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Comment by TranquilMarmot | Hacker News Reader

TikTok in China is already cut off from the rest of the world. The US is just copying China's homework.

This. I think people in general misunderstand the allure of power and the means to maintain it. Power centers in US are drooling at the opportunity to do what China has done in terms of controlling discourse and language. The interesting thing is that they all assume that this particular measure of control would never be turned against them.

edit: Adjusted weapon to 'measure of control'. I accept people are a little too happy to overreact lately.

In a democracy where the politicians change every 4-8 years this is receipt for disaster. The next administration will undo action taken by the previous one. In effect destroying any momentum or progress for achieving anything. For China and Russia this is not a problem because of the totalitarian state.

These fascist Republicans are not intending on giving up power. A bit China mixed with the sham democracies of Russia, Hungary or Turkey - this is the model they're going for.

What do you think the push behind the new gerrymandered districts is for?

Why do you think they are assembling a national voter registration database that hasn't existed before? https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-doj-national-...

Why are they creating fake emergencies to justify inserting federal police and the national guard in major cities with big Democratic voting populations?

Get your surprised pikachu memes ready for the day martial law is called to permanently postpone the election.

I thought conservatives were the conspiracy theorists.

1. Gerrymandering is and always has been a thing, blue and red. Nothing has changed.

2. Government puts government data from multiple government places into one government place. More news at 11.

3. Because you get stabbed/shot for just existing in them? Because of the riots earlier this year?

Fascism = Something I don't like. Get a grip.

for 3 it cant be about riots, the president is a riot fan - he bukk pardoned the DC rioters, so its a thing he doesnt consider to be bad.

i dont think thats a good guess

Have mid decade redistrictings at the request of the president so he doesn't lose his ass in the midterms always been a thing?

There were no riots, you don't get stabbed or shot just for existing in these cities. What planet are you living on?

Violent crime has been dropping for years in almost every major liberal city in America. Are there still random incidents? There always will be, but fun violence rates are actually higher in many rural and GOP led states than in major cities.

You need to get a grip and disconnect yourself from the propaganda the fascists are feeding you. The military does not belong in US cities.

I'm sure that by now someone on the Trump administration has also realized this and has some plan to keep the politicians from changing.

We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.

Careful now, you don't want to accused of spreading hate speech

> We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.

Except China doesn't actually serve its people. Things are way more cut-throat there, with much less safety net. The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for.

> The Chinese government sees workers as grist for the mill, not something to be cared for.

I think this is universal, but perhaps China indeed may be worse.

There is a significant difference in a population of 70 million educated workers who need to be maintained for high performance and 400 million low skill workers who are highly replaceable.

I am trying to make no judgement here, just explaining then 'motivational environment'

This math of course is in flux to a degree we haven't seen in maybe 1000+ years though right now.

> 70 million educated workers who need to be maintained for high performance

But what if AI surpasses human skill and now you have need for 0 educated workers. Not good for human citizens...

Thus my final statement about this math being in flux

Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.

> Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.

The Chinese rural population still isn't eligible for local equivalent of social security in their old age (that's only for city folks), and IIRC there was a huge unwillingness to provide financial assistance to individuals during COVID.

Sure, and also quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory.

A few hundred million of that rural population have become city folk.

> A few hundred million of that rural population have become city folk.

Not legally, IIRC China has an internal passport system, and workers who migrate to the city from the countryside typically remain must registered in the countryside (and are therefore denied access to city benefits).

hukou has changed a lot, particularly since 2014 and you'll find that it exist in its strictest form only for cities > 5 million inhabitants. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou

I think you can it's just shifted by several decades because China took a long dark detour through the Cultural Revolution. QoL exploded in the US in the Post War period, partially imo because we were the only industrialized economy that didn't have significant homeland attacks during WW2 so the US got a straight shot to the top of the heap. China got a similar QoL lift through a similar path, mass manufacturing (this time business taken from the US by being far cheaper) and growth of in country expertise. Now even China is feeling a similar cost squeeze drawing some business to smaller neighbors. They're also just so much larger they can sustain a larger gradient between coasts that look closer to '1st' world costs and poorer interiors where cheaper manufacturing can be done.

Sure, but what's relevant is what sort of political and cultural pressures we're all experiencing now. Maybe China is just a few years behind on the same crunch trajectory we're on, maybe not, but that doesn't matter much to what's going on today.

Well if the complaint is China is experiencing/experienced much more recently a big uplift in QoL vs the US it's because China was behind the US in it's economic development so it had easier gains to make.

We're no where near experiencing the same political and cultural forces because the US and China are vastly different on many axes both in their structure and culture and importantly we're very very different economically.

A government-provided safety net is not an absolute good; you need to ask what holes are being filled.

Just because you have fewer full-body casts than someone who just got in a bad wreck, does not mean you are worse off.

"Democratic People's Republic of America"

Probably more like "Republican People's Democracy of America"

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