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Comment by erulabs | Hacker News Reader

My explanation is that their tight control is an illusion. Not to get political, but the illusion of power is power, and suggesting they control billions of peoples speech is certainly an illusion of power.

China, and all other (supposedly) top-down-economies, survive only because their control is not airtight. If they were to actually have complete control, things would fall apart rapidly. “No one knows how Paris is fed” and all that.

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From my work visits and sort of guarded discussions with people there: I feel like they have just accepted the inevitable. Don't ask weird questions about things you're not supposed to ask about, be pragmatic, get things gone, get rich.

My experience as well! Pragmatism over idealism is a fantastic virtue for everyone — but turns out a vital one for communists :P

Is pragmatism really a "fantastic virtue" when people are forced away from alternatives by an overbearing government?

Is there any culture on earth that prioritizes idealism over "pragmatism", if we must use that term? What does this even look like?

There are individuals and subcultures that prioritize idealism, yes. Often they are young people. Idealistic individuals can get ground down and turned into pragmatists, but some hold onto their hopes and dreams very tightly.

I mean, one could argue that the early Soviet Union suffered from this issue. Or early revolutionary China. Cambodia is certainly an example. The french revolution might be an even better example, what with wanting to re-do the clock and calendar and such. To convert startup culture speak's "pragmatism beats idealism" into political science speak, it might come out as "rationalism has tremendous difficultly reinventing all unconscious behavior".

I wasn't aware that Chinese citizens owned the means of production ;) just looks like another authoritarian dictatorship to me.

Guess they never really tried it.

One could argue that the only system under which a citizen can own the means of production is capitalism. If you "own" something you can sell it, trade it, and otherwise use it as you wish. In any realistic version of communism these powers are transferred to a central authority instead.

Wow, even mentioning communists made you get downvoted. That's sad.

And I was being cheeky too! Such is life.

Ian Malcolm said it best:

"the kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained."

Humans are clever and typically find workarounds given enough time/hope. Sure you could argue that this is some kind of authoritarian 4D chess/matrix scenario to let off steam for an unruly populace, or it's just the natural course of things.

Culturally, the Chinese population has more of a rebellious streak than people realize. It's a weird contrast - the Great Firewall is there but citizens and often the workers that maintain the firewall seem to circumvent it on a regular basis. Often in order just to function day to day and survive, as noted above.

Also an analogy re how the image is of communist central planning, but post Deng, it's maybe even more of a freewheeling capitalist economy in some regions than the US....(especially in Shenzhen - see Bunnie Huang's write-ups of the ecosystem/economies there)

Fake it till you make it. At some point they will have full control.

Yes. LLM:s will make it easy. Even current solutions are probably good enough for them to do what what want, with an "acceptable" error margin.

There’s the Chinese saying, “Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away”.

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this: freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

Remember this: try.

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