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Comment by eunos | Hacker News Reader

Oppressed 1/5 of world population is on track to become high income country and highest GDP?

Exactly this. This idealistic discussion is leading nowhere, still, my 2 cents. I experienced this opinion when speaking to people who never lived there or even spoke with people from there.

In fact people there are fully aware of the censorship and either ignore it, find easy ways around it or even mock it and make fun of it: from creating the globally famous "Winnie the Pooh" synonym to memes that are shared.

If I had to pick between free speech and higher income, I'll pick free speech.

Better having full tummy and empty mind rather than the other way around.

Unless the religion one follows condemns you to an afterlife of suffering for the actions you took to have a full tummy.

If they’re a commie (atheist) they don’t believe in an afterlife anyway, so there isn’t really any accountability in the mind of such a person if they can get away with whatever they do in this life.

> commie (atheist)

I am a capitalist-as-it-gets atheist. How dare you equate me to a communist! Belief in gods has nothing to do with belief in politicians' ability to manage the economy.

I didn’t equate atheists to commies.

Let me rephrase that: All commies are atheists but all atheists are not commies.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

> If they’re a commie (atheist) they don’t believe in an afterlife anyway, so there isn’t really any accountability in the mind of such a person if they can get away with whatever they do in this life.

Unlike the religious people who believe, that they can sin as much as they want to, just as long as they repent, and then still go to heaven?

Tell me you haven’t read the Bible without telling me…

Not relevant.

What Christians believe, doesn't necessarily have anything to with what the Bible says.

Even when it does, then it's often cherry picked.

That's the dumbest thing I've read all day. I'd rather starve than suffer fat idiots thanks.

Don’t take the ”highest GDP” statement at face value. It’s not only a lie (the US still has the highest GDP), GDP also doesn’t account for economic imbalances. Much of the Chinese population are living in poverty.

Chinese shills will claim that poverty has been eliminated, but that’s only true if you lower the poverty line. You could set the poverty line to 10 USD/year if you wanted to and by doing so “solve poverty”.

There is much room for misinformation and lies when it comes to these issues. One has to stay vigilant.

That's why I said on track.

To be fair the GDP per capita in-balance in the US is also horrible from a western standpoint.

This doesn’t take away from the fact that he was outright lying when he said China that has the highest GDP.

Given that "free speech" is nonexistent even in the West (or in the case of the US: quickly dying because of new Puritanism), many would answer that question differently.

    Food first, then morality.
    -- Berthold Brecht

That translation is ambiguous. He said Fressen. Which means eating like an animal, or to gorge/guzzle. So not simply having enough food.

> Oppressed 1/5 of world population is on track to become high income country and highest GDP?

Those things have _nothing_ to do with each other.

The US southern states got very rich on cotton, tobacco, etc., and had a high GDP, during slavery.

Were the slaves not oppressed?

Again, GDP has nothing to do with being oppressed or not.

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