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Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

Those computers took a fairly significant effort to design, source components, and run through manufacturing. You'd think at some point they'd be self aware enough that the open source they're adulterating also required similar levels of gratis effort and should be afforded some respect.

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If you looking into Chinese culture [1][2], it is astonishingly autocratic. Creativity is frowned on, and criticizing superiors is nearly impossible. There is a very strong "do what is asked, no questions" attitude. Business has very strong "nothing matters once I have your money" policy. I took South East Asian history in college, and Chinese culture is abundantly self-sabotaging. It was morbidly fascinating, which is why I took several courses on it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@serpentza [2] https://www.youtube.com/@laowhy86

> Business has very strong "nothing matters once I have your money" policy.

Western business now has adopted "nothing matters once I got your personal data" policy though. It seems that "nothing matters" policy is not restricted to Asia.

Opening up to China has not made that country more Western, it could be argued it has made the world more Chinese.

See also: VCs talking glowingly about how "productive" 996 makes Chinese companies and how US employees should be working similar hours to keep up.

Greed knows no national boundaries, and the societal norms that kept it somewhat under control in the West are being rapidly eroded.

I cringe when I see the term "Western" vis-a-vis countries in East Asia. How does it sound if we say "modern"? That sounds better to me. Why? Then, it includes Korea, Japan, and Taiwan -- all very modern, but not at all "Western".

I agree with your sentiment, but the collective delusion to open up to China was not an attempt to make it more modern. It truly was an attempt to westernize it. In the colonial, racist sense. The Allied powers wanted to westernize Japan and Korea as well after the second world war.

Makes me wonder how much innovation would the west see again if only we got rid of IP lawyers

Case law, at least in England and Wales, is on the side of whoever makes something out of disused or dormant designs and patents. The equitable ruling will always be made in favour of the technical infringer paying a reasonable royalty provided that use and application does not harm the rights owner.

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