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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

This hit the mark 24 months ago but China is in a major decline since then and its strategic ambitions surely must be reviewed by the CCP in that light.

In the past few years China had ripped apart its own economy and made most of the world into its enemy, as a result vast numbers of foreign companies have pulled out of China and there is mass unemployment. The real estate market has been shown to be a bubble and is crashing.

China has ripped up its tech sector and let any billionaires know they exist only at the pleasure of the CCP as witnessed by Jack Ma.

The good days are over for China. If there’s a war it’s because China is failing, not because it is succeeding.

The USA has more to fear from itself than China in terms of its world dominance.

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The US’s biggest problem right now appears to be an inability to build.

The U.S. is the world’s biggest arms seller in terms of revenue and yet it seems it’s incapable of ramping up ammunition production to meet the needs of the Ukrainian military, which would be a fraction of the needs of what a war that involved the U.S. fighting a symmetric power like China or Russia, as opposed to cave dwellers from the 19th century would require.

Add to that the general inability for the U.S. across both private and public sectors to do anything cheaply which means even a poorer nation might still have greater resource capacity than the U.S. So even though China's economy, contrary to expectations even a year ago, might now never grow as large as the US’s economy in dollar terms, it would still have greater capacity because it’s able to wrangle out a lot more output for every dollar than the U.S. is.

Finally, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine thoroughly discredited the Russian military, it’s also exposed the US’s lack of preparedness for the next version of war which will be heavily driven by drones and the like. Unfortunately the U.S. is relying on heavy expensive weaponry and doesn’t seem to have a great counter for inexpensive weaponry deployed in mass. So, Russia can fire large number of cheap Iranian drones at Ukraine, but Ukraine has to spend a million dollars worth of defensive weaponry to take down 100k worth of those drones, an economic difference which would not be sustainable in a larger war.

You're probably aware but for anyone not familiar, the economic term you're describing is called "purchasing power parity" (PPP) and I seem to remember that China had more or less matched the US in PPP terms some time ago.

I can say this - as much issue as I might have working in software development, I'm definitely not interested in moving to some other state to work on ammunition presses or whatever it would be to contribute to some foreign war. Even if I believed (which I do) that we are more or less on the righteous side.

People probably would move if the jobs paid well and the housing cost was affordable. The reality is that the United States has priced its people out.

Yes, I don't know what "ammunition press operator" or whatever pays, but I doubt it's enough to put the kids through college in any state in the country these days. Somehow the military industrial complex is as profitable as ever though.

> "purchasing power parity" (PPP)

this is usually heavily weighted by consumer basket, meaning China has cheap rice, clothes and basic services, but PPP for oil, cars, aircrafts, ships, industrial machinery will be equal.

Arresting local people bravely trying to reconcile with the west, like Naomi Wu also didn't help.

But I agree the US is tearing itself apart in the two party war.

> But I agree the US is tearing itself apart in the two party war.

It’s remarkable that people continue to frame the US’s problems in this way.

There is only 1 party that has taken the U.S. to the brink every time the debt ceiling has been a factor.

The same party is currently unable to select a speaker within its own caucus.

The same party took the U.S. to decade long wars in the Middle East.

The same party is the only major political party in the world that denies the reality of climate change.

The same party has overseen massive increases in deficits and debts while somehow pretending they will lower both.

There is nothing redeemable about the Republican Party while the worst thing you can probably say about the Democratic Party is that they might spend a little too much, and yet their spending has caused lower increases in deficits than the tax cuts implemented by the Republican Party.

The U.S. has a 1 party problem. The other party is a big standard average Western centrist party at worst.

> The U.S. has a 1 party problem. The other party is a big standard average Western centrist party at worst.

The other party has a problem too, just a very different kind that is ultimately synergizing well with the badness of the Republican party - utter incompetence at a lot of points.

The 2016 election was a great example of that. Dem-affiliated media giving Trump all the screen time in the world and free promotion they could, because the profits are too nice to ignore and “haha who would vote for him anyway, amirite”? Check. Running a heavily disliked candidate that previously failed (in 2008), with a heavy twinge of “it is her turn”? Check. That candidate almost entirely ignoring important battleground states during the campaign, all while Trump was campaigning very aggressively in those states (and then subsequently winning them)? Check. I absolutely hate the fact that I called it out (as soon as the primaries started) that Trump was very likely to win. Which got me clowned at the time.

This is just the most surface level easiest points to make, and only about the 2016 election. If one wanted to, they could dive into this much deeper.

I will say this though, Dems seem to have gotten their shit together a bit more recently, so that’s a nice development. However, let’s not pretend that just because the Republican party is tearing things up using their methods, Dems aren’t doing the same as well (just in very different ways that help the Reps do their job more efficiently).

So your big complaint about the other party is that media companies they are "affiliated" with covered someone running for President who was saying shocking things?

Yes, both sides are truly the same. Why bother even voting?

Quite a big theme tbh I'm not smart enough to make a comprehensive reply to your question that encompasses all the socialogical, economical and so on thing.

But my 2 cent on this topic as common dude is that nowadays it pretty useless to vote since both parties have scandals or some grade of corruption.

On the other hand if you don't vote you are just idle and you can't complain if things don't change if you don't act

I'm talking about almost every first world country rn not just the US

I know it is in bad tone on HN, but did you read the rest of my comment? Asking because the part about the media was just one small piece and, imo, the least relevant point out of all that I’ve made.

And I’ve never said anything even close to resembling “both sides are the same.” They are not. But they are both contributing to the whole tearing things apart issue, just in very different ways.

> Why bother even voting?

Because I believe that voter participation is vital to preserving any semblance of a democracy.

The comment you replied to was making a fairly clear case, which you quoted:

> The U.S. has a 1 party problem. The other party is a big standard average Western centrist party at worst.

Their entire point was about the false balance BS that enables this almost incredible level of dysfunction.

And your reply is about how the Democrats really do have problems and your list is, in a word, weak. All of it, not just the "news media covering news" item I singled out.

So you're doing exactly what the person you replied to was complaining about, and contributing to the problem.

>There is only 1 party that has taken the U.S. to the brink every time the debt ceiling has been a factor.

That would be the military junta that really runs the country, masquerading as a republic through the smoke and mirrors of the revolving door between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR.

I understand your sentiment.

However my point of view is, when there is a war there are two parties fighting. One side started it more than the other, yes. One side did worse things than the other, yes. The other side did have to respond, well maybe.

But as long as this continues it's on both parties in my point of view. The democrats are not perfect. In particular, they are just as beholden to campaign contributor interests as the republicans are.

But both are fighting now and considering a loss of the other a win for their camp (zero-sum thinking). Until this is prevalent, this will not end and the country will continue to suffer. Someone will have to be the responsible one and stop it.

PS: I'm not in favour of the republicans personally, I'm socialist. I'm a lot more left-wing than even the democrats in the US. Where I don't live. And glad not to, to be honest, I have been offered a job in Silicon Valley in the past and have declined. Now, I have to say this was during the Trump reign and with the whole Corona thing going on. Not the best of times.

But I blame both for this continuing battle that puts the position of the US as a geopolitical force at risk, because the enemies don't have this particular infighting issue (easy, being mostly dictatorships) and they take full advantage of this weakness. With the world with China and Russia as major powers we are all a lot worse off.

What are your thoughts on the politics of California?

Sibling post by "addicted" takes aim at your "two party war" throwaway line. He/she seems offended by the implied "false equivalency". Let me take this in a different direction --

What's keeping the US from having a Speaker of the House? Infighting within the Republican party.

Or, what have the fiercest political fights been around the Bay Area? Who "cancels" whom? It's all infighting among Democrats.

So while there's polarization, there's also infighting. This concept of "realignment" captures some of it, but not completely. (Also, Democrats have been fighting recently, with success, to hang onto labor, and Republicans have been noticeably absent from recent strikes, which calls the whole "realignment" into question.) I do see a "hidden" political axis that is split between the two parties and neutered, though.

I didn't mean for it to be a throwaway comment. I just didn't feel like going to deeply into it, thinking it was obvious to everyone.

While I'm personally more aligned with the democracts in the US (I'm a socialist in Europe), I do see the same kind of zero-sum thinking from both parties. "The loss of the other side is a win for our side". This is not sustainable as it leads to ever more polarisation.

I wrote about this in a little more detail recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860952

Yeah, I wouldn't fundamentally disagree with your point, either. While there is this other layer I describe, the polarization is of course a major problem.

I'd also agree with your characterization, in your other post, of how the proportional, Parliamentary systems in Europe make the issue a little less bad there. When that comes up I always cite Duverger's Law.

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