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Comment by zpeti | Hacker News Reader

Things like this usually come down to incentives. And right now I don’t see how almost any major power’s leaders have any incentive to push an investigation forwards.

We are too dependent on China to piss them off, and so far experience shows we are much more likely to follow their demands than follow our own (Hollywood, NBA, Hong Kong, blizzard, albeit only one of those is geopolitical).

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It's important to realize that the world's dependence on China is actually interdependence.

People fear what might happen if China suddenly blocked all exports to their country, and rightly so. China is a country where the government wields that kind of totalitarian power. However, this hasn't happened even once yet. The Chinese government knows that, once they play that particular card on one nation, every other nation in the world is going to freak out, stop talking about diversifying away from Chinese manufacturing, and actually do it.

The world absolutely should press the Chinese government to behave in an open and responsible manner on COVID and on many other fronts. China will respond with their usual hostage-taking and "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but it's a sham backed by thin air. China needs the world as its customers even more than the world needs cheap Chinese manufacturing. If the world's governments are willing to show a little solidarity then much can be accomplished.

i wouldnt too sure about that. Most of the things that china imports have super low ramp up time, so a planned exodus is significantly easier for them.

It's unlikely to happen in the short term but it's entirely possible in a decade or two if nothing significant changes in the meantime.

Very true. Nations depends on China's cheap manufacturing as China depends on other nations' order.

The US went a step further and not only blocked exports from their own country but pressured other entities to do the same.

All the more reason to piss them off and ween off our addiction to disposable junk and sweatshop priced labor.

Given the impact to the world we all should be asking difficult questions.

This is a reasonable argument and will be exactly as effective as presenting a reasonable argument to an addict is.

Love this comment

You mean capitalists’ addiction to profit. Double my wage, I’ll buy made in the UK/EU much more often.

We can double your wage, but you first need to buy made in EU and stop buying cheap crap you don’t actually need.

The issue is not so much with frivolous consumerism as it is with cheap crap flooding the market, taking over certain product categories altogether. If you're in the market for any kind of electronics, toys, small tools, etc., chances are your only option is to buy a variation of the same cheap mass produced crap with a different temporary or nonexistent brand and thousands of fake 5-star reviews. Even searching for name brands you run the risk of getting a counterfeit. The system is rigged to the point where quality, and thus more expensive, brands simply can't compete.

The change needs to start on the manufacturer and retailer side. Stop prioritizing cost savings from cheap Chinese factories and start building locally and in factories that prioritize quality and respect human labor and the environment. As a consumer I'd happily pay for that overhead if that option was available and was given a fair chance to compete.

Ok we’re obviously making stupid black and white arguments. But it’s patently true in many companies there is plenty of profit to be reduced and redistributed as wages (also exec comp)

You know you can’t have both that and stonks, right?

If wages doubled in the UK/EU everything made in the UK/EU would instantly also become more expensive.

Unless those wage increases were the result of productivity increases.

If wages were halved would everything instantly halve in price?

No, I don't think, because wages aren't the only production cost.

>Double my wage, I’ll buy made in the UK/EU much more often.

Sounds like you're suggesting that made in UK/EU is too expensive, and if only people were paid enough they would be buying local. Is there any evidence that's actually the case? Do SV engineers, doctors, and lawyers buy US made goods significantly more than anyone else?

Are we just going to brush off the US’s involvement in funding WIV? And how even Fauci tried to cover that up? China is not the sole one to blame.

Well, if we are going to play the game where covert research implicates overt funding that specifically hinges on the funds not being used on such covert research (gain-of-function studies), we will definitely be barking up the wrong tree.

If there was no foul play why the fuss to cover it up then?

That's a circular argument. You're using the assumption of foul play to characterize the response as a cover-up, and the putative existence of a cover-up as evidence of foul play. Be better.

I think it’s undeniable now that the US did fund reaserch in the WIV, why do I need further evidence for that when Fauci himself has admitted so?

The cover-up was Daszak and co. pre-emptively denouncing lab leak theories as an attack on science and branding them as crazy conspiracies.

The only remaining thing to determine is whether the funding went into gain-of-function research, which Fauci vehemently denies but given his track record of lying it’s only natural to be hesitant in believing him. I’m far from an expert but according to the BBC[1] there do exist experts who believe Fauci not admitting it is just relying on semantics.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57932699

As long as we are discussing potential incentives, it seems reasonable to have a modicum of curiosity concerning the incentives for a biosecurity state.

Simply blaming one state actor over another appears as a set of false alternatives. A convenient distraction which inspires tribalism and identity.

CBDC, "verified digital identities" and a host of other dystopian solutions grow into rationalized necessities from the germ of the COVID crisis. We need not look very far to see many of the same actors involved have advocated for these dystopian innovations for years, if not decades. If some of those actors hosted a simulated coronavirus pandemic exercise in October of 2019, is it appropriate to dismiss it as a mere coincidence?

At a certain point you have to concede the probability of a duck being the source of the waddling and quacking.

>>We are too dependent on China to piss them off,

That seems to be a problem... No?

Maybe we should be pushing our political and business leaders to fix that. If a nation.. openly hostile to our interests is able to cause a worldwide pandemic that no one can investigate because it might upset that nations feefee's. That imo is much bigger problem than the pandemic itself

> a nation.. openly hostile to our interests

What interests of ours is China openly hostile to?

Democracy, freedom, individual rights.

Sure.

Price fixing of the yuan to keep Chinese manufacturing significantly cheaper than everywhere else. https://www.investopedia.com/trading/chinese-devaluation-yua...

Taiwan's independence. The emergence of TSMC is pretty critical at this point in time and the US and other European countries have paid them a lot of money to open plants in their territories.

Chinas aircraft carrier program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_progr...

Chinas claims that the j20 can "beat" the f22. https://guardingindia.com/china/china-claims-that-j-20-can-b...

And the most recent and my latest favorite: China has started up 250 ICBM silos for nuclear weapons https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-business-scienc....

This is most likely in direct response to the latest US anti missile capabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...

China now has to either pretend is has way more nuclear missiles or actually make them (and maintain them).

The US and China are in this constant state of "our biggest trade partner is also our current biggest rival". I'm not really sure what the end game of that entails but I'm really hoping it just maintains at dick waving status.

It's going to be very interesting if/how China steps into Afghanistan. That was basically Russia's vietnam. The current US situation with it should be pretty obvious to everyone at this point.

We specifically did pacific theatre exercises with the japanese self defense force and the south korean military with shit like launching land based JSDF missles from USN ships target guidance and plenty of other joint operations to show China(maybe Russia?) the capabilities of the US armed forces and it's allies.

inb4 "the usa started it". Yeah probably. China has been playing the military dick measuring game for the last 10 years pretty hard tho. I didn't think any country was as stupid as the USA to put as much money into defense spending but here we are (I am a US citizen).

tl;dr China is openly hostile to US military and economic influence in SE Asia.

Part of the problem is that the entire mainstream media narrative of the pandemic was warped by using it to get Trump out of office, which lead to downplaying how important China's actions were. In particular, I remember a lot of the press harping on about how the Obama administration wrote a pandemic plan and how much better everything would've gone if Trump followed it... except the plan wasn't exactly as described by the media. The most important thing, according to the document, was something none of the media coverage mentioned - it wasn't mask wearing, or lockdowns, or vaccinations or anything they talked about, it was actually getting accurate information from the country where the pandemic started. It hammered away on the fact that every other part of the pandemic response fundamentally relied on that information, there was no way to do without it, and if the pandemic started in a developing country without the staff to gather it the US should deploy their own mission there to get it. There was no advice on what to do if the country was a near-peer of the US which refused to release that info for internal political reasons. An accurate description of that document would've put a lot more of the blame on China, and that just wouldn't do politically.

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