RingwormOne

Can >Buzzword1< Plus >Buzzword2< Build a New Economic System?

I really have no idea what any of that means, but it sounds interesting and I want to understand it. Where do I start?

Of course they're capable. That's apparent. But a strong capital base does not fall into a nation's lap simply because its people are capable.

The Chinese had very little capital, then over the course of the 80's built it up. How? Through direct investment. They were given the investment because investors recognized that Chinese commitment to property rights and stability.

That was not always the case. The government used to be much friendlier and accommodating towards foreign business. In order to kickstart their Renaissance, the Chinese almost entirely relied on foreign capital.

You make the claim that because China was strong in the past it magically should be expected to return to strength in the future, and that foreign capital or not, such a rejuvenation would be inevitable. That's magical thinking. As I said, yes a strong cultural heritage has greatly helped the Chinese, but the initial spark and driving force during much of the 80s and 90s was foreign capital investment.

Rule of law and enforced property rights are everything. Absolutely everything.

Ever wonder how China was able to emerge from decades of regressive economic and industrial policies in a short span of time? International investors were willing to pour capital into post-Mao China because there was a strong central government presiding over an orderly society in which cheap labor was plentiful. Of course there were other factors that helped as well, like a cultural obsession with education that has generated a wellspring of human capital.

Cheap labor is everywhere. Cheap labor and stability is rare.

Sometimes interesting stories or explanations one reads about then wishes to convey to someone else may require more than a few minutes to convey. It seems that was the case here.

It's not a matter of arrogance, pseudo-intellectualism or anything else. It's a matter of wanting to share interesting things one knows.

So you're saying that no lay person can share interesting facts during casual conversation? You must be an expert on something to casually talk about it at lunch? Nonsense. This is one of the sillier things I've ever read on HN.

Exactly. Thank you

Don't the statistics show that violent crime is much higher among blacks than other racial groups?

I'd be interested to see statistics on white collar crime, but I know that there are significant resources put towards catching and sentencing white collar criminals.

I'm not sure why you would call that statement racist.

Poverty tends to beget crime, this is very hard to deny. Because the black community - as a result of the slavery of its ancestors in this country - suffers disproportionately high rates of poverty, it also suffers from disproportionately high rates of crime.

Sure, but that's why it's important to ensure competent public defenders are available to all people accused of a crime. I'd be very interested to hear suggestions on how we can improve the public defender system.

Your second point may be true, but that's the case for almost everything. Doesn't mean that everything is right or wrong. We need to judge things on a case by case basis.

And when we talk about slavery it's usually in the sense of racialized, bondage-from-birth slavery rather than penal labor.

The two are very different, and using the word 'slavery' to refer to both conflates meaning and disguises the important differences between the two.

Yes, making a criminal - who has committed a crime, been convicted and sentenced to jail time - do work is not equivalent - morally or otherwise - to racialized slavery.

Slavery has had significant long term effects on the black community. That can't be denied. Disproportionate poverty in the black community is directly tied to slavery.

However I disagree that slavery - as the term is usually meant to mean - still exists in the form of incarceration.

We as a society have decided that certain things are illegal. The black community, because of poverty (so because of slavery), disproportionately breaks those laws and so there is disproportionate incarceration.

Slavery is the root cause of this disproportionate incarceration, but we should not blame the fact that we have a system which punishes criminals, or equate the enforcement of laws with slavery.

Instead we should be trying to eliminate outdated laws - the illegality of marijuana for instance - and also reducing crime in the black community.

This is good for both the US and foreign nations that tend to send H-1B workers to the US.

US based workers will have more opportunities, and foreign nations will be able to reign in some of the brain drain that the allure of US industry and opportunity causes.

A very interesting model. It aligns with that general principle of biology that dictates biological systems should do as little work as necessary. The robustness to cell death exhibited in figure B near the end is reminiscent of our own brain's robustness.