free_rms

Is "communist" not a description of the economic system?

How "communist" was Pinochet? He had total 1-party control, after all.

Is North Korea a Democratic Republic? That's what they call themselves, after all.

You information sources are sick though, bro. Nobody has better information sources than you.

It's not a personal attack, you're still calling China communist and don't seem to understand how things work there. They're something else.

There's more small business than america, by a lot, the biggest internet companies outside of America... I think you've redefined 'communist' into some sort of tautological catch-all.

Here, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China. Unless the Wikipedia editors are communist conspiracists as well.

US politics have had a "big bad" for 80 straight years now, it's basically a reflex.

I'm all for securing domestic chip manufacturing but can we stop with the vanquishing? It sounds like you're talking about an army of orcs.

I did say I was out on a limb..

Anyways, you've made clear that your reference point for understanding China is Soviet Eastern Europe. If you check a map and a calendar, you can see some places where that reference point might be inexact.

> You don't know the first thing about my information diet.

You've given some pretty strong hints about it in fact, and tripled down in this comment.

I'll go out on a very specific limb, tell me I'm wrong: Moved to the US from an eastern european country at a young age, perhaps exactly 1989, parents talk a lot about how bad it was?

And "state-controlled to the tune of Norway" is approximately accurate, thank you. You know they have gigantic private corporations there? Alongside the state-owned oil behemoths, Norway makes for a particularly nice comparison.

In the book we're discussing, the Cultural Revolution is presented as a catastrophe where the heroes are well-meaning scientists who's neutral observations of nature are twisted into being counter-revolutionary.

The book covers the Cultural Revolution like US films cover Vietnam: not favorably.

This thread started under the topic "believe it or not, Chinese people are actually pretty happy with their government given the record over the last few decades".

Can you think about what would be persuasive to such a person?

They're not American, didn't grow up on your information diet, and really don't give a shit about what's "communist" or not. Their economy is state-controlled to the tune of Norway, or a little less so. Who cares. They are all doing way better than a generation or 2 ago, and here in America, we are comparatively struggling. They see this. Why should they want our system instead?

Do you even know who Deng Xiaopeng is?

Changing systems without a massive, disruptive loss of life is actually a huge accomplishment. No other nation has transitioned out of communism smoothly. It had the side effect of not changing names of various things.

The third book is good, almost as good as the second imo. Manages to become completely insane while still feeling believable at each step.

Germany's an ally. We don't try to beat them up over hitler, and it wouldn't make sense if we did. For basically the same reasons, so good choice of analogy I guess.

I don't know if you read the books but there are some pretty severe consequences.

Can you name the dates and major events within the Great Leap forward or Cultural Revolution without googling and reading wikipedia?

I'm not trying to assert authority here but you could look at the last 500 years, the last 200, 100, years, the last 50 years.. cherrypicking a 25 year period that happened between 70-45 years ago is kinda weird if you're after understanding rather than scoring points.

Apparently the evil alien robot in book 3 is waaaaay more Japanese-sounding in the Mandarin version.

What's happening in India is that farmers were/are going to be screwed, and they're really mad about it.

What has happened in China is that a billion farmers are massively, undescribably better off. You literally cannot describe it to the average American, their scale for lifestyle doesn't go that low.

I didn't get that from it at all. The theme of the last book is a conflict between values and survival. What's the point of survival if you sacrifice all values to do so?

Liu is Chinese just like most of HN are American so there will be different default stances on international politics, but the books did not read as jingoistic to me.

Expert programmers should write 'low quality' programs if that's what the situation calls for. Most of us are solving business problems, and lateral thinking can be worth more than perfect engineering or fancy algorithms.

Absolutely right, and I should have written that :)

That said, seems like the easier narrative for the NYT to go with as well -- they don't have to own up to their editorial failures up the chain that way.

It's concerning that that's the lever, though.

Break every rule of your profession and publish a bunch of BS? We'll give you another chance. Gave an inappropriate backrub 10 years ago? You're out!

He should have been fired for Caliphate and expressly for Caliphate.

If the UK is banning Chinese 'State Media', the BBC is a pretty natural target for a clap back..

Which society should they demographically match, America?

They have a lot of experience in every part of the car except the drive train. And once you have the battery, the rest of the drive train is.. pretty easy? I think? You're just hooking 2 motors to 2 wheels?

Someone tell me what I'm missing here.

Edit: someone down thread pointed out charging station build out.

The whole point is the immature shit-for-brains act. It's funny on multiple levels when mashed up with analysis of equities.

You don't have to dig the humor but the public square is not "your house".

Not OP but it's the grown up subset rather than the Abbie Hoffman set. Hilarious pranks are hilarious but sesame street is more widely and subtly influential.

Kill a hundred thousand Yemenis and nobody bats an eye, but you bone-saw one little washington post reporter and now it's a crisis.

Very well put re: the cherry picking. I wasn't so much arguing for autocracy as arguing against buying our own agitprop.

I think it's more about multipolar vs unipolar.

The time period you describe includes multiple massive european wars between nation states who were incentivized to improve industrialization, logistics and yes technology.

China's periodic bloody uprisings don't create the same incentive, they basically didn't have foreign policy until it came knocking.

Huge buried assumption in this comment that democracy in general or America's system in particular is more likely to produce 'correct' decisions than China's 100 million party members and their hierarchical politics.

It's interesting to compare/contrast the incentives created in each system but in light of the last 20 years of decision making, it's hard to claim America aced it.

China as a nation dealt with 'change' in the form of white men on awesome ships with awesome guns coming and having their way for 100 years.

Going from their nadir in WWII to what they are now in 70 years seems awfully adaptable to me.

The linked post said project manager.

Good PRODUCT managers, in small numbers, are worth their weight in gold IMO. Researching/talking to users takes time, making decks takes time, stepping back and surveying the landscape takes time. It's worth having someone doing that.