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Comment by mattgperry | Hacker News Reader

Personally I think it's better to "do by example" with other open western democracies. And then when dealing with China etc rather than letting them roughshod over your financial and data economies because of principles or whatever, enforce the same rules upon them as they put upon you. Then there's an actual incentive and mechanism by which trade can open up in a fair manner. Our (speaking broadly about the west) current approach to China is madness.

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Ive never understood why the concept of reciprocity is so obvious yet never discussed. China blocks your apps, you block theirs.

I guess you'd have to be an idiot like Trump to even suggest such a thing.

“The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.”

Lol...taking the high moral ground in this situation is naive in the extreme.

Reciprocity is so fundamental to nature that people can’t stop doing it:

Most of the studies about “people are irrational” are times psychologists fail to realize that people are acting on an iterated (rather than single round) game — and enforcing reciprocity through their “irrational” acts.

We know at an instinctive level that reciprocity is necessary in game theory — eg, Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.

There are situations where it is entirely rational and advantageous to make people think you are irrational.

Reciprocity is necessary but one of the best strategies for iterated prisoner's dilemma is tit-for-tat or "equivalent retaliation". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

You always start out by cooperating but if someone defects on you, you defect on them.

But the law acts sometimes a deter factor. Because you know you will lose your eye if you damage someone else (at least on purpose).

It leads to escalation because people (or nations) disagree about when the balance is restored, due to loss aversion (subjectively feeling more intensity from a loss than from an objectively equivalent win), among other things. That leads to perpetual eye for an eye for an eye for an eye, and to a tendency to increase rather than decrease the reciprocity.

Maybe in some situations its better to risk escalation than be complacent and submissive? There are millions of examples in life where this is the case.

Your argument is so general as to be almost meaningless. It can be used to justify not responding to almost anything.

The US is in direct competition with China. Why let someone play by rules that are more advantageous to them if you dont have to?

To understand how this situation has come about have a read of "Red-Handed" by Peter Schweizer.

The Chinese "elite capture" program is well-documented. They intentionally ensnare govt & business elites (and family members) in extremely lucrative deals with China to ensure they remain pro-China's interests. And there are some big names in there (Bidens, Pelosi, and McConnell etc).

The media doesnt talk about this corruption as they all have movie studios and want to sell their movies into China.

Its why there may be occasional discussion of the problem (like here) but for some inexplicable reason, simple and obvious steps are never taken.

The political will simply isn't there due to elite capture IMO.

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