Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

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I've lived in a totalitarian state, and you can't really observe how happy the people are when their rights and means of expression are constantly suppressed. Even if some people were happy with the arrangement, I'm pretty sure people who are imprisoned, stripped of basic rights and sometimes just disassembled for spare organs aren't that happy.

> didn't grow up on your information diet

You don't know the first thing about my information diet.

> and really don't give a shit about what's "communist" or not

Hong-Kong protests showed pretty clearly they do, if they are not forcefully and violently suppressed. Of course, it's kinda hard to know if they give a shit if one gets shot for publicly admitting you give a shit.

> Their economy is state-controlled to the tune of Norway, or a little less so.

That's a lie.

> They are all doing way better than a generation or 2 ago

Generation or 2 ago Communists were literally destroying the country with Cultural Revolution, trying to purge it from any shred of old tradition and make all educated people forget all they know and go dig dirt in the fields. Pretending like stopping this and the resulting relative improvement of conditions is some great achievement of the Communists is the peak arrogance - what's the Chinese word for hutzpah? It's like if I beat you up for years and then stopped for a while and your health improved a bit and I would go around and brag that I am a great doctor - because I "cured" you from the sickness I was causing to you by beating you up!

> You don't know the first thing about my information diet.

You've given some pretty strong hints about it in fact, and tripled down in this comment.

I'll go out on a very specific limb, tell me I'm wrong: Moved to the US from an eastern european country at a young age, perhaps exactly 1989, parents talk a lot about how bad it was?

And "state-controlled to the tune of Norway" is approximately accurate, thank you. You know they have gigantic private corporations there? Alongside the state-owned oil behemoths, Norway makes for a particularly nice comparison.

> tell me I'm wrong

You are not wrong about me being born in an Eastern European country (no shit, Sherlock, I told about it in this very topic pretty transparently, and mentioned it many times otherwise on HN), but very wrong about all the rest. Ok, except for the fact I am presently in the US (which also doesn't require genius-level detective insight as I also referred to this fact many times). As internet telepathy goes, I give you C- - at least you could read what I write, lesser minds would conclude if I said I lived in a totalitarian state I must have been born in North Korea.

That said, I am not sure what it has to do with my information diet anyway - I assume you are not going to tell me my place of birth somehow prescribes my information sources? That makes no sense whatsoever. Even if you guessed my whole biography right - which you mostly failed at with an exception of a couple of details which I pretty much explicitly told you - you still wouldn't have any idea what my information diet is. And you do not, of course.

> And "state-controlled to the tune of Norway" is approximately accurate, thank you.

Repeating a falsity does not make it less false. Norway has plenty of socialist stuff going on, but nowhere on the level that CCP totalitarian control goes. Not even same order of magnitude.

I did say I was out on a limb..

Anyways, you've made clear that your reference point for understanding China is Soviet Eastern Europe. If you check a map and a calendar, you can see some places where that reference point might be inexact.

No, I didn't make it clear. I did make it clear I have a personal experience living in a totalitarian county, but I also read books, articles, historical documents, and many other sources of information I encountered over the years that allow me to know about things I haven't personally experienced. I can also conclude since your only argument now is to personally attack me, you're out of ammo. Which is what usually happens to communist apologists - it's not something one can argue for very long without going dry on substance and having to resort to tricks.

It's not a personal attack, you're still calling China communist and don't seem to understand how things work there. They're something else.

There's more small business than america, by a lot, the biggest internet companies outside of America... I think you've redefined 'communist' into some sort of tautological catch-all.

Here, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China. Unless the Wikipedia editors are communist conspiracists as well.

I do call China communist, and so does Chinese Communist party itself. Only you for some reason try to pretend it isn't. And you do it not by addressing my argument but by discussing irrelevant details of my biography. This is textbook personal attack (check out Wikipedia of you're in doubt).

> I think you've redefined 'communist' into some sort of tautological catch-all.

I define "communist", broadly, as a totalitarian state with single-party rule, where the ruling party is the communist party, i.e. a leftist party based on the Marxist social theory, and with state-controlled planned economy, with all economic and political decisions being made and subject to the control of the state and the communist party (which are one and the same in this case). This describes China very well. What would be your definition of a communist country?

Of course, if we instead use strict Marxist definition of "communism", no communist country ever existed and none can exist ever, because marxian communism is anti-scientific fever dream. But if you follow the common use and include socialist countries which are ruled by Marxist parties calling themselves "communists" (e.g. USSR, North Korea, Warsaw Pact countries, China) - even though their countries do not implement marxian communism (because it can not exist) - China fits. Here is Wikipedia:

The economy of the People's Republic of China is a mixed socialist market economy which is composed of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and domestic and foreign private businesses and uses economic planning. Since the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1982, the economy has been described as socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Following the common, colloquial definition of communist country instead of the strict marxian one - and noticing SOEs in fact dominate the economy and even the nominally independent businesses are subject to strict control by the CCP - one can be sure my definition is correct. But if you insist on saying "totalitarian socialist country ruled by Communist party" - ok, you can use that one, it's just saying the same with different words.

Is "communist" not a description of the economic system?

How "communist" was Pinochet? He had total 1-party control, after all.

Is North Korea a Democratic Republic? That's what they call themselves, after all.

You information sources are sick though, bro. Nobody has better information sources than you.

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