop inventing ways to break the rules,

Which is another reason why 10% is no big deal.

10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

China had the prior example of Taiwan to imitate. And Taiwan had China scared witless by the end of the Cultural Revolution, when it looked like the total size of Taiwan's economy, with only about one-SIXTIETH the population, might exceed the size of China's economy soon.

Communist governments have usually attracted intellectuals to higher levels of power -- the results so far haven't been uplifting.

No they don't. The Chinese cultural revolution has almost extinguished the intellectual class before ending. I don't recall a single scientist in The Soviet Union Politburo. Do you have any examples for your "usually", beyond this particular incarnation of the Chinese government?

The reason why democracy is a good thing is not because the general public is good at running a country, or even good at selecting people who are good at running a country.

The reason why democracy is a good thing is it forces the people in power to care about the effects their decisions have on the general public.

Or to put it another way, it's the system that is most likely to throw complete and utter incompetents out of office in a reasonable period of time.

"Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

I think democracy is a good thing because it is generally good at keeping the government in line. Even though 90% of what Republicans and Democrats do are the same, it is that they're eternally afraid of the public reaction that they do keep themselves in line.

This is even more true in Westminster style Democracies where Members of Parliament can defect on decisions, or defect entirely to another party or go independent. Potentially at any time. Why? Because your local MP is supposed to act on your behalf, and you elect the one that stands for what you do. I know our present conservative government, and Prime Minister, would love to do nothing more than open the election debate and with their majority get some legislation passed. However, they're so afraid of fracturing their government that the PM has out and out said he will not reopen it.

Sadly this isn't always so, as here in Canada the NDP has a dozen or so MP's who were essentially placed as seat fillers (in Quebec), but because of a bizarre turn around those padded seats became their entire election campaign.

It prevents the people in power from deciding to enslave all right-handed people, but enslaving all left-handed people is still acceptable.

It's maybe a trade-off? Sure we have bozos for politicians in the US, but in the US government corruption usually doesn't lead to people 'disappearing.' Though we're definitely making great strides in that direction.

The United States still has, overall, a much better set of governance, courts, regulation, etc. than China. But the USA is trending gradually downwards and China is trending quickly upwards.

Now it's interesting, countries can catch up a lot faster than they can lead. If a country is a bit backwards, with the right set of leadership, they can very quickly modernize, becoming extremely important economically and geopolitically in ~30 years when starting almost from scratch. But many of those rapid modernizations peter out once a lot of the proven methods are implemented.

Sometimes that means flat growth, like Japan. Sometimes collapse, like Nazi Germany. Sometimes gradual decline, like the USSR. Singapore has done a pretty outstanding job of keeping their upwards trends going and they're about 50 years into their building phase - I think that's the longest rapid sustained modernization in history?

So anyways, yes, I'll take the USA's system over China's today. And tomorrow. And probably 5 years from now. But maybe not 20 years from now if all else stays equal, and China can adapt after they've caught most of the low hanging fruit.

If a country is a bit backwards, with the right set of leadership, they can very quickly modernize, becoming extremely important economically and geopolitically in ~30 years when starting almost from scratch.

It's not only leadership. If there is a long track record of commerce and admiration of scholarship, a culture can enable rapid modernization. I think this is why Japan, Korea, and China have done very well for themselves.

Cultural antecedents are not a necessary pre-condition for modernisation. The USSR modernised very rapidly and it started off with mass illiteracy.

The USSR modernised very rapidly and it started off with mass illiteracy.

Yes, but look at them now. The territories of the former USSR do not constitute the best climate for business. Cultural antecedents are not a necessary pre-condition, but they seem to help.

Fair enough.

>But the USA is trending gradually downwards and China is trending quickly upwards.

In population, wealth, etc. sure. But in terms of corruption? Having people who do no harm in power is often better than having people who do great good. If a great leader is just that - great. Not good, but great. Greatness has the capacity for evil and good. The advantage of a less skilled leadership is that they're only really able to do middling things, whether middlingly evil or middlingly good.

Back in the 1990s economists found that the major cause of improvements for the "Asian tigers" was due to increases in inputs -- that is, people and material were actually used for the first time. But productivity per person or unit of capital is actually quite poor and in the long run, this places a limit on that rapid growth.

We're already seeing work being outsourced from China to even cheaper countries as China's supply of labour becomes fully engaged.

You're right, but the trend in the US is towards more repression, while the trend in China is towards less. We are destroying our middle class, they are creating and growing theirs at an incredible rate.

The attitude that I get from a lot of Chinese is that they feel the present government is a necessary evil - i.e., in exchange for many political and religious freedoms, they get progress, and an immense improvement to the quality of life of hundreds of millions... where before there was only starvation and misery. And progress they have gotten, which is more than I can say for us in the last decade or so.

The Chineese exchange students, that is, the ones who are not nationalized in America, the off the boat people, at my school think rather differently. They consider the government of China, for the most part, simply the nature of china. It isn't a necessary evil, its just the way things are.

They consider the government of China, for the most part, simply the nature of china. It isn't a necessary evil, its just the way things are.

This is exactly what is meant by the Chinese "Civilization State."

http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its-unde...

I've had Chinese coworkers openly feel sorry for me because I have asian features and I don't know how to read/write Chinese characters, and I'm not even Chinese!

We've all got different friends, but I'd offer a different perspective. Most Chinese I know dislike their government, but are apathetic towards it, or too busy trying to live their own lives.

And China is recently tending towards more sophisticated repression, rather than less of it in general. Perhaps the US and China will end up in the same place!

"A sufficiently sophisticated repression is indistinguishable from democracy?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imam_Rapito_affair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_El-Masri

I'm not sure China's leadership has shown a more nuanced understanding of policy and statesmanship than America's leadership.

First, America has dominated the world for the last 30 years. We've got a lot of public fingers in a lot of public pies as the world's policeman. China takes no such stance. It wants oil, so it supports Sudan genocide. It wants a buffer zone between it and the West, so it supports North Korea. Just like the honey badger, China doesn't give a shit. It's relatively quiet and has tons of cash and (directly)stays out of other people's foreign affairs, so everybody more or less ignores it. I wouldn't call this a particularly nuanced understanding or implementation of foreign affairs policy.

Turning to domestic affairs, I wouldn't call China's policies nuanced either. Maybe draconian? Their one-child-per-family policy, their restrictions on speech and travel, their widespread confiscation and displacement, (I could go on) I would call evil, not nuanced.

They are booming, and a 10% growth rate will cover up a lot of poor decisions. Their growth is certainly a function of a few smart guys taking the reins and dragging them into the future, but that had a lot to do with last cadre of "smart" guys shackling them to a failed system for 50 years. And it doesn't mean that's the best way forward, either.

>Turning to domestic affairs, I wouldn't call China's policies nuanced either. Maybe draconian? Their one-child-per-family policy, their restrictions on speech and travel, their widespread confiscation and displacement, (I could go on) I would call evil, not nuanced.

I used to feel the same way until I visited China last year. Their social restrictions really are nuanced! They allow a lot of freedom to the rich/intelligentsia of appropriate ethnic groups and restrict the "restive" segments of their population. A lot of care has gone into the system by which their government maintains control while simultaneously trying to maximize growth and material comfort. It's not just naked oppression.

http://www.freekorea.us/2011/05/16/un-report-implicates-chin...

I think you also should add to the list that given a choice, people will chose leaders who they are able to like the most.

This means that if China's existing leadership is heavily engineering based, the power structures will form in such way that aspiring politicos study engineering.

After all, we are all having this debate because we, being engineers, want to see more engineers in high office.

Chomsky has a great quote about this: In the U.S. there is basically one party - The Business Party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations of the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies, as is most of the population.

I'm not against business, but it shouldn't be our singular goal as a society.

You know, I think I get where you're coming from because I felt the same way until I (1) opened up a business, and (2) spent significant time outside the USA.

Honestly, the business/commerce in the USA is one of the best things about it. As for Chomsky - well, he's completely discredited to me after comparing his writings about Southeast Asia to spending significant amounts of time in SE Asia. Also the ex-Communist countries. He's a relic from a dead age, who played for the wrong team, and hasn't woken up from it. I've gone into depth on this before, but long story short - North Korea is much worse than South Korea, Taiwan drastically outperformed pre-Deng Xiaoping China, West Germany is still much more developed than East Germany... and it's really obvious that South Vietnam is much worse because it was conquered by North Vietnam.

Also, the Khmer Rouge genocide started the same year after American forces withdrew - the Khmer Rouge were emboldened by the American withdrawal. Little known fact - the last recognized battle of the Vietnam War was USA vs. Khmer Rouge, the only military engagement between the two parties before South Asia went from "bad" to "much much worse."

Anyway - I know this kind of not an easy to do overnight, but I'd really suggest comparing Chomsky's writings on SE Asia to what happened in SE Asia firsthand if you get the chance. Also, try to engage with a full-time entrepreneur while he's building the early stage of a company. Guaranteed perspective-changer.

>As for Chomsky - well, he's completely discredited to me after comparing his writings about Southeast Asia to spending significant amounts of time in SE Asia. Also the ex-Communist countries. He's a relic from a dead age.

Ad Hominem circumstantial.

>Guaranteed perspective-changer.

If I was a BP CEO I would have a different perspective on the oil spill, and If I was a Goldman&Sachs CEO I would have a different perspective on the economic crash. Perspectives are not arguments.

> Ad Hominem circumstantial.

Hey, welcome to Hacker News. This is your second comment, your first was, "Meanwhile, red necks scream in anger, teir took uor jobs!!"

So, let me clue you in to the vibe here. First, we aim for a really high level of civility here. Second, standard throwing out of cliche is frowned upon - yeah, we get it. Nobody liked the bailouts and the BP oil spill was bad.

But most importantly - here, we try to engage in thoughtful discussion instead of just throwing out words like "ad hominem" when an argument isn't ad hominem. I wrote a fairly long comment that Chomsky's writings about what the world was like were wrong, with specific examples of comparable Communist/non-Communist countries. And I outlined that I had a personal background in the matter.

Anyways, my above comment said -

1. Chomsky advocated strongly for many communist regimes and against the USA plenty of times.

2. I believe that was a mistake, as evidenced by comparisons between Communism/non-Communism. Also, clearly, his predictions on South Vietnam and Cambodia were mistaken.

Anyways, welcome to Hacker News. Please try to up the discussion level a little bit, this isn't like the rest of the internet.

Mentioning a comment he made somewhere else to discredit him is clearly an ad hominem, even if your attack on Chomsky wasn't.

Chomsky is wrong on a lot of things. That in no way makes him wrong about everything.

Ad Hominem? not quite. However you did trot out 3 of the 4 top straw-man attacks on Chomsky, namely he's hard left, supported the Khmer Rouge, and is rabidly Anti-American. You forgot to accuse him of anti-antisemitism.

It's hardly ad hominem when the guy makes a four paragraph argument explaining why he thinks Chomsky is wrong. Feel free to argue the point, if you want.

Your second point is just mush.

It sounds like you're saying you have to accept all or none of Chomsky's ideas. Just because I quoted him doesn't mean I believe everything he's written, in fact quite to the contrary.

However... I do feel the quote above accurately reflects the sentiments of your first comment, which is why I posted it. It wasn't meant to reflect the entirety of Chomsky's work.

Chomsky denied the Cambodian Holocaust while it was occurring and has never apologized or really publicly reckoned with this. He also keeps his fortune in tax shelters while inveighing against others who do the same. I would thus take his comments about the manifold evils of business with a wee grain of salt; the regimes he has unapologetically flacked for have killed many more people than Google has.

>He also keeps his fortune in tax shelters

His "fortune"? You know he's a college professor right?

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.ht...

But trusts can't be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of US$2-million, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning," set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions.

Chomsky favours massive income redistribution -- just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning.

When I challenged Chomsky about his trust, he suddenly started to sound very bourgeois: "I don't apologize for putting aside money for my children and grandchildren," he wrote in one e-mail. Chomsky offered no explanation for why he condemns others who are equally proud of their provision for their children and who try to protect their assets from Uncle Sam. (However, Chomsky did say that his tax shelter is OK because he and his family are "trying to help suffering people.")

Indeed, Chomsky is rich precisely because he has been such an enormously successful capitalist. Despite his anti-profit rhetoric, like any other corporate capitalist Chomsky has turned himself into a brand name. As John Lloyd recently put it in the lefty New Statesman, Chomsky is among those "open to being "commodified" -- that is, to being simply one of the many wares of a capitalist media market place, in a way that the badly paid and overworked writers and journalists for the revolutionary parties could rarely be."

Chomsky's business works something like this. He gives speeches on college campuses around the country at US$12,000 a pop, often dozens of times a year.

This is more of typical "find some way to make everyone who takes any action into a hypocrite". First of all, just because Chomsky believes something doesn't mean he has to practice it if no one else is. What would it benefit the world for him to be poor?

I have some strong Anarchistic beliefs (i.e. the immorality of one man ruling another, not the smash-things-up kind) but I do literally nothing (outside of talking) for it because it's not practical. I could only ruin my own quality of life and who would see that kind of example and say "wow, count me in!". I'm in a capitalist system so I may as well learn it and use it to the best of my abilities. It's almost certain to be the only system I ever live under no matter what actions I take.

Likewise, very few people listen to Chomsky so he may as well use the system he will live his whole life in to the best of his ability.

And finally, the messenger is different than the message. It is perfectly valid for a smoker to preach about the evils of smoking. He can even call people who smoke stupid. Him smoking doesn't make his message invalid.

Look, I'm not saying you're a bad guy or that working within the system for change is illegitimate.

My point is this: smoking while convincing others that smoking is bad makes you worse off but others better off. That's a failure of will.

But piling up millions in a trust while arguing that other rich people should be punitively taxed makes Chomsky better off but others worse off. That's hypocrisy.

It would only be hypocrisy if he said they should be punitively taxed and he shouldn't. So long as those holes exist he would be foolish to not use them.

He's in the same situation as Warren Buffet: both condemn/ridicule the current system and both do what ever is available to them within the current system.

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