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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else tired of the fact that on the internet you can't say "Hey, look at this sucky thing in Random Country X" without having someone pipe up and say "Yeah, but what about this vaguely-similar thing in the USA? Huh? Huh?"

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The difference between many of the corruptions in China vs the USA is that in the USA it's legalized corruption with lobbies that pay congresspeople, legally. So the corruption is out in the open, the average person just doesn't have a chance in hell of changing anything.

In China the corruption is actually illegal but hidden and therefore the abuses even worse because thy are undocumented and unprovable without great sacrifice to somehow prove what happened (and then they will still get away with it).

Forced prison labor is somehow perceived as "okay" in the USA because it's documented and in the light and some people can say "OH THE PRISONERS DESERVE IT, THEY SHOULD PAY US".

In China the same people say its not okay because it's not documented and the cannot feel good about why the people may be in prison (in the USA apparently all people in prison are very guilty of moral laws, regardless if the law is just or not, because there was possibly a "jury").

But the USA has political prisoners too - on the mild side for example, not paying your taxes - isn't that political after they have taken all your assets to pay the debt? Should Wesley Snipes be forced to work for 23 cents per hour now? What about if you are arrested at the DNC or RNC for protesting and the patriot act or similar is thrown at you and you have to serve in prison for year? Is it okay for that person to be forced to work for 23 cents per hour? Aren't they a political prisoner?

Forced prison labor is somehow perceived as "okay" in the USA because it's documented and in the light and some people can say "OH THE PRISONERS DESERVE IT, THEY SHOULD PAY US".

Well I think it is okay and... a

Aw fuck, why the hell am I arguing about politics on the internet again?

How are the Chinese and American situations vaguely similar? Just because one involves computers and the other doesn't? If these counterexamples are not made up, what would it take for you to go from being tired to seriously revising your beliefs on the US system?

I think you two actually agree, the grandparent is saying he is tired of seeing that for many morally questionable practices happening in the world, there is sadly similar conduct sometimes happening in the US and he would rather this wasn't the case.

The use of the word "vaguely" makes me doubt it.

Well honestly, I don't have a problem with prisoners being made to work under certain reasonable conditions. Heck, I'm from Australia, a country which wouldn't even exist if it weren't for prisoners being made to work. And I think a prison where everybody is kept occupied is probably a better place than a prison where nobody has anything to do except work out and gossip.

Making 'em farm gold in a MMORPG, on the other hand, comes across as silly.

An online friendship of mine ended in part because of the other person's habit of pouncing on any excuse to bad-mouth the US and it's government and culture like it is The Evil Empire. So count me among the tired.

As a foreigner who studied in the US, I used to find myself attacking some US actions with some American friends, while attacking senseless knee-jerk anti-Americanism back in my country... A sad, and also tiring state of affairs, without much (even partial) support on either place.

I may give out about something in my country and say how it's so much better in that other country but if someone from there is here and does the same I feel like saying it's a wonder they didn't stay there so if it's so bloody good.

So it is quite possible that you may indeed agree with that foreigner on the issue being discussed and yet wonder why s/he didn't stay home... So much for open, frank dialogues!

In my case, I have plenty of criticisms of my own of the US and tend to have foreign friends (in part because I grew up in a bicultural home). So I have certainly had conversations with foreigners where I agreed with some of their criticisms. And I have also had friends who lived in a country where the country as a whole had a negative view of the US and where the US had a negative view of their country and it wasn't some big personal issue between us. In some cases, it was treated more like an in-joke. In this particular case, my friend was so consistently critical in a very ugly way and so rabid about it that I did often feel like "If you think all Americans are pure evil simply for being born here, why on earth are you friends with me? How sick is that?"

This was an extremely good friend. I still miss them. One of the things that stops me from trying to reach out to them is that I don't know how to get past these issues. And I'm not interested in being someone's "whipping boy" for their personal bugaboo. I don't think there is anything healthy or constructive about something like that.

Meta-comment follows:

Would you have replied if comment scores were displayed?

In this specific case, I don't know.

Meta answer: Though there are certainly times that I reply these days when I would have only upvoted if comment scores showed.

I agree that this is an issue with the lack of comment scores. If I see something I strongly agree with, I'm more inclined to reply with a "Yeah I totally agree" if I don't know what the score is than if I see it already has 100 points.

For what it's worth, my original comment to which you replied has 25 points.

Thanks, though I wasn't specifically suggesting it was an issue. I was only answering the question asked of me factually and the fact is that, yes, it does change my behavior in some ways to not have comment scores visible. However, I do not feel I have sufficient information at this point in time to draw conclusions or make value judgments in terms of "this is a good thing" or "this is a bad thing" or even "this is what is good about it and this is what is bad about it". (I personally like engaging people in conversation. Although I am aware that concerns about signal-to-noise are very valid concerns, I have long been baffled by people who join discussion lists/forums and then loudly complain about people talking too much. So I am not yet ready to say, yea, verily, stating agreement in place of or in addition to upvoting is inherently a bad thing.)

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