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Comment by pgsandstrom | Hacker News Reader

Swede here. We fear a chinese hegemony as well.

I don't. As Finn I have big enough country in between. And they have not yet done global terrorism with things like drone strikes. So to me they are at this moment the good guys.

Your "good guys" use slave labor and harvest organs from prisoners. Their people suffer under censorship as they instigate domestic conflicts abroad. They are just as imperialist as anyone else you can imagine, but they are still challenged by the US. If they get into a dominant position, prepare to be censored or disappeared in your own country because of what they think of your online comments.

Bad guys loved slavery so much they enshrined it in the document they value the most. Maybe if they got rid of the entire thing I might trust them even tiny bit...

And about prisoners weren't there just post in HN how organs got harvested as well from prisoners? Some that end up dead by "suicide" if they might have something against people in power. Or how some whistle-blowers about to criticize important part of their terrorism-complex end up dead... One makes wonder just how good and moral the citizenry are if people behind that sort of stuff keep getting elected...

Let me get this straight. You don’t like the US because we removed slavery from our Constitution instead of just removing the Constitution? What were we supposed to do instead?

No you put it in there. Slavery is now part of the document it is explicitly approved and glorified part of that document. Only way to really fix that sort of thing is to get rid of such evil document entirely. Correct way would have been total and absolute ban. But instead it was chosen not to do that. But to add only tiny clause against it.

Can you point me to the part where it says that? I’ll be sure to vote to change it and/or call my representatives, something I do every so often.

In the meantime while we’re working on that, do you know of any countries where I couldn’t do that? Perhaps places where the state sponsored social media would censor these words I’m typing before they made it to you. I want to keep a list and avoid buying microwaves from those places

Paraphrased the 13th amendment says slavery or involuntary servitude shall be used as punishment for crime. That if anything in my reading is absolute support for slavery. Which should be clear looking at how high ratio of people in the USA is punished for crimes.

That's not a reasonable paraphrasing. There's no directive that it "shall be used", there's an exception to the statement that it isn't allowed to exist.

I can understand objecting to penal labor, but you are over in "words don't mean things" territory.

Sure, let’s assume that’s a problem. The wording is not great, I don’t like it, let’s get rid of it. I’m still not sure how that requires re-writing the whole thing?

I also wonder - if you’re so opposed to slavery, what do you think about https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie... ? You did call them the good guys.

EDIT: it’s not even zero in Finland! https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/map/#mode=map:...

https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...

Gives 3.3 people per thousand in slavery. If the people there were good human beings should it not be zero? They have had much longer time to fix this, but have done absolutely nothing clearly. So they must be the bad guys, don't you agree? At least we can agree that they are comparatively worse guys. As they have had much longer to fight against slavery but have not done it.

No, I don’t agree and your argument makes no sense. Slavery has historically gone down in American but is going up in China. Clearly we have not done “absolutely nothing”. I don’t know what you mean by “a longer time”, slavery has existed in China since well before the current Chinese regime.

America is not perfect (maybe not even good) but your attempt to portray them as “worse” than China is nonsensical, the Chinese NK and Russian governments are as bad as it gets in 2024

The US had slavery over a hundred and fifty years ago, at a time when it was common practice. Over 600k men died fighting to end slavery. When China has such an uprising over its slavery, then you can lecture us about it. Ok?

As for the other stuff you mention, it is well-known that there are sketchy things done by people in power in virtually every country. So in some sense, there are no good guys. But to say China is on par with the US on human rights is ridiculous on the face of it. People are silenced constantly in China over mundane stuff that makes the government look bad. If you won't submit to thug tactics, they will put you in prison.

There are like a million people working to censor the Chinese internet. Just yesterday I heard about a bus crash in China involving the death of a little girl, and the government was threatening the parents and witnesses, and stealing flowers from the site of the accident. If you want to live under that kind of oppression, go move to China. I think you're probably a Chinese propaganda agent but I say it anyway.

I'm Brazilian and I couldn't care less. Do not see the same advocacy in IT against American imperialism and financeirization of the whole world or against the cartels of american companies products preventing me of having a job due to no significant industry in Brazil.

I agree it’s bad for a few companies in the west coast of America to have the power they do. However, America is a lot more trustworthy and less dangerous than the CCP, who are currently committing a genocide against some of their own citizens, jailing political opponents, suppressing democracy in Hong Kong, bullying other countries in South China Sea, threatening invasion of Taiwan, attacking other countries with cyber warfare, stealing through industrial espionage, and more. They’re powerful and hostile, and should be shunned by the free world until there is political change.

not to mention Xi's unconditional free blowjobs card to Putin, and no embargo enforcement against North Korea.

do not see anti Big Tech advocacy? where are you looking? every week there's at least one submission about EU vs Big Tech; every time there's any post on US law enforcement, healthcare, other cost(s) of living, compensation, etc. about US startup and software/hardware development culture or industry people rightfully say the words, fuck Google/Meta/Amazon/etc.

The main thing is that i do not see practical efforts by the workforce (us, as yes, i worked for an american company before going jobless) to sabotage these efforts. Everyone is happy getting their bucks and doing the dream of their lives in amazing projects while other people with enough talent who could at least contribute but were born outside of the spectrum watch with even their life being on the line due to having acquired the skills in the wrong place.

Same in France, I fear China quite as much as Russia or the USA.

As someone living in the Eastern Europe I don't care if something is manufactured in US or China. I would rather have things manufactured locally so our economy grows and there are more jobs.

Know plenty of eastern european manufacturers who went bankrupt because they couldn’t compete with cheap chinese workforce. At this point it’s fait accomplished and past tense. But this trend continues to erode local indistries

If this was the case nowhere outside the US would have significant industry. Australia, UK and EU would be wastelands with no opportunity.

This is a drastic oversimplication, and blame game. There are plenty of internal problems with Brazil preventing industry. Taking just one -- Corruption is a significant damper on economic opportunity.

The book "Why Nations Fail" has some amazing insights into why corruption amongst other things has a massive impact on dampening opporunities. The TLDR is that you need confidence of a level playing field, that your hard work won't be taken away from you.

Brazil rates very badly on the global corruption perception index[0], 36/100 compared to say Australia at 75/100 and Germany at 78/100.

It is the OECD[1] view that corruption is one of the significant limiting factors on Economic growth and opportunity within Brazil.

This[2] gov.uk page has some fantastic reading about the problems with doing business with Brazil. You need look no further than this for the things that will need to be solved if you want Brazil to be competitive on the world stage.

This is just one factor amongst many.

  - [0]: https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/brazil
  - [1]: https://www.oecd.org/policy-briefs/brazil-strengthening-integrity-for-sustainable-growth.pdf
  - [2]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/overseas-business-risk-brazil/overseas-business-risk-brazil

Always the accusation we are doing something wrong. Industrial espionage, outright "selective" prosecution of corruption cases against national companies while sidelining foreign companies who did the same things, forced assimilation/buyout of our rare startups are always ignored. Suspicious cases where governments are simply "removed" in impeachments due to not having favourable foreign policy to the US or economic policies which are developmentalist and not of the non-interventionist kind not considered in the analysis. This is exactly what our local media says, which gives us two options

1- You are right and reality is simply reproduced in distinct social stratums around the world

2- Something doesn`t adds up.

Don't get me wrong the US absolutely misbehaves. China misbehaves. Russia misbehaves. Europe is suffering from Russian and Chinese industrial espionage, Australia has definitely been the target of Chinese espionage. (Leaving the Ukraine war to the side for the purposes of this discussion)

Brexit is almost certainly linked to Russian influence. The difference is Australia, UK and Australia have strong institutions and firm anti-corruption mechanisms.

Brazil can't succeed until it deals with it's internal problems. Media that blames everyone but internal problems is just serving interests that would prefer the people to look elsewhere.

Brazilians don't care because they largely live in poverty, and China is promising the country and its people economic salvation. It's an easy choice for Brazil against America, whom they see as an economic oppressor.

Brazilian here that welcome a multi polar world. Here we had much worse experience dealing with Europe and USA than with China, which at least did not colonized our country, did not implanted a dictatorship, nor enslaved or tortured people here.

Do you speak on behalf of the entire country?

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