Hacker News Reader

Comment by justinzollars | Hacker News Reader

In my lifetime one of the biggest freedoms we have lost is private banking. Prior to 9/11 banking was relatively private. What you had was your own, and secret. You could even have a private bank account in Switzerland. Now, if you are American foreign banks won't even bother dealing with you.

Obviously the paranoid state, won't like the idea of a private safety deposit box company.

I think the next leg to fall is cash itself. We will move to CBDC and social credit.

View on HN

> We will move to CBDC and social credit

There’s something incredibly irresponsible and pathetic about acknowledging a course of action that seems bad/inevitable, and then declaring that it will happen.

The future is not inevitable. If you declare failure to reach a positive future as inevitable, you are actively working towards failure, not success.

Yep. I had a chance to talk to an American several years ago who was living in Switzerland when I first learned about this situation. He had a house there before the US had fully forced the Swiss banks to give up their banking records. He had to refi or something and basically the local Swiss banks would not offer him a new loan purely because he was an American and because the US had been so heavy handed with them. Eventually I was able to find a lender to work with but it was not easy. The situation was so acrimonious that all major Swiss banks were refusing to do any new business with Americans. Afterwords I looked into it and linked up what had been happening in the news with his story (not his specific problem, but in general terms what had been going on with banking).

And China has a few years head start in that direction.

The US following China's lead. I'd hope that the idea alone, of following in China's footsteps, is enough to get the US to change course.

>The US following China's lead.

Quality of life in China is constantly improving. In US it isn’t. So no, US isn’t following China’s lead.

not sure why this is being downvoted. China recently surpassed the US in life expectancy. But suppose you do not trust Chinese statistics; Mexico passed US life expectancy. Life expectancy a good measure for right track / wrong track.

The US is definitely on the wrong track, but I think the more we think emulating China will “fix” things (especially under Xi), the worse things will get. Look at what we did with Covid. We had existing pandemic response strategies that were thrown out to mimic China, and we destroyed our economy, didn’t save anyone, and stunted child development. Sweden was much more rational and adhered to much saner western policies that we abandoned due to panic and false advertising from China.

There are things about China worthy of emulation, like how easy it is (or was, not sure if this is still true) to set up factories, the cultural emphasis on hard work and education, the stronger generational family support networks, the sense of unity and cooperation and trust in authority. But there are also severe problems that China doesn’t talk about, many of which are side effects of some of the same things that are admirable when moderated, and extremely dysfunctional when under poor leadership.

US approach to COVID is pretty much the exact opposite to what China did. It follows from a fundamental difference in priorities - Chinese don’t want to die for somebody’s profits. I’m also not sure if fake news is an entire industry in China, like it is in US. And if it exists, it’s certainly not backed by the government, like Breitbart was.

As for false advertising - look at how western media are pumping Chinese “housing crisis” where the reality is pretty much the opposite (https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1011211/the-winners-of-chinas...) - it’s the west that has a terrible housing crisis; China has merely a housing investment crisis, which is a relatively minor problem to people.

> Mexico passed US life expectancy.

Where did you hear that? Everything I can find says the opposite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

Everything you can find says the opposite? How odd! When I search “china usa life expectancy” on DDG I get a page that’s choc-a-bloc with headlines about the provisional CDC release that says all signs point toward US Covid death rates causing such a sharp drop in US median lifespans that China, already having shown stunning improvements this past few decades and recently nipping at the US’s heels, has now pulled ahead.

Whew. Hard work. You’re welcome!

Not who you're replying to, but: Mexico, not China

Oh fuck me. Sorry, octoberfranklin.

You are right! They have not passed us yet, but our life expectancy is going down, while theirs is going up; so this may happen down the road

I’m not so sure about that… look at the demographic issues and the current banking collapse. China looks like it’s starting a pretty precipitous decline.

I hope things stabilize and people there DO keep improving, I have no desire to see anywhere stagnate or start declining. But I’m also extremely aware of how much of the Chinese state apparatus is dedicated to lying and distorting public perception, and what I hear about what’s been going on behind the scenes sounds really bad right now.

What you state is true and apparent to anyone who looks at the statistics. China has lifted billions of citizens out of desperate poverty over the past few decades. Over the same time period, middle-class wealth in the USA has been dropping and the poor have remained poor: in fact, most citizens have become less well-off. It is too bad that people afraid of uncomfortable truths have downvoted you.

Facts:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/04/20/how-the-ame...

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/us-and-china-n...

The uplift in China has been staggering and should be celebrated.

A large part of that uplift is due to massive US investments. US leaders knowingly sacrificed a lot domestic industry in order to build up a China that we thought would liberalize and act to counterbalance the Soviet Union.

What should have been a cause for solidarity and cohesion and mutual uplift, and was functioning that way until relatively recently, has turned sour. China is starting to stagnate drastically, and we have not managed to create the service economy in the US we thought could sustain the middle class in spite of the transfer. The demographic issues in China were created decades ago, as were the supply chain issues affecting the global economy. The massive real estate fraud also didn't help. Instead of actually working to productively address these issues, Xi has pumped up nationalistic rhetoric, is clamping down on business, and seems hell bent on returning to a Maoist cult of personality.

These problems will not be addressed by chest pumping about which dysfunctional system is less dysfunctional, or which past glories are brightest. The present requires focus on the problems we have in front of us, and are best addressed with eyes wide open and a hard look at the practical problems in both the Chinese and US economies.

> The present requires focus on the problems we have in front of us, and are best addressed with eyes wide open and a hard look at the practical problems in both the Chinese and US economies.

Which, unfortunately, seems to be the opposite of the direction that most politicians are going because real long term solutions are incompatible with tax cuts.

>US leaders knowingly sacrificed a lot domestic industry in order to build up a China

Lol, no - they sacrificed it for profits. Same with India. Also, China is liberalizing quite quickly; in many aspects it’s already more liberal than parts of Europe. But it doesn’t matter - it’s just an American propaganda talking point, as evidenced by not having an issue with much less liberal US Allie’s, like Saudi Arabia.

> These problems will not be addressed by chest pumping about which dysfunctional system is less dysfunctional, or which past glories are brightest.

I believe you’ll find that the last link (csis.org) discusses that in detail.

chinese data is what the central gov want it to be or else bureaucrats get trimmed, making the next data survey compliance with central gov estimates. the farce is so big that in 2022, the gov asked to redo GDP calculations "honestly" to assess the real situation (cant find articles for now)[]

[]https://www.china-briefing.com/news/people-dont-trust-chinas...

[]https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2022/04/29/is-chin...

> Now, if you are American foreign banks won't even bother dealing with you.

I'm living in the EU and any bank-related form I had to fill out ask whether I have ties to the USA. There's one for "are you citizen of a different country?", but the USA (and only the USA) is always asked for explicitly.

And non-American banks force their non-American customers to answer "are you happen to be American resident?". Even when they never did anything related to USA.

Imagine if every country on Earth asked this. But of course USA can force other countries to do whatever it wants.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com