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Comment by faichai | Hacker News Reader

> Molten-salt reactors are just one of many advanced nuclear technologies China is investing in. In 2002, an intergovernmental forum identified six promising reactor technologies to fast-track by 2030, including reactors cooled by lead or sodium liquids. China has programmes for all of them.

The west is so fucked. Meanwhile in the UK we’re reintroducing Imperial units, getting the UAE to invest in our infrastructure and fighting inane culture wars on Twitter.

The lack of proactivity and long term planning for things that matter, combined with academia’s lurch towards publishing treadmills instead of truly novel innovation means we are surely going to fall behind. At this point China’s future hegemony is all but assured.

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Congratulations. You just discovered the simple fact of life that you can do everything much faster when you don't need half your population to agree on it and don't need to spend your whole focus on getting their approval to be reelected.

I just hope you understand what you wish for.

It’s a failure of the current political class, not a failure of the system.

In the past western politicians have gotten us to the moon, introduced universal healthcare and created the New Deal. All whilst operating as a democracy.

It seems to me that modern politicians have lost sight of the power they wield to enact change. They’ve certainly lost the ability to convince the electorate of any given position.

They’ve become reactive, self-interested hucksters. We need politicians with vision, integrity and backbone. Not authoritarianism.

We lost our best and brightest to the corporate machine. Young intelligent people don’t aspire as much to a life of service anymore, but a life of getting paid.

Not sure how we inspire the bright people to get back into the civil service.

I think the problem is incentive and of course money.

In past, western politicians didn't had to appease the mass as most people didn't use to live the modern life we do today. And the lobby we see today simply didn't use to exists. Now we have turned so much greedy that we only see short term advantage.

But China is different. In democracy votes are important. For China party is important. Party is eternal for them so they need to develop manufacturing, improve energy. CCP needs to think about their party future too because they might have to fight against whole world. As a result we can even see recent crackdowns, investment in research like nuclear etc.

What I feel is if more 50% of people are greedy/bad/egocentric democracy simply doesn't work. And the way housing/inflation/ overwork of printers democracy is prone to more harm.

Of course all of the above is my personal opinion so please don't feel afraid to post your opinions :)

Thank you.

The US was barely a democracy under FDR. FDR was the closest the US got to a dictatorship. There's a reason term limits were put into place.

The majority of western world probably wasn't in favour of austerity, declining the welfare state and huge tax breaks for the rich and powerful, but it still happened. The people behind the buttons just have a different economic model what they perceive as progress.

welfare on debt is not an economic model. "Saving" to pay debts is not wrong

We've had decades of leading innovation with Democracy.

Just because the current state of affairs is more concerned about trendy topics like wokeness instead of 10 year plan for the future doesn't mean we're want authoritive governments.

It's just another person not learning enough from history.

Soviet Union actually looks better... before their fall

As someone who lived through the cold war, I can tell you the Soviet Union never looked "better".

Maybe I was just the one crazy person who thought the Soviet lifestyle and society was dreary, but I don't think I was. If you think the soviets looked better, you're likely looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Most people would have done anything they could to avoid living that "better" soviet life.

Many people literally lost their lives trying to escape that "better" soviet life style.

At least in Germany, the communist part was actually looking better very early after the war. It was of course soon overtaken economically by West Germany.

Conflating long-term, strategic planning with authoritarianism, as you have done, is perhaps part of the problem.

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