Chinese State Media Persuades a Global Audience That the China Model Is Superior | Hacker News Reader

Chinese State Media Persuades a Global Audience That the China Model Is Superior

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13 pointsnindalf9 comments

An authoritarian top-down hierarchy is certainly superior for certain tasks like building a rail network and upending any villages in the way.

Democracy is slow because everyone has a voice - think Parks & Rec.

However, once an authoritarian inevitably makes a stupid decision, they tend to bash their head continuously into a brick wall wondering why nothing is changing.

Democracy is more resilient to disruption because all the things happen and solutions are stumbled upon. Authoritarians can be fast followers, but wouldn’t know where to lead.

In the context of HN it seems more the opposite, as everyday there are comments to the effect that such and such interest groups are stalemating each other in pursuing any substantive change.

The two points aren't mutually exclusive. That sort of scleroticism can happen as systems become less representative.

If there is no effective mechanism to remove populist decision makers who act like authoritarians, they will slowly accumulate and co-opt the levers of power, even in ostensibly democratic nations.

Look at nations like Turkey, Hungary, Russia. Technically democracies, with some distant memories of fair competitive elections, but everyday people have very little ability to influence their governments' actions today.

It's considered rude when someone attempts to speak for the entire reader-base on HN.

Huh, this is the third identical reply from 'kjs3' to 3 different comments on very different posts, with no seeming connection.

Surprisingly, I only noticed this 9 days later, it must have been overlooked several times.

I had thought the account got hacked but since the recent submission history seems to be of a person, this is likely a weird attempt at low-effort trolling?

Bizarre, and I don't even know who 'kjs3' is!

I think authoritarian is good for developing because it is efficient; democracy is good for developed because it is more fair. A country will be more authoritarian when economy is bad, and will be more democrat when economy is good.

> A country will be more authoritarian when economy is bad, and will be more democrat when economy is good.

If that was true, then why is China not a democracy?

Democracy is not the equilibrium state of human organization according to history.

Loosening one's grip on the victim's neck isn't the same as performing the Heimlich maneuver.

"The CCP lifted a billion people out of poverty"

Basically any policy was better than Mao's economic development plans. The deception is in how the argument is framed.

There is also the question of the unseen. Misallocating resources by over investing in infrastructure isn't easy to see. A high speed railroad is easily observable. Harder to see the lost opportunities for innovation or other economic activity because central planners chose to build out tofu-tower real estate bubbles.

Breaking a shop window employes the glazier, but what would the shop owner have done with his money otherwise? Invested in inventory? Developed a new innovative product?

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