I am appalled by all the supportive comments in this thread. Why are HN users so comfortable with authoritarian government?
It’s about more than just online games. It’s about control.
I’m sure the great firewall is perfectly fine as well?
It’s about more than just online games. It’s about control.
I’m sure the great firewall is perfectly fine as well?
But getting closer to the source (http://www.news.cn/english/2021-08/30/c_1310157673.htm), the regulation appears to be exclusively targetting the amount of on-line gaming services that companies are allowed to offer to minors. This doesn't any seem different in principle to various Western regulations attempting limit ads[1] or pornography[2] to children. Granted, some people in the West also consider these as examples authoritarian government overreach. But my guess is that a some people's reactions are driven substantially by the specific story framing (and of course, China), more than by principled reasoning.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulations_on_children%27s_te...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...
I currently look after a system which gets random spikes of traffic thats critical to serve. Which means I more or less need to run a huge amount of redundant servers 24 hours a day incase there is a spike at 2am.
We have horizontal scaling but our traffic has little lead time.
Every Monday, an hour after school, scale up 5x, because the timer has reset for students. Scale down from Wednesday to Friday. Scale up 2x over the weekends.
Or whatever your data tells you.
It was actually a pretty unique challenge that had some weird trade-offs.
For example, when do you release new code? You've got this nice window at the end of each day when traffic is super low, so any issues with the release will affect a minimal amount of users, but on the other hand, if you release at the end of the day, you don't really know if your code works at scale until the next morning.
Similarly, what do you do during the summer period? You've got a couple quiet months in where almost no one is online where you can kind of swing for the fences in terms of changes, but at the same time, you won't really know whether it handle the full load of the customer base until September.
Sure there's things like load testing (which we did), but theres no way to truly predict how your customers will use your product. We had a really solid engineering team and ended up coming up with processes to handle a lot of these problems, but still, it was something that I hadn't dealt with before and I found pretty interesting.
The Chinese Communist Party is seen as a meritocracy within China, which draws on an ancient tradition of bureaucracy. It's hard for Americans to understand.
[1]: https://twitter.com/bopinion/status/1281853054078386181?lang...
Good news comes almost direct from CCP. Bad news is from anywhere-but-CCP.
Neither good/bad news can be judged as 100% true or false but the "CCP influence" means I have to use a fudge factor that decreases the trustworthiness of good news in comparison to bad news.
It doesn't outright invalidate "good news" but it introduces a significant element of doubt.
Do you vocally campaign to repeal the law that prevents you buying and using asbestos in their buildings?
Do you vocally campaign to repeal the law that prevents you from buying and owning an anti-aircraft missile system?
Our democracies have plenty of laws about things we're not allowed to do. Some of them are for our own good, some are for the overall good of society.
Not all regulations are born equal and some of them are definitely not worth fighting against.
I agree, though definitive evidence is clearly *not* the threshold for when laws to protect us are or are not created.
For example, there is a mountain of evidence that smoking is exceptionally bad for adults, but there's no law against it. I could smoke 20 packets a day from now on. I could even drink 10 bottles of vodka a day perfectly legally.
China _is_ authoritarian, denying that is ridiculous. The CCP creates laws that individually or in part can benefit its populace, but are often or solely pro cadre or their personal interests.
That democracies have corruption or vested interests (whether "positively" motivated or not) influencing laws does not make the process or the results equivalent.
Maybe I'm the delusional one.
but given the many many reports on CCPs active propaganda and controlling of media/online content (hell the whole point of this discussion) gives me plenty of evidence to support large-scale coordinated govt propaganda tools, if not here, definitely elsewhere.
Does it matter? Judge the idea, not the person behind it I say. If the argument is not worthy to stand, it will fall.
> That democracies have corruption
But it's not corruption. That's the issue.
"When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy" [1]
That's not corruption. If America was a true democracy, the country would look completely different.
> The CCP creates laws that individually or in part can benefit its populace, but are often or solely pro cadre or their personal interests.
It doesn't seem like that from the outside. Looking in, it seems like the CCP has successfully pulled an astronomical amount of people out of poverty and increasing QoL insanely, all while maintaining public legitimacy.
Honestly, all it seems like, is that America drunk the cool aid too much and now believes so hard in it's own propaganda that it looks like brainwashing, while the reality is utterly different.
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america...
Of course it matters, what a bizarre statement.
>> That democracies have corruption > But it's not corruption. That's the issue.
Either deliberately, though in-attention or personal need you, are mis-interpreting and or changing the subject.
> It doesn't seem like that from the outside. Looking in, it seems like the CCP has successfully pulled an > astronomical amount of people out of poverty and increasing QoL insanely, all while maintaining public ? > legitimacy.
There is no good way to assert that, but it's a pretty common refrain.
> Honestly, all it seems like, is that America drunk the cool aid too much and now believes so hard in it's > own propaganda that it looks like brainwashing, while the reality is utterly different.
I'm not American.
All this cycles round to what I was saying. You could just be an interested observer, passionate about seemingly connected ideas. Or you could be deliberately derailing, trying to muddy the waters. There's no good way to tell, but ultimately it still paints China in a bad light - eventually no one will believe anything.
Why? Please elaborate.
As the person you replied to said, I feel that ideas should be judged on their merit, not on who came up with them. Plenty of "bad" people have good ideas and visa versa.
It's a pretty typical tactic - but whether it was done because they want to boost the CCP or wether they just aren't good or careless at understanding or expressing themselves? I don't know.
Being genuine; the field of human interaction isn't some philosophical paper; if your cousin consistently lies, and has always lied; it's a good bet they will do so again - not evaluating each thing they say on its merits is a rational choice.
If everyone in a group is prone to lying or misdirection - evaluating each idea will lead to exhaustion - trust matters.
For reference, I am the other poster. I don't think I pivoted. My entire point is that genuine-ness of the poster does not matter. This is what confuses me.
What does the "genuine-ness" of the other person matter in terms of whether the idea should be judged on it's own merit or not. If you disagree with it, you disagree with it, regardless of whether the other person is being genuine or not genuine.
> "making some rules that benefit themselves"
You didn't say that. You said that the laws can benefit it's populace, but are often or solely pro cadre or in their personal interests. That's not making some rules that benefit themselves, that's more making laws that mostly benefit themselves with citizens being a secondary factor.
Considering that in 1990, China had 750 million people under the poverty line and in 2016 (latest World Bank figures I could find with a quick google search) that number is 7.2m million. Clearly, the policies aren't entirely aimed at benefiting CCP with slight citizen benefit as a secondary thought. Or else maybe the CCP's incentives are very very well aligned with lifting people out of poverty.
> It's a pretty typical tactic
I honestly find this so yucky. Every discussion on China devolves into people claiming the other is a shill in an attempt to discredit the person and get away feeling like they're superior.
> if your cousin consistently lies, and has always lied; it's a good bet they will do so again
but you don't know it's your cousin online talking to you. Therefore, what happens is that anyone who speaks against your preconceived notions must be working for the shadowy government to spread "propaganda".
> If everyone in a group is prone to lying or misdirection - evaluating each idea will lead to exhaustion - trust matters.
and the group is everyone who disagrees with you? That's certainly what it seems like.
But it does, don't agree? OK.
>You didn't say that. You said that the laws can benefit it's populace, but are often or solely pro >cadre or in their personal interests. That's not making some rules that benefit themselves, that's >more making laws that mostly benefit themselves with citizens being a secondary factor.
Much more accurate, but still not what the other poster claimed I was saying.
>I honestly find this so yucky. Every discussion on China devolves into people claiming the other is >a shill in an attempt to discredit the person and get away feeling like they're superior.
That is bad, because it is a low-trust environment - deliberately so.
> and the group is everyone who disagrees with you? That's certainly what it seems like.
That's your thoughts, not mine, but maybe you understand why I say genuineness matters, all these conversations are traps while the dishonest sow doubt. Talk to a point, answer it directly, don't derail with "facts", introduce new ideas as a new idea in the conversation, not a made claim on others thoughts.
Why? Who cares if the other person is genuine or not? The idea is still an idea.
> because it is a low-trust environment
therefore, the only real solution is to simply talk about the discussion/argument/idea not about the person behind it.
> deliberately so.
deliberately? How? Just China or the entire internet? I was talking about the entire internet btw.
> all these conversations are traps while the dishonest sow doubt
they aren't if you are not focused on the "genuine-ness" of the poster.
> maybe you understand why I say genuineness matters
I really don't. I am failing to see it and you clearly cannot explain it well enough or simply are saying it without any concrete reasoning behind it. Either way, you haven't explained why it matters.
> Talk to a point, answer it directly, don't derail with "facts", introduce new ideas as a new idea in the conversation, not a made claim on others thoughts.
I don't understand what this weird pontificating is about.
Because the goal is not to expose ideas, the goal is to change the conversation so they can be hidden.
>I really don't. I am failing to see it and you clearly cannot explain it well enough or simply are saying it without any concrete reasoning behind it. Either way, you haven't explained why it matters.
Well, thanks for the criticism, you are probably right, I'll work on it. Have a good life.
I don't think I was doing either. If I was, please explain what exactly you were saying and what I mis-interpreted.
My understanding is this:
1. China is authoritarian. 2. They make laws that benefit themselves (i.e. CCP) without care for the populace (populace benefit is secondary) 3. Democracy is corrupt. 4. However, even if corrupt, it's better since it is not equal to China's system where the laws are made mostly out of interest for the CCP.
This was my interpretation.
However, as I said, the evidence is the other way around.
1. China is authoritarian -> Sure.
2. They make laws that benefit themselvse ahead of the populace.
Poverty in 1990 -> 750 million. Poverty in 2016 -> 7.2 million. That's World Bank figures. Not China figures. Clearly, either they had policies actually aimed at benefiting the populace or the laws that benefit CCP also align extremely well with the populace. In which case, we should learn from them since aligning incentives for politicians and populace is a pretty insane trick.
3. Democracy is corrupt.
Democracy is not just corrupt. It is corrupt in a way that makes the voice of the citizen entirely useless. Democracy does not represent your views if you live in America at least.
4. However, even if corrupt, it's better since it is not equal to China's system where the laws are made mostly out of interest for the CCP.
Economic elites and the organized interest groups group control America. Not the average person.
> There is no good way to assert that, but it's a pretty common refrain.
What? World Bank figures should that China has pulled massive amounts of people out of poverty, and increased their Quality of Life. Public Legitimacy seems clear since there aren't mass protests (Hong Kong showed that it is certainly possible).
Forget that. Just fly to Beijing. It's arguably more modern than most Western cities and talking to people will show you how their lives have changed. I genuinely don't understand how you're denying the economic miracle that the CCP has engineered.
> You could just be an interested observer, passionate about seemingly connected ideas. Or you could be deliberately derailing, trying to muddy the waters.
I am the first one. I don't understand how I derailed? Or how you thought that happened? Either you entirely misunderstood me, or just have no interest in actually talking about the discussion?
> There's no good way to tell, but ultimately it still paints China in a bad light - eventually no one will believe anything.
I mean, again, you can literally dismiss every argument that goes against your preconceived notions and pretend that the other is a shill but that's a very weird way to live in my opinion. It's more better to actually critically analyse what the other says and break it down or agree with them.
If your goal is to see China in a bad light, it doesn't matter what I say. You will see them that way.
This is what I meant by drinking the Kool_Aid too much. (Not limited to Americans but the entire Western sphere)
Come on. That's just false. You can't operate a country successfully at China's size by making law just to benefit the cadre / personal interests.
Don't get started by advocating that benefiting the people is just a way to benefit to cadre. It's infalsifiable and just pointless.
That feels like a loaded question because something like that simply would never pass in a Democracy.
I don't get the desire to see everything as black and white and boil everything problem down to a slippery slope fallacy.
If you are only looking for a cartoon villain and not, say, yourself, you might be caught flat footed when it arrives at your door.
The topic in question was whether Covid restrictions has made people more comfortable with other authoritarian measures which are implemented to benefit society as a whole. I actually think it's a very apt point and I'm surprised you don't see the connection.
Half of the US is up in arms about it, for better or worse. I think you'd have a hard time imposing anything on the US.
The other half doesn't think immunizations are authoritarian, just science.
Maybe 1% of the loud and attention grabbing people on either side of the isle wants to impose things on the other just for the sake of imposing them.
So not exactly.
[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-vaccine-passp...
[2] https://globalnews.ca/news/8104692/canada-getting-proof-of-v...
Faced with this, it's not surprising to me that many people would see a more authoritarian government to be preferable to a laissez faire approach that requires the vast majority of individuals to make reasonably good choices for the collective and understand the wider implications of their behavior.
It would be ironic if the right wing shrieking for 'freedom' ends up backlashing on all of us because they've simultaneously demonstrated that we're not mature enough to handle that level of freedom.
Australia was a model for success, until a cab driver in Sydney contracted the delta variant. Much of the country is now in total lockdown, while the army patrols Sydney streets and daily COVID cases continue to rise exponentially, far exceeding any previous COVID outbreak in Australia. There is no ten billion dollar program to develop vaccines for new variants, no path to eradication, and no way out of the continuing crisis except to ignore it. Therefore, I expect that this situation of mandatory quarantines, mandatory vaccination proof, mandatory negative test result proof, and multiple new-variant outbreaks and lockdowns annually will continue until politically untenable, and I conclude that countries instituting hard lockdowns are not places where I want to live or travel, until they eventually reform.
Australia knows it can just... get vaccines right? They are sitting at 27.1% fully vaccinated vs 52% in the US. What's their excuse?
Ahh. This one is good old pure utter incompetence plus possibly some good old corruption thrown in to the mix as well.
As much as a I understand, the gov decided not to buy Pfizer early in the pandemic since they could produce AstraZeneca plus an early vaccine candidate developed at University of Queensland at CSL (Australian BioTech company).
Instead of placing multiple orders with multiple providers, they put all their faith into CSL and it's trials.
Turns out, the vaccine at University of Queensland returned false positives of HIV cases. Stage 2/3 trials never occurred.
AstraZeneca later turned out to have side effects that quickly led to vaccine-hesitancy. By that time, Pfizer had supply issues since the US went full swing in to the vaccination drive.
There were some reports that the PM's mates were high up in CSL. I am not entirely sure of that bit but it doesn't seem unlikely.
The five key reasons that come to mind, after witnessing events unfold:
1. Sitting at a lower global priority on the vaccine purchase list for Pfizer due to very low case numbers.
2. Government deciding that the bulk of vaccines should be produced locally (likely due to a combination of sourcing being difficult, and for national security reasons). This inevitably means taking a bit longer to ramp production up.
3. The Australian Immunization Advisory Group declaring that the vaccine produced locally should be used on people aged 60+, while Pfizer would be the preferred vaccine for everyone else.
4. No vaccine injury scheme. If you are unlucky and get a rare blood clotting disorder, you have to wear the full treatment cost. And because of #3, you have to see a doctor and sign a waiver to get AstraZeneca. (This has since been relaxed now and does not have to be a doctor consultation. You can just sign the waiver at the point of vaccination)
5. Government not pushing as hard, as it in hindsight should have, to purchase more Pfizer. This is a difficult call for any government to have made at the start of the pandemic though and really ties back into #1. The locally produced vaccine would have easily covered the entire population, but the chance of blood clotting really did a number on this strategy.
If I buy a car, there's a warranty on it. Why doesn't the government stand by what it's recommending people inject?
“ The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,””
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
"From September 13, NSW residents that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be given new freedoms.
Residents of hotspots can leave home for an hour of recreation on top of their exercise hour, while people in other areas can meet five others outdoors.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the vaccination milestone of six million reached this week would allow for a small renewal in freedoms for residents with the jab."
Freedom is never granted, only earned.
Comparing this kind of thing to what China is doing is drawing a false equivalency. There is no legitimate comparison to be made.
Mild? Australians can't travel more than 5km from their homes. For essential purposes only. Vaccinated Australians can only leave their homes for 2 hours a day (unvaxed 1 hour a day).
In Oregon we were on a very bad trajectory in the last two weeks with hospitals full and "elective" medical procedures suspended in some areas (my family being directly effected by this), that is now being deflected a bit by the renewed mask mandate. And in America we're very fortunate with how easy access we have to vaccines, other places aren't as lucky so they have to enact harsher measures...
I've complained in other spaces about this, but it really feels like we're reliving the 1918 flu again. People dealt with restrictions the first year, but got fed up the second year. Costing lots of human lives.
My problem is simply the loose definition. Kate Brown didn't even say that much, I don't think. But if that's the metric, it should be easy enough to say so, and define it. E.g. "When ICU bed occupancy is below 90% and has declined for three consecutive weeks, the mandate is lifted."
I think many people would quibble less about the mandates if they weren't open-ended.
Your argument is already flawed. We don't have vaccines available to everyone in the US yet.
I'm not even "very" libertarian at all, yet I find the "temporary" (which is not so very temporary) and "mild" (which is not so very mild) authoritarian measures absolutely reprehensible.
Just saying something is a false equivalency doesn't make it so. Both instances have the government putting limits on your autonomy in unprecedented ways. The government is very boldly telling you what you can and cannot do and how much of it when allowed. I completely reject your characterization of totalitarianism as "mild" and "making complete sense."
"Ahh, they fell for the temporary fallacy!"
Most Libertarians are extremist libertarians in my view.
Both things can be simultaneously true.
I think you've implicitly agreed that the pandemic countermeasures were authoritarian, and this thread is saying "authoritarian bad." But we all saw what happened to places that delayed or denied countermeasures. If authoritarian bad, then that questions whether non-authoritarian is actually good in this case.
>"Temporary and mild authoritarian measures during a once-in-a-century pandemic make complete sense, even to very libertarian people. "
I have not seen any (even centrist) libertarians supporting these measures; having checked the most mainstream libertarian publication (Reason). Additionally, 'very libertarian people' are minarchists, who definitely don't support these measures.
Have you actually seen/heard 'very libertarian people' endorsing these measures? Is it possible that the parent is projecting their beliefs onto others?
Very-libertarians? That’s a good point; I’m not sure I’ve seen any. But it’s hard to know who among us is very-libertarian except those who say so, which may be a small subset.
There’s a newsworthy virus (usually SARS-like) every 2-5 years. There are notable “variants” every few months. The perceived risk of COVID has a lot to do with reporting, which is fickle at best. Heart disease kills hundreds of thousands and we basically don’t care.
>temporary
Nixon’s closing the Gold window and Bush’s GWOT come to mind as substantial counter-examples. I don’t foresee the US politburo giving up on their newfound unlimited and totally arbitrary authority so long as their appointed brain trust says it’s for your own good. Their subjects might start to ignore them, though.
But now would be a good time to roll back all the temporary 9/11 stuff, if there are any politicians wanting to see some trust lent to talk about 'temporary'. Hard to see a better occasion for it ever coming up, with the 20th anniversary in a couple weeks.
About the WW2 example, I was surprised how much was still on the books and even in continuing 'emergency' use, reading https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Leviathan-Critical-Government-...
The U.S. legal system is by no means perfect but there are very few examples of real abuse that go unchecked for long periods. U.S. history is full of overreach that is curtailed relatively quickly, although it can go on for years at a time.
The Patriot Act was not renewed. Very little over the overreach inspired by 9/11 is still in place. Even mass surveillance has been curtailed and restricted to a large degree (although not enough by my estimation).
I think it's status-quo bias to look at this picture and think the high-order bit is that yes, temporary emergency measures were temporary. In the bigger picture there are dozens of separate national emergencies getting repeatedly renewed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i....
No, the West isn't find. Mild tyranny isn't cool and how temporary these measures are is debated. If they actually were temporary, why is there no restriction for how long they can last? How much longer will it go? Nobody knows.
This is a loophole in our constitutions, they can use "emergency" situations to suspend civil rights indefinitely. This very same method has been used many times in history to establish dictatorships and totalitarian systems, so it's a very legitimate concern.
And the U.S. has a legal system unlike any other country, that has proven itself able to prevent long-standing and unjustified overreach. The Supreme Court is incredibly powerful and has the ability to strike down unconstitutional laws, and has done so many times.
People should be concerned about this issue and pay close attention. But there is very little reason to be very concerned at all. These mask mandates, or even requiring vaccine proof, is not a cover story for a take over of the U.S.
These are extremely rational and justified, and even mild, measures being taken to address a very real and easily verified threat.
The U.S. is not Australia. No one's first amendment rights are being curtailed. Anything anyone wants to say is perfectly accessible to the public. No one is being fined.
And the U.S. is not China or a a banana republic and there's absolutely no evidence that we're in any danger of becoming like either.
Like literally everyone else in tech who knows how the sausage gets made, I'm appalled by the teams of Ph.Ds which exist solely to exploit the dopamine response of children. However, it never would have ever crossed my mind to jump from "here's a particular problem" to "the government should control how much of a specific activity your child can do at home"
You can read about it here from their own page:
https://careers.king.com/kingdom-news/data-at-king/
> That experiment is typical of how we learn from data at King. We have about 150 people working in data roles, out of a total workforce of 2,000. They come from a range of backgrounds. Many are from the games industry, of course, but we also bring in lots of recruits straight from university.
> These people will have just done their masters or PhD in a wide range of disciplines. Many of our team studied statistics, physics or computer science but we also have people who came from theoretical biology because work on DNA sequencing in that field has produced a lot of data-sophisticated people. Others are behavioural psychologists or behavioural economists.
Now in the specific example they choose to highlight they saw that making the game less frustrating made people spend more money. However if making the game more frustrating turned out to make more money since users bought more powerups then they absolutely would do it.
The obvious scenarios are alcohol, nicotine & drugs. As a parent of young children, there are addition parallels between Minecraft / Roblox / Alcohol / Cigarettes.
To a real degree, more effort is put into making gaming deliberately additive - although flavored vaping (bubble gum, cotton candy, etc) would like to enter the conversation.
Flavored vaping products are for sure bad. I'll happily give you that. I'll also give you sugar, processed food, alcohol, cigarettes, McDonalds, and a near never ending supply of things we regularly consume (food, entertainment, or other).
I wouldn't petition the government to control access to any of them. I tend to trust the millions of individual personal (or parental) decisions over the long haul more than I do centrally planned, top-down mandates.
My belief is that's a reasonable debate with very valid points on both sides. At a personal level, kids 2-12 are Addicted to games (Minecraft, Roblox, etc). Taking the games away has the same impact as taking away narcotics from an addict.
The unregulated ability of these platforms to target children (and they do), seems very analogous to pre-regulated cigarettes, drug, and alcohol marketing.
I wager more psychological studies are done on driving MAU, rapid viral adoption, and upping Click Through Rates than were done for nicotine.
Seems insane to suggest that adults would prefer the taste of ashtray over apple or orange (I like fruity aromas). I mostly vape without flavoring nowadays because I'm lazy, but I just don't get the mindset. Adults like sugar, sweets, lemonade and all that stuff just as much as children do. Some seem to really like the taste of cigarettes, but I think for the most part people are just more comfortable to say "I like the taste" instead of "I'm addicted to nicotine", because inhaling burnt plant matter along with the diffused active agents and aromatic compounds generally isn't good for taste. Weed also tastes much better vaped.
It's honestly nice to see a not totally incompetent government try a novel policy with good intentions. It's welcome break from the firehose of our own government making policies that seem to only target the poor and minorities.
Meanwhile, gaming addiction can also be very destructive.
I mean, yes, "other countries" don't have age limits, but it's pretty rare and it's overwhelmingly not what you'd call successful or stable countries.
The link they posted even has a pretty picture within of the areas without age limits. They’re all mostly in Africa, Vietnam has a shout at stable and successful though.
And more and more online games use psychological tactics to encourage spending.
Emphasizing the physical effects of alcohol, and reducing the mental effects of any human computer interaction to “watching and interacting with pixels on a screen” isn’t the right way to go about it.
There’s a difference between checking your feed and doom scrolling, there’s a difference between playing fortnite with friends, maybe even a little too late into the night, and compulsively grinding.
The dose makes the poison.
My bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM6hEOtV92E
When kids game excessively, I'd wager it's an escape for them. It's an escape just as much as it was for the geeky / nerdy kids of America, as it is for the kids in China who have goukou.
You can try to enforce whatever culture you're gonna enforce, but I think we've seen from the war on drugs that these kinds of things don't really work. There's always some deep psychological and/or physiological deficit whenever there is an "addiction" at play. And you're trying to treat the disease by treating the symptoms. You can try to tighten control so that you can try to force that "ideal" society, but when you do that, things have a way of becoming authoritarian in a handbasket. Everything messed up about China is about socialist idealism turning authoritarian, and you can say that about other countries too.
People should have figured that out when they did that study on rats, where the rats that lived in some enriched environment, with plenty of playtime, did not get addicted to sugar water the way that the rats trapped in cages did.
I think we're bad at prediction - so why not let them experiment and see how it turns out 50 years later.
> And you're trying to treat the disease by treating the symptoms
So, for example, Opiods. In the United States we're treating the symptoms by banning it (and this is pretty much supported by both political parties). Yet we know the root cause: People that are effectively feeling worthless, do not feel connected to a specific social group and/or disengaged from culture.
Other aspects of our entire culture is causing people to feel like that: 1. Changing family values, 2. Disconnected from people, connected to devices and online popularity, 3. Impossible to succeed and feel valuable.
I feel like we have a really weird problem: Our capitalistic environment or, greed in general, are driving these problems. So the solution is authoritarianism.
Sorry that's just the way my mind works. I see right through issues to their root causes and it makes my worldview weird.
Alcohol is an addictive, psychoactive, carcinogen. The difference between drugs and “online game time” is pretty stark from my perspective.
The essence of your argument seems to be: “we already give up some control for other health-related regulations and online game time is no different.”
I have to admit, drawing the exact line is difficult and I’m unable to create a clear definition of government overreach. This specific example is obvious to me, but clearly some people disagree.
Where do you think the line should be? Would you be okay with CCP mandated exercise, sleep time, or diet? Do you believe there should be a line at all?
Not trying to be adversarial here, I am genuinely curious.
But it's more of a experiment - life is an experiment.
To your last question, many jurisdictions are making fast food or sugary drinks illegal thus imposing a diet. I am fine with that. Some company are lowering health premium to those who do exercise, imposing exercise. I am fine with that too..
Requires elaboration. When "online game time" is intentionally designed to be addictive, its affects on addicts need to be critically examined - loss of physical fitness, loss of social fitness, loss of motivation, agoraphobia. That both can be consumed responsibly in small quantities does not preclude that addiction is a serious problem and too often not treated like a serious problem in Western countries.
Edit: and too many newspapers?
It was a mild addiction and the feelings of my teacher was that it could be disruptive to my experience and those of students around me.
There's no such clear definition of 'games'. So there is potential for interpretation and overreach.
Different magnitudes.
Odds are that you are under an NDA which limits your freedom of speech. Odds are that if you refused to sign one, you couldn't afford a mortgage in a place with a lot of tech. Odds are you will sign more NDAs so your kids can keep going to the same school. The freedom of no regulation is an illusion.
Companies will keep making what sells, even if it's bad for you. Without regulation, video games will become more and more addicting. Without regulation, companies will keep running advertising, even if ads harm culture and the overall economy.
To manage all of this, we need a better system. I, for one, am excited about countries trying something different. The CCP seems to be implementing a lot of measures which stand to increase overall quality-of-life, from limiting stress on kids, to workforce stress, to limiting unhealthy activities. I'd like to see how that plays out.
As a footnote, I'd even be excited about a fundamentalist Muslim government in Afghanistan, if it wasn't expansionary, and if people were free to emigrate if it was't working for them.
Or a country that has no freedom of the press, savagely beats or murders political dissidents, will take away your job and livelihood if you dare question CCP orthodoxy...
The fact that you think is somehow morally equivalent to an NDA is just absolutely astonishing.
It's not the current state that matters, but possible future outcome.
We're both hill-climbing trying to improve systems from an imperfect present. The US is higher up its hill than China right now, but it's not clear that China won't pass the US in a few decades. Or the US will race ahead. Or how other systems will fare.
It's also not clear how those will change as the world itself evolves.
I like having a diversity of political and economic systems, even is some are better than others. I also like a diversity of cultures, even if there are ones I strongly disagree with.
#simulatedannealing #geneticalgorithms
These are mostly very specific, very limited and largely perfectly sensible. Yes some NDAs are onerous but they're quite rare. China has no concept of freedom of speech at all. It simply doesn't exist. I don't see how that's better.
>Companies will keep making what sells, even if it's bad for you.
We actually do have market regulation in the west, more in some countries than others, but it's a well established principle. You may disagree with the regulations we have, that's a matter of opinion, but we do have regulations on safety, quality, etc. If you want further regulations you are free to campaign for them, but the lack of any relations you might want is not a flaw in the system, it's just a consensus choice you disagree with.
>The CCP seems to be implementing a lot of measures which stand to increase overall quality-of-life...
All western states, even the US, have regulated labour markets including controls on working hours, minimum wages, mandatory breaks, etc. 996 is in practice illegal in almost every (possibly actually every) western country already. We are way, way ahead of China on this, so much so that you thinking China is breaking ground is frankly laughable.
Many countries already have guidelines in place on activities like video games. Public health systems recognise, provide advice and support, and even treatment for games addiction. The CCP is not breaking any novel ground on any of this. The fact is it has a woefully inadequate public health system and primitive social services that are so bad they have to resort to crude dictatorial mandates like this because it's all they have left. That is not a good thing.
>As a footnote...
Oh good grief.
It's not so much that I want more or fewer regulations, as I want to explore systems other than market-based incentives. I'm not sure that regulations + free markets will get us to a place where people aren't addicted to video games, eat healthy, exercise, have quality education, and generally lead the good life. In 1930, there were a lot of ideas for how to get there, and a lot of those seem plausible. I'd like to see how some of those play out in practice.
I'll mention that I'm aware of where China is with regards to labor practices, freedom-of-speech, and so on, but with regards to public health systems, China is way ahead of the US. Everyone has access to decent, affordable healthcare. It's not at the same level as $50,000 procedures in the US, but it's good enough, and everyone has it.
It's also not really fair to compare countries with $64k per-capita GDP to ones with $10k per-capita GDP. It's even more unfair if one considers where the per-capita GDP was a decade or two ago. 25 years ago, China had a per-capita GDP of under $1000 -- that's less than Nigeria today. I think that's a more fair comparison between systems of government. Would you rather live in Nigerian democracy or Chinese CCP? That's not a loaded question -- they're quite different.
> Oh good grief.
Islam has a lot of good ideas too. For example, it has a wealth tax, and it discourages debt-based economies. You don't need to swallow political and economic systems wholesale.
This is not true at all, I know because my wife is Chinese. Almost everyone is covered by health insurance in theory, but in practice this has limited use by most people because it only covers 50% of costs, and less than that for serious illnesses. Those on low incomes simply can't afford it anyway and there is nothing comparable to the level of cover under Medicaid or CHIPS, or Medicare for the elderly. Everyone under the public system has to pay up or not get treatment. Employer plans are better, but still very basic compared to typical US corporate plans. Waiting lists can also often put treatment out of practical reach unless you are willing to pay a lot of money to the right people.
It's also very scammy. They charge for everything they do, from painkillers, saline drips, blood tests, being hooked up to a blood oxymeter. On arrival they will set up all of that, the works, whether it's necessary or not so they can charge you for it. There is little to no regulation to prevent such abuses, and no practical way to get redress for malpractice.
On experimentation, communism and authoritarianism have been tried many, many times. There's nothing novel or experimental about it. We know it sucks. We know what Taliban style Islamic theocracies are like too, Afghanistan has been under one before remember?
And Democracy was tried several times during the French Revolution, as well as in many countries in Africa, to great failure. You can't generalize from small n.
It's really unclear how Communism would have worked out if not for Stalin. Communism isn't fundamentally authoritarian. The concept of workers soviets as a political system sounds pretty plausible to me. Things played out that way, but it's only been tried once.
And as far as a planned economy, I think the feasibility really changes with access to computers which can simulate complex systems. Market economies are a greedy algorithm. It's likely there's a better system.
What I like in the current Chinese model is market economy for commodity businesses (like restaurants) and central control of rent-seeking ones (like banking). That seems more efficient. I also like the concept of systems of governance which are more meritocratic (which contrasts with populist ideals in the US), where competent people make decisions, and where you can plan strategically over long periods. I don't think China has yet stumbled on the right model there. But they're trying.
Sorry, but Marxism has coercion at it's core because it's maximally redistributive. I'm no libertarian fundamentalist, I'm proud if my contribution to society through my taxes, but Marxism takes confiscation to the ultimate extreme. All property belongs to the state, all needs are decided and provided by the state. Max called it 'society' and said that society would regulate every aspect of the economy, but in practice it's the state.
As for tried out once, er, this whole thread is about China not the USSR. Stalin died 39 years before the collapse of the USSR, they had four decades to fix it. There's also Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, Yugoslavia. Robert Mugabe was a Maoist, Hugo Chavez was a Marxist. It's been tried over and over. They've all either run their country into the ground or basically given up on Marxism and clung on to power anyway.
You're quite right that democracy has had plenty of failures, that's irrefutable. It certainly does create a moral dilemma, but I still believe in allowing as much individual choice and autonomy as is practically achievable.
In the U.S., it’s somehow become popular opinion that the government shouldn’t do anything. Without the ability to make coordinated decisions, the U.S. has predictably fallen behind on a wide variety of metrics (income equality, health care, education, mass transit, etc.)
You should reflect on why you view a government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.
Why should the government control how I manage my time? I'm pretty sure this site would be pretty outraged if the government decided we could only code 3 hours a week.
And please don't use the "but coding is constructive!1!" argument. A good use of time is defined by whoever spends it, not whatever someone else's idea of wasting time is.
As a case in point, playing hours of Splitgate has kept me sane during the pandemic as a college student locked in a room for 1.8 years. I meet on Discord with friends and discuss topics while playing. I've made more friends gaming than physically in the past year. That's pretty constructive if you ask me.
Your logic seems good but is removed from history and reality.
I'd rather have less GDP and no CCP; I'd also "sacrifice" max GDP for universal healthcare, fewer wars, jail reform...all kinds of things.
Personally I'd propose things like longevity, obesity, parks per-capita, household wealth, etc.
To say that money isn't everything is already a luxury
It's like we've confused a metric (GDP) with success; we maximized the metric and can't even wake up and realize it's not what we were actually trying to accomplish.
I'd argue the best way to accomplish whatever you're thinking about that we should be accomplishing - something that is hard to measure - is by maximizing GDP. Because GDP is correlated with everything you're thinking about accomplishing.
Because GDP pays for universal healthcare, for example...?
Also countries "worth" less seem to pay for it, so maybe it's that we have fucked up priorities?
The best way to progress has been GDP growth - modern medicine is not driven by good-will, kindness, or faith. It's driven by profit
The US (pockets at least) are dysfunctional but other countries demonstrate the model of not having to live under a dictatorship that commits genocide and restricts liberties and have high values in the things you mentioned.
Not to mention that obesity comes from… consuming too much food. Chinese will be obese too soon as they become wealthier. Well, unless the government mandates calories or something like they do hours playing video games..
The US is the only country committing genocide. They have killed over a hundred innocent civilians in Afghanistan just the past few weeks. Over the past decodes they've killed around a million innocent civilians in the name of the hyper-aggressive and hypocritical "war on terror". Indirectly, they're responsible for several millions criminal murders during the same timespan, and they've not once been put to trial. They're not only failing their citizens, they're a genocidal, terrorist state.
Hard to have a response to something so far removed from what I'm seeing. Not really any reconciliation possible here I think. Have a good day/evening!
In fact, reading what you wrote just strengthened my conviction that they're not true at all.
There's plenty of research, and leaks have uncovered much of the extent of US war crimes. The proportion of civilian casualties in Afghanistan (and Iraq) are immense, bordering 80%. This is because of the extremely low bar for claiming someone are enemy combatants.
See for example just the past few days: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/30/an-afghan-family-ki...
A "suspected" car bomb (not a car bomb at all), triggered the US to kill 10 innocent civilians. They claimed they targeted ISIS, and that no civilians were known to have died. This is the rule rather than an exception, which leaks and whistleblowers have extensively shown.
Yea thought so. No engagement possible here when we just live in two completely different worlds. Have a good day!
Cheers!
You say that people can't be left to the own accord, but then you also want people that you can't trust (leave to their own accord) to be in charge of you and managing a country?
What would you suggest?
IMO that's why we're seeing problems with the U.S. that simply will never resolve. The long-term future is balkanization in some fashion. Either outright via secession or implied via arbitrary restrictions that make certain places undesirable to go to. Contrast that with a country like Iceland where the population is more homogenous and the democracy seems to work better.
And it's not a race thing so much as a belief/culture thing. Just in case someone mistakenly believe that was what I was implying, it's not.
But I do think it's hard to reconcile saying that you fundamentally mistrust people but then you still want to give them power to make rules for you. The safer bet would be to have less or no government in that scenario unless you trust that you can create a process that really weeds out those who are not trustworthy. It's hard to do that too. Even people who are highly credible (scientists, doctors, etc.) often aren't people you would want making rules for you because they're not philosophers...
Making rules is a function of government, and government is a function of the collective will of the people. So rules are nothing more that what I, and most of my neighbors, believe how everyone should behave, and the process is ultimately a trial and error; an experiment.
Its not so uncommon belief/opinion.
I don’t agree that having SOME laws means that the government should be able to pass ANY law.
No child owns his own life or decision making. Typically parents make most decisions, the government makes some others e.g. mandatory schooling, setting standards that parents most abide by if they don't want their children taken away from them (sufficient food and shelter etc.).
Why should the government tell stores & restaurants when they can or cannot sell alcohol? How can the government tell me when I can, or cannot buy/consume alcohol. How is that a benefit to society? Why is it in a country codified for separation of religion and government are they allowed to have this in law?
The government didn't. They just put online-game service providers to the same category as alcohol or drugs.
True.
> In the U.S., it’s somehow become popular opinion that the government shouldn’t do anything.
Amongst some people and some topics. Liberals don't think the government should do anything about heroin needles and homeless people, and conservatives don't think the government should do anything about gay conversion camps (arbitrary examples). This is the core of how democracy works. What you're seeing here actually is a breakdown in homogeneity when you have 300+ million people trying to make decisions when they have different values.
> Without the ability to make coordinated decisions, the U.S. has predictably fallen behind on a wide variety of metrics (income equality, health care, education, mass transit, etc.)
Which depends again on factors such as demographics, etc. and is largely a function of the lack of homogeneity. Not to mention all sorts of compelling arguments. Like we have people who won't take a vaccine, but we were also one of the first countries to roll out mass vaccinations. It's not simple.
> You should reflect on why you view a government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.
I think many people do reflect on that. It's a precarious balance of liberty, management of a nation state, and many other things. I don't think it's wise to try and over-simplify these things into "well the government just wants you to be healthy". Ok. Let's ban all junk food, alcohol, cars, high-end restaurants, skydiving, and make everybody walk 10,000 steps/day or else they go to jail. I mean, why would you view the government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing?
Other societies may look at it differently and feel ok delegating decisions about how their lives should be lived to their government. I, for one, would never be OK with that.
But I have to admit I will relish the opportunity to tell my (11 year old) son about this around the dinner table tonight (after he spent the whole day hiding inside playing Terraria and Minecraft)
And I wish as a parent I had the actual ability to enforce such a limit myself (maybe not so drastic). But the battle would be intense, futile, and conflict ridden. It's been tried.
The government has no business doing this, but there's something to be said for community / cultural standards and leadership. Parents in our society are on their own, fighting a tide of digital "addiction" without supports. And in fact key pillars of our kind of society (that is, corporations) are working to encourage screen time, rather than the other way around. A year of COVID isolation has made it so much worse, too.
I wonder what the outcome of this policy will be and if it will make China's youth more competitive and their society healthier. Or if it will be a total an abject failure and laughed at in a couple generations (most likely).
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if it's highly successful at cutting down on game addiction (which is a problem you easily carry into adulthood).
Worth mentioning they aren't banning children playing games outside these hours. They are only restricting access to online games. Namely multiplayer games like Honor of Kings. If a parent is happy for their child to play other games that don't require online services they are free to do that.
Easy to have when you control what the media reports.
It does seem like there has been a lot of news lately about curious social engineering policies coming out of China. I wonder if the politburo suspects trouble.
I don’t think well of the CCP for many reasons but please, this is a very superficial understanding of China on display. It seems more well suited to Soviet about half a century ago.
I do agree with you that a lot of rules on kids even in our "free countries" were hypocritical and didn't actually work.
Kids shouldn’t be playing games 5 hours a day and looking up to streamers. The government shouldn’t be involved in this.
I think the larger threat of gaming in today’s society is that we have a situation where the standards have gone up dramatically for everyone to be an average mediocre person. You will have to do something serious if you want a real career in the future. You will have to be social and socially astute to navigate social networks (pretty much as early as 10). The pressure is much higher at a much younger age, and chronic gaming is going to be the goto escape. We don’t have a reasonable enough society where gaming can just be an innocuous past time. It’s going to be a hideout for people growing up under the enormous pressure of this new world.
I expect drug use, and prescription medication use to be going up on exactly the same curve.
I'm against that but don't see it as overly authoritarian.
On the other hand, both systems owe their existence in part to government saber-rattling that they would impose actual regulation. Some attempts at actual legal enforcement have been struck down over the years.
Most of the people who agree with you simply upvote your comment and move on.
I think HN crowd is more prone to question their own believes and playing devil's advocate to just bashing on authoritative regimes. It is a blessing and a curse.
Actually though this is a fucking big brother atrocity of a policy that people will inevitably circumvent and the government will pick and choose when to enforce.
I fully agree with this and actively encourage this behavior, but we also need to be careful with our words because 1) we're in a time that we're discouraging this kind of practice and 2) as stated above there are factions actively promoting confusion about this specific subject matter (specifically ones relevant to this conversation).
I would love if we could all argue in good faith and give the benefit of the doubt, but it should not be a working assumption.
1. The people being enforced will find ways around these laws, naturally because it's considered unreasonable and overreaching in some regards.
2. In doing so, the government will selectively enforce these rules based on the limited amount of information or surveillance used to enforce these rules, so those who are busted for breaking them will pay the price, while others who are breaking the rules without getting caught will not pay the price.
I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence by breaking this down, but it's worth clarifying the scenarios.
While I agree with the GP's sentiment (it's very much overreaching into the private lives of its citizens who may wish to decide for themselves (or their family) how they spend their free, recreational time), the argument is no different from the fact that many DUI offenders never get caught while some do and pay the penalties.
I don't think this is a strong enough argument to mount a realistic protest against it, but it's a small factor that's unequivocally true -- many will get away with gaming longer than 3 hours anyway.
Gaming longer than 3 hours will give youth a good thrill at least. ;)
Jokes aside, this policy sucks.
Almost every single comment I make with that sentiment gets instant downvoted or flagged.
Isn't this more likely to provoke the opposite? Addictive time-wasters are an aid to authoritarian government.
Assuming this policy is effectively enforced, Chinese youth suddenly have a lot more free time on their hands.
They're an aid to control; however, the government has interests apart from control. If the government feels that it has sufficient control, but worries about economic output, it may prioritize economics over control. Ultimately government needs to achieve both.
> It’s about more than just online games. It’s about control.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Politics and governance is about compromise and deciding where to draw lines, not slippery-slope absolutism about vague ideals and fervent dogmas that are all-too-easily impinged.
> I’m sure the great firewall is perfectly fine as well?
If you can't differentiate between "control of information and discourse across the entire population" and "control of how long (not even 'whether or not') minors can play online videogames" that's your problem.
This is a horrendous infringement on personal liberty. No human should ever have to endure government mandates over such trivial parts of their lives “for the greater good”. This tactic is used by the likes of the Taliban who banned painting, music, sports etc.
I mentioned the great firewall to illustrate what Chinas real goals here are: total and absolute control over their citizens. The CCP restricts access to free information, political dissent, and freedom of religion.
These are new laws being introduced which would make it illegal for a teenager to play ONLINE CHESS on a Wednesday. How is this not overreach? If the dark software patterns were really the issue they would just make the loot boxes and micro purchases illegal. It’s 100% about power.
This is more like the CCP imposing its value system on them.
I’m not surprised. Sad? A bit. It normalizes authoritarianism. But what are you going to do? I want to live in a globalized society and internet, and China is a huge portion of that, despite their best efforts to insulate their citizens from the world.
This is not in any way similar to video games.
This entire thread seems to be overrun with Tankies or CCP bots.
I think people recognize the efficiency--that they, China can actually pull something like this off; if they mandate that they're going to restrict this then it doesn't get mired in debate and bogged down in Parliament to eventually passes as a watered down concession representing everybody's possible interest group; rather if they say they're going to do something they just go ahead and they execute on that--and I think people can admire that.
And certainly probably nobody else in the world can do this at that kind of scale.
So I think ultimately that sets China up for great success by evolving a system of government because they can afford to run the experiments.
Other countries they can't afford to run the experiments: first off, they don't have the data or the scale to do so; second they don't have the ability to do so; and third they're not able to conjure the political will to be able to run an experiment.
But if China wants to run an experiment and figure out if this policy is going to work or what the effects are going to be--if it's going to help or not--they can afford to do that and they can iterate quickly. And that's what they do.
So in the long term China has a better, more scientific approach to figuring out a system of governance for their people. and this is not some slap dash theory I'm just pulling out of thin air and predicting what the future of China would look like in some fantasy: this is how the CPC have run things for the last 70 years.
Contrast with the West and liberal Democratic systems we have in the West: because we cannot move so quickly, we have to--to some extent--assume what we're doing is right prima facie and so a lot of our rhetoric reflects that. Our political rhetoric about ourselves reflects our sense of moral or procedural superiority to the rest of the world. we constantly remind ourselves you know of the superiority of our system even while acknowledging its flaws. instead of being able to implement policies, at scale, and collect data and move quickly we commission studies, and design intricate theories, and funnel money to think tanks, and often these policy manufacturing initiatives are partisan dalliances with foregone conclusions serving the interests of some of the number of competing groups.
But we cannot iterate as quickly are effectively as China can. But interestingly there's no real reason why we can't. If you consider the scale of our so-called Western civilization stretching from the EU to all of the anglophone world and even South America we should be able to run policy experiments. But consistently we do not. So we fret away the hours theorizing, debating and raising ginormous elections while the world keeps on turning.
so ultimately in the long game even if we started out ahead with a better system--even if--China is going to be able to create a better system in the long term because they can run more experiments more quickly, more efficiently, with bigger scale and they're going to have bigger data. so they can iterate more quickly they can analyze the bigger data that they have and they can come up with the optimal policies to drive their nation and their people forward.
one danger for the West is as China gets deeper into that approach the choices they make are going to seem more and more perplexing to people in the west because the choices are based on a set of assumptions and knowledge that we simply don't have in the west: because we haven't been able to run those experiments we don't have the benefit of that experience. so we're not going to understand China or how they make these choices. and I think that's dangerous for the West politically because we'll fall further behind but it's also dangerous you know culturally and individually because there'll be an increasing empathy Gap between people from different systems which will I suppose in the online world get reduced to a binary polarization of zero nuance and zero understanding which we see the beginnings of today very clearly.
so China is playing a high-risk high reward strategy to some extent. (And it's funny because I think there's a stereotype in the west where people often think of Chinese as very risk averse people. But if you look at the way that China has run its government it's calculating but they take a lot of risks. And you want to push that stereotype further you know a lot of Chinese people start businesses so I feel that stereotype is wrong: the Chinese culture embraces risk.)
If it's not clear what I'm talking about with the term experiments here, it's policy experiments. We are not able to run policy experiments in the west because everything gets bogged down; we can't execute on a plan and the short-term need to appeal to the lowest common denominator and people's sentimental or emotional nature or to their amygdala--their fear--this kind of pragmatic political necessity in our Western liberal Democratic systems distorts the discourse and the issues of democratic politics away from something substantial and towards something that's pretty ephemeral, often insubstantial and even petty.
What kind of future are we creating for ourselves and for our culture and for the legions of people who have sacrificed throughout our history with this kind of behavior?
And I think this abuse of our position is especially egregious when compounded with the lack of empathy and understanding towards the different system that the Chinese are doing when if we could look at it clearly I think we would have much to learn. At least much to give us pause and reflect about our own flaws but instead what you see happening is people look at this different system and instead of reflecting on themselves, they puff themselves up with--an almost seemingly reactionary or even compensatory-- pride about how good their own is, using some fabricated pretense of the evil bogeyman Other and how righteous they are themselves. you might dismiss this as simply the reaction of the common person but that reaction is very important in politics and that drives the discourse and ultimately constrains the thinking and the policy of the nations that comprise the west.
So China can afford to run the experiments and they can afford to think long-term. So who's going to win in like 200 years? it doesn't have to come down to a military conflict. they just have to win at everything else. And then who's going to be the more likely primary aggressor? The side that's on top or the side that's embittered and feeling their foregone place in the world has been stolen and with the history of amassing enormous military power and utilizing it sometimes seemingly haphazardly?
I think the Western system really has to evolve if we are really going to back up our grandiose self-important rhetoric and self-congratulatory triumphal political narratives about ourselves with real results. And I think the core of that is our governance system. It has to be flexible enough to prosecute our interest in a changing world we can't outsource that adaptability solely to the military because while necessary it overly constrains our strategy. We need a flexible government as the core of everything. that's one thing that I've learned by watching and thinking about China over the last 10 years. And I think in order to start doing that there needs to be a correction to the narrative of how Western culture thinks about and talks about china. That's what I'm trying to achieve with this comment: contribute to that correction.
I honestly don't see what the big difference is between online games and weed.
It doesn't really seem off-brand for governments these days to be making these kinds of decisions.
I mean, if they decided to make coffee illegal for kids - yeah, that seems dumb, right? But is that REALLY that big of a difference than making tobacco illegal?
I just don't see a huge difference with online gaming.
Video games aren't all mindless watching of bibs and bobs and dodads and shinies. They're often organized groups of social activity.
The CCP is an authoritarian government. Yes. Is this being proposed in the US? No. Why all the whining and insane amount of pearl-clutching then?
Frankly, I was hoping to see more discussion about the (potential) effects of (excessive) gaming or the potential/unforeseen consequences of the ban, but apparently people here seem to go braindead the moment China, government or freedom is mentioned. It feels like I'm back on Facebook or Reddit again. Has the level of discourse really become that much worse on HN over the years?
It sounds like if you had your way, you'd be quite the authoritarian. Do you hear yourself?
> The CCP is an authoritarian government. Yes. Is this being proposed in the US? No. Why all the whining and insane amount of pearl-clutching then?
Vaccine passports and mandated lockdown and vaccines without informed consent are bringing us closer to authoritarianism than we ever have before.
> Has the level of discourse really become that much worse on HN over the years?
So in response you create a meta post complaining about others complaining about authoritarianism?
So every forum that has mods to moderate the posts that are made is "authoritarian"? Do you listen to yourself? It's not authoritarian to ensure a certain level of quality or level of discourse. And what's going on in these comments does not meet any reasonable bar.
There is a chance that liberal government is the most effective government, ever - the so-called end of history argument, but let's not forget the shot heard around the world was fired less than 250 years ago. Benevolent dictatorship could still work - especially today. Look at Singapore, look at China - lifting millions and billions of people out of poverty is an achievement that shouldn't be denied because they're an authoritarian government.
This is an oft-repeated propaganda talking point. Their system created their poverty in the first place. Not sure breaking something then fixing it again is much of an achievement. Not to mention, the Chinese government changed the definition of what constituted poverty in order to make that claim. I really don't care about the US vs China war because I think the US has already lost but it is quite annoying to hear people repeat propaganda.
If it was easy to fixing it - every country that has been colonized should be at least middle income by now right?