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Comment by wazoox | Hacker News Reader

That was the main argument for global trade already in 1914. France was Germany's most important commercial partner, and vice-versa. All German rifles had stocks made from French walnut wood! All French locomotives had German-made tubing! This stupid mantra was repeated ad nauseam after 1991, too, with silly op-eds from Friedman and friends about how two countries with McDonald joints in both can't be at war and similar inanities. Surprise surprise, such wars happened many times since then (the latest being, of course, Russia vs Ukraine).

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A connected world is not a guaranteed sufficient condition for peace. But that does not mean it's not a necessary condition for peace. One could argue that without economic interconnectivity, Europe could have fought WW1 much earlier, or would have had wars much more often.

While I ultimately believe you're correct (along with open borders and travel) I wish there were more rigorous proofs that this were the case.

I think about the line in West Wing: "Free trade is essential for human rights...the end of that sentence is 'we hope because nothing else has worked.' ...Chinese political prisoners are going to be sewing soccer balls with their teeth whether we sell them cheeseburgers or not, so let's sell them cheeseburgers."

While war and human rights are different, they're also pretty correlated.

Human rights is more than just political rights or speech. Hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted out of poverty is a huge win for human rights. When you're poor, you're not free. Having grown up with dirty streets and beggars, you can't possibly imagine how big a deal it is for me to see my hometown transforming into a modern metropolis, and how my grandparents-in-law (in a different city, in a rural area) finaly have... Wait for it... A fscking toilet instead of a hole in the ground, as well as free health insurance. To me and millions of Chinese, these matters much more than being able to vote for the president.

A recent study by the Democracy Perception Index shows that Chinese feel that their country is democratic. But this is ludicrous, how can this be? It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected. It's not just propaganda; this result is consistent with earlier studies by Harvard and York University, as well as by my own experience on the ground.

https://latana.com/democracy-perception-index/

The concept of 民主 is much more in line with the 19th century definition of democracy, when the concept was brought to China. It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that (in the west) democracy became synonymous with electorialism.

So, not commenting on any other countries. But in case of China, Chinese view democracy and human rights differently. I think we should let them.

Why the false dichotomy? Does political freedom automatically contradict with economic prosperity for some reason now? Born and raised in China, I fail to see how the last 10 years of erosion in freedom has yielded any better results economically.

Please don’t buy the government propaganda that legitimizes everything from stupid to evil as a price that has to be paid to raise people out of poverty.

Nowhere did I say that economic freedom and political freedom are mutually exclusive. What I do protest however is the idea that only political freedom can be considered a legitimate form of freedom. I am making the case that:

- economic freedom is an equally valid form of freedom.

- societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most.

As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in China": this is the mainstream western narrative, but the Chinese people don't view it that way. By and large, they view China as way better off now than 10 years ago. All the data and on the ground talks show this. What else is there it argue about?

It sounds like you are like me, born and raised in China but having lived in the west for a long time. If you live in the west and all you hear is liberal thought and western ideas on political freedom, then after a while it seems like that is all there is that matters.

But I am saying no: what we think here don't matter at all, what the people there think is all that matters. We here can consider China's government illegitimate for whatever reason, but that doesn't make them illegitimate. The Chinese people have way more right to consider what sort of government is legitimate, for whatever reason they want, even reasons that we don't agree with.

> As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in China ... the Chinese people don't view it that way

Really? My girlfriend and her friends would strongly disagree with that statement. From my understanding they grew up in a time when internet in China was a lot younger and they actually had an ability to discuss political discussions, or items that highlight the government in a negative manner.

Now everything that isn't the government's view is incredibly censored/filtered online. It might hard to not see the erosion of freedom when it's being prevented from being communicated online.

Fwiw I'm not disagreeing with your statement on economic freedom and I find the amount of people lifted out of poverty and the growth China has gone through in the last few decades to be incredible but it seems a bit disingenuous to say certain "freedoms" haven't been eroded in the last 10 years comparatively.

What I'm arguing is not whether freedom of speech in China has changed. What I'm arguing is that Chinese people, by and large, value different kinds of freedoms, assigning different priorities. It's like telling an average social media user about the erosion of the freedom to self-host and the erosion of Free Software values. The average user cares about very different things.

The data from decades of research is very clear on this. People like your girlfriend and her social circle, who value freedom of speech the most, are a minority in China. A decreasing minority even. By and large, people are happy with the direction of China. Even if various groups may disagree with specific parts of policy, overall satisfaction is quite high. Freedom of speech is considered a nice to have, not a must, and ranks below many other things such as freedom from poverty, freedom to get quality education, freedom from disease, freedom from anarchy, freedom of security, etc.

The "economic freedom" you describe is not freedom. A better description is "bread and circuses", after the way Roman emperors supposedly kept people happy. The West is familiar with societies like that, because it also describes most of our history. When the elites try to keep the people they depend on prosperous and happy, it's not freedom. It's just common sense for them.

Freedom is not about the freedom of the well-off and the majority. It's always about the freedom of the minorities, the oppressed, and the different. Only their opinions matter. You can only determine the degree of freedom in the society by asking those who don't fit in.

I know many people who come from small towns and rural areas. Places where everyone knows everyone, everyone is part of the community, and everyone helps those in need. Places that are toxic to people who are different. For many of those people, freedom started when they moved to a big city. A city where nobody cares what you are and what you do, where you can safely be yourself, and where you can find other people like you.

I'm sorry, having a toilet instead of a hole in the ground, having proper housing, not having a high chance of dying from poverty, having free healthcare, not having every other street in the city be a huge dumpster, etc. are not "bread and circuses". They are very real, very tangible improvements in quality of life. Your comment boils down again to the tendency to consider political freedom to be the only valid form of freedom.

The hard data from a decade of research is very clear about the fact that Chinese people are overall very satisfied about the direction of their country. No matter what rhetoric you employ, you argue purely from your own perspective and your values. That is fine — for your own country. The Chinese people should have a right to disagree with you on what they value in their own country.

- societies can make up their own minds on what sort of freedoms they value most.

This is only possible peacefully if you have political freedom.

> The Chinese people have way more right to consider what sort of government is legitimate

The Chinese people have no right whatsoever to consider what sort of government is legitimate. The CCP deliberately, systematically deprives of them of exactly that right. Hence the total censorship of thought and expression and the repression of any group that might remotely offer an alternative to the CCP, even non-political religions.

The CCP is like the Model T of political parties - "You can have any government you want, as long as it's the CCP."

i disagree, there's absolute nothing preventing an ordinary Chinese from taking a exam and become someone that actually has influence over domestic policies. Elections aren't the only ways a legitimate government can be formed.

Democracy means you can alter the future direction of your country by simply voting, which took me 15 minutes.

Don't think joining a party with clear views and goals would let you have any significant effect on its trajectory without decades and lots of luck.

i dont think thats a strength as you make it out to be

The world has only gone downhill ever since medieval, centralised power structures disintegrated right? Are you following what you preach, and living in a non-democratic country?

You wouldn't be able to make any real policy changes unless you made it all the way up into to the 25-member Politburu (or maybe even its 7-member Standing Committee) [1]. All the other ~90 million CCP members are tasked with implementing the policies made there.

You might be able to become a social policy research professor or something, or where you study Communist/Marxist/Leninist/Maoist/Jinpingist/etc thought and try to develop new applications of it to the modern world. But you won't get to change anything from the Politburu, and could lose your career or worse if you try.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Chinese_Commu...

Correct that you have to climb up. But isn't it fine that the Chinese have a different philosophy on governance? They don't want just anyone to be able to make nationwide changes on a whim. They want leaders to prove themselves first by working for 30 years. This is meritocracy. They see the possibility of someone like Trump getting elected, as a huge risk. I think we should allow earth to have diversity in governance systems.

> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected.

I'm going to be thinking about this sentence for the rest of my life

That sentence stuck out to me too. It makes me wonder if the nature of America's representative democracy lowers the threshold by which our elected officials actually have to do a good job / serve the will of the people.

They constantly fall short, even of the narrow interests of whatever their particular constituency is. But there's kind of a floor where we just throw up our hands and say "WELL THEY WERE VOTED IN"

Do our officials receive less psychic pressure? Does the Chinese government work harder to align the populous' desires with their actions?

Pretty fascinating rabbit holes.

Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think[0]

  Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.

[0] https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/

That study is false.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...

The way the US electoral system chooses representatives is terrible. Other countries have better methods, but change is very, very hard.

I assume you are talking about a parliamentary system? Yes, I also prefer it. It is even better if there is a good mix of parties in power -- Germany, Netherlands, etc. It seems like 5-10 parties in parliament forces a good amount of compromise, which results in the most progress possible. I prefer what is loosely termed as a "weak prime minister" where the coalition is multi-party, over a "strong prime minister" where no coalition is required. (Please ignore the scenario of a _constant_ super majority, like Singapore's "People's Action Party".)

GP is probably referring to the electoral system itself: "first past the post" [1]. Essentially a winner take all style of voting which enforces a two-party system.

E.g. In such a system, if a state has 50 seats and a party manages to win 24 of them (while the second place only wins 23 seats), that first party gets all 50 seats of representation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Dreadful. I don't understand the point of "first past the post" versus a (semi-)Presidential system. What is the _effective_ difference if the outcome is always two parties?

To be fair: My comment is mostly focused upon "Western" parliments, which includes two geographically non-Western places: Australia and New Zealand! If you look at the constant dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan... look _very_ closely... you realise there are many competing factions within the party. So LDP _acts_ like multiple parties and forces the Prime Minister to compromise to get things done. Not perfect, but many outsiders fail to understand this about the Japanese (national) political system.

There’s also weirdness like the electoral college and presidents getting elected despite getting fewer votes than their competitors (see Bush Jr. and Trump).

Except they have no recourse when the party doesn't work for their best interest.

It has been repeated a lot in the past decade because overall things improved but recently the population of Shanghai was put under a terrible lockdown, the government didn't have their best interest at heart and what happened? Nothing, because they can't change anything and because the party doesn't care about their best interest. The party only cares about itself.

Making the populace happy is a lever amongst many they use to stay in power but when their interest and the people's interest doesn't align they have other, brutal means to enforce their policy.

Nothing happened in Shanghai? No, people complained and the government made changes in policy. People complained and they fired corrupt or incompetent officials who screwed things up.

Yes the Shanghai mess was gigantic. But even so, by and large, the Chinese people are supportive of lockdowns even if they protest against specific logistical problems, fuck ups and the overall strain placed on their lives. The Chinese government doesn't lock down because they are an evil oppressive regime, they lock down because the public is at large still very supportive of lockdowns as a measure (especially given the fact that vaccination rates in China are relatively low, and that Chinese people fear COVID much more than people in the west do). If they don't lock down and they let millions of people die through COVID, that's when you will see mass protests and riots.

That "they don't have recourse" is false, this is a stereotype. Protests are commonplace in China. There are literally thousands of protests every year, and often the government is responsive to such protests. Not every single protest is respected, but many are. The Chinese government performs a lot of polls and surveys to elicit feedback and to gauge satisfaction. There's a reason why hard data from a decade of research has shown that Chinese people increasingly believe that the government represent their interest well.

All this stereotyping of the party "only caring about itself" doesn't even make sense when you consider that the party consists of 95M people, or about 5% of the population. Everybody has some extended family member that's a party member. That's a big amount of representation.

I'd say most of the ideas about China come from some sort of reasoning on what a stereotypical authoritarian regime looks like, as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Is China actually authoritarian? From a western perspective, I guess so. But even so, what's underappreciated is that China is a very atypical "authoritarian" regime with a lot more grassroots representation and feedback than one might expect from a stereotypical authoritarian regime.

Making the populace happy being a lever to stay in power — sure, agreed. That's not a bad thing, that's how it's supposed to work in China — the party derives legitimacy from doing good work, and if they stop doing good work then all hell will break lose and the country will plunge into a civil war, as China has seen time and again in the past 2000 years. The government knows this, the people know this, thus the government knows it better do a good job, or else their heads will roll.

I don't totally disagree with you here. There's certainly something to be said about systems that make people happier than no system at all or the wrong system entirely, e.g. the soft power of surveillance being better than a total lack of enforcement of certain rules or heavy-handed and expensive policing efforts that don't work or make people any more free.

That being said, I think there are limits to this philosophy. It's pretty clear by now that not everyone in China is getting a fair shake, to the extent that perhaps it is time for other countries to evaluate their relationships with the output of those in China who are experiencing something that goes beyond the pale in terms of human rights violations i.e. the Uyghur population and the work that they are being "voluntold" for as well as the "re-education" they are experiencing.

I think that for as much sense as it makes for China to do whatever it does, it makes sense for Western countries to do something about the obvious misalignment of values between the two groups. The West not accepting / becoming dependent on economic conditions that result from violations of their views on human rights or democracy is a very reasonable action to take from an ethical and moral standpoint, just as an example.

There may be limits to that philosophy (or any philosophy for that matter). There are no doubt inequalities in China. I just don't think the Xinjiang issue is representative of the problem you're thinking of, because the issue is heavily politicized by western mainstream media and governments, leaving out or mispresenting important facts (as is usually the case with China reporting), and/or representing allegations as final and proven facts even in the absence of evidence.

> Human rights is more than just political rights or speech.

> When you're poor, you're not free.

I appreciate someone 'qualified' making this point. Whenever I tried to argue this in the past, I inherently got dismissed as being in a privileged European position not knowing what I am talking about, (even as an Eastern European), so thanks for your post.

Happy to hear this.

> It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they believe their government works for their interest and whether they yield good results, not by how their government is elected.

And here is the crux of China's zero-covid policy. Follow the Western lead and run covid run its course? That would be millions of deaths even with Omicron being not as deadly, simply because Sinovax is nowhere near as effective as the mRNA vaccines are. It's too late (and politically unwise, given how CCP propaganda praised its selfmade vaccine) to mass-rollout mRNA vaccines, so the only option that prevents millions of deaths (and so, keeps the "social contract" of freedoms vs. wealth) is to brutally suppress Covid.

The interesting thing will be when the Chinese public deems the zero-covid policy "not good enough"...

Actually, Sinovac work as well as Pfizer when it comes to preventing hospitilization and death, but requires sufficient boosters. This is shown by this research paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v...

The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media.

What is true however is that Chinese population has less immunity against omicron due to lower vaccination rates, especially among the elderly. For one, the Chinese don't see vaccination as really necessary because lockdowns work. Second, the Chinese worry a lot more about vaccine side effects. Here in the Netherlands, vaccines are sold as "100% safe, everyone should get it", whereas in China doctors would recommend against getting a vaccine if you have another medical problem such as heart problems. My other grandparents in law choose not to get vaccinated because they have many other health problems due to old age.

Finally, the Chinese public is by and large very supportive of lockdowns despite the Shanghai mess. Rather than "don't lock down" they now just believe "lock down earlier, don't turn into the next Shanghai".

> This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media.

Unlike mainstream Chinese media, which always represents facts objectively and doesn't use a headline generator to deflect attention whenever there's some trouble in the country.

I always see this amusing sentiment of "evil Western xyz doing things and stuff", meanwhile it's just something that happens all around the world, and usually even more so in other, less developed places. Maybe the main difference is that I don't get much media from, say, Zimbabwe, but I sure do from the US and even Canada, even if I don't particularly care about the happenings in either place.

Nowhere did I say anything about how Chinese media behaves. This is whataboutism. Even if Chinese media behaves badly that doesn't excuse mainstream western media from behaving badly. This is especially so because western outlets and commentators like to present themselves as morally superior because they have "democracy", "freedom of speech" etc. Well, then practice freedom of speech responsibly by representing things fairly!

Freedom of speech has absolutely nothing to do with representing things fairly. It's about being able to express ideas and thoughts without fears of censorship or retaliation. In fact, being able to misrepresent things is in itself a test of freedom of speech. People have been wailing about the moon landings being faked for decades without disappearing mysteriously. Don't think people in North Korea can afford to spread conspiracy theories about Kim Jong-Un, however.

The cry over whataboutism is funny when you're sharing a paper funded by the Chinese CDC, and taking that as gospel. I'm not excusing Western media anywhere, I'm simply saying "Western" is a pointless qualifier when the problems you are describing apply to media driven by profits and/or vested interests, which is almost every news source.

You are throwing "Western media" under the bus, but in contrast to what? Not Chinese media, which the discussion was about, so I'm curious what your reference point for good media is in this case, that happens to be better than "Western media". Keep in mind that quality levels differ, and if you only follow Murdoch rags, obviously you're not getting quality reporting of any sort.

> The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media.

This isn’t true, and if you look at table 2 in the paper you link it is obvious. With equal dosing, SinoVac is less effective than Pfizer in basically all categories.

SinoVac doesn’t start to have _any_ protection against mild/moderate disease until 3 doses, and even then, it’s significantly worse than Pfizer. It’s hard to know how that relates to disease transmission, but it’s probably fair to guess that less protection against mild/moderate disease means increased viral loads and faster disease spread.

Yes with equal dose before the third dose it's less effective, but why would one compare the two vaccines based on number of dosis to get effective?

Back when there were fewer variants, the Janssen vaccine only required 1 dose; was Janssen "better" than mRNA, and did "mRNA vaccines not work very well"?

Here in the Netherlands, once Omikron arrived, the Dutch CDC advised everyone to get a booster (third dose). Nobody here counts on Pfizer having enough protection with just 2 doses. Why would anyone then compare 2-dose Pfizer with 2-dose Sinovac?

What matters is the eventual efficacy after sufficient boosters. Besides, we already live in a "booster subscription" reality. Here in the Netherlands, the elderly are encouraged to get a booster every 3 or 4 months. In light of all this, I'd say it's very disingenuous to compare based on number of dosis instead of eventual efficacy.

And you say "even [after 3 doses] it's significantly worse than Pfizer". Where in table 2 do you see that?

Severe/fatal disease:

- Three-dose BNT162B2: 99.2 for 60-69 yr, 99.5 for 70-79 yr, 95.7 for >= 80 yr

- Three-dose Coronavac: 98.5 for 60-69 yr, 96.7 for 70-79 yr, 98.6 for >= 80 yr

Mortality:

- Three-dose BNT162B2: 98.9 for 60-69 yr, 96.0 for >= 80 yr

- Three-dose Coronavac: 98.7 for 60-69 yr, 99.2 for >= 80 yr

I'm sorry, these numbers look nearly identical to me? They're all >= 96% for the elderly.

I think you're looking at the "mild/moderate" section. Yes the numbers there are lower for Sinovac. But so what? Protection against severe/fatal disease and mortality is the most important. That it's less effective at mild/moderate disease prevention doesn't make "Chinese vaccine don't work very well".

Heck if we go back in time before there were so many variants, various studies showed Sinovac as having roughly 70% protection against mild/moderate COVID (depending on country; efficacy is context-dependent). That 70% was then branded by western media as "Chinese vaccines are junk, they don't work at all, because our mRNA vaccines provide 90%+ protection against mild disease". And now Pfizer has only 70% protection against mild omikron but it's still represented as "mRNA vaccines are much superior, the Chinese are fscked until they get their hands on mRNA". Yes, what's wrong with that narrative?

For some reason, outside of the context of comparisons with China, everybody agrees that Pfizer works kinda "meh" against omikron; it's merely "good enough to get the job done". But when comparing with China, all sorts of people are suddenly inclined to represent mRNA as the holy grail that can end the pandemic, which the Chinese unfortunately don't have.

Against what are these efficacy comparisons? Omicron? Other variant?

I have not paid attention to COVID-19 recently and I recall that Chinese vaccines were problematic against Omicron.

If it is so efficient then why the hell they have this security theater in China?

The paper says specifically that the data is for Omicron.

Not sure why you call it "security theater". The lockdowns in China work, even against Omicron, even if it has become way more difficult. Shenyang, Guilin, Shenzhen, Guangzhou all defeated omicron without the Shanghai mess.

As for why they don't push vaccines more, that I don't know. Possibly because they are more cautious about vaccine side effects than we are. As I said, doctors in China recommend against getting vaccinated if you have other health problems. The same elderly in the Netherlands would just get a recommendation to get vaccinated because "vaccines are very safe", as we are officially told here.

I call it theater because if the vaccine is as good as Western ones, you really do not need these draconian measures.

I think you've got it backwards. Lockdowns existed before vaccines did. So people in China tend to think "you don't need vaccines (and risk side effects) when lockdowns work".

A similar notion existed in Taiwan until they got overwhelmed by Omicron. Lockdowns worked and they were able to keep COVID out of the island, so people weren't interested in vaccines hence low vaccination rates.

Western societies view lockdowns as draconian human rights violations, and don't take COVID very seriously relative to "freedom", but not all societies look at things that way. Chinese people are very afraid of COVID, much more so than westerners, and see lockdowns as an inconvenient but absolutely neccessary measure. Chinese society values responsibility more than freedom.

Sounds like failure to me.

I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close.

Yes, the Chinese state has made some remarkable positive material achievements for most Chinese. No, it does an absolutely shit job for many of them. Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a combination of the above.

What would it take for a national government to get more passable results on the veil of ignorance test? Try the thought experiment!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

> I'm open to any system of government that systematically tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get even close.

What about somewhere like Singapore (nominally democratic, but with a single party in power for decades and widely seen as authoritarian)?

> Imagine being Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a combination of the above.

Those are very visible examples, but if you're applying the veil of ignorance test you have to weight by how many people they actually apply to. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of them put together represented a smaller proportion of the population than incarcerated Americans, say). Every government system has some fraction of the population that it "gives up on", that much is unavoidable.

> Those are very visible examples, but if you're applying the veil of ignorance test you have to weight by how many people they actually apply to. (I wouldn't be surprised if all of them put together represented a smaller proportion of the population than incarcerated Americans, say). Every government system has some fraction of the population that it "gives up on", that much is unavoidable.

I am deliberately applying an individual level test to the social level. This is not fuzzy utopian everything-should-be-perfect idealism though. Think of it as an extensive test suite to run against a government's policies.

> What about somewhere like Singapore (nominally democratic, but with a single party in power for decades and widely seen as authoritarian)?

EHARDFAIL: active lgbti+ prosecution.

> I am deliberately applying an individual level test to the social level. This is not fuzzy utopian everything-should-be-perfect idealism though. Think of it as an extensive test suite to run against a government's policies.

OK, but that doesn't answer the question. What's the pass/fail criterion for your test suite? For China to be such a particularly bad case, it seems like you must be focusing on those particular groups and weighting them more highly than in the actual veil of ignorance test (where one assumes an equal chance of being anyone), no?

This is interesting to read, I'm curious how this diverges/converges from the observation that:

In the West the words for referring to someone formally are words that used to refer to the nobility exclusively (Mister, Misses in English comes from 'Master, Mistress', Monsieur, Madamme in French, Señor, Señora in Spanish, derive from 'My Lord, My Lady' respectively).

So in the West, the cultural transformation was more than mere equality of political voice, but more, that 'we are all nobles', and (domestic?) political history in the West is the ever expanding circle of this inherent nobleness of all (arguably right down to trends in current American social issues).

'Rights' was something that, in the West, was first contested between the nobility and the King, then in the modern period between the wealthy merchant class and the nobility/royalty. James Madison, one of the American Revolution leaders, writes explicitly about how the masses are incapable of the requirements of absolute democracy. So there's definitely something to it when you point out that 'Democracy' in the West wasn't immediately interested in conferring a voice onto every Tom, Dick, and Harry (we'll just set aside the status of women and slaves)

You might be off about 'latter half of the 20th century' bringing electorialism to bear, rather the late 19th century/early 20th century was when, finally, the proletariat started demanding its rights, e.g. The Mexican Civil War that saw the establishment of collective farming lands, the struggle of labor and unions in America and Europe to secure worker's conditions backed by the threat of socialism (which, from Marx himself, is about endignity [ennoblement] of everyone's time), all of which, funny enough, have been desolving since the 90s (NAFTA eradicatd collective farming in Mexico).

Democracy in the West is more than a mere political configuration, its also the cultural precept (however divergent in interpretation), in stark contrast to what you're describing is the history of this idea in China, where, dare I say, the idea of ennoblement stops at a hard boundary unlike in the West.

P.S. I don't know a Chinese language so it may be that the words for formally addressing someone also share this genealogy of descending from terms formerly meant exclusively for nobility.

> Democracy in the West is more than a mere political configuration, its also the cultural precept (however divergent in interpretation)

This was a hard concept for my Thai wife to grasp at first. I described it this way.

In America, each person represents their own kingdom. The government exists to serve (and be subservient) and protect us to keep the peace. I always try to remind myself that government by the people, for the people means that the balance of power lies solely with the people.

This is all fine and good until the Chinese government is leading China down a path of aggression abroad or to a genocide such as in Xinjiang.

As a German believe me if I tell you that being under a totalitarian regime can backfire pretty quickly. It took Hitler only 6 years. Putin took longer but hundreds of thousands are dead for just this year alone.

The Chinese lived (well, far from all did...) 27 years under Mao.

They know about murderous totalitarian regimes!

The Mao background may also mean they appreciate even minor progress more than us.

> wish there were more rigorous proofs

It's a deep area of research with conflicting results [1][2].

[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.85...

[2] https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=oRbfdWw4ozUC&oi=...

Interconnectedness means that there's additional price everyone pays for (even a small) conflict erupting, and social ties that can disarm smaller conflicts before they get large.

On the other hand, the cost of significant armed conflict is already very, very high.

I would not go so far as to call selling our time to produce what ads and marketing create demand for as free trade.

Polls show little interest in making McDoubles and tons of interest in healthcare and education jobs.

Somehow there’s always financing for cheap consumer jobs while costly jobs face more uncertainty: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1505597901011005442

The market is unfalsifiable like a religion now. Free trade is captured by rent seekers who believe past success in one special context makes them the best person to handle any context. The memes are no longer based in historical religion, but the lack of critical challenge and blind allegiance to normal humans self aggrandizing story, being dictated at by they who live privileged lives far away is as traditional as it gets.

I’d like to see a rescope of political power that better conforms to where all this value comes from: https://www.unlv.edu/news/article/future-american-city-state

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...

Coddling certain sensibilities and foisting nostalgia driven politics on the masses, tacit ageism towards youth through hand me down gossip and schooling of industrialist owners who need cheaper labor, are hardly hallmarks of a free society.

We moved manufacturing into rural areas a century ago seeking cheaper labor, then overseas for the same reason. Human agency is dictated by financiers empowered by political tradition. There’s no theory I know of that concludes they are absolutely making sound choices for anyone but themselves. The blind faith in grand schemes thing has got to go.

Interconnectedness exposes your countrymen more to other countries cultures - it is much harder to war against a people who you can't paint as a demonic "other". I don't really think that the private industrial sourcing concerns have any real pressure to apply against war - those industries aren't the government and, even with modern supply chain minimalism, it'll take a while for one or two industry sectors to really cause widespread pain to an economy. Those personal connections across borders, though, those are the best defense against war.

There are ethnic rivalries today in France. I’ll spare you the list, but lowly are paying with their life for some, and girls with their intimacy. It’s systematic in most big cities, anyone who hasn’t been bullied isn’t really living the diversity (spare me the “I know a guy and he’s very nice” – you haven’t lived the real diversity, the unchosen one).

Sometimes, when it doesn’t touch you, you have some fancy theoretical poetry about it; the closer you are, the more you notice how the other is, indeed, wow, gruesome.

Not all cultures can mix.

Ah... West Wing. Even the cynicism was better than it is in reality.

Eh have you looked at the list of wars in Europe in the 19th century?

As I recall, it was much less that previous centuries.

I'd start the 19th century after the Napoleon wars for this argument, of course.

Well multiply that by 3x if there were no interconnectedness.

Why by 3? Is there any kind of basis for that number or is it just speculation?

I'm not sure you understand what a necessary condition is.

Easily disproven by all the countries that were not constantly at war despite low connectedness.

In the (absurd) limit: There was no war between Australia and the Roman Empire in 100BC.

More practical: existence of a Cold War in the 20th century.

You can and should have both. It's a form of defense at depth.

The theory of comparative advantage (David Ricardo) means it's worth specializing. But the counter argument (local resiliency) is also important -- but it may mean less efficiency in the short run, as a kind of investment against risk.

All that is fine, but it opens up the opportunity for short-sighted decisions (basically a mercantilist view that exports = good and imports = bad) like tariffs to protect local mfrs (which removes incentives for them to be efficient).

In short, like everything in life, there's not a sharp decision.

Entering war in 1914, one of the French traditional soldier costume included bright red pants (that made them easy to spot and shoot into on the field). The dye came from Germany. And it was very cheap!

And in 1812 the UK was the US's biggest trading partner. And that created major tensions in the US, with New England almost threatening secession over it. But the war still happened.

The economic relationship between New England and the UK had historically been adversarial up to this point in time. New England was in direct competition with the UK, as both regions were industrial and educated. The monarchy did everything in their power to starve New England of the resources and tradesmen they needed to succeed. This is in contrast to the rest of the USA, which was supplying raw resources for industry.

Trade needs to be fair and mutually beneficial.

In 1812 the monarchy of the UK wasn't doing shit. The Government of the UK called the shots.

Friedman launched what I call Friedmanism: The belief that vapid and banal observations are the best way to understand the world. His McDonald's observation launched a thousand opinion writers to imitate him

The economic sanctions against Russia really do seem to be creating quite a lot of internal pressure to stop the war in Ukraine which is not going so well.

Without those sanctions, it is quite conceivable that a troubled war effort would not be nearly so much of a problem, but because of the trade dependency Russia feels quite threatened by the consequences of war. Not enough to have prevented it in the first place, but they overreaced.

Its the same for Ukrainians since EU big powers want the end of war because of economies even if it means Ukraine giving away their territories. You could argue without globalism and a lot of trade that pressure wouldn't exist.

But without the global support, would Ukraine have lasted this long this successfully?

Obviously not, all I wanted to say was that these geopolitical relationships are complicated especially in the globalized world.

McDonald's is now leaving Russia. A local company is taking over operations there and will operate under a different brand name.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/16/1099079032/mcdonalds-leaving-...

The McDonald's leaving thing was always totally absurd to me for this reason. There are real examples of economic dependence that could and do cause problems. The owners withdrawing ownership though is a pure benefit to Russia. Threemployees get paid by the customers and get supplies from suppliers and all of that is totally unaffected. The only thing that changes is they pay less money to American buisness owners, so if anything, pay might go up or prices might drop as less is skimmed off the top.

How is it a benefit? I somehow doubt that with the supply chains interrupted, the new owners will be anywhere as efficient at their business as their predecessors.

Your analysis is incomplete at this point. We do not know what will be the outcome of war. How long will sanctions and general isolation of Russia hold and what that might result in.

Perhaps it will(as it seems now, also) be seen as catastrophic mistake. Like Russia selling Alaska to US. My point is, it is way to early to tell and even if we knew the outcome: we have to have few events/outcomes like that for them to become an example of mistake to not make.

Generally countries can do whatever, despite all. It is more important we deter them and have tools to do that as broader "world" community. Otherwise we would have to forcefully own "other" countries to secure such peace.

I'd like to think, though, that today's economic connections are less replaceable than wooden stocks or steel tubes. Try replacing modern electronics with local resources when you're Russia, for example.

more interconnectedness = less % chance of war

not absolute 0 % chance of war

I like how everyone here is doing precise statistics on something so imprecise as geopolitics.

> more interconnectedness = less % chance of war

What evidence do you have to make this claim? A simple thought experiment proves the counter. Let's say there is a population on one island, and another population on another island, and these populations have no way of reaching each other or even knowing of each others existence. These not-connected populations are guaranteed not to go to war. However, give one of them the means of reaching the other population, and most assuredly the chance of war has gone up not down.

If you like ad absurdum arguments: if you connect the countries together so much, they eventually decide to become one country and the chance of war goes down, not up (excluding civil war)

Austria, World War II. Some people saw annexation, others saw reunification, others still saw a bunch of cowards surrendering without firing a single shot.

With all of these things, context matters. If memory serves, Austria being an independent state was one of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, so if that had been the last act instead of the opening chapter, there still would have been hell to pay. Perhaps not on a par with Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but definitely starting something that requires a resolution.

I don't think they like ad absurdum arguments. But without systematic evidence, there is not way to determine if if such an argument is actually any less valid then the initial claim.

How many more wars would there have been without this interconnectedness?

When we find a solid way to A/B test the universe, we might know. Otherwise, good luck!

This is the same logic that because some vaccinated people get Covid, vaccines are stupid and don't work.

It is actually pretty easy to provide a proof of effectiveness for vaccines. The theory of peace through interconnected and colonies is more complicated. All we have are arguments, and these are not even that convincing. Every trade connection requires compromise, and risks one party feeling taken advantage off. Often rightfully so.

See, that's the problem with franchises. If every McDonald's was run directly by McDonald's HQ, then surely McDonald's would have pressured Putin not to attack Ukrainian cities with McDonald's restaurants in them.

McDonald's has the same incentives with a franchise system -- the parent makes money when the franchisees thrive.

If Taiwan didn't have the world's most advanced semiconducter industry, which China (and all other nations) rely on, China would have long ago attacked it.

So that's an easy example of how trade helps keeps peace.

That's a made up scenario, it provides no example. We don't know what china would or wouldn't have done in that situation.

One may as well argue if Taiwan didn't have the world's most advanced semiconducter industry, it would have voulentarely joined China.

Counterfactual imaginings make for poor evidence. But ideology can make a fool of anyone.

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