A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers, who could just take and print his works.
Likewise the Chinese often ignore foreign copyrights and patents, though not as much as the US did back then.
So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent? Copyright is more than paying "fair share," the enforcement apparatus puts a large opportunity cost which is ordinarily unaccounted for. I am less likely to innovate and iterate if I have to navigate patents and copyright compliance, as all of that is administrative cost and the legal risks are well and above R&D costs. I argue it creates an environment of not bothering, when one has to tip-toe on egg shells to avoid massive liabilities in suits coming out of nowhere from trolls and such.
If I built a binary Linux distro, you know damn well ZFS will be in the kernel, it will be hosted on only .onion and .i2p, and all Linux Foundation and Oracle Corp C&D emails will be published with sensibly witty lampooning comments.
It sounds like one party is getting all the advantage of a piece of IP without having to make any investment in it's generation, which is a competitive advantage.
That's the idea behind patents. You get a period of what is essentially monopoly license in exchange for the idea being made available to the public. The issue with copyright is that it lasts far too long now compared to the original length (14 years in the US), which throws off the balance.
> So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent?
Even this feeble pitch would hold a lot more weight if companies either couldn't own copyright or couldn't purchase the copyright. As it is it's more like a corrupt rent-extraction scheme with government backing.
> If you’re ignoring copyright and IP rights while catching up? That’s just freeloading, you need someone to pay for all the research/innovation.
This is not true. Everyone, everywhere, who created any thing ever, built it on the backs of [millennia of] previous creators.
History teaches us that innovation flows in the absence of restrictions - including rent-seeking. Conversely, modern history teaches us that IP gets in the way everywhere it can.
Innovation and progress happened at a snail’s pace (by modern standards) before IP rights (at least rudimentary) became a thing. Not saying there was a causal relationship necessarily but if we look at some of the most important inventions like the steam engine it’s unlikely that it could have been invented and perfected at the time it was without patents.
It’s rather [extremely] simple and obvious , generally R&D requires significant investment. If you can’t get any return on your investment, you won’t invest.
Of course there needs to be a balance to minimize rent seeking beyond a certain point.
Charles Dickens writes a book. Everyone copies and sells it without permission. Charles Dickens starves. Charles Dickens either becomes a factory worker or dies. No more Charles Dickens books.
The first publisher to get a hold of one would have a massive advantage.
Publisher pays Charles Dickens to only provide his newest work to them. Many publishers want this privilege, there is a bidding war.
Publisher sells millions in the first week, eventually other publishers get in on the action but it takes time to typeset, print and ship the books. The book is the talk of the town, consumers want one now.
Publishing house doesn't make outsized profits years after the authors death and instead has to compete on the quailty of its publishing in the free market.
Rent seeker has to get a factory job or dies. The market is brimming with high quailty editions of each authors work available to everyone at a price point they can afford.
That’s not how it worked back in the 1800s, that’s not even how it works now.
In any case Charles Dickens would have earned less than he did and a larger proportion of surplus would have went to printers and publishers. How is that in any way a positive thing?
And of course without physical distribution your “business” model is even more absurd (being very absurd to begin with).
I’m not sure if you are aware (presumably not) but that’s how publishing worked in the 1500s. Cervantes got a lump sum for the Don Quixote (and his other books) and he was never able to sustain himself by writing and a had to have a daytime job.
His books were (relatively) extremely popular at the time and no publishers outside of Spain paid him anything. It seems rather absurd that even someone like him could never make a comfortable living by writing?
> Rent seeker has to get a factory job or dies
These bizarrely unhinged anti IP takes are truly something else..
I mean sure the “fair” duration of copyright is up for discussion, author’s life + 70 years is probably excessive.
> Why does that level of effort entitle someone to a "comfortable living"?
Because people enjoyed his books and were willing to pay for them? (But all the profits when to the printers in Belgium etc)
> That's on the order of a few words a day.
That irrelevant. It’s about the value/utility you provide and not the amount of labor.
Also you(or me) really have no clue how many words he wrote per day even if that were relevant. Maybe he wrote a dozen drafts for each book which he discarded, how would that change anything?
I mean… if you wrote down 500 words per day would you believe that you deserve to be paid more for that than Cervantes for e.g. 0.01 of his words?
> Shakespeare
Ran a theater (together with his partners) i.e. he was both the writer and the publisher.
His final theater troupe was sponsored directly by the King (previous one by the Lord Chamberlain) and had a royal patent and operated in a heavily regulated market. So surely not a very good example?
Or is patronage and a system heavily regulated by the government preferable to legal copyright? Because that the only realistic alternative besides having no content.
> entitle
What entitles you to the content of your bank account or retirement savings? Maybe even your house? What kind of a question was that even? (I don’t really get it)
The talking point is always focused on rewarding those who did the work but that I have to pay to enforce the scheme and the cost of going without if we don't get permission is also not important at all.
Funny as hell to pay so that it can be assured I don't get to use something.
I think we should find ways to at least judge some technology valuable enough to buy it into the public domain at sensible but non-negotiable rates.
America's economic strength doesn't rely on something as easily copyable as intellectual property.
Look at SpaceX. What they had perfected isn't going to be easily available in patents, homeworks for other people to copy, especially the Chinese. What they are willing to do is what other companies and organizations aren't willing to do. When SpaceX steadily made progress, people kept dismissing them until it's too late and now SpaceX is pushing ahead anyway.
It's a form of false strength, and there had been discussion about how detrimental patent laws are to innovations.
My grandfather filed patents on his method of forming large halide crystals. However, all attempts to duplicate his process have failed to produce those crystals, and he's long dead.
He apparently wished to both protect his process and keep it secret.
It seems like the usual status quo power and revisionist power conflict: [0]
In every political system, the existing rules are created to preserve the existing status quo. Where do those rules come from? There is chaos and war (not necessarily kinetic; there are trade wars too), the war ends with a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability (as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting), and the signatories to peace create rules to maintain their desired outcome.
Later a power arises for whom that peace isn't desireable. They are the revisionist power and want a change. Intellectual property rights are desireable for those who have a lot of intellectual property, the status quo IP powers. New powers might not have IP and don't find IP rights to be desireable.
If the revisionist power is strong enough, then either the status quo powers accomodate them - perhaps a controlled IP transfer program for developing countries, in return for strong IP laws or openness to foreign investment within those countries - or there's war (again, not necessarily kinetic war - maybe lots of hacking and IP theft, for example).
[0] "International relations analysts often differentiate between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign entities, and more."
I'll try to keep my sentences shorter for you. :-)
It's not that 'wars must end, otherwise they keep fighting', but that there is 'a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability ... otherwise they keep fighting'. [0]
I will stipulate that the sentence could have parsed more clearly. :-(
[0] It's just Clausewitz, effectively: Warfare is politics conducted by other means.
In 2000, Bo McCoy and Ron McCoy organized a joint family reunion of the Hatfield and McCoy that garnered national attention. More than 5,000 people attended.
What does that mean? Aren't there endless examples of peace? Unless you just say all conflict is part of a great universal conflict, which you'll have to give us some evidence for.
I'd say either both are equally natural (hard to believe when you've been conditioned in a mostly competitive environment) or cooperation is actually more common (it's just that you consciously register the competitive).
It’s very successful in areas where software is a “cost center” (i.e. allows companies to use it reduce the cost of developing (semi)proprietary software)and not the end product. Everywhere else it’s mixed or a failure (e.g. video games).
One reason I'm always skeptical of the IP moralists. IP is not property. If it was it wouldnt need the classifier. It's really just a rent seeking mechanism
IP law is more analogous to zoning in that it fixes the supply of land that can be used for a particular purpose.
I know everyone gets a stupid stick up their ass over property ownership and "rent seeking" but property ownership is just ownership of "something". You can rent seek any investment. The whole point of much every professional license is that we all agree to let these people "rent seek" because they've proved they don't suck at the subject.
Yeah some people don't get that "property" is just as much a constructed concept as everything else is. It is an agreement/contract between people that is enforced by other people (e.g. the government).
Owning a home might seem more "real" than owning some IP, but it is just an agreement, and without a proper enforcement, anybody could enter and live in your house (which is what actually happens with squatters in some European countries where you're not allowed to kick them out by yourself and police don't care).
So property rights were never "real" (inherently) — they only become real when somebody kicks your ass for violating them. That's the only real thing about it.
Well… by Western standards the patent on silk (tea is probably no even applicable) would have expired a couple of thousand year prior to the 1800s. Nobody is arguing in favor of perpetual patents..
Edit: the Romans first “stole” silk in the 500s, but still
To be fair it’s not like the Chinese were unwilling to buy western goods (not just opium) it’s just that the ultra mercantilist Qing government didn’t allow them to..
The guy who developed the textile industry in the US memorized the drawings for the machinery before immigrating to the US. There was nothing for the export customs people to find.
Anyone who thinks Chinese science isn't catching up extremely fast is dreaming. In my own area accepted papers at top conferences from china have gone from a negligible amount to about 50% in the space of 15 years. It's only a matter of time before the top prizes mentioned will follow in my opinion.
Look at the authors of AI papers from big tech companies, many are authored by Chinese. There are also a lot of teams in some big tech companies (e.g. Meta), who are 100% chinese. I've heard they muscle out non-chinese employees. I bet it's difficult for Zuck. He has to choose between patriotism or business. As we know, in the short term globalisation and business are at odds with America.
I remember when I was in university in the UK (2014). The cohort was atleast 40% Mainland chinese. I bet some had cheated on their English tests to get into the university. One of my Chinese friends told me he planned to learn the cutting edge research in the UK from a well known UK company related to my field and bring it back to his dad's business.
Strategically, not only are we in a bad position, but it is actively getting worse. Economically, there is nothing wrong with Chinese citizens paying £40K a year on university tuition fees, on top of that, spending money on nice accommodation, which has been "great" for the UK economy. We pay for their cheap labour and manufacturing, and they pay for our services. Also, going back to Zuck, chinese employees have a harder working culture (e.g. "996") - that hustle leads to exponential better results (IMHO). The western work life balance does not. Can you start a business in a culture of working 4 hours a day?
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Ultimately America, particularly once you get to the upper middle class is a straight up lazy country.
You see this often in immigrant families. The first gen comes here, knows struggle. The second gen grows up, fails to appreciate anything, drops out of college and blames mom and dad for their failures.
Then again, I don't buy into this neo coldwar propaganda.The fear mongering is getting out of hand. The Military Industry Complex needs fear though, how else would you justify spending trillions.
With a few exceptions, most of the claims coming out of Chinese reserach is immediately suspect. For decades claims were irreproducible or the work not of high quality.
It's certainly improved, and there are a few institutions that produce high quality work, but they make up a few percent of the total coming out of China.
No doubt the quality will continue to improve, but no more than any other developing country.
The number of papers from Chinese teams getting accepted into the top international journals paints a different picture.
Chinese scientists are now publishing more papers in journals like Nature and Science than American scientists are. Those are journals with very difficult peer-reviewing and editorial thresholds.
Counting papers in top journals isn’t a great measure. While top journals do have high standards, not all papers are equal.
I got published in a Nature journal but my paper was not groundbreaking by any means. You have groundbreaking research and you have “we made a slight, but important modification to an existing technology”.
In my area of physical sciences, the big breakthroughs are still coming from the US and Europe.
1. Chinese researchers are catching up and increasingly producing good papers.
and:
2. There is a lot of low-quality junk science spam coming out of China.
Are entirely compatible. Both can be true at the same time.
I don't really know about scientific papers, but the high number of Chinese patents is generally considered a fairly useless metric files mostly for "CV reasons" rather than representing any genuine invention (see e.g. [1]). But here too, "China is producing tons of trash patents" and "China is catching up on innovation" are entirely compatible.
I wonder if those top conferences need updating their process and have stronger verification of submissions. China took fake it till you make it to fake it while you can keep getting away with it.
Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways in which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands today our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends are too big to ignore.
Amazon is similar. Their service is essentially to make buying the random, weirdly-named products from China as “safe” and convenient as possible. (By “safe” I mean a bare minimum of having a generous return policy. Not that they are actually vetting safety.)
I would place Temu, Alibaba, and TikTok shop somewhere on that same spectrum of safety.
It’s incredible how unsafe our products are. They are practically unvetted, and even when they are, Amazon sells counterfeits under the same SKU comingling. And risks nothing because the product was technically sold by “INXBDBA”.
Having been to Armenia, which has practically no laws because it’s not part of the EU, I wonder what would happen “naturally”, if EU laws didn’t exist in the EU. Maybe we’d get exactly the same quality of products.
> And risks nothing because the product was technically sold by “INXBDBA”.
The kicker is that this is a classic "cobra effect" [1] that has bogged down government offices. Those useless brands exist because Amazon tried to cut down on counterfeits and no-name junk by implementing a policy of requiring the brand to be a registered trademark. Instead of cutting down on junk products, it led to an explosion of junk brands [2].
I was talking to an engineer who has a worked on a few majority buildings in NYC, SF. His take was it was mostly regulations slowing things down. Not that the regulations were overly onerous, but rather NIMBYs leverage the regulations to fight the projects every possible step of the way.
Before even breaking ground, the environmental assessments would take years and close to $1M. Relatively straightforward assessments are contested by people who don't want it built, and current regulations force builders to come to yet another hearing, respond, then wait for a response, then another hearing for a decision.
If they win, then the NIMBY files a lawsuit contesting the environmental hearing's decision.
This is a reason why people selling fixer-uppers in SF charge way more if they have approved permits for it. The time and money spent can easily be >$100,000.
I don't think it's even NIMBY. It's just that doing big labour projects in us, EU, UK, etc is too expensive.
Until we figure out how to develop our infrastructure without throwing manpower at it, we're going to get left behind. Our roads, rail, power, etc will all age and fail to keep up.
We got to where we were because our great great grandparents all worked for significantly less, consumed significantly less. Our society shouldn't expect that of us, we need to have technology/IP that enables us to more with less people. One person controlling a bricklaying robot can get paid a respectable wage while keeping costs down.
> doing big labour projects in us, EU, UK, etc is too expensive
To be clear, the EU is huge -- 27 countries. In the east, there are plenty of poor and lower income people who are happy to move to other parts of EU for construction work. As for US and UK, I agree: There is no cheap labour. How do you explain why there is so much infra construction in Korea and Japan, but the prices are reasonable? They are both highly advanced nations.
Alon Levy over at Pedestrian Observations has a pretty well developed theory on this. The Anglosphere countries perform worse than Spain, Korea, etc., for a few reasons, some legal- the lawsuit bonanza up thread- and some more specific to the nontechnical bureaucracy in the high cost countries.
> so much infra construction in Korea and Japan, but the prices are reasonable
Just watched a Bloomberg short about SK where they complain that they are overworked, over-stressed, hypercompetitive, depressed as a people, giving up on starting families out of fear of financial insecurity. (also, seems top suicidal in SK) No idea if it's true, but that all might have something to do with keeping the wages down?
> One person controlling a bricklaying robot can get paid a respectable wage while keeping costs down.
what happens to all other persons? For example, there are 3.5 million truck drivers in US, whose only skill, with all due respect, is to sit behind the wheel all day long. Once we have robocars, they will all start to sing and dance and will get some time to discover their true calling?
I'm not as concerned about them advancing technologically as I am about their demographics. I just hope the resolution does not involve war, as it often has throughout history.
China is about to reach the tipping point where solar and batteries will be cheaper than all forms of energy the resulting efficiency gains will not cause the demographic economic collapse people are expecting.
On the other hand the way they are slowly encroaching on some of the largest economic moats of the west like car manufacturing and Jumbo Jets the wars might be coming from the other side.
They have a lopsided gender distribution in favor of men, and an expected population collapse in the not too distant future. This does not spell happiness and harmony.
They are far from a demographic catastrophe if they start doing something about it now. Also, 23% of their population is rural. 1% is enough to feed the population. They could lose 22% and it would not affect their productivity.
A policy of licensing boy births (coerced by revocation of social benefits), or a ratio requirement of conceiving n+1 girls for n boys to qualify for social security, or something, can go a long way to help prevent Chinese style tens-of-millions of excess men overhangs (due to selective abortion of females). I'm not 100% sure, but I sense there being a mild excess of women vs men would have a cooling effect on both international and domestic tensions...
... then again, I am a self-interested heterosexual man. :^)
>> China will have fewer people in 75 years than the US.
> Source? Wikipedia predicts US population of ~425 million, China ~632 million in 2100. Still a dramatic decline either way.
Also, assuming current trends continue for a ridiculously long time. The Chinese government has the ability to be massively coercive if it wants to. It's been less than a decade since they ended the one child policy. I wouldn't be surprised if that's deployed in the next 75 years to increase birthrates (e.g. "hey women under 35, you're fired unless you have two kids, kthxbye"). They already have a youth unemployment problem, and it probably wouldn't be too big of a deal for them to make sure all those unemployed youth are women having babies, and slot unemployed men into any jobs that are opened up.
The thing is that without migration, demographics are extremely predictable for a very long time. People that don't exist can't have kids. They can't be coerced to have kids. And they can't have grandchildren either.
Even if you start coercing people to have kids: that will be much harder than enforcing the one-child policy. And it will have a slow effect either way, because it is starting from such a low base.
I am not sure what is possible given the political cost (and yes even authoritarian states have political costs) but I think it’s worth noting that economics are much more powerful than any birth rate limiting policy at this point. It doesn’t matter if China raises the limit to 10.
Immigration would be a tough sell but not out of the question. In fact with an aging population China’s options may be highly limited.
> It doesn’t matter if China raises the limit to 10.
> Immigration would be a tough sell but not out of the question. In fact with an aging population China’s options may be highly limited.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking of China as having the same policy limitations and constraints as a Western country (i.e. limited to some weak carrots due to a respect for personal liberties).
If the Chinese government wants more Chinese babies, I don't think they're going to fret at all about a lot of the things Westerns would fret the most about. I think they have plenty of options to push Chinese women into having children: onerous fines for not doing so, penalties at work (getting passed over for promotion, demotion, firing), banning access to birth control, etc.
When I mentioned political cost, I meant it. Single party states still need to maintain a level of popular support.
The genius in a two party system is that one party can scapegoat the other for unpopular policy. If there’s no second party, the public will begin to question the system itself.
And ignoring the political aspect, raising kids costs money. One question is who will bear that cost, both at a personal level and socially. If women are taking care of kids, they’re not in the workforce. And Chinese women have fairly high labor force participation rates (slightly higher than the US).
> That massive coercion is exactly why the birthrate is dropping like a stone.
Yes, but that was coercion in the other direction. Nothing's preventing them from using coercion to course-correct their previous policy. They're not timid liberals or libertarians afraid of using state power to do whatever.
> Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways in which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands today our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends are too big to ignore.
Yes. I think there's a lot of lazy thinking happening in the West vis-a-vis China, which will serve to delay hard decisions until it's too late.
The US thinks of Chinese prosperity as a threat in and of itself. The US wants to call the shots, and the reason it has been able to since WWII is because it is wealthy (due to its innovation of not being a country in Europe during WWII.) It's not simply racism, though. The US also thinks of European prosperity as a threat.
These sentiments are not hidden. They are openly spoken during policy discussions and in policy papers. Fake concerns about the nature of Chinese governance have nothing to do with it - the problem the US has with Chinese governance is that China is not governed by the US. The US is jealous of China's tools for censorship and the tight top down political control.
edit: the US government is not at all concerned about the citizens of China. It also did not invade Afghanistan for women's rights, and it is not helping Israel to preserve gay rights. These are barely even serious pretenses. It is not in Ukraine because it cares about the freedom of 2/3rds of the population to suppress the other third. These are stories for children.
China - under Xi specifically - doesn't have rule of law, acts as an agent of chaos on the world stage, doesn't care about international order, bullies its neighbors, and critically, has become a 1-man dictatorship in the past ~10 years. Under Xi, it's an aspiring evil empire that considers all humans of Han ancestry to belong to it, and genuinely doesn't care about the rest. Pre-Xi, China was on a positive trajectory. Post-Xi, hopefully that'll return.
Your first sentence is exactly what the US has done since the Cold War through recent history. Why is it different when China does it, which it also hasn't to the scale that the US has?
It's not different. Peace is always a temporary illusion, a cloaking of the war, and one shouldn't expect any consistency in these cases (akin to the peacock's tail-feathers, too much consistency costs).
China doesn't really have stable rule of law, but "agent of chaos on the world stage"? It's the most stable and predictable major power, by far.
China hasn't fought a war in 40 years. It's been too busy focusing on its own internal economic development. In terms of the international order, China is much more committed to institutions like the UN and WTO than the US is, because China wants a stable international framework in which to continue its own internal development.
Dude you need to chill. Xi is just a man in China. You need to take a trip there to get a different perspective and make sure to talk/interact with the local people.
Everything you said describes the US and other western nations better than any other civilization in history. The US backs genocide after genocide, consistently breaks the international “laws” it pushed for. From the start of the empire, that’s been the explicit policy of the American empire. Trail of tears anyone? Hiroshima? Agent Orange? East Timor? The banana republics? It’s a really long list…
Students really need to be taught their actual history. It’s really quite horrific.
This comment displays not even a shred of understanding regarding China or it’s history.
How dare China have territorial sovereignty. How dare they have security in their own region. How dare they build infrastructure in the global south, when everyone knows they should be pillaging those regions instead! Unthinkable! That all belongs to the west!
That comment represents an insanity in the west that may just be the downfall of organized human life.
Lol yes exactly like this. Tides have turned eh? The American elite are doing a very good job of distracting the public from problems at home.
They get people riled up about Taiwan or Ukraine, meanwhile the education system, the housing supply, job market, healthcare system, etc... are all in shambles.
Americans don't even question it anymore! It's now fair that housing should be >=40% of your wage. It's fair that companies that are propped up by the American people can screw over those same people.
But when you see how modern and lively China is and how they live, compared to the crumbling, old United States... oh boy. Strange how they can afford it but we, the supposed 'richest country in the world', can't.
The way they curb free speech, even projecting that internationally.
Their announced intention to become the world's superpower and displace the US militarily, technologically, and economically, and the risks to US interest which tie to that.
Their active pursuit to enact that claim, specifically with rapid military technology development, and international organization of BRICS.
Their aggressive tendencies towards US allies.
Their aggressive spying on US military and industrial facilities.
China has barely started with Taiwan. There are projections of China moving to forcibly take Taiwan within the next two years. It may be a bit later than that.
If the US doesn't take a strong stance in support of its ally in Taiwan, China will only take it sooner. Once China invades, that begins the massive expansion to WWIII that JP Morgan CEO claims has already begun with Ukraine.
The US can't lose Taiwan as an ally, strategically or economically. If we give up our support of Taiwan we've as good as handed over hegemony to China. And we'll have lost the AGI race in its infancy.
It depends on how long you're willing to roll back US interventionism. If you're talking about pre-WW1, maybe. But even by the mid-late 19th century the US started sticking its nose in the Pacific (which alarmed Japan, which contributed to that countries subsequent militarism). So I'd say you'd have to go back even further.
If not the US, it would probably be Europe and/or the Soviet Union. China and the Soviet Union nearly came to blows in the 60s.
Europe decolonized largely because Hitler wrecked major continental colonial powers France and the Netherlands) and put Britain with their backs against the wall such that it had to partially abandon its empire in order to defend itself and avoid a complete disaster. So they let India go, but tried to hold on elsewhere. This worked to some extent, but not in others. What remained tried to morph into the Commonwealth, this was only partially successful.
The US assumed the crown, this time with a different model, hegemony vs. colonialism. They had a rival in the Soviet Union, which funded Communist revolutions in many parts of the developing world. With the exception of Vietnam, something the Chinese did not do. They valued North Vietnam as a buffer against Wester imposition, but were not too keen on a reunified Vietnam, indeed they invaded a few years after South Vietnam collapsed.
Well for starters, Xi Jinping being the most powerful person on Earth is probably a bad sign for democracy.
In their time as the dominant world power, the US hasn't always used their influence for good, but at least its a democracy with some form of constitutionally protected human rights in charge. I much prefer that to having a country with a permanent ruling party where critics go missing being the dominant force in world affairs.
America only cares about spreading democracy if some country they have beef with isn't democratic. America had no issue replacing democratic (and sometimes secular) goverments with dictatorships if dictatorship was more friendly to the US.
Is that perception why everyone online constantly shits on America and proclaims that every other country is superior? For as much as people like to accuse Americans of being "'Merica, fuck yeah!" the truth sure looks like it is mostly other countries with the arrogant attitude.
Interesting that the self-loathing seems to be associated with waging unpopular and losing wars. I didn't live through it but the Vietnam War seemed to have some similar impact that persists to this day with the utter loathing of conscription. It seems to be the same underlying cause: that bad leadership essentially permanently burned credibility for their country for no gain for their country.
Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing companies to make a better product then the other guy, rather then the crappiest thing people will buy.
> Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing companies to make a better product then the other guy, rather then the crappiest thing people will buy.
If by "better," you mean "crappier but even cheaper." IMHO, we're kind of in a race to the bottom with product quality. You can't really tell what's good and what's bad online, so people gravitate the what's cheapest to minimize the risk of getting really taken advantage of. A lot of the stuff that's still good quality has massive luxury premiums tacked on, and a lot of the stuff that used to be good quality has been debased by some bean counter trying to convert goodwill into cash money.
Kind of hard to tell, because sort of an optimal successful product is made from the worst possible hardware.
If you were to look at this in terms of a CPU chip, the cheapest chip would be the chip with the most defects that runs, while the chip with the fewest defects would be overpriced to sell, or extra-overpriced and overclocked to barely running.
Think about it - do you run out an buy a Xeon Gold blah blah for $15k or a core i7 for $200? Marketing keeps you from thinking the core i7 is "crappier and cheaper"
Dude, the next iconoclast is probably going to walk around with tablets playing videos showing every way China is kicking the US' ass, and why it's happening (his incumbent opponents).
I wonder what this perspective can tell us about the new wave of Chinese expansionism, which becomes somewhat akin to the US's abandonment of isolationism and the resultant war with Spain (1898) and joining the two World Wars.
you can argue that the Monroe Doctrine was also a bit of expansionist policy, essentially warning all European colonial powers that the Americas was the U.S.A's sphere of influence.
the goal of the Monroe Doctrine was to keep the endless European wars, which at that time were not wars of nationalism but of monarchy, out of the Western Hemisphere. In North America, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution itself were aspects of larger monarchical wars taking place in Europe.
it was a sensible doctrine in 1823, and we see 40 years later in 1864 the French under Napoleon III still attempted to install a Hapsburg as Emperor in Mexico.
yeah I'm aware of the stated purposed of the Monroe doctrine, nonetheless as noble as it was it also functioned as saying the Americas belong to us, other colonial powers, and we will protect it.
The definition of a sphere of influence is "a country or area in which another country has power to affect developments although it has no formal authority."
At the time of the Mexican-American War, in 1846, there was no Spanish colonial presence in Mexico. In fact, the country had become an independent monarchy, soon followed by a republic, more than two decades before.
Spain lost the vast majority of its empire in the 1820s. Just a few possessions, like Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, remained in Spanish hands until the end of the nineteenth century.
What do you mean by this? The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion. If you're dating expansion over the continent as overlapping with that (which you should) you're agreeing that there was unbroken expansionism.
edit: and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it doesn't make me not a burglar. The question was whether the US was expansionist, not a moral judgement about the people who controlled the places it expanded to. You can't say that we weren't expansionist and also that they deserved it.
Yes thanks, that was my point, that it's not like the Mexican government had a clear moral argument to that land over the US. Both were break-away colonies expanding over native cultures.
> The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion.
That is not entirely true. The United States government and/or its citizens acting autonomously had global reach much earlier than 1898.
Throughout the nineteenth century, American expansionism was seen in various Central American countries, Ecuador, Liberia and Japan, for instance. In some cases, like in Japan and in Brazil, America’s aggressive policies were thwarted. But it does not mean that there was not expansionism.
Yes Spain was already out, but kicked out by the Spaniards and their dependents that controlled Mexico. My point was that both the US and Mexico at that point were colonies that broke free and were fighting over land that had originally belonged to neither of them, so it's a bit strange to act like the Mexican government had some clear moral, historical claim to the land vs the US. Both countries expanded when the could and decimated the native cultures.
The dominant native cultures did the same thing to get that land before the Europeans arrived. The Aztecs colonized and subjugated plenty of groups.
It's a well written article, but a lot of it appears to be based on a flawed interpretation of Yuen Yuen Ang's "China's Gilded Age".
Ang's argument is that there are 4 types of corruption - Petty Theft (eg. policeman takes a bribe), Grand Theft (eg. a Governor embezzles from the state pension fund), Speed Money (eg. business pay bribes to speed up processing of a permit), and Access Money (eg. pay bribes to get access to the bureaucracy).
Ang's thesis posits that China's comparative ability to somewhat temper Speed Money corruption was the primary driver for China's economic growth (eg. via SEZs and allowing foreign corporate structures to leverage Hong Kong).
This is not meant to be treated as a positive though. Ang points out that China still has an active problem with Access Corruption due to the chumminess between regulators and politically connected firms which can lead to systemic risks (eg. Evergrande Crisis):
"China provides a sharp illustration: by enriching capitalists who pay for privileges and rewarding politicians who serve capitalist interests, access money perversely stimulates transactions and investment, which translates into GDP growth (Ang 2019; Ang 2020, chapter 5).
Yet this does not mean that access money is “good” for the economy—on the contrary, it distorts the allocation of resources, breeds systemic risks, and exacerbates inequality. The harm of access money only blows up in the event of a crisis: for example, America’s first great depression of 1839 (triggered by risky public financing and state-bank collusion) (Ang 2016, chapter 7; Wallis 2000, 2001), the 1997 East Asia financial crisis (Kang 2002), and the 2008 US financial crisis (Baker 2010; Igan, Mishra, and Tressel 2011; White 2011; Fisman and Golden 2017; Fligstein, Brundage, and Schultz, Forthcoming)"
- "Unbundling Corruption: Revisiting Six Questions on Corruption", Yuen Yuen Ang 2019
While the "spoils system" did incentivize access, the principal-agent problem in this case would treat a voter as the principal and a legislator as the agent, as is a common issue with patronage systems in general.
Access Money in Ang's typology hasn't been extended to patronage politics (yet).
My current take is that culture is just path-dependent[0] interpretations of pretty much the same situation [1]
[0]large mean time between scattering events, e.g. number and make-up of parties dont change very much since the last time the current system became barely-functional (we take on socio-technical debt before we have actual social tech??) as it is, 1789 was a bit too long ago for founder-mode, may halloween continue to console us!
[1]more tk. it seems mostly everyone is tripartite. Tripartism, has its own en.wikipage! But more research on YYA’s taxonomy is required of me.
Not sure if the sage is allowed cruelty(=irreversibilty?<= deluging), more sure that the sage is forbidden from enjoying it (or even signalling its enjoyment, cf Not-Hillel)
That may be why a common definition of cruelty is being unnecessarily unpleasant: the Lords/Ladies of Instrumentality would say, it's not me, this just falls out of the Lagrangian, and yes it was horrible yet I was but the instrument. (compare the original words to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6m9SusjNYk )
The chinese note a tension between 霸 and 王 , do they also note one between 正 and 仁?
TFA discusses exports, but doesn't seem to mention anything about ease of blockading ports; I guess the War of 1812 (or the midcentury CSA experience?) might have some evidence along those lines for the 19th Century U.S.?
I would love to see a similarly detailed article juxtaposed with the detailed environmental effects of each phase in history. What crucial choices were made to get us here, what would we have needed to have done differently?
What surprisingly good policies may have also emerged? Where was old times better than current environmental awareness?
It seems warped to talk if these only as success stories.
While it has invested infrastructure, the scale of its investment does not equate to the US - it vastly, vastly overshadows it. The nature of its infrastructure investment: centralist planning under socialist leadership, is also nothing like US robber-baron driven development. Modern China's urbanization has been nothing less than the largest human migration in history. The infrastructure went from the odd railroad with a few urbanized cities to fiber optic internet, 5G data, high speed trains and airports everywhere in the country within ~30 years. 1.4 billion people have cell phones, flatscreen TVs, instant messaging, e-vehicles and streaming movies.
But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories are closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of technical integration, cutting headcounts. The educated youth are unemployed. International investment has dried up. Rumours abound that the party leadership is in crisis with factional schisms and high profile coverups, and the national pension fund has been emptied. Chinese with money seek to escape by moving their families overseas. The specter of the party looms over remnant private industry seeking a tax to aide its flailing coffers. Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and seeks to send their kids overseas. A fledgeling venture capital industry, once buoyant, has seized, and while domestic remittance is ~free and ~instantaneous international financial remittance is heavily regulated. But everyone can watch the latest Hollywood, Bollywood or Chinese content. Wealthy young Chinese can obtain information from across the country in seconds and access drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine, and marijuana, drive Teslas or Ferraris and wield iPhones. Everyone in the cities has a VPN on their phone to get foreign content. AI's potential to accelerate further change looms large.
How is this anything like the US in the 19th century, an era before even broadcast media? This to me seems a frankly ridiculous assertion. Modern China is nothing like anything that has ever happened before, in terms of technology, political ideology, or economy. At best, weak parallels can be drawn along constrained axes, but the big picture is totally unknown to history. I only hope for the people's sake the current situation can be resolved without civil war. And indeed such wishes should be extended globally, as in the current era, the UK, the US, parts of western Europe and even my native Australia could be said to have the socioeconomic preconditions for civil war. Let us not see another world war in our lifetime. Let us not be blinded by nationalism.
Nationalism is an infantile disease: the measles of mankind - Einstein, who also incidentally, it should be highlighted, was himself a globalist-humanist and turned down the presidency of Israel considering Zionism a self-destructive political ideology...
> But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories are closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of technical integration, cutting headcounts.
China has been suppressing domestic private consumption, it stands at just 40% of the GDP. For comparison, the US is at 68% and Germany is at 53%.
This was probably done to prevent the appearance of the true middle class. China has no problem controlling a fairly small percentage of rich people, but the Party is afraid of large population strata that might start asking for political representation.
But it does give them a _lot_ of leeway for easy growth. They just need to make the country more business-friendly at the lower end.
> But it does give them a _lot_ of leeway for easy growth. They just need to make the country more business-friendly at the lower end.
Consumption-led growth is all but over. The population is shrinking, manufacturing is fleeing as fast it can, and the number old people exceeds young — China got old before it got rich, which has never happened before
The old population will also need to consume stuff and services. And the younger people can make it.
China's fundamentals are fine. They just need to allow more low-level business activity. It's easier to start a factory compared to a neighborhood café.
Peak consumption for a population is 45-54, when income is highest and people are having their 1 kid. Once retirement hits income is generally fixed as people rely on pension or savings. They also depend more on state services like healthcare. In China, this also means depending on their 1 child.
It’s not really possible to say “China’s fundamentals are fine” because China’s fundamentals look like nothing the world has ever seen. It’s not clear they have the leadership to navigate it.
The time to start a business is in your 20s, before you have a kid. Unfortunately, China runs short of these. The largest demographic bucket is 50-54 years old. The second largest is 65-69. The 20’s are 7th and 8th…
> Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and seeks to send their kids overseas.
Is that so? My understanding is the Chinese education system is pretty cutthroat, and lot of the Chinese kids studying overseas are the ones with rich parents who could not compete academically. So a rando foreign degree is not looked on as highly as it once was, and many domestic schools are more prestigious than they used to be.
Pretty much. Their universities are very prestigious and rising fast. The prior comment has an old perception of china, heavily influenced by western propaganda, which is quite strong in their native Australia.
Chinese leadership is deeply influenced by Marxism. The representation of the masses is strongly prioritized. There are obviously many problems, but it doesn’t take long to be certain of this fact.
There’s many many examples that support this. Evening out the education landscape, ruthless drive towards ecological sustainability, massive anti poverty campaigns, state funded healthcare, hard regulation of the housing sector, complete renovation of the slums (they even pay out or rehouse citizens when they do said renovation)
The perception about China in the west is genuinely psychotic.
You are quite incorrect. I have decades of experience hiring in China, including foreign-educated Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, domestic educated Chinese, and foreigners. Mostly this was for R&D work, but also operations and other roles.
You know what I found? The value of Chinese domestic university education was a net negative. For instance, in R&D work, I found it to be a solid predictor of futility in the face of unstructured problems. Local employees who had never been to university outperformed those who had - every time.
While I wasn't hiring Tsinghua elites, I did hire from a range of universities across a range of provinces. Many of these graduates would last only days before being fired. I found no more efficient way to screen than to allocate tools, space and a task. Domestic employment law is supportive in this regard.
If I had to generalize, when performing R&D work, the university educated Chinese people were the worst performers, mostly due to no capacity to handle unstructured problems but also due to assumptions of being in a "team" and active seeking bureaucratic excuses for lack of progress. They would freeze up and have no confidence reasoning forward when questioned. The "made it without university" Chinese people were the best performers, and excellent communicators. And the foreigners were generally somewhere in the middle. Overseas educated Chinese were essentially equivalent in this regard.
Other foreign bosses in China have reported to me that they prefer to hire women who have already had children as they are stable employees willing to do what needs to get done, graduates and in particular young men are considered near to useless, with zero loyalty, commitment or motivation.
Everything you described reflects my experience with American graduates. I have only worked at "top tier" FAANG-level institutions and attended what is supposed to be a globally competitive so-called "elite" university. Very few students at my university and others I interacted with (who were supposed to be some of the best, given the programs I met them through) and very few employees at these institutions were actually good performers or genuinely knowledgable.
I was most impressed by those from 'second tier' universities and some without degrees at all who were more obsessed with quality and rigor than they were about 'GPA', prestige, or whatever it is. I don't expect this to be different anywhere in the world, due to the nature of selection systems. That is Goodhart's Law after all.
The selection systems employed by these institutions favor those who optimize for select-ability, which distorts things quite a bit. I hold very little value in a PhD from any university at this point. In fact, I'm quite weary of prestigious credentials in general, as they often translate to over-confident idiocy with power in credentialist institutions, rather than self-aware idiocy which can at least self-regulate to some degree. PG put it well when he called them "professional fakers".
That being said, research output in China is quite strong. I have also learned that average people, given enough time, resources, and a little bit of good direction, will be able to accomplish quite a bit. China has made undeniable, unprecedented progress across the board in high-tech sectors. I say this having been part of competitive analysis at two of these top tier American institutions, looking at how China is overtaking our own products.
> Chinese domestic university education was a net negative.
Is fair but not exceptional observation to PRC tertiary education. Can be generalized to most mid to shit tier western university talent as well, i.e. if you're not hiring from elite. But really also tons of low calibre all over "top tier" western institutions with academic inflation in last couple decades.
IMO generalized tier list is follows: c9 league (or other PRC elite) -> self motivated / self educated go getters -> competent grads from good (not elite) institutes -> average to bottom barrel grads. Note here competent grads includes much of your expats, and foreign educated Chinese... both have some qualities of self motivation to do well because they decided to go (or return) to PRC to work instead of working/staying in west. Western educated Chinese who returns also largely falls under / prefiltered the bucket of basically not being good enought for elite/C9 but have smarts and enough resources to goto a semi decent western uni. Chinese educated in mid to shit tier comparable to same quality of medicore talent from mid to shit tier western uni. Plenty of such western educated PRC grads just chilling in the west being useless, many from fairly well ranked western institutions - plenty of useless non-Chinese grads in even well ranked western institutions bad at unstructured problems (maybe disproportionately so). Young men being < young women for skilled work force also pattern you see in west, except in west, young men aren't being pushed through tertiary at similar rates as in PRC.
Also worth nothing Chinese C9 has like 400,000k enrollment (500+k if you include seven sons), vs 150k US Ivys + MIT,Standford,Caltech, good UCs, and it's maybe 250k... a big portion being non S&T.
I'm pretty sure the bar for 'like' does imply there are still many things that are not alike. The title is not 'how China and 19th century US are exactly the same'.
I think the US raised interest rates in part to put the breaks on Chinas economy but the US was unable to keep high rates for longer without tanking it's own economy. That China and the US have bubble ponzi economies is one way I do think they are alike. I'm in disagreement with the Peter Zeihan with his predictions of a population bust with aging. I do agree there will be some population decline but Chinese old people are vastly cheaper than US old people and if they have to will work right up until the point they keel over. I really don't know which country is in a worse state but most people I know do not believe the US can continue in it's current state for much longer. Compared to that China does not seem that bad - but that could just be because I'm too far removed to see it's warts.
The traditional way of managing civil discontent is by exporting it with a war, so as much as I hope China does not have a civil war I would rather they have a civil war than intentionally trigger an international war.
Not sure how you square the US support for Israel as part of the global-humanist effort by the US. A nationalistic US would not support a nationalistic Israel.
Not sure I mentioned the US, and I certainly didn't give an opinion on US support for Israel, a subject which has in many people's view become impossible to discuss openly. I believe you refer to the Trump election outcome with regards to claims of cessation of support for foreign conflicts. I do not follow US politics to any depth but my uninformed impression was that he perhaps wants to dethrone or progressively de-fund the defense industry who have historically backed various political or business rivals. Probably this is a part truth.
But yes, the US is certainly in a difficult position with its socioeconomic trajectory, and the current election is a powder keg.
A somewhat popular meme in the expat community in China has long been that the US and China are just converging on the same future from different paths. Those who have lived for extended periods in both places can see the truths behind this suggestion.
It has been said that "Our true nationality is mankind", but I think it better to state "Our true nationality is Eukaryote". We should care more about the environment and other species' outcomes, not obsess over monkey-squabbles.
You're talking about nation support for Zionist Israel and that's pretty much just the US. The US is the worlds current hegemon and it's current policy of exporting liberal democracy is part of the globalist effort to instill and maintain a rules based world order. I consider that to be globalism and the opposite of nationalism.
Trump is merely wearing the cloak of nationalism in order to get elected which I guess is why it gets confusing - Zionism is a wedge issue in the culture war and an ability for the right wing to take part in grievance politics. Evangelicals have also been thoroughly brainwashed to support Zionist Israel but those are dying out and the new ones are smaller in number and have a net negative view of Israel. Support for Israel was already on a demographic timer which has only just gotten much shorter since Oct 7th.
We're going to see some weird things in the near future.
In a spirit of share the wealth if you still actually believe the export part, you might benefit from reading more Chomsky and maybe Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Religious fervor is associated with low standards of education, and organized religion with politics. One good takedown is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRcYaAYWg4
Thanks for the suggestion but I've already read both of them. You and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum, you have an affinity with eukaryotes and I barely share an affinity with most of humanity. I'm interested in knowing things for curiosity sake and my general support for humanity, specifically the unthriving middle class, is for my own comfort and desire to live in a nice society. I see religion is just another form of politics and politics is inherent to people, to hate religion is to hate people. I don't particularly like religion but I don't particularly like people either. Given the inherent constraints of people I'm not sure how I would design a nice society without religion. It appears to me that those who try to stamp out religions often end up creating new ones complete with articles of fait, heresy, and excommunications.
>Trump is merely wearing the cloak of nationalism in order to get elected which I guess is why it gets confusing - Zionism is a wedge issue in the culture war and an ability for the right wing to take part in grievance politics.
Ever noticed that the Israeli flag has a religious symbol in it? Very curious. As a citizen of a secular nation with separation of church and state it's difficult to ignore.
I would not have called a Chinese invasion of Taiwan a civil war - not sure of your point there. My reference to a Chinese civil war was like how I would image a US civil war. Start out as a small outburst of grievances and quickly grow.
Israel has made a grave mistake and is only now just starting to realize it - views made public with the 'painful concessions' speech made 4 days ago. Due to modern weaponry we no longer live in a world were you can relatively cheaply maintain dominance over your neighbors. In my view the failure to navigate this new state of affairs could be terminal. The US can no longer afford to bail them out of a major regional war.
China is referring to Taiwan as break away province and see this all thing as internal affair. I thought that what you were hinting.
Regarding Israel, I don't think it has made any grave mistakes. The 'Iron Beam' is set to be deployed next year, which will resolve most of the cost issues.
I’ll refrain from discussing the future of this war until the U.S. elections, as that will be a pivotal moment
Is this what they were referring to by "civil war" or were they referring to the possibility of a civil war breaking out between provinces in the PRC due to their mention of the economic bubble bursting.
Unfortunately for you Einstein supported Zionism, while his views shifted on how should be implemented by 1947 he certainly tried to persuade world leaders to support Israel
It seems you are questioning only the "...considering Zionism a self-destructive political ideology" final part of the final sentence, a necessarily concise summary of a whole person's lifetime views which is obviously skipping nuance.
Well, hey, I'm the first to admit I never met the guy. I have also read that wikipedia page, which is probably not impartial or complete. My limited understanding is that he didn't want an Israeli state - "I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state". Later, he initially supported Israel (as did many fleeing Europe, including my own family), but never Israel-for-the-jews-to-the-exclusion-of-others. Later he was disgusted at the political leadership of this bent he saw emerging to dominate the political reality in the fledgling nation, which is what my GP comment referred to. He would without doubt be critical today, though it seems he wisely tried to stay out of politics where feasible. Probably I should have said "militant exclusionary Zionism" or some other phrase, but it seems everything is a loaded phrase these days in discussions touching on Israel.
Edit reply to child: I can see clearly that quote must be taken out of context quite often. Perhaps you should imagine if you had lived somewhere for generations and then a bunch of foreigners show up from Europe and start altering the status quo, how exactly you the residents might feel about it. It seems peaceful protest and strikes had been carried out in living memory but the results were violence. So you can see what sort of tinderbox that would be. I don't think deploying historic quotes out of context in an attempt to allocate blame and transfer that to a modern context is in any way shape or form constructive, valid, useful or intellectually honest.
"He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the state of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live to complete it. In the draft he speaks about the dangers facing Israel and says “It is anomalous that world opinion should only criticize Israel’s response to hostility and should not actively seek to bring an end to the Arab hostility which is the root cause of the tension."
It's complicated. Einstein opposed the creation of a Jewish state, but wanted Jewish immigration to Palestine to be allowed.
On the whole, however, Einstein suffered from the same blind spot that many people in his time did: not paying enough attention to the rights of the native population of Palestine, which was more than 95% non-Jewish.
Not to disregard the main claim, but the numbers seemed wrong so I checked and never since 1890 (at the time Einstein was 11), Jewish population in Palestine was estimated below 8% (and more than twice that number in the 30's).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
If you want to modify my statement to 92%, fine. It makes absolutely no difference.
Almost none of the Jewish population in 1948 could be termed "native," except for the tiny minority that had actually lived in Palestine before Zionism (and that Jewish minority was by and large opposed to Zionism). The overwhelming majority of the people who founded Israel were European or American, with a small fraction of young people born to European/American parents.
"Not to disregard the main claim" is what I started my comment with.
Not sure why you keep reiterating it when I just pointed that native population at the time (when Einstein addressed it) is estimated to be more than double what you stated.
And yet they were estimated to be over 11%, not less than 5% or less 8% when Einstein addressed it. That's all I was saying, you quoted a wrong stat, which IMO is independent of the other statement you made yet you keep repeating the other statement.
You brought up the percentage of Jewish population, not me.
I just pointed out your mistake. Now you're suggesting it's not important by claiming I'm "obsessing over it"?
If in fact the size of Jewish population at the time isn't relevant to the point you're trying to make, why would you even bring it in the first place?
P.S. you again quote a wrong stat. The Zionism movement is considered to have started on 1897. At the time (1890), Jewish population was estimated to be 7.9%, not 3%.
Certainly the ballpark size of the ca 1897 population is relevant.
Just not the fine grain of whether it was 3 or 5 or 8 percent.
Either way, the commenter's salient point still stands: like all Zionists at every point in the history of the movement, regardless of subvariant -- Einstein never paid enough attention to the rights of the non-Jewish native population of region (being variously an absolutely overwhelming majority of the population up until about 1936, to a still thoroughly solid majority until 1947).
If the US had been established in the mid-20th century through naked colonialism, then yes, a great many people would question its moral right to exist.
Israel was founded at a time when anticolonial movements worldwide were gaining strength. That made its founding - through the mass expulsion of the native population - an anachronism.
Einstein was very clearly against the foundation of a Jewish state until it actually occurred. He accepted is establishment in the end, and like many people of the time, he glossed over the incredible injustice that had been done to the Palestinians in order to establish Israel.
I do know that not everyone thought this way, though. Some of my own Jewish family members opposed to establishment of Israel at the time, precisely because they thought it was unjust to the Arab population.
Many Jews actively opposed the creation of a Jewish nation; the Bund is just one example [0]. I’m not sure what your point is here—people are entitled to different opinions. However, Einstein actively persuaded world leaders to support the UN partition plan, which was before the founding of Israel.
The founding of Israel resulted from the UN decision on the partition plan, which the Jews accepted while the Arabs rejected. The "mass expulsion" was a consequence of the war, similar to contemporary events in Europe (where 3 million ethnic Germans were displaced) and India (with approximately 20 million displaced). Additionally, you seem to overlook the 900,000 Jews displaced from Arab countries and areas that were meant to be part of Israel but ended up under Jordanian control. This is why, many people at the time (Einstein included) didn't hold the prevailing view that 80 years later is dominating the left.
The U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were undeniably created through colonialism. Live with it.
Einstein publicly testified against the creation of a Jewish state in 1946.
About the Bund: indeed, they represented mainstream Jewish opinion before WWII, which was anti-Zionist.
> The founding of Israel resulted from the UN decision on the partition plan
This is just historically wrong. First of all, the UN "decision" was actually a nonbinding proposal. Second, the leaders of the Zionist movement were preparing to go to war to create a Jewish state, regardless of what the UN did or did not propose. With the British leaving, there was going to be a power vacuum, and the Zionists were going to seize the opportunity. They had already built up an army (trained by the British) and most of the organs of government (like a legislature, an executive, and ministries handling different state affairs). They weren't waiting for the UN to decide.
> The "mass expulsion" was a consequence of the war
Zionist paramilitary forces went town by town forcibly expelling the residents. Those who remained were often killed. Many Palestinian civilians heard of these atrocities and fled in advance of Zionist forces. The Palestinian Exodus isn't just something that happened by itself. It was a brutal affair.
After the war, the Israelis refused to let the Palestinians return home, and either expropriated (read, "stole") or destroyed their homes and property. If you just go down the list of major Israeli cities nowadays, many (maybe most) of them were formerly Arab cities, which the Zionists "cleansed" in 1948. Lod is the Hebrew name for Lydda, an Arab city where the IDF massacred over 100 civilians, then stripped the rest of the inhabitants of all belongings and drove them out at gunpoint, forcing them to walk on foot through the summer heat to the Jordanian army. After the war, Israel resettled the city with Jewish residents. The Israelis did this sort of thing all over Palestine.
> U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were undeniably created through colonialism.
If they had been created by the same methods in the last 75 years, then people would care just as much as they do about the expulsion of the Palestinians. Israel was founded as the colonial era was coming to an end. I would even say that if it weren't for the fact that Israel rules over millions of stateless Palestinians to this day, far fewer people would care. About 40% of the population of greater Israel - the area actually ruled by the Israeli state since 1967 - is subject to martial law and treated worse than dogs. That's why so many people care, and can't just "live with it."
I know that numbers and dates can seem intimidating, but let me assure you that 1946 came before 1947, which came before 1948.
"In his testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in January 1946, Einstein stated that he was not in favor of the creation of a Jewish state. However, in a 1947 letter to Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he sought to persuade India to support Zionist aims of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine."
So again, your wishes aren’t aligned with reality.
>This is just historically wrong. First of all, the UN "decision" was actually a nonbinding proposal. Second, the leaders of the Zionist movement were preparing to go to war to create a Jewish state, regardless of what the UN did or did not propose…
Resolution 181, while not binding, remains a plan that the Arab side rejected, and the Jews accepted. This isn’t speculation; it’s simply what happened. The Arab side not only rejected the plan but also took less than 12 hours to murder seven Jews — four women and three men. Again, this is not speculation; this is actually what happened.
The Jews, acting like responsible adults, prepared for the worst-case scenario and, rightly so, prepared an army. Did the U.S. act wrongly when it strengthened its army before any hostilities from Japan? That’s what responsible adults do — they prepare for the future.
While we can only speculate on what might have happened to the Jews if the Arabs had won, it’s not speculation that Mohammed Amin al-Husseini cooperated with the Nazis. Between 1941 and 1945, he lived in Berlin and worked as a Nazi propagandist.
> Zionist paramilitary forces went town by town forcibly expelling …
At the end of the war roughly 20% of Israel population were Arabs, so obviously you are lying when you say that they went “town by town”. Why are you lying?
> The Palestinian Exodus …
I never said it happened entirely on its own; many people were forced to leave. All I said was that it was (and to an extent still is — just look at Syria) a common practice in war. It happened during the partition of India (affecting 20 million people) and at the end of WWII, when 3 million ethnic Germans were displaced. So, intelligent people, like Einstein, wouldn’t think it unprecedented
And as I was saying, and you ignored, all the land that was captured from Israel was ethnically cleansed from Jews. And there was a mass explusion of 900,000 Jews from Arab counties.
What I really find it puzzling that you might have some good arguments to the peaceful nature of the Arabs, that they were all loving and caring. 2 most lovely examples: Hadassah medical convoy massacre [0] and Kfar Etzion massacre [1]
> 1967 borders ...
I'll never defend the settlements it is an abomination. Yet the root cause of the conflict remains the Palestinian refusal to any peace plan that doesn't include the destruction of Israel.
What I really find it puzzling that you might have some good arguments to the peaceful nature of the Arabs, that they were all loving and caring.
It really quite difficult to discern what benefit you might see in presenting such an obviously false and derisive characterization of what another user has been saying, such as this.
Since you're being extremely condescending, I'm going to point out that this does not mean what you think it means:
> a Jewish homeland in Palestine
This does not mean a Jewish state, as anyone who has read even a little bit about the history of Zionism knows. The term "Jewish homeland in Palestine" comes from the Balfour Declaration, and the point of inventing this term was that it implies some sort of Jewish community in Palestine, but doesn't specify that that community will have a state. It doesn't even state where in Palestine that homeland will be. Part of Palestine? All of it? It's unclear, and intentionally so.
So when you bring up Einstein supporting a "Jewish homeland in Palestine" as proof that Einstein supported a Jewish state, you're just revealing that you don't even know the basics of the history you're trying to discuss.
> The Jews, acting like responsible adults, prepared for the worst-case scenario and, rightly so, prepared an army.
Okay, so the condescending tone continues. Another way of putting this is that the Zionist movement was aware that what they were doing - attempting to establish a state on someone else's land - was so unacceptable to the local population that it would inevitably mean war. Yet they persisted in this policy anyways. By the way, this is one of the central reasons Einstein gave for rejecting a Jewish state. He said that the establishment of a Jewish state in a land that was majority non-Jewish was unjust and would lead to violence. He was correct on both counts.
> At the end of the war roughly 20% of Israel population were Arabs, so obviously you are lying when you say that they went “town by town”. Why are you lying?
The fact that Israeli forces went town by town expelling the Arab population is very well established. There are records of how this happened in countless villages all over Palestine.
Without the expulsion, a vast majority of the population of the territory that became Israel - far more than 50% - would have been Arab. The 20% of the population that was Arab after the war was a small fraction of the original Arab population. In fact, about 80% of the Arab population was expelled.
> and you ignored, all the land that was captured from Israel was ethnically cleansed from Jews.
No land was "captured from Israel." There was no Israel before the war. It was the Zionist forces that were seeking to capture territory to establish a state, against the will of the overwhelming majority of the native population of Palestine. There were small numbers of Jewish people who were expelled from the parts of Palestine that ended up under Arab control, but that was practically nothing compared to the number of Arabs who were expelled.
> And there was a mass explusion of 900,000 Jews from Arab counties.
That happened over the following decades, and it was caused pretty directly by the establishment of Israel. The expulsion of the Palestinians by Israel caused a wave of antisemitism across the Middle East, which led Arab governments to start taking their own oppressive measures against their Jewish populations. One of the tragedies of Zionism is that it undermined the status of Jews in the Muslim world.
> What I really find it puzzling that you might have some good arguments to the peaceful nature of the Arabs, that they were all loving and caring.
Where did I ever say they were all "peaceful" and "loving and caring"? They were normal people. They would fight under some circumstances. One circumstance under which almost any group of people anywhere would fight is when another group of people comes in and tries to conquer their territory.
Oh, are you talking about what China is doing to Tibet? Or Russia to Ukraine? Or perhaps you're referring to the suffering of the Uyghurs (China again)? I’m sure the Arabs would appreciate your help in Khuzestan (the Persians are really fucking them there). Or are you implying that you're focused on the 6.7 million refugees forced to flee Syria, and on bringing to justice those responsible for the deaths of 230,000 civilians?
Or maybe you're thinking about the raped women in Darfur [0]?
There are so many real evils to choose from—not imaginary ones involving Jews. But I know what you’ll end up choosing... the hallmark of anti-Semitism.
> There are so many real evils to choose from—not imaginary ones involving Jews. But I know what you’ll end up choosing... the hallmark of anti-Semitism.
Saying that antisemitism is the reason people care about Israel killing 15,000 Palestinian children is pathetic and contemptible. You're abusing that term.
As of 13 May 2024, the U.N. has reported that the 35,000 who have died in the conflict includes 7,797 minors, 4,959 women and 1,924 elderly[52] with confirmed identities.
The figure of over 15,000 children killed comes from the Gaza Health Ministry, which bases its figures on sources like hospitals and morgues, and which has proven to be reliable in past conflicts.
Your accusations of antisemitism are just a bad-faith attempt to shut down all criticism of Israel. There's no point in even taking your accusation seriously. Find a better argument.
Unfortunately for you the flavor of Zionism he endorsed (which preferred a binational rather than a Jewish state) hasn't had any political significance since Israel's independence. If he were to espouse those same beliefs today, he would likely be seen as "anti-Zionist", if not outright antisemitic within Israel and its support base abroad.
So no, one does not get to say "Einstein supported Zionism" per the latter's modern definition and context.
Not fentanyl. Fentanyl precursors. That's a critical distinction.
China has an extremely large chemical industry. They supply the world's pharmaceutical industries for their re-agents, precursors and such.
Fentanyl, like LSD, is highly HIGHLY potent, so quantities of ingredients don't actually have to be so high so that it becomes obvious. Also like LSD, there's analogues up and down the chain. They've banned all analogues of fentanyl and some of the direct precursors, but analogues and other pathways exist and new ones are constantly invented to circumvent bans.
In hindsight, it would have been better to not have wrecked Latin America so much that there's sophisticated mega-cartels that overwhelm whole nations, but what can you do...
This seems extremely negative on China, and echoes a lot of web content that frankly smacks of anti-Chinese propaganda. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of being a propagandist and in fact I believe you are 100% sincere, and I'm glad you've provided your opinion here. But the similarity of your description to the various China-bashing outlets is striking and makes me question the sources of it.
My opinions are my own, based on decades of experience since first living in China in 2001. I last lived there in 2022. I actually run businesses, and my social networks consist of disparate experiences, which probably means my view of things is more nuanced and rationally founded than fly-in journalists or those watching only the statistics, albeit necessarily only a "partial truth" (nobody knows exactly what is going on across the country, not even the government). Perhaps if you raised concerns regarding a specific point it would be possible to respond more fully.
You clearly have a wealth of expertise that I don't, and because of that, I again thank you for your original comment. It's probably better for me to simply consider your point of view rather than try to question it using second-hand data.
And why do you suppose these ostensible 'China bashers' believe what they do? Do you believe that people just wake up one morning and say to themselves: 'I'm going to go online and hate on China today' for absolutely no reason at all?
They're literally inundated with the message in all media. The US government spread rumors about Chinese vaccines it knew to be safe to convince people not to take them. The US has budgeted 1.6 billion dollars for propaganda activity against China.
The coordination and omnipresence of the western media is the most impressive thing I’ve ever experienced. Once you catch them all lying about incontestable truths in unison, the charade falls apart.
Americans grow up in this soup. They even have rebellious media companies that say edgy things, but all tow the party line. It’s genuinely incredible.
It happens all the time and it would be quite a bit of work to prepare a list to the level of un-disputability on my part (which seems to be required as Hacker News is feeling very pro-establishment at the moment), but a recent example of this is the failure of the Iron Dome system against Iranian rockets.
Videos online very, very clearly showed many rockets bypassing the system, with some interceptions in the video that made it all the more obvious how many rockets were not being intercepted. All western media claimed the Iron Dome was exceedingly successful and blocked 90%+ of the missiles. This was also not corroborated by non-western sources. It wasn't until Planet Labs released evidence of dozens of strikes on an airbase that this specific messaging decreased.
At that point, they didn't acknowledge that 'error', but instead shifted the narrative to say that the attack, which Iran gave several hours warning of and had explicitly designed not to take lives, had failed because nobody got killed.
Israel coverage in general is a great topic to witness this phenomenon.
That's not nearly the impression that I got from reading the GP comment. Did you mean to reply to a different one?
If anything, it seemed rosy; for example I was under the impression that China had cracked down on VPNs. But if GP says they're still widely accessible, then it leaves me with the impression that China has more free access to information than I previously thought.
It strikes me as a picture filled with both positives and negatives, and the point being made is not that China is a doomed sinking ship, but that the challenges it is dealing with aren't analogous to the ones faced by the US in the 19th century. (I don't know if wealthy 19th-century Americans did or did not aspire to move their wealth to Europe or send their kids abroad for school, but at least, the argument being made by the poster suggests a belief that they were not).
China has much more freedom than I was led to believe growing up. The restrictions seem pretty neatly constrained to things that are genuinely threats to public safety, “social harmony”, or national security.
It seems scary until you think about the kind of information warfare that a certain cross pacific neighbor likes to employ, frequently.
Please tell me you're kidding. There is way, way more pro-Chinese propaganda online than anti-Chinese. So overt at this point that you'd have to be willfully blind not to notice.
Either do I, as I was born a few decades too late for that. But there is a lot on Reddit and other popular forums. And on HN, even in this very discussion.
China is on its own league. The nation has repeatedly claim the largest nation under the same culture heritage and political evolution, and economy development for over 2000 years, non-stopping. And among the time, claimed the longest period of time among the most powerful nations as well.
China's transformation since 1840, is a 200 years turmoil that repeated before in that 2000 years history. When Xi Jinping proclaimed that now is the juncture of major-changes-unseen-in-a-century, the idea is that China was already in a changing period that unseen in thousands of years, which was proclaimed by Li Hongzhang.
You see, China as a nation understand her own heritage and destiny.
Her role is to be the manifestation of the Mandate of Heave, to build the great harmony that everyone under heaven can life peacefully together.
That's different than western heritage, which is built upon dominance and hierarchy.
Both are powerful systems that align with some of the most fundamental aspects of human nature. And each of these 2 systems also internally manifested the counterpart. For example, Chinese system emphasize hierarchy from the Confucious, and a spirit of rebellion ignited by Chen Sheng & Wu Guang's line of "Are kings and nobles given their high status by birth?". West system emphasis harmony in Christian teaching.
Or the other countries like the Philippines and Vietnam that dispute China's excessive maritime claims. That claim isn't really surprising in light of the rest of their comment which is essentially repeating the PRC creation myth.
Not only is it blatant whataboutism, but the whataboutist analogies for the US of Alaska, Palestine and Cuba are also completely nonsensical, as the US didn't conquer any of them. I suppose though that being nonsensical is on theme for PRC nationalists arguing online.
Ah dang ya got me! The brutal repression and other antics by the US is totally justifiable now. How could I not have thought of this highly misleading/misinformed technicality. You win!
> PRC nationalists arguing online
This is the final defense. “Anyone who doesn’t hold my opinion is a shill”. The indoctrination runs deep.
If the rest of America is as taken aback as I was when I learned the truth and saw the situation for what it is, oh man.
The logical inconsistencies of the propaganda can only hold up for so long, I hope.
But they can’t let people find out. Because it would reveal just how shitty we have it, for no goddam reason, and how good life could be. Keep coping I guess.
From my perspective, it had already devolved when you started making dishonest whataboutisms and accusations of being "indoctrinated" in your comments. Just to humor you though, what is the "truth" that you say you were enlightened of?
You're deluding yourself. You literally tried to turn a discussion about something the PRC likes to say into a discussion about the US. Why, exactly? Some notion that the PRC can say sweet lovely things while acting completely differently, and we should totally not criticize them because someone else has done something you view as equally bad?
That is exactly a demonstration of whataboutism. It is a bad faith technique intended to derail the conversation and stop the criticism.
It’s because the conversation is ridiculous. Because I’m ashamed to be an American witnessing people trash a relatively poor country that actually takes care of its citizens when conditions are so bad in the US. When my tax dollars go to antagonizing nuclear armed Russia and committing various genocides, wasting resources on almost 1000 military bases abroad, but somehow I have to pay off students loans for a degree that not only ultimately benefits this country more than what I paid for it, but also could be easily paid for by reducing global military waste slightly. And that’s just the start.
Have a little perspective yeah? Good for you that you’re so far removed from the material reality of most of the world, so that you can be detached from what’s going on, so you can ignore what the US does, so you can go after the WAY WAY WAY more peaceful China.
Oh and BTW, Taiwan is a separatist territory from their civil war. If the US was to lose Hawaii in a civil war, what do you think they would do?? Except it’s worse than that because Taiwan becomes a blockade/choke point against China. China, a fairly peaceful developing country of 1.4 billion people who apparently needs to be choked out by a rich country of about 1/5th that. That’s psychotic.
People really need to learn history and stop applying ridiculous double standards.
Given its support for the Khmer Rouge, its invasion of Vietnam, its tacit support of the aggression against Ukraine, and its menacing actions against the Philippines, and its intimidation of expats abroad (nevermind what it threatens to do to Taiwan) -- I wouldn't put China in the "WAY WAY WAY more peaceful" category.
It also isn't being "choked out" by anyone and never will be.
On almost 1000 military bases abroad
I know that must feel emotionally invigorating to believe, but it turns out it's just a number that gets copy-pasta'd around in order to get you riled up. If you do you homework on the number, you will quickly find (1) the larger number is for all worldwide facilities, the vast majority being in the US of course; and (2) the actual number of foreign "bases" is much smaller (e.g. 128 according to the Congressional Research Service), and many of these are still largely foreign-run and/or barely count as "bases" in any meaningful sense (the U.S. and/or NATO just has an office or a token presence there, etc).
So reality is infinitely more boring and that's a huge bummer of course, but that's how life is unfortunately.
> I know that must feel emotionally invigorating to believe
Have a little class please.
> the larger number is for all worldwide facilities
Pointless distinction and missing the forest for the trees. Just close up shop. Don't spend 1.6 billion on anti-China propaganda (google this). Don't spend $800+ billion on endless wartime activity.
> I wouldn't put China in the "WAY WAY WAY more peaceful" category
The more you learn about both American and Chinese history, the more true this becomes. Suppose China invaded a sovereign country for their oil rights? Or directly funded terrorist regimes across the globe? Or toppled democratically elected governments to install brutal regimes? It just keeps going to the point where it's somehow unremarkable and it becomes background noise. It's psychotic. This shouldn't be so normalized.
> It also isn't being "choked out" by anyone and never will be.
Google "china containment". Then also mentally reverse the roles between China and the US to give yourself a little objectivity on the matter.
There's way too much to refute in your statements that I literally just don't have the time so I encourage you to do more research on them, including the extent of Khmer Rouge support and the US role in supporting them among SO, SO MANY other brutal regimes.
You seem to be on the right track in your other comments regarding Israel, so I hope you can eventually see through the fog of propaganda on this issue. Just like how western media lies in unison about the situation and events in Israel/Ukraine, as verified by on-the-ground sources, it also does with China. It's really not that clear cut.
Pointless distinction and missing the forest for the trees.
Don't know what to tell you, but you were literally off by a solid order of magnitude with the "1000 military bases abroad" figure, which means you were also wrong in the forest/trees sense. It isn't nitpicking at all to point this out. I'm not saying the US military footprint above isn't a problem. But for some reason you seem determined to present a characterization of this footprint that is numerically much larger than it actually is.
Including the extent of Khmer Rouge support and the US role in supporting them
China's support for the KR was unquestionably far, far greater than the material support they are alleged to have indirectly obtained from the US (and even that is hotly contested). It seems you're trying to point to a near-equivalence between their respective roles here, but there just wasn't one, or anything close to it.
There is the rather more subtantial issue of the US appatantly tolerating China's support for the KR (via statements we have from Brzezinski et al). But that's still different from the matter of the far greater outright material support that China provided (well over $1B in aid, training KR troops on their own soil -- and of course invading Vietnam in response to its own defense against the KRs aggression against it, in turn supported by China).
And either way, it simply veers off topic: you were trying to say China was "WAY WAY WAY more peaceful", to which I said "yeah, like their support of the KR for example", which you attempted to water down with "but US also through something into the KRs tip jar, allegedly". Nevermind the fine-grained detail on those cover programs -- whatever the US did at the time, it does not detract in any way from the decidedly non-peaceful role that the PRC played in that conflict.
Google "china containment".
Make of the policy what you will. The point here is that for some reason you're using wildly exaggerated and emotionally manipulative language ("choked out") to talk about it. Which I find to be (1) not useful (2) boring.
You don't have to like what the US does in the world, but there's no need for all factual distortions and weird, emotional language, please. And you can definitely spare us this rhetoric about "peaceful China".
Your fixation on numerical specifics and word choices misses the point entirely. The issues here are clear-cut patterns of global interventionism, both recent and historical, that have wide-reaching impacts. Nitpicking about base counts or who funded whom doesn’t change the reality of these policies’ effects on actual people, nor does it excuse moral double standards.
It's telling that you’d rather split hairs on specifics than engage with the ethical implications of systemic militarization and the resulting destabilization worldwide. I’d hoped for a meaningful discussion about the costs and consequences of these actions on a global scale, but you seem more invested in technicalities that derail any serious dialogue.
So, if the best you can offer is dismissive corrections and patronizing asides, then I think we’re done here.
Again, pointing out that you're off by 10x isn't "nitpicking", and that wasn't the only matter of concern in regard to issues of basic factual integrity (and logical coherence) of the stuff you're saying. We definitely seem to be speaking different languages in any case, so I agree that we can close up shop here, and move onto other things.
Personally I'd support a supermajority process, similar to a US constitutional change, started in both mainland China and Taiwan so they both have the same constitution.
Once that happens the merging of the countries could carefully proceed.
I'm not sure how you're going to get both population, subdivision, and political supermajorities for the same new constitution in both countries though.
China is rising. They’re clearly prioritizing the wellbeing of their people through infrastructure and social programs.
They’ve also developed a reputation among the global south (as well as the majority of their neighbors, despite western media) as a benevolent “win-win” trading & investment partner.
Given these developments, I think it’s possible that Taiwan will agree to some kind of “100 year transition” to full reunification in the future, once it becomes clear that they’re better off under PRC rule vs American occupation.
They don’t even need the same constitution. Hong Kong has it’s own constitution. It’s not even a state, it’s literally just a city.
The entire point of my solution is to prevent another HK situation. It's quite likely it still wouldn't work (deep state, backsliding, etc.), but it's a total no-go otherwise.
But all Chinese knows the art of tense and relax, forward and retreat.
If you think Chinese are depressed because of some GDP numbers, then you are a normal non-Chinese individuals.
When I say Chinese being fundamentally different, I do mean that normal non-Chinese individual indeed cannot make sense of China.
This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure the Chinese I've met have been taught this technique. Also, I don't think most people in any given country usually get depressed about GDP numbers. They'll more likely get depressed when they can't find a job.
> A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers, who could just take and print his works.
I mean where was the railway invented for example.
The point is that the US got a huge jump start in 19C from copying - and often improving - other countries technology. Sure lots of fundamental inventions - like Edison came at the end of that period but it doesn’t negate the jump start.
So ‘the US invented its technology’ really doesn’t describe the position accurately. Nor is the contrast with China as stark as you imply.
Robert Hammond beat Edison to starting a formal electric power supply company by a few months and continued on for a number of years after Edison's first effort folded.
The Pearl Street station began in 1881 and was delivering power to customers in 1882. It was far more advanced than Hammond's which strung a few overhead wires to arc lamps, and Hammond's work never went further and was a dead end. Edison's company evolved into General Electric. By 1884 it was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps at 110V.
see "Edison" by Josephson starting page 251
Quoting from page 256:
More than fifty years had passed since Michael Faraday had discovered the mechanical production of induced electricity and had been possessed by a vision of the future electric power. It needed Edison, however, as well as Faraday, Ampere, Arago, and other scientific explorers, to make the Electrical Age.
"Scientists and inventors have more in common than in difference," James G. Crowther has written in discussing the relation of invention to science. A Faraday might discover far more new scientific facts than Edison, and in this their roles were different. "But the importance of
Faraday's discoveries cannot be explained without reference to the work of Edison... This is why Edison is truly a 'man of science.'"83
It was Edison who had finally applied the knowledge of electrical science that had been accumulating during those fifty years in a decisive form (his "system") and boldly imposed it upon the "new" commodity, electricity, which thereafter was introduced to practical usage on a large
scale. Thenceforth, the mass production and sale of electric current was to be carried on in all the world's markets. His successful carbon filament lamp, taken together with his System of electrical distribution, constituted the key invention in this technological drama. More than any other
individual, he gave impetus to the advance of this new art, creating new wealth immeasurable, new convenience and enjoyment, and a new tempo of life.
Edisons contribution was to capitalize on the discoveries/inventions of Volta, Faraday, Siemens, Gramme, and Tesla, helping to popularize and push electricity into the market. Not insignificant certainly, but if we're talking about doing the actual inventing here, I don't think that supports the thesis.
Things that were patented that he then stole, or things he patented that other people really originated at their core? Former is silly, but latter:
Lightbulb, xray, moving camera, phonograph are some things that were originated by others and refined by him, but that are often completely attributed to him. Again, his contributions are not insignificant, but highly misleading in the spirit of the topic regarding China and the trope that they can’t invent new ideas but that America did. All ideas take lots of collaboration so it’s just wrong to make those kinds of statements.
> won all cases
You mean the patent office awarded him patents, not that he is the undisputed originator of the idea, surely? The legal complexity and resource hungry nature of the patent system makes this a pretty moot point. Even today, patents are largely pointless if you can’t wage a long drawn out legal battle. The robber baron era was not a more just time.
Building the first electrical power grid is quite significant, yes, but still irrelevant, because the core tech is still non American. Many innovations must be made to take those foreign ideas and implement them, yes, but how is that different from what’s going on in China?
The original claim is that they don’t invent anything, only copy. Its a common narrative that’s not only an untrue cope, but also blinds people to the fact that they are on a trajectory to surpass in innovation, in addition to implementation.
And on the bandsaw, it’s very international as well.
I didn't write anything like that. I wrote that you can grow faster by copying existing ideas that have been refined and put into practice than by reinventing them.
You might want to read a biography of Edison, not just a summary on the web. The one by Josephson is good, and goes into considerable detail.
Edison did not invent a glowing wire, nor did he invent electric arc lamps. However, both of those were useless as light bulbs. Existing lightbulbs at the time were low voltage, high current. The lightbulbs didn't last very long, and so were useless. They also consumed enormous amounts of power.
Edison's innovation was to go with high voltage, low current. This cut the power consumption way down. The next problem he had was the filament burning up. This problem he managed to solve with a vacuum pump. Voila! A long lasting, cheap, and cheap to operate, light bulb.
This is why he received the credit for inventing the light bulb, as it was the first practical light bulb. This is why all the other patent suits against him on the invention failed.
If you are interested, feel free to read the Josephson book which covers the patent suits. I don't think you can just dismiss them with Edison had the resources to defend his patents, nor can you dismiss them with the litigants being paupers. The litigants who didn't have money got money to pursue the patent cases from investors who knew that if they won the suit, they would get rich.
Everyone was aware that an entire industry was up for grabs, and so they poured money into fighting Edison. These when on for many years. They had every opportunity to make their case(s).
But Edison prevailed.
As for the bandsaw, I said the invention of the circular saw revolutionized the lumber industry, and that invention was I think from the Amish.
What Edison did was make things that were practical.
BTW, Edison invented electronic vacuum tubes, but he failed to recognize what they would be good for. Would you say he invented the entire electronics industry up until 1960? I wouldn't. It was others who turned the vacuum tube into a practical and incredibly useful device.
Edison invented the idea of a commercial invention lab, and produced so many practical inventions that revolutionized life that he is a contender for inventing the modern world. It's hard to understate his impact.
Interestingly, the Wright Brothers inadvertently invented the modern directed research and development laboratory. I'm probably the only person who ascribes that to them, but before the Wrights, people just tried random things (including Edison). What the Wrights did was:
1. research everything known about the topic
2. identify each problem that needed solving
3. develop prototypes to test and solve each problem
4. put the solutions together to solve the whole problem
and voila! it worked! and everybody else has followed that pattern since.
> 19th century US invented its technology. China simply copied it - which enables much faster growth until one runs out of things to copy.
This is what I would rather focus on. If Edison can be credited with inventing as much as you say, I don’t see why you hold this belief regarding China.
If you define “invention” as the core concept of a mechanism/process/etc, then Edison did not invent much at all, and perhaps China has a lot to prove.
If you define “invention” to include all improvements to technologies which at their core already exist, then China is already the leading innovator globally.
Yes, China has been playing catch up, but I hate narratives that would paint an entire nation of 1.4 billion people as some kind of mindless robot state.
I’ve worked at two market leading, trend setting, American flagship tech companies which did competitive analyses on mass market Chinese tech products. Incidentally, they were at times when Chinese products were beginning to overtake the American ones. People were pretty shocked overall, and shortly after both of these experiences, on both occasions, the US imposed trade restrictions on the respective products.
I remember a while ago, the thought that China was innovative would have been laughed at as it was a silly idea. They were just a factory, no more. Now, people get mad at you for stating the truth that China has evolved and is now out-innovating us. I think it’s fear based. The media paints a grim picture about what it’s like there, but breaking out of the western bubble has been enlightening and humbling.
I now firmly believe that China will be the first to some kind of AGI, I think their EVs will dominate all global car markets, they’ll build embodied AI robots at scale first, their chips will eclipse Nvidia’s finest soon enough, their space program will be more advanced, etc
Most importantly however, their green tech is outpacing us. The west really dropped the ball on what is the second greatest threat to long term survival of organized human life. For the sake of humanity, I hope they’re able to continue this advancement trend unimpeded, since they’re the only signatory of the Paris accords who are taking this seriously and not just meeting but exceeding targets. I hope they can equip the world with their inventions soon enough.
Let's take an example. One country invents a tractor, and makes improvements on it for 100 years. Then, another country that does agriculture by hoe and shovel, buys a modern tractor.
Which one is going to experience faster year over year growth in the next year?
If you bring a cellphone to an isolated Amazon tribe, have you just implemented the most rapid advancement of technology known to man? It’s a ridiculous, meaningless question.
Where is their industrial capacity? Where is their university system? Or their self defense capability? A space program on the way tomorrow perhaps?
Why is it that China’s development outpaces India so much? Why does China have 28,000 miles of high speed rail, doubling in the next decade, when the US has 50? Why did China roll out 5G before the west, when there wasn’t anything to steal yet?
Does the US need to steal some high speed rail technology from somewhere so that it can grow?
These aren’t matters of technology at this point. They are growing fast because they’re committed to it. The growth capacity has been there for so long in the west, but we prioritize the wealth of elites instead. At this point they have a better space station and a better moon landing / colonization plan. Their green tech is better, their batteries are better, their robots are better, their EVs are way better.
This idea that they should slow down because there’s no more technology to steal is inconsistent with the fact that they have in so many areas surpassed us rather than asymptotically approaching the status quo.
Comparatively, the trajectory of material conditions leaves the US in the dust, if it hasn’t already for most of the US populous.
It makes me sad because I’m an American, but it gives me hope because the US may finally start competing in areas like infrastructure, housing, and education rather than letting the private sector take the wheel.
That's the literal opposite of the truth and basically just neoliberal propaganda. It's also quite an amusing take more broadly, considering that the market reforms were implemented by the original Communist revolutionaries, people who were deeply committed to Marxism and vehemently opposed to that idea.
China's system is defined by not letting the private sector take the wheel. Capitalists (major owners of capital, the 0.1%) have very little political power vs. in the West, where policies are almost wholly driven by the private sector.
Marx actually believed that Capitalism was a necessary step to Socialism, which would then turn into communism. Lenin added that a vanguard party would be required to oversee that transition. The CCP fulfills that purpose in China. When the Chinese leaders decided to allow some capitalism, they did so with heavy restrictions, referring to it as a "bird in a cage" policy. They quite explicitly did not allow the private sector to take the wheel, and that continues to this day.
The real history of China in the last 100 years is extremely fascinating once you get past all the western propaganda. If you want to see what happens when the private sector takes the wheel, look up "shock therapy in Russia".
A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers, who could just take and print his works.
Likewise the Chinese often ignore foreign copyrights and patents, though not as much as the US did back then.
So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent? Copyright is more than paying "fair share," the enforcement apparatus puts a large opportunity cost which is ordinarily unaccounted for. I am less likely to innovate and iterate if I have to navigate patents and copyright compliance, as all of that is administrative cost and the legal risks are well and above R&D costs. I argue it creates an environment of not bothering, when one has to tip-toe on egg shells to avoid massive liabilities in suits coming out of nowhere from trolls and such.
If I built a binary Linux distro, you know damn well ZFS will be in the kernel, it will be hosted on only .onion and .i2p, and all Linux Foundation and Oracle Corp C&D emails will be published with sensibly witty lampooning comments.
It sounds like one party is getting all the advantage of a piece of IP without having to make any investment in it's generation, which is a competitive advantage.
Or that you can't squat ideas and memes, and you actually have to materially produce to get [super]wealthy.
And you should never publish your new ideas and memes, to ensure your keep your technological advantage.
That's the idea behind patents. You get a period of what is essentially monopoly license in exchange for the idea being made available to the public. The issue with copyright is that it lasts far too long now compared to the original length (14 years in the US), which throws off the balance.
> So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent?
Even this feeble pitch would hold a lot more weight if companies either couldn't own copyright or couldn't purchase the copyright. As it is it's more like a corrupt rent-extraction scheme with government backing.
> So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent
If you’re ignoring copyright and IP rights while catching up? That’s just freeloading, you need someone to pay for all the research/innovation.
> if I have to navigate patents
Albeit still more likely than if you have no funding? Investors don’t have as many incentives to provide that if they can’t get a return.
Of course you need a balance, over restrictive IP protection might be as bad as not having it at all.
> If you’re ignoring copyright and IP rights while catching up? That’s just freeloading, you need someone to pay for all the research/innovation.
This is not true. Everyone, everywhere, who created any thing ever, built it on the backs of [millennia of] previous creators.
History teaches us that innovation flows in the absence of restrictions - including rent-seeking. Conversely, modern history teaches us that IP gets in the way everywhere it can.
Innovation and progress happened at a snail’s pace (by modern standards) before IP rights (at least rudimentary) became a thing. Not saying there was a causal relationship necessarily but if we look at some of the most important inventions like the steam engine it’s unlikely that it could have been invented and perfected at the time it was without patents.
It’s rather [extremely] simple and obvious , generally R&D requires significant investment. If you can’t get any return on your investment, you won’t invest.
Of course there needs to be a balance to minimize rent seeking beyond a certain point.
Charles Dickens writes a book. Everyone copies and sells it without permission. Charles Dickens starves. Charles Dickens either becomes a factory worker or dies. No more Charles Dickens books.
People like Charles Dickens books.
The first publisher to get a hold of one would have a massive advantage.
Publisher pays Charles Dickens to only provide his newest work to them. Many publishers want this privilege, there is a bidding war.
Publisher sells millions in the first week, eventually other publishers get in on the action but it takes time to typeset, print and ship the books. The book is the talk of the town, consumers want one now.
Publishing house doesn't make outsized profits years after the authors death and instead has to compete on the quailty of its publishing in the free market.
Rent seeker has to get a factory job or dies. The market is brimming with high quailty editions of each authors work available to everyone at a price point they can afford.
> Publisher sells millions in the first week
That’s not how it worked back in the 1800s, that’s not even how it works now.
In any case Charles Dickens would have earned less than he did and a larger proportion of surplus would have went to printers and publishers. How is that in any way a positive thing?
And of course without physical distribution your “business” model is even more absurd (being very absurd to begin with).
I’m not sure if you are aware (presumably not) but that’s how publishing worked in the 1500s. Cervantes got a lump sum for the Don Quixote (and his other books) and he was never able to sustain himself by writing and a had to have a daytime job.
His books were (relatively) extremely popular at the time and no publishers outside of Spain paid him anything. It seems rather absurd that even someone like him could never make a comfortable living by writing?
> Rent seeker has to get a factory job or dies
These bizarrely unhinged anti IP takes are truly something else..
I mean sure the “fair” duration of copyright is up for discussion, author’s life + 70 years is probably excessive.
Cervantes wrote what, 5 books and some poems that weren't well recived.
Why does that level of effort entitle someone to a "comfortable living"? That's on the order of a few words a day.
Shakespeare wrote 39 plays and 154 sonnets. He didn't need a day job beacuse he wrote full time. He didn't enjoy copyright protection and was fine.
> Why does that level of effort entitle someone to a "comfortable living"?
Because people enjoyed his books and were willing to pay for them? (But all the profits when to the printers in Belgium etc)
> That's on the order of a few words a day.
That irrelevant. It’s about the value/utility you provide and not the amount of labor.
Also you(or me) really have no clue how many words he wrote per day even if that were relevant. Maybe he wrote a dozen drafts for each book which he discarded, how would that change anything?
I mean… if you wrote down 500 words per day would you believe that you deserve to be paid more for that than Cervantes for e.g. 0.01 of his words?
> Shakespeare
Ran a theater (together with his partners) i.e. he was both the writer and the publisher.
His final theater troupe was sponsored directly by the King (previous one by the Lord Chamberlain) and had a royal patent and operated in a heavily regulated market. So surely not a very good example?
Or is patronage and a system heavily regulated by the government preferable to legal copyright? Because that the only realistic alternative besides having no content.
> entitle
What entitles you to the content of your bank account or retirement savings? Maybe even your house? What kind of a question was that even? (I don’t really get it)
it doesn't sound like it but it is it.
The talking point is always focused on rewarding those who did the work but that I have to pay to enforce the scheme and the cost of going without if we don't get permission is also not important at all.
Funny as hell to pay so that it can be assured I don't get to use something.
I think we should find ways to at least judge some technology valuable enough to buy it into the public domain at sensible but non-negotiable rates.
Something similar was said about Germany’s 19th century development:
“No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?”, https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
America's economic strength doesn't rely on something as easily copyable as intellectual property.
Look at SpaceX. What they had perfected isn't going to be easily available in patents, homeworks for other people to copy, especially the Chinese. What they are willing to do is what other companies and organizations aren't willing to do. When SpaceX steadily made progress, people kept dismissing them until it's too late and now SpaceX is pushing ahead anyway.
It's a form of false strength, and there had been discussion about how detrimental patent laws are to innovations.
My grandfather filed patents on his method of forming large halide crystals. However, all attempts to duplicate his process have failed to produce those crystals, and he's long dead.
He apparently wished to both protect his process and keep it secret.
Walter Bright, making crystals. Did he inspire a show by any chance?
I am sometimes confused with Walter White, as we are both in the Empire business.
It seems like the usual status quo power and revisionist power conflict: [0]
In every political system, the existing rules are created to preserve the existing status quo. Where do those rules come from? There is chaos and war (not necessarily kinetic; there are trade wars too), the war ends with a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability (as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting), and the signatories to peace create rules to maintain their desired outcome.
Later a power arises for whom that peace isn't desireable. They are the revisionist power and want a change. Intellectual property rights are desireable for those who have a lot of intellectual property, the status quo IP powers. New powers might not have IP and don't find IP rights to be desireable.
If the revisionist power is strong enough, then either the status quo powers accomodate them - perhaps a controlled IP transfer program for developing countries, in return for strong IP laws or openness to foreign investment within those countries - or there's war (again, not necessarily kinetic war - maybe lots of hacking and IP theft, for example).
[0] "International relations analysts often differentiate between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign entities, and more."
https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/ac...
> as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting
And up is up unless it is down :-)
I'll try to keep my sentences shorter for you. :-)
It's not that 'wars must end, otherwise they keep fighting', but that there is 'a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability ... otherwise they keep fighting'. [0]
I will stipulate that the sentence could have parsed more clearly. :-(
[0] It's just Clausewitz, effectively: Warfare is politics conducted by other means.
> It's just Clausewitz, effectively:
Drink!
Apologies to fans of Bret Deveraux :-)
I think that was intended to be read as "how all wars must end" rather than "because all wars must end".
War never ends, alliances and theatres merely shift.
> War never ends
Some wars end!
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield%E2%80%93McCoy_feudWhat does that mean? Aren't there endless examples of peace? Unless you just say all conflict is part of a great universal conflict, which you'll have to give us some evidence for.
Don't believe the military-industry-complex lies. Peace is not only possible but natural.
Peace might be but competition certainly is more natural than peace.
I'd say either both are equally natural (hard to believe when you've been conditioned in a mostly competitive environment) or cooperation is actually more common (it's just that you consciously register the competitive).
Germany ignored patents and copyrights in the 19th century, and their economy rapidly industrialized.
The free software movement has shown that freely distributing IP is quite workable.
> The free software movement has shown
It’s very successful in areas where software is a “cost center” (i.e. allows companies to use it reduce the cost of developing (semi)proprietary software)and not the end product. Everywhere else it’s mixed or a failure (e.g. video games).
Is this Da real Walter Bright? Hello, sir.
It says I am on my passport!
One reason I'm always skeptical of the IP moralists. IP is not property. If it was it wouldnt need the classifier. It's really just a rent seeking mechanism
How is it any more or less rent seeking than property ownership?
IP law is more analogous to zoning in that it fixes the supply of land that can be used for a particular purpose.
I know everyone gets a stupid stick up their ass over property ownership and "rent seeking" but property ownership is just ownership of "something". You can rent seek any investment. The whole point of much every professional license is that we all agree to let these people "rent seek" because they've proved they don't suck at the subject.
Yeah some people don't get that "property" is just as much a constructed concept as everything else is. It is an agreement/contract between people that is enforced by other people (e.g. the government).
Owning a home might seem more "real" than owning some IP, but it is just an agreement, and without a proper enforcement, anybody could enter and live in your house (which is what actually happens with squatters in some European countries where you're not allowed to kick them out by yourself and police don't care).
So property rights were never "real" (inherently) — they only become real when somebody kicks your ass for violating them. That's the only real thing about it.
True, but "this is my home and you cannot have it" is still quite a bit different from "this is my idea and you cannot use it". ;)
> How is [IP] any more or less rent seeking than property ownership?
Property ownership restricts what you can do on my property.
IP restricts what you can do on anyone's property, including your own.
Famously the West stole tea and silk cultivation secrets from the Chinese and I'm pretty sure they never paid any royalties...
Well… by Western standards the patent on silk (tea is probably no even applicable) would have expired a couple of thousand year prior to the 1800s. Nobody is arguing in favor of perpetual patents..
Edit: the Romans first “stole” silk in the 500s, but still
What's the royalty on tea cultivation?
They also fought the Opium Wars over tea (well, trade imbalances resulting from the tea trade).
To be fair it’s not like the Chinese were unwilling to buy western goods (not just opium) it’s just that the ultra mercantilist Qing government didn’t allow them to..
Yes and I believe that at the time the UK also restricted the emigration of engineers to the US so as to limit technology transfers...
The guy who developed the textile industry in the US memorized the drawings for the machinery before immigrating to the US. There was nothing for the export customs people to find.
I think the same thing happened with movies.
Edison basically pirated "A Trip to the Moon" and showed it in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Release
Anyone who thinks Chinese science isn't catching up extremely fast is dreaming. In my own area accepted papers at top conferences from china have gone from a negligible amount to about 50% in the space of 15 years. It's only a matter of time before the top prizes mentioned will follow in my opinion.
Look at the authors of AI papers from big tech companies, many are authored by Chinese. There are also a lot of teams in some big tech companies (e.g. Meta), who are 100% chinese. I've heard they muscle out non-chinese employees. I bet it's difficult for Zuck. He has to choose between patriotism or business. As we know, in the short term globalisation and business are at odds with America.
I remember when I was in university in the UK (2014). The cohort was atleast 40% Mainland chinese. I bet some had cheated on their English tests to get into the university. One of my Chinese friends told me he planned to learn the cutting edge research in the UK from a well known UK company related to my field and bring it back to his dad's business.
Strategically, not only are we in a bad position, but it is actively getting worse. Economically, there is nothing wrong with Chinese citizens paying £40K a year on university tuition fees, on top of that, spending money on nice accommodation, which has been "great" for the UK economy. We pay for their cheap labour and manufacturing, and they pay for our services. Also, going back to Zuck, chinese employees have a harder working culture (e.g. "996") - that hustle leads to exponential better results (IMHO). The western work life balance does not. Can you start a business in a culture of working 4 hours a day?
Old Russian proverb.
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men.
Ultimately America, particularly once you get to the upper middle class is a straight up lazy country.
You see this often in immigrant families. The first gen comes here, knows struggle. The second gen grows up, fails to appreciate anything, drops out of college and blames mom and dad for their failures.
Then again, I don't buy into this neo coldwar propaganda.The fear mongering is getting out of hand. The Military Industry Complex needs fear though, how else would you justify spending trillions.
>Can you start a business in a culture of working 4 hours a day?
Only if you're not gonna be competing internationally, like working for governments or state companies.
As a scientist this isn't my experience at all.
With a few exceptions, most of the claims coming out of Chinese reserach is immediately suspect. For decades claims were irreproducible or the work not of high quality.
It's certainly improved, and there are a few institutions that produce high quality work, but they make up a few percent of the total coming out of China.
No doubt the quality will continue to improve, but no more than any other developing country.
The number of papers from Chinese teams getting accepted into the top international journals paints a different picture.
Chinese scientists are now publishing more papers in journals like Nature and Science than American scientists are. Those are journals with very difficult peer-reviewing and editorial thresholds.
Counting papers in top journals isn’t a great measure. While top journals do have high standards, not all papers are equal.
I got published in a Nature journal but my paper was not groundbreaking by any means. You have groundbreaking research and you have “we made a slight, but important modification to an existing technology”.
In my area of physical sciences, the big breakthroughs are still coming from the US and Europe.
Is your impression more accurate and unbiased than what the numbers of papers say?
For what it's worth, my impression is completely different from yours. A significant share of major findings are now coming from China.
It seems to me that:
1. Chinese researchers are catching up and increasingly producing good papers.
and:
2. There is a lot of low-quality junk science spam coming out of China.
Are entirely compatible. Both can be true at the same time.
I don't really know about scientific papers, but the high number of Chinese patents is generally considered a fairly useless metric files mostly for "CV reasons" rather than representing any genuine invention (see e.g. [1]). But here too, "China is producing tons of trash patents" and "China is catching up on innovation" are entirely compatible.
[1]: https://www.cigionline.org/articles/what-do-chinas-high-pate...
I wonder if those top conferences need updating their process and have stronger verification of submissions. China took fake it till you make it to fake it while you can keep getting away with it.
their papers are much more likely to find real world application too
What's your area?
Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways in which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands today our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends are too big to ignore.
As a European I've already come to terms with the fact that we're a consumer group dependent on china.
A huge sector or our commerce can be summarized as "Alibaba but with expensive middle men".
Amazon is similar. Their service is essentially to make buying the random, weirdly-named products from China as “safe” and convenient as possible. (By “safe” I mean a bare minimum of having a generous return policy. Not that they are actually vetting safety.)
I would place Temu, Alibaba, and TikTok shop somewhere on that same spectrum of safety.
It’s incredible how unsafe our products are. They are practically unvetted, and even when they are, Amazon sells counterfeits under the same SKU comingling. And risks nothing because the product was technically sold by “INXBDBA”.
Having been to Armenia, which has practically no laws because it’s not part of the EU, I wonder what would happen “naturally”, if EU laws didn’t exist in the EU. Maybe we’d get exactly the same quality of products.
> And risks nothing because the product was technically sold by “INXBDBA”.
The kicker is that this is a classic "cobra effect" [1] that has bogged down government offices. Those useless brands exist because Amazon tried to cut down on counterfeits and no-name junk by implementing a policy of requiring the brand to be a registered trademark. Instead of cutting down on junk products, it led to an explosion of junk brands [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...
Visiting East Asian countries and then returning to the US, I’m always struck by how behind and slow we are with large infrastructure projects.
I was talking to an engineer who has a worked on a few majority buildings in NYC, SF. His take was it was mostly regulations slowing things down. Not that the regulations were overly onerous, but rather NIMBYs leverage the regulations to fight the projects every possible step of the way.
Before even breaking ground, the environmental assessments would take years and close to $1M. Relatively straightforward assessments are contested by people who don't want it built, and current regulations force builders to come to yet another hearing, respond, then wait for a response, then another hearing for a decision.
If they win, then the NIMBY files a lawsuit contesting the environmental hearing's decision.
This is a reason why people selling fixer-uppers in SF charge way more if they have approved permits for it. The time and money spent can easily be >$100,000.
NINBYs at all levels love regulations
I don't think it's even NIMBY. It's just that doing big labour projects in us, EU, UK, etc is too expensive.
Until we figure out how to develop our infrastructure without throwing manpower at it, we're going to get left behind. Our roads, rail, power, etc will all age and fail to keep up.
We got to where we were because our great great grandparents all worked for significantly less, consumed significantly less. Our society shouldn't expect that of us, we need to have technology/IP that enables us to more with less people. One person controlling a bricklaying robot can get paid a respectable wage while keeping costs down.
Alon Levy over at Pedestrian Observations has a pretty well developed theory on this. The Anglosphere countries perform worse than Spain, Korea, etc., for a few reasons, some legal- the lawsuit bonanza up thread- and some more specific to the nontechnical bureaucracy in the high cost countries.
> so much infra construction in Korea and Japan, but the prices are reasonable
Just watched a Bloomberg short about SK where they complain that they are overworked, over-stressed, hypercompetitive, depressed as a people, giving up on starting families out of fear of financial insecurity. (also, seems top suicidal in SK) No idea if it's true, but that all might have something to do with keeping the wages down?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2024-10-31/south-korea...
Japan and Korea don't have unions like in EU.
Japan absolutely has unions which are extremely empowered.
> One person controlling a bricklaying robot can get paid a respectable wage while keeping costs down.
what happens to all other persons? For example, there are 3.5 million truck drivers in US, whose only skill, with all due respect, is to sit behind the wheel all day long. Once we have robocars, they will all start to sing and dance and will get some time to discover their true calling?
I'm not as concerned about them advancing technologically as I am about their demographics. I just hope the resolution does not involve war, as it often has throughout history.
China is about to reach the tipping point where solar and batteries will be cheaper than all forms of energy the resulting efficiency gains will not cause the demographic economic collapse people are expecting.
On the other hand the way they are slowly encroaching on some of the largest economic moats of the west like car manufacturing and Jumbo Jets the wars might be coming from the other side.
They have a lopsided gender distribution in favor of men, and an expected population collapse in the not too distant future. This does not spell happiness and harmony.
They are far from a demographic catastrophe if they start doing something about it now. Also, 23% of their population is rural. 1% is enough to feed the population. They could lose 22% and it would not affect their productivity.
A policy of licensing boy births (coerced by revocation of social benefits), or a ratio requirement of conceiving n+1 girls for n boys to qualify for social security, or something, can go a long way to help prevent Chinese style tens-of-millions of excess men overhangs (due to selective abortion of females). I'm not 100% sure, but I sense there being a mild excess of women vs men would have a cooling effect on both international and domestic tensions...
... then again, I am a self-interested heterosexual man. :^)
China will have fewer people in 75 years than the US.
Source? Wikipedia predicts US population of ~425 million, China ~632 million in 2100. Still a dramatic decline either way.
>> China will have fewer people in 75 years than the US.
> Source? Wikipedia predicts US population of ~425 million, China ~632 million in 2100. Still a dramatic decline either way.
Also, assuming current trends continue for a ridiculously long time. The Chinese government has the ability to be massively coercive if it wants to. It's been less than a decade since they ended the one child policy. I wouldn't be surprised if that's deployed in the next 75 years to increase birthrates (e.g. "hey women under 35, you're fired unless you have two kids, kthxbye"). They already have a youth unemployment problem, and it probably wouldn't be too big of a deal for them to make sure all those unemployed youth are women having babies, and slot unemployed men into any jobs that are opened up.
The thing is that without migration, demographics are extremely predictable for a very long time. People that don't exist can't have kids. They can't be coerced to have kids. And they can't have grandchildren either.
Even if you start coercing people to have kids: that will be much harder than enforcing the one-child policy. And it will have a slow effect either way, because it is starting from such a low base.
I am not sure what is possible given the political cost (and yes even authoritarian states have political costs) but I think it’s worth noting that economics are much more powerful than any birth rate limiting policy at this point. It doesn’t matter if China raises the limit to 10.
Immigration would be a tough sell but not out of the question. In fact with an aging population China’s options may be highly limited.
> It doesn’t matter if China raises the limit to 10.
> Immigration would be a tough sell but not out of the question. In fact with an aging population China’s options may be highly limited.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking of China as having the same policy limitations and constraints as a Western country (i.e. limited to some weak carrots due to a respect for personal liberties).
If the Chinese government wants more Chinese babies, I don't think they're going to fret at all about a lot of the things Westerns would fret the most about. I think they have plenty of options to push Chinese women into having children: onerous fines for not doing so, penalties at work (getting passed over for promotion, demotion, firing), banning access to birth control, etc.
When I mentioned political cost, I meant it. Single party states still need to maintain a level of popular support.
The genius in a two party system is that one party can scapegoat the other for unpopular policy. If there’s no second party, the public will begin to question the system itself.
And ignoring the political aspect, raising kids costs money. One question is who will bear that cost, both at a personal level and socially. If women are taking care of kids, they’re not in the workforce. And Chinese women have fairly high labor force participation rates (slightly higher than the US).
That massive coercion is exactly why the birthrate is dropping like a stone.
> That massive coercion is exactly why the birthrate is dropping like a stone.
Yes, but that was coercion in the other direction. Nothing's preventing them from using coercion to course-correct their previous policy. They're not timid liberals or libertarians afraid of using state power to do whatever.
> Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways in which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands today our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends are too big to ignore.
Yes. I think there's a lot of lazy thinking happening in the West vis-a-vis China, which will serve to delay hard decisions until it's too late.
Why is it unsettling?
The US thinks of Chinese prosperity as a threat in and of itself. The US wants to call the shots, and the reason it has been able to since WWII is because it is wealthy (due to its innovation of not being a country in Europe during WWII.) It's not simply racism, though. The US also thinks of European prosperity as a threat.
These sentiments are not hidden. They are openly spoken during policy discussions and in policy papers. Fake concerns about the nature of Chinese governance have nothing to do with it - the problem the US has with Chinese governance is that China is not governed by the US. The US is jealous of China's tools for censorship and the tight top down political control.
edit: the US government is not at all concerned about the citizens of China. It also did not invade Afghanistan for women's rights, and it is not helping Israel to preserve gay rights. These are barely even serious pretenses. It is not in Ukraine because it cares about the freedom of 2/3rds of the population to suppress the other third. These are stories for children.
This right here.
China - under Xi specifically - doesn't have rule of law, acts as an agent of chaos on the world stage, doesn't care about international order, bullies its neighbors, and critically, has become a 1-man dictatorship in the past ~10 years. Under Xi, it's an aspiring evil empire that considers all humans of Han ancestry to belong to it, and genuinely doesn't care about the rest. Pre-Xi, China was on a positive trajectory. Post-Xi, hopefully that'll return.
Your first sentence is exactly what the US has done since the Cold War through recent history. Why is it different when China does it, which it also hasn't to the scale that the US has?
It's not different. Peace is always a temporary illusion, a cloaking of the war, and one shouldn't expect any consistency in these cases (akin to the peacock's tail-feathers, too much consistency costs).
[flagged]
You could say something similar about the Mongols (Pax Mongolica). Of course, they weren't very nice to other states when establishing that order...
China doesn't really have stable rule of law, but "agent of chaos on the world stage"? It's the most stable and predictable major power, by far.
China hasn't fought a war in 40 years. It's been too busy focusing on its own internal economic development. In terms of the international order, China is much more committed to institutions like the UN and WTO than the US is, because China wants a stable international framework in which to continue its own internal development.
>doesn't have rule of law, acts as an agent of chaos on the world stage, doesn't care about international order, bullies its neighbors
This also describes the actions of the US in many circumstances in its history.
Dude you need to chill. Xi is just a man in China. You need to take a trip there to get a different perspective and make sure to talk/interact with the local people.
Unlike several other authoritarian regimes, this is very much constitutional in China. Every institution pretty much reports to the CCP.
Really? That's fantastic. In the US, three-letter government agencies work outside the scrutiny of the law.
In China, "there are no three-letter government agencies".
Yikes. Propaganda runs DEEP in the west.
Everything you said describes the US and other western nations better than any other civilization in history. The US backs genocide after genocide, consistently breaks the international “laws” it pushed for. From the start of the empire, that’s been the explicit policy of the American empire. Trail of tears anyone? Hiroshima? Agent Orange? East Timor? The banana republics? It’s a really long list…
Students really need to be taught their actual history. It’s really quite horrific.
This comment displays not even a shred of understanding regarding China or it’s history.
How dare China have territorial sovereignty. How dare they have security in their own region. How dare they build infrastructure in the global south, when everyone knows they should be pillaging those regions instead! Unthinkable! That all belongs to the west!
That comment represents an insanity in the west that may just be the downfall of organized human life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
Lol yes exactly like this. Tides have turned eh? The American elite are doing a very good job of distracting the public from problems at home.
They get people riled up about Taiwan or Ukraine, meanwhile the education system, the housing supply, job market, healthcare system, etc... are all in shambles.
Americans don't even question it anymore! It's now fair that housing should be >=40% of your wage. It's fair that companies that are propped up by the American people can screw over those same people.
But when you see how modern and lively China is and how they live, compared to the crumbling, old United States... oh boy. Strange how they can afford it but we, the supposed 'richest country in the world', can't.
Because of how they treated Hong Kong.
The way they curb free speech, even projecting that internationally.
Their announced intention to become the world's superpower and displace the US militarily, technologically, and economically, and the risks to US interest which tie to that.
Their active pursuit to enact that claim, specifically with rapid military technology development, and international organization of BRICS.
Their aggressive tendencies towards US allies.
Their aggressive spying on US military and industrial facilities.
To a non westerner, this doesn't seem like a bad thing. A world where US sanctions are useless is a good world
China has barely started with Taiwan. There are projections of China moving to forcibly take Taiwan within the next two years. It may be a bit later than that.
If the US doesn't take a strong stance in support of its ally in Taiwan, China will only take it sooner. Once China invades, that begins the massive expansion to WWIII that JP Morgan CEO claims has already begun with Ukraine.
The US can't lose Taiwan as an ally, strategically or economically. If we give up our support of Taiwan we've as good as handed over hegemony to China. And we'll have lost the AGI race in its infancy.
We deserve this treatment. Their entire personality on the international stage was created by the west.
It could of course be that they would be much worse without us but that didn't happen.
It depends on how long you're willing to roll back US interventionism. If you're talking about pre-WW1, maybe. But even by the mid-late 19th century the US started sticking its nose in the Pacific (which alarmed Japan, which contributed to that countries subsequent militarism). So I'd say you'd have to go back even further.
If not the US, it would probably be Europe and/or the Soviet Union. China and the Soviet Union nearly came to blows in the 60s.
Europe decolonized largely because Hitler wrecked major continental colonial powers France and the Netherlands) and put Britain with their backs against the wall such that it had to partially abandon its empire in order to defend itself and avoid a complete disaster. So they let India go, but tried to hold on elsewhere. This worked to some extent, but not in others. What remained tried to morph into the Commonwealth, this was only partially successful.
The US assumed the crown, this time with a different model, hegemony vs. colonialism. They had a rival in the Soviet Union, which funded Communist revolutions in many parts of the developing world. With the exception of Vietnam, something the Chinese did not do. They valued North Vietnam as a buffer against Wester imposition, but were not too keen on a reunified Vietnam, indeed they invaded a few years after South Vietnam collapsed.
Well for starters, Xi Jinping being the most powerful person on Earth is probably a bad sign for democracy.
In their time as the dominant world power, the US hasn't always used their influence for good, but at least its a democracy with some form of constitutionally protected human rights in charge. I much prefer that to having a country with a permanent ruling party where critics go missing being the dominant force in world affairs.
> the US hasn't always used their influence for good
This is a bit of an understatement for anyone in latin america.
> but at least its a democracy with some form of constitutionally protected human rights in charge
as far as i can tell, those only apply to US citizens, not humans in general.
America only cares about spreading democracy if some country they have beef with isn't democratic. America had no issue replacing democratic (and sometimes secular) goverments with dictatorships if dictatorship was more friendly to the US.
If you want to see how much the US cares about democracy, read Noam Chomsky's How The World Works. Or just look down south to Latin America.
A common refrain in american homes and schools is about american superiority over all other countries, especially their rivals like china.
Is that perception why everyone online constantly shits on America and proclaims that every other country is superior? For as much as people like to accuse Americans of being "'Merica, fuck yeah!" the truth sure looks like it is mostly other countries with the arrogant attitude.
Capacity for self criticism is part of what lets America reïnvent itself.
yes and it's deeply ironic that you just quoted an American film which was satirizing that attitude twenty years ago!
if anything I feel like Americans have become extremely self loathing in the passing generation since the release of Team America: World Police
Interesting that the self-loathing seems to be associated with waging unpopular and losing wars. I didn't live through it but the Vietnam War seemed to have some similar impact that persists to this day with the utter loathing of conscription. It seems to be the same underlying cause: that bad leadership essentially permanently burned credibility for their country for no gain for their country.
Lots of gain for those in charge, and their cronies.
Americans may feel that way, but "Team America: World Police" still applies to US foreign policy in 2024.
Xenophobia
Stop playing dumb, superiority is everything.
Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing companies to make a better product then the other guy, rather then the crappiest thing people will buy.
> Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing companies to make a better product then the other guy, rather then the crappiest thing people will buy.
If by "better," you mean "crappier but even cheaper." IMHO, we're kind of in a race to the bottom with product quality. You can't really tell what's good and what's bad online, so people gravitate the what's cheapest to minimize the risk of getting really taken advantage of. A lot of the stuff that's still good quality has massive luxury premiums tacked on, and a lot of the stuff that used to be good quality has been debased by some bean counter trying to convert goodwill into cash money.
Kind of hard to tell, because sort of an optimal successful product is made from the worst possible hardware.
If you were to look at this in terms of a CPU chip, the cheapest chip would be the chip with the most defects that runs, while the chip with the fewest defects would be overpriced to sell, or extra-overpriced and overclocked to barely running.
Think about it - do you run out an buy a Xeon Gold blah blah for $15k or a core i7 for $200? Marketing keeps you from thinking the core i7 is "crappier and cheaper"
This is why I prefer to underclock than overclock.
Dude, the next iconoclast is probably going to walk around with tablets playing videos showing every way China is kicking the US' ass, and why it's happening (his incumbent opponents).
What a great topic for a great blog.
I wonder what this perspective can tell us about the new wave of Chinese expansionism, which becomes somewhat akin to the US's abandonment of isolationism and the resultant war with Spain (1898) and joining the two World Wars.
The USA was never non expansionist: they either took over the native Americans or the Mexicans.
you can argue that the Monroe Doctrine was also a bit of expansionist policy, essentially warning all European colonial powers that the Americas was the U.S.A's sphere of influence.
the goal of the Monroe Doctrine was to keep the endless European wars, which at that time were not wars of nationalism but of monarchy, out of the Western Hemisphere. In North America, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution itself were aspects of larger monarchical wars taking place in Europe.
it was a sensible doctrine in 1823, and we see 40 years later in 1864 the French under Napoleon III still attempted to install a Hapsburg as Emperor in Mexico.
yeah I'm aware of the stated purposed of the Monroe doctrine, nonetheless as noble as it was it also functioned as saying the Americas belong to us, other colonial powers, and we will protect it.
The definition of a sphere of influence is "a country or area in which another country has power to affect developments although it has no formal authority."
That ended over well over an hundred years ago, and was when the country was explicitly in expansion mode.
And “the Mexicans” in this context were an expansionist Spanish colonial empire too.
At the time of the Mexican-American War, in 1846, there was no Spanish colonial presence in Mexico. In fact, the country had become an independent monarchy, soon followed by a republic, more than two decades before.
Spain lost the vast majority of its empire in the 1820s. Just a few possessions, like Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, remained in Spanish hands until the end of the nineteenth century.
> That ended over well over an hundred years ago
What do you mean by this? The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion. If you're dating expansion over the continent as overlapping with that (which you should) you're agreeing that there was unbroken expansionism.
edit: and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it doesn't make me not a burglar. The question was whether the US was expansionist, not a moral judgement about the people who controlled the places it expanded to. You can't say that we weren't expansionist and also that they deserved it.
> and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it doesn't make me not a burglar.
To be clear it's not that you're in a burglar's house, it's that you're robbing the same place.
Yes thanks, that was my point, that it's not like the Mexican government had a clear moral argument to that land over the US. Both were break-away colonies expanding over native cultures.
> The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion.
That is not entirely true. The United States government and/or its citizens acting autonomously had global reach much earlier than 1898.
Throughout the nineteenth century, American expansionism was seen in various Central American countries, Ecuador, Liberia and Japan, for instance. In some cases, like in Japan and in Brazil, America’s aggressive policies were thwarted. But it does not mean that there was not expansionism.
1898 was still well over a hundred years ago though.
I think by the time Unite States got to the west coast and south spain was mostly kicked out already by mexicans?
Yes Spain was already out, but kicked out by the Spaniards and their dependents that controlled Mexico. My point was that both the US and Mexico at that point were colonies that broke free and were fighting over land that had originally belonged to neither of them, so it's a bit strange to act like the Mexican government had some clear moral, historical claim to the land vs the US. Both countries expanded when the could and decimated the native cultures.
The dominant native cultures did the same thing to get that land before the Europeans arrived. The Aztecs colonized and subjugated plenty of groups.
It's a well written article, but a lot of it appears to be based on a flawed interpretation of Yuen Yuen Ang's "China's Gilded Age".
Ang's argument is that there are 4 types of corruption - Petty Theft (eg. policeman takes a bribe), Grand Theft (eg. a Governor embezzles from the state pension fund), Speed Money (eg. business pay bribes to speed up processing of a permit), and Access Money (eg. pay bribes to get access to the bureaucracy).
Ang's thesis posits that China's comparative ability to somewhat temper Speed Money corruption was the primary driver for China's economic growth (eg. via SEZs and allowing foreign corporate structures to leverage Hong Kong).
This is not meant to be treated as a positive though. Ang points out that China still has an active problem with Access Corruption due to the chumminess between regulators and politically connected firms which can lead to systemic risks (eg. Evergrande Crisis):
"China provides a sharp illustration: by enriching capitalists who pay for privileges and rewarding politicians who serve capitalist interests, access money perversely stimulates transactions and investment, which translates into GDP growth (Ang 2019; Ang 2020, chapter 5).
Yet this does not mean that access money is “good” for the economy—on the contrary, it distorts the allocation of resources, breeds systemic risks, and exacerbates inequality. The harm of access money only blows up in the event of a crisis: for example, America’s first great depression of 1839 (triggered by risky public financing and state-bank collusion) (Ang 2016, chapter 7; Wallis 2000, 2001), the 1997 East Asia financial crisis (Kang 2002), and the 2008 US financial crisis (Baker 2010; Igan, Mishra, and Tressel 2011; White 2011; Fisman and Golden 2017; Fligstein, Brundage, and Schultz, Forthcoming)"
- "Unbundling Corruption: Revisiting Six Questions on Corruption", Yuen Yuen Ang 2019
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3481412
was the "spoils system" the XIX equivalent of "access money" in the US?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
In a way.
While the "spoils system" did incentivize access, the principal-agent problem in this case would treat a voter as the principal and a legislator as the agent, as is a common issue with patronage systems in general.
Access Money in Ang's typology hasn't been extended to patronage politics (yet).
My current take is that culture is just path-dependent[0] interpretations of pretty much the same situation [1]
[0]large mean time between scattering events, e.g. number and make-up of parties dont change very much since the last time the current system became barely-functional (we take on socio-technical debt before we have actual social tech??) as it is, 1789 was a bit too long ago for founder-mode, may halloween continue to console us!
[1]more tk. it seems mostly everyone is tripartite. Tripartism, has its own en.wikipage! But more research on YYA’s taxonomy is required of me.
If you take the interpretation —as I do— that 1984 was a bunch of fast-forward* around the message that Orwell wanted to write, then it also says:
a/ everyone is tripartite
b/ every now and then, mid and high circulate, often by appeal to the low
c/ as soon as the old mid becomes the new high, they forget their promises
which is completely in keeping with what he said in Animal Farm. (did he have a third book on the topic?)
{a: PIE, b: Veblen, c: Machiavelli}?
(I recently learned the chinese latin TLA "SPA" from a Zhihu question about the PRC equivalent of the low)
* not completely fast forward: one sentence of the last narrative explains why the Man even bothers to keep the low down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40023059
EDIT: on Tripartism, yeah, a large part of our current "The Middle" party was previously known as Christian Democrats.
Re:cruelty/VPS/offering struggle
Not sure if the sage is allowed cruelty(=irreversibilty?<= deluging), more sure that the sage is forbidden from enjoying it (or even signalling its enjoyment, cf Not-Hillel)
That may be why a common definition of cruelty is being unnecessarily unpleasant: the Lords/Ladies of Instrumentality would say, it's not me, this just falls out of the Lagrangian, and yes it was horrible yet I was but the instrument. (compare the original words to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6m9SusjNYk )
The chinese note a tension between 霸 and 王 , do they also note one between 正 and 仁?
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92WwPFDn_xM#t=90s
TFA discusses exports, but doesn't seem to mention anything about ease of blockading ports; I guess the War of 1812 (or the midcentury CSA experience?) might have some evidence along those lines for the 19th Century U.S.?
I would love to see a similarly detailed article juxtaposed with the detailed environmental effects of each phase in history. What crucial choices were made to get us here, what would we have needed to have done differently?
What surprisingly good policies may have also emerged? Where was old times better than current environmental awareness?
It seems warped to talk if these only as success stories.
We used to talk about this but people shot us down as racists and didn’t grok what was happening in front of them. Played right into that fiddle.
China is nothing like the 19th century US.
While it has invested infrastructure, the scale of its investment does not equate to the US - it vastly, vastly overshadows it. The nature of its infrastructure investment: centralist planning under socialist leadership, is also nothing like US robber-baron driven development. Modern China's urbanization has been nothing less than the largest human migration in history. The infrastructure went from the odd railroad with a few urbanized cities to fiber optic internet, 5G data, high speed trains and airports everywhere in the country within ~30 years. 1.4 billion people have cell phones, flatscreen TVs, instant messaging, e-vehicles and streaming movies.
But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories are closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of technical integration, cutting headcounts. The educated youth are unemployed. International investment has dried up. Rumours abound that the party leadership is in crisis with factional schisms and high profile coverups, and the national pension fund has been emptied. Chinese with money seek to escape by moving their families overseas. The specter of the party looms over remnant private industry seeking a tax to aide its flailing coffers. Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and seeks to send their kids overseas. A fledgeling venture capital industry, once buoyant, has seized, and while domestic remittance is ~free and ~instantaneous international financial remittance is heavily regulated. But everyone can watch the latest Hollywood, Bollywood or Chinese content. Wealthy young Chinese can obtain information from across the country in seconds and access drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine, and marijuana, drive Teslas or Ferraris and wield iPhones. Everyone in the cities has a VPN on their phone to get foreign content. AI's potential to accelerate further change looms large.
How is this anything like the US in the 19th century, an era before even broadcast media? This to me seems a frankly ridiculous assertion. Modern China is nothing like anything that has ever happened before, in terms of technology, political ideology, or economy. At best, weak parallels can be drawn along constrained axes, but the big picture is totally unknown to history. I only hope for the people's sake the current situation can be resolved without civil war. And indeed such wishes should be extended globally, as in the current era, the UK, the US, parts of western Europe and even my native Australia could be said to have the socioeconomic preconditions for civil war. Let us not see another world war in our lifetime. Let us not be blinded by nationalism.
Nationalism is an infantile disease: the measles of mankind - Einstein, who also incidentally, it should be highlighted, was himself a globalist-humanist and turned down the presidency of Israel considering Zionism a self-destructive political ideology...
> But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories are closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of technical integration, cutting headcounts.
China has been suppressing domestic private consumption, it stands at just 40% of the GDP. For comparison, the US is at 68% and Germany is at 53%.
This was probably done to prevent the appearance of the true middle class. China has no problem controlling a fairly small percentage of rich people, but the Party is afraid of large population strata that might start asking for political representation.
But it does give them a _lot_ of leeway for easy growth. They just need to make the country more business-friendly at the lower end.
> But it does give them a _lot_ of leeway for easy growth. They just need to make the country more business-friendly at the lower end.
Consumption-led growth is all but over. The population is shrinking, manufacturing is fleeing as fast it can, and the number old people exceeds young — China got old before it got rich, which has never happened before
The old population will also need to consume stuff and services. And the younger people can make it.
China's fundamentals are fine. They just need to allow more low-level business activity. It's easier to start a factory compared to a neighborhood café.
Peak consumption for a population is 45-54, when income is highest and people are having their 1 kid. Once retirement hits income is generally fixed as people rely on pension or savings. They also depend more on state services like healthcare. In China, this also means depending on their 1 child.
It’s not really possible to say “China’s fundamentals are fine” because China’s fundamentals look like nothing the world has ever seen. It’s not clear they have the leadership to navigate it.
Sure, but China has huge unemployment _and_ under-consumption. This means that the economy is not well-aligned with the needs of the population.
The fix for that is long-known: liberalize the business environment and let the market settle.
The question about the leadership is right, though. I'm not sure they _want_ the market to win.
The time to start a business is in your 20s, before you have a kid. Unfortunately, China runs short of these. The largest demographic bucket is 50-54 years old. The second largest is 65-69. The 20’s are 7th and 8th…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101677/population-distr...
> Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and seeks to send their kids overseas.
Is that so? My understanding is the Chinese education system is pretty cutthroat, and lot of the Chinese kids studying overseas are the ones with rich parents who could not compete academically. So a rando foreign degree is not looked on as highly as it once was, and many domestic schools are more prestigious than they used to be.
Pretty much. Their universities are very prestigious and rising fast. The prior comment has an old perception of china, heavily influenced by western propaganda, which is quite strong in their native Australia.
Chinese leadership is deeply influenced by Marxism. The representation of the masses is strongly prioritized. There are obviously many problems, but it doesn’t take long to be certain of this fact.
There’s many many examples that support this. Evening out the education landscape, ruthless drive towards ecological sustainability, massive anti poverty campaigns, state funded healthcare, hard regulation of the housing sector, complete renovation of the slums (they even pay out or rehouse citizens when they do said renovation)
The perception about China in the west is genuinely psychotic.
You are quite incorrect. I have decades of experience hiring in China, including foreign-educated Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, domestic educated Chinese, and foreigners. Mostly this was for R&D work, but also operations and other roles.
You know what I found? The value of Chinese domestic university education was a net negative. For instance, in R&D work, I found it to be a solid predictor of futility in the face of unstructured problems. Local employees who had never been to university outperformed those who had - every time.
While I wasn't hiring Tsinghua elites, I did hire from a range of universities across a range of provinces. Many of these graduates would last only days before being fired. I found no more efficient way to screen than to allocate tools, space and a task. Domestic employment law is supportive in this regard.
If I had to generalize, when performing R&D work, the university educated Chinese people were the worst performers, mostly due to no capacity to handle unstructured problems but also due to assumptions of being in a "team" and active seeking bureaucratic excuses for lack of progress. They would freeze up and have no confidence reasoning forward when questioned. The "made it without university" Chinese people were the best performers, and excellent communicators. And the foreigners were generally somewhere in the middle. Overseas educated Chinese were essentially equivalent in this regard.
Other foreign bosses in China have reported to me that they prefer to hire women who have already had children as they are stable employees willing to do what needs to get done, graduates and in particular young men are considered near to useless, with zero loyalty, commitment or motivation.
Everything you described reflects my experience with American graduates. I have only worked at "top tier" FAANG-level institutions and attended what is supposed to be a globally competitive so-called "elite" university. Very few students at my university and others I interacted with (who were supposed to be some of the best, given the programs I met them through) and very few employees at these institutions were actually good performers or genuinely knowledgable.
I was most impressed by those from 'second tier' universities and some without degrees at all who were more obsessed with quality and rigor than they were about 'GPA', prestige, or whatever it is. I don't expect this to be different anywhere in the world, due to the nature of selection systems. That is Goodhart's Law after all.
The selection systems employed by these institutions favor those who optimize for select-ability, which distorts things quite a bit. I hold very little value in a PhD from any university at this point. In fact, I'm quite weary of prestigious credentials in general, as they often translate to over-confident idiocy with power in credentialist institutions, rather than self-aware idiocy which can at least self-regulate to some degree. PG put it well when he called them "professional fakers".
That being said, research output in China is quite strong. I have also learned that average people, given enough time, resources, and a little bit of good direction, will be able to accomplish quite a bit. China has made undeniable, unprecedented progress across the board in high-tech sectors. I say this having been part of competitive analysis at two of these top tier American institutions, looking at how China is overtaking our own products.
Basically.
> Chinese domestic university education was a net negative.
Is fair but not exceptional observation to PRC tertiary education. Can be generalized to most mid to shit tier western university talent as well, i.e. if you're not hiring from elite. But really also tons of low calibre all over "top tier" western institutions with academic inflation in last couple decades.
IMO generalized tier list is follows: c9 league (or other PRC elite) -> self motivated / self educated go getters -> competent grads from good (not elite) institutes -> average to bottom barrel grads. Note here competent grads includes much of your expats, and foreign educated Chinese... both have some qualities of self motivation to do well because they decided to go (or return) to PRC to work instead of working/staying in west. Western educated Chinese who returns also largely falls under / prefiltered the bucket of basically not being good enought for elite/C9 but have smarts and enough resources to goto a semi decent western uni. Chinese educated in mid to shit tier comparable to same quality of medicore talent from mid to shit tier western uni. Plenty of such western educated PRC grads just chilling in the west being useless, many from fairly well ranked western institutions - plenty of useless non-Chinese grads in even well ranked western institutions bad at unstructured problems (maybe disproportionately so). Young men being < young women for skilled work force also pattern you see in west, except in west, young men aren't being pushed through tertiary at similar rates as in PRC.
Also worth nothing Chinese C9 has like 400,000k enrollment (500+k if you include seven sons), vs 150k US Ivys + MIT,Standford,Caltech, good UCs, and it's maybe 250k... a big portion being non S&T.
Maybe it's about it's usefulness?
I'm pretty sure the bar for 'like' does imply there are still many things that are not alike. The title is not 'how China and 19th century US are exactly the same'.
I think the US raised interest rates in part to put the breaks on Chinas economy but the US was unable to keep high rates for longer without tanking it's own economy. That China and the US have bubble ponzi economies is one way I do think they are alike. I'm in disagreement with the Peter Zeihan with his predictions of a population bust with aging. I do agree there will be some population decline but Chinese old people are vastly cheaper than US old people and if they have to will work right up until the point they keel over. I really don't know which country is in a worse state but most people I know do not believe the US can continue in it's current state for much longer. Compared to that China does not seem that bad - but that could just be because I'm too far removed to see it's warts.
The traditional way of managing civil discontent is by exporting it with a war, so as much as I hope China does not have a civil war I would rather they have a civil war than intentionally trigger an international war.
Not sure how you square the US support for Israel as part of the global-humanist effort by the US. A nationalistic US would not support a nationalistic Israel.
Not sure I mentioned the US, and I certainly didn't give an opinion on US support for Israel, a subject which has in many people's view become impossible to discuss openly. I believe you refer to the Trump election outcome with regards to claims of cessation of support for foreign conflicts. I do not follow US politics to any depth but my uninformed impression was that he perhaps wants to dethrone or progressively de-fund the defense industry who have historically backed various political or business rivals. Probably this is a part truth.
But yes, the US is certainly in a difficult position with its socioeconomic trajectory, and the current election is a powder keg.
A somewhat popular meme in the expat community in China has long been that the US and China are just converging on the same future from different paths. Those who have lived for extended periods in both places can see the truths behind this suggestion.
It has been said that "Our true nationality is mankind", but I think it better to state "Our true nationality is Eukaryote". We should care more about the environment and other species' outcomes, not obsess over monkey-squabbles.
You're talking about nation support for Zionist Israel and that's pretty much just the US. The US is the worlds current hegemon and it's current policy of exporting liberal democracy is part of the globalist effort to instill and maintain a rules based world order. I consider that to be globalism and the opposite of nationalism.
Trump is merely wearing the cloak of nationalism in order to get elected which I guess is why it gets confusing - Zionism is a wedge issue in the culture war and an ability for the right wing to take part in grievance politics. Evangelicals have also been thoroughly brainwashed to support Zionist Israel but those are dying out and the new ones are smaller in number and have a net negative view of Israel. Support for Israel was already on a demographic timer which has only just gotten much shorter since Oct 7th.
We're going to see some weird things in the near future.
In a spirit of share the wealth if you still actually believe the export part, you might benefit from reading more Chomsky and maybe Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Religious fervor is associated with low standards of education, and organized religion with politics. One good takedown is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRcYaAYWg4
Thanks for the suggestion but I've already read both of them. You and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum, you have an affinity with eukaryotes and I barely share an affinity with most of humanity. I'm interested in knowing things for curiosity sake and my general support for humanity, specifically the unthriving middle class, is for my own comfort and desire to live in a nice society. I see religion is just another form of politics and politics is inherent to people, to hate religion is to hate people. I don't particularly like religion but I don't particularly like people either. Given the inherent constraints of people I'm not sure how I would design a nice society without religion. It appears to me that those who try to stamp out religions often end up creating new ones complete with articles of fait, heresy, and excommunications.
Bro, you don't like people, we must create a religion. Hear your calling.
>Trump is merely wearing the cloak of nationalism in order to get elected which I guess is why it gets confusing - Zionism is a wedge issue in the culture war and an ability for the right wing to take part in grievance politics.
I will not be hoodwinked again!
-t. Bamboozled 2016 Trump Voter
[flagged]
Ever noticed that the Israeli flag has a religious symbol in it? Very curious. As a citizen of a secular nation with separation of church and state it's difficult to ignore.
Have you ever seen Hamas flag? It literally contains the opening sentence from the Quran. Amazing how you were able to ignore it.
I would not have called a Chinese invasion of Taiwan a civil war - not sure of your point there. My reference to a Chinese civil war was like how I would image a US civil war. Start out as a small outburst of grievances and quickly grow.
Israel has made a grave mistake and is only now just starting to realize it - views made public with the 'painful concessions' speech made 4 days ago. Due to modern weaponry we no longer live in a world were you can relatively cheaply maintain dominance over your neighbors. In my view the failure to navigate this new state of affairs could be terminal. The US can no longer afford to bail them out of a major regional war.
China is referring to Taiwan as break away province and see this all thing as internal affair. I thought that what you were hinting.
Regarding Israel, I don't think it has made any grave mistakes. The 'Iron Beam' is set to be deployed next year, which will resolve most of the cost issues.
I’ll refrain from discussing the future of this war until the U.S. elections, as that will be a pivotal moment
Is this what they were referring to by "civil war" or were they referring to the possibility of a civil war breaking out between provinces in the PRC due to their mention of the economic bubble bursting.
Unfortunately for you Einstein supported Zionism, while his views shifted on how should be implemented by 1947 he certainly tried to persuade world leaders to support Israel
[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Albert_Ei...
It seems you are questioning only the "...considering Zionism a self-destructive political ideology" final part of the final sentence, a necessarily concise summary of a whole person's lifetime views which is obviously skipping nuance.
Well, hey, I'm the first to admit I never met the guy. I have also read that wikipedia page, which is probably not impartial or complete. My limited understanding is that he didn't want an Israeli state - "I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state". Later, he initially supported Israel (as did many fleeing Europe, including my own family), but never Israel-for-the-jews-to-the-exclusion-of-others. Later he was disgusted at the political leadership of this bent he saw emerging to dominate the political reality in the fledgling nation, which is what my GP comment referred to. He would without doubt be critical today, though it seems he wisely tried to stay out of politics where feasible. Probably I should have said "militant exclusionary Zionism" or some other phrase, but it seems everything is a loaded phrase these days in discussions touching on Israel.
Edit reply to child: I can see clearly that quote must be taken out of context quite often. Perhaps you should imagine if you had lived somewhere for generations and then a bunch of foreigners show up from Europe and start altering the status quo, how exactly you the residents might feel about it. It seems peaceful protest and strikes had been carried out in living memory but the results were violence. So you can see what sort of tinderbox that would be. I don't think deploying historic quotes out of context in an attempt to allocate blame and transfer that to a modern context is in any way shape or form constructive, valid, useful or intellectually honest.
Are you sure you read the page?
"He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the state of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live to complete it. In the draft he speaks about the dangers facing Israel and says “It is anomalous that world opinion should only criticize Israel’s response to hostility and should not actively seek to bring an end to the Arab hostility which is the root cause of the tension."
I hope it helps
It's complicated. Einstein opposed the creation of a Jewish state, but wanted Jewish immigration to Palestine to be allowed.
On the whole, however, Einstein suffered from the same blind spot that many people in his time did: not paying enough attention to the rights of the native population of Palestine, which was more than 95% non-Jewish.
Not to disregard the main claim, but the numbers seemed wrong so I checked and never since 1890 (at the time Einstein was 11), Jewish population in Palestine was estimated below 8% (and more than twice that number in the 30's). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
If you want to modify my statement to 92%, fine. It makes absolutely no difference.
Almost none of the Jewish population in 1948 could be termed "native," except for the tiny minority that had actually lived in Palestine before Zionism (and that Jewish minority was by and large opposed to Zionism). The overwhelming majority of the people who founded Israel were European or American, with a small fraction of young people born to European/American parents.
"Not to disregard the main claim" is what I started my comment with.
Not sure why you keep reiterating it when I just pointed that native population at the time (when Einstein addressed it) is estimated to be more than double what you stated.
They weren't native. They were almost all Europeans and Americans who had just recently arrived.
And yet they were estimated to be over 11%, not less than 5% or less 8% when Einstein addressed it. That's all I was saying, you quoted a wrong stat, which IMO is independent of the other statement you made yet you keep repeating the other statement.
If you really want to obsess over a few percent, the actual percentage of the population that was Jewish before the Zionist movement began was 3%.
>If you really want to obsess over a few percent
You brought up the percentage of Jewish population, not me. I just pointed out your mistake. Now you're suggesting it's not important by claiming I'm "obsessing over it"?
If in fact the size of Jewish population at the time isn't relevant to the point you're trying to make, why would you even bring it in the first place?
P.S. you again quote a wrong stat. The Zionism movement is considered to have started on 1897. At the time (1890), Jewish population was estimated to be 7.9%, not 3%.
Certainly the ballpark size of the ca 1897 population is relevant.
Just not the fine grain of whether it was 3 or 5 or 8 percent.
Either way, the commenter's salient point still stands: like all Zionists at every point in the history of the movement, regardless of subvariant -- Einstein never paid enough attention to the rights of the non-Jewish native population of region (being variously an absolutely overwhelming majority of the population up until about 1936, to a still thoroughly solid majority until 1947).
It's not complicated at all. His views shifted over time.
He also was a product of his times: no one questioned the moral existence of USA, Australia or New-Zealand in regard with native population rights.
If the US had been established in the mid-20th century through naked colonialism, then yes, a great many people would question its moral right to exist.
Israel was founded at a time when anticolonial movements worldwide were gaining strength. That made its founding - through the mass expulsion of the native population - an anachronism.
Einstein was very clearly against the foundation of a Jewish state until it actually occurred. He accepted is establishment in the end, and like many people of the time, he glossed over the incredible injustice that had been done to the Palestinians in order to establish Israel.
I do know that not everyone thought this way, though. Some of my own Jewish family members opposed to establishment of Israel at the time, precisely because they thought it was unjust to the Arab population.
You are confusing reality with your own wishes:
Many Jews actively opposed the creation of a Jewish nation; the Bund is just one example [0]. I’m not sure what your point is here—people are entitled to different opinions. However, Einstein actively persuaded world leaders to support the UN partition plan, which was before the founding of Israel.
The founding of Israel resulted from the UN decision on the partition plan, which the Jews accepted while the Arabs rejected. The "mass expulsion" was a consequence of the war, similar to contemporary events in Europe (where 3 million ethnic Germans were displaced) and India (with approximately 20 million displaced). Additionally, you seem to overlook the 900,000 Jews displaced from Arab countries and areas that were meant to be part of Israel but ended up under Jordanian control. This is why, many people at the time (Einstein included) didn't hold the prevailing view that 80 years later is dominating the left.
The U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were undeniably created through colonialism. Live with it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Jewish_Labour_Bund
Einstein publicly testified against the creation of a Jewish state in 1946.
About the Bund: indeed, they represented mainstream Jewish opinion before WWII, which was anti-Zionist.
> The founding of Israel resulted from the UN decision on the partition plan
This is just historically wrong. First of all, the UN "decision" was actually a nonbinding proposal. Second, the leaders of the Zionist movement were preparing to go to war to create a Jewish state, regardless of what the UN did or did not propose. With the British leaving, there was going to be a power vacuum, and the Zionists were going to seize the opportunity. They had already built up an army (trained by the British) and most of the organs of government (like a legislature, an executive, and ministries handling different state affairs). They weren't waiting for the UN to decide.
> The "mass expulsion" was a consequence of the war
Zionist paramilitary forces went town by town forcibly expelling the residents. Those who remained were often killed. Many Palestinian civilians heard of these atrocities and fled in advance of Zionist forces. The Palestinian Exodus isn't just something that happened by itself. It was a brutal affair.
After the war, the Israelis refused to let the Palestinians return home, and either expropriated (read, "stole") or destroyed their homes and property. If you just go down the list of major Israeli cities nowadays, many (maybe most) of them were formerly Arab cities, which the Zionists "cleansed" in 1948. Lod is the Hebrew name for Lydda, an Arab city where the IDF massacred over 100 civilians, then stripped the rest of the inhabitants of all belongings and drove them out at gunpoint, forcing them to walk on foot through the summer heat to the Jordanian army. After the war, Israel resettled the city with Jewish residents. The Israelis did this sort of thing all over Palestine.
> U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were undeniably created through colonialism.
If they had been created by the same methods in the last 75 years, then people would care just as much as they do about the expulsion of the Palestinians. Israel was founded as the colonial era was coming to an end. I would even say that if it weren't for the fact that Israel rules over millions of stateless Palestinians to this day, far fewer people would care. About 40% of the population of greater Israel - the area actually ruled by the Israeli state since 1967 - is subject to martial law and treated worse than dogs. That's why so many people care, and can't just "live with it."
I know that numbers and dates can seem intimidating, but let me assure you that 1946 came before 1947, which came before 1948. "In his testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in January 1946, Einstein stated that he was not in favor of the creation of a Jewish state. However, in a 1947 letter to Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he sought to persuade India to support Zionist aims of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine." So again, your wishes aren’t aligned with reality.
>This is just historically wrong. First of all, the UN "decision" was actually a nonbinding proposal. Second, the leaders of the Zionist movement were preparing to go to war to create a Jewish state, regardless of what the UN did or did not propose…
Resolution 181, while not binding, remains a plan that the Arab side rejected, and the Jews accepted. This isn’t speculation; it’s simply what happened. The Arab side not only rejected the plan but also took less than 12 hours to murder seven Jews — four women and three men. Again, this is not speculation; this is actually what happened.
The Jews, acting like responsible adults, prepared for the worst-case scenario and, rightly so, prepared an army. Did the U.S. act wrongly when it strengthened its army before any hostilities from Japan? That’s what responsible adults do — they prepare for the future.
While we can only speculate on what might have happened to the Jews if the Arabs had won, it’s not speculation that Mohammed Amin al-Husseini cooperated with the Nazis. Between 1941 and 1945, he lived in Berlin and worked as a Nazi propagandist.
> Zionist paramilitary forces went town by town forcibly expelling …
At the end of the war roughly 20% of Israel population were Arabs, so obviously you are lying when you say that they went “town by town”. Why are you lying?
> The Palestinian Exodus …
I never said it happened entirely on its own; many people were forced to leave. All I said was that it was (and to an extent still is — just look at Syria) a common practice in war. It happened during the partition of India (affecting 20 million people) and at the end of WWII, when 3 million ethnic Germans were displaced. So, intelligent people, like Einstein, wouldn’t think it unprecedented And as I was saying, and you ignored, all the land that was captured from Israel was ethnically cleansed from Jews. And there was a mass explusion of 900,000 Jews from Arab counties.
What I really find it puzzling that you might have some good arguments to the peaceful nature of the Arabs, that they were all loving and caring. 2 most lovely examples: Hadassah medical convoy massacre [0] and Kfar Etzion massacre [1]
> 1967 borders ...
I'll never defend the settlements it is an abomination. Yet the root cause of the conflict remains the Palestinian refusal to any peace plan that doesn't include the destruction of Israel.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Etzion_massacre
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Etzion_massacre
What I really find it puzzling that you might have some good arguments to the peaceful nature of the Arabs, that they were all loving and caring.
It really quite difficult to discern what benefit you might see in presenting such an obviously false and derisive characterization of what another user has been saying, such as this.
Since you're being extremely condescending, I'm going to point out that this does not mean what you think it means:
> a Jewish homeland in Palestine
This does not mean a Jewish state, as anyone who has read even a little bit about the history of Zionism knows. The term "Jewish homeland in Palestine" comes from the Balfour Declaration, and the point of inventing this term was that it implies some sort of Jewish community in Palestine, but doesn't specify that that community will have a state. It doesn't even state where in Palestine that homeland will be. Part of Palestine? All of it? It's unclear, and intentionally so.
So when you bring up Einstein supporting a "Jewish homeland in Palestine" as proof that Einstein supported a Jewish state, you're just revealing that you don't even know the basics of the history you're trying to discuss.
> The Jews, acting like responsible adults, prepared for the worst-case scenario and, rightly so, prepared an army.
Okay, so the condescending tone continues. Another way of putting this is that the Zionist movement was aware that what they were doing - attempting to establish a state on someone else's land - was so unacceptable to the local population that it would inevitably mean war. Yet they persisted in this policy anyways. By the way, this is one of the central reasons Einstein gave for rejecting a Jewish state. He said that the establishment of a Jewish state in a land that was majority non-Jewish was unjust and would lead to violence. He was correct on both counts.
> At the end of the war roughly 20% of Israel population were Arabs, so obviously you are lying when you say that they went “town by town”. Why are you lying?
The fact that Israeli forces went town by town expelling the Arab population is very well established. There are records of how this happened in countless villages all over Palestine.
Without the expulsion, a vast majority of the population of the territory that became Israel - far more than 50% - would have been Arab. The 20% of the population that was Arab after the war was a small fraction of the original Arab population. In fact, about 80% of the Arab population was expelled.
> and you ignored, all the land that was captured from Israel was ethnically cleansed from Jews.
No land was "captured from Israel." There was no Israel before the war. It was the Zionist forces that were seeking to capture territory to establish a state, against the will of the overwhelming majority of the native population of Palestine. There were small numbers of Jewish people who were expelled from the parts of Palestine that ended up under Arab control, but that was practically nothing compared to the number of Arabs who were expelled.
> And there was a mass explusion of 900,000 Jews from Arab counties.
That happened over the following decades, and it was caused pretty directly by the establishment of Israel. The expulsion of the Palestinians by Israel caused a wave of antisemitism across the Middle East, which led Arab governments to start taking their own oppressive measures against their Jewish populations. One of the tragedies of Zionism is that it undermined the status of Jews in the Muslim world.
> What I really find it puzzling that you might have some good arguments to the peaceful nature of the Arabs, that they were all loving and caring.
Where did I ever say they were all "peaceful" and "loving and caring"? They were normal people. They would fight under some circumstances. One circumstance under which almost any group of people anywhere would fight is when another group of people comes in and tries to conquer their territory.
The U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were undeniably created through colonialism. Live with it.
And genocide, slavery and a whole host of other evils.
That doesn't mean we need to accept those evils when they're happening in the present day.
Live with it.
Oh, are you talking about what China is doing to Tibet? Or Russia to Ukraine? Or perhaps you're referring to the suffering of the Uyghurs (China again)? I’m sure the Arabs would appreciate your help in Khuzestan (the Persians are really fucking them there). Or are you implying that you're focused on the 6.7 million refugees forced to flee Syria, and on bringing to justice those responsible for the deaths of 230,000 civilians?
Or maybe you're thinking about the raped women in Darfur [0]?
There are so many real evils to choose from—not imaginary ones involving Jews. But I know what you’ll end up choosing... the hallmark of anti-Semitism.
Live with it.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/nov/03/w...
We're also done with whataboutism, and nonsense accusations of antisemitism.
> There are so many real evils to choose from—not imaginary ones involving Jews. But I know what you’ll end up choosing... the hallmark of anti-Semitism.
Saying that antisemitism is the reason people care about Israel killing 15,000 Palestinian children is pathetic and contemptible. You're abusing that term.
15,000 children is an imagenry number.
But my point is that as soon as you apply different rules to Jews that is antisemitism. Pure and simple, there is no way around it.
As of 13 May 2024, the U.N. has reported that the 35,000 who have died in the conflict includes 7,797 minors, 4,959 women and 1,924 elderly[52] with confirmed identities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80...
The figure of over 15,000 children killed comes from the Gaza Health Ministry, which bases its figures on sources like hospitals and morgues, and which has proven to be reliable in past conflicts.
Your accusations of antisemitism are just a bad-faith attempt to shut down all criticism of Israel. There's no point in even taking your accusation seriously. Find a better argument.
Unfortunately for you the flavor of Zionism he endorsed (which preferred a binational rather than a Jewish state) hasn't had any political significance since Israel's independence. If he were to espouse those same beliefs today, he would likely be seen as "anti-Zionist", if not outright antisemitic within Israel and its support base abroad.
So no, one does not get to say "Einstein supported Zionism" per the latter's modern definition and context.
Based on my experience with China, access to drugs is very difficult, or impossible
Considering the amount of research chems and hyper-fentanyls they export it definitely exists in abundance within their borders.
Not fentanyl. Fentanyl precursors. That's a critical distinction.
China has an extremely large chemical industry. They supply the world's pharmaceutical industries for their re-agents, precursors and such.
Fentanyl, like LSD, is highly HIGHLY potent, so quantities of ingredients don't actually have to be so high so that it becomes obvious. Also like LSD, there's analogues up and down the chain. They've banned all analogues of fentanyl and some of the direct precursors, but analogues and other pathways exist and new ones are constantly invented to circumvent bans.
In hindsight, it would have been better to not have wrecked Latin America so much that there's sophisticated mega-cartels that overwhelm whole nations, but what can you do...
its most likely export only and covertly endorsed by the state as a "payback for opium" (it's a big argument apologists make)
It is. Check propublica report on fentanyl
https://www.propublica.org/article/china-cartels-xizhi-li-mo...
And
https://www.propublica.org/article/chinese-organized-crime-u...
This seems extremely negative on China, and echoes a lot of web content that frankly smacks of anti-Chinese propaganda. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of being a propagandist and in fact I believe you are 100% sincere, and I'm glad you've provided your opinion here. But the similarity of your description to the various China-bashing outlets is striking and makes me question the sources of it.
My opinions are my own, based on decades of experience since first living in China in 2001. I last lived there in 2022. I actually run businesses, and my social networks consist of disparate experiences, which probably means my view of things is more nuanced and rationally founded than fly-in journalists or those watching only the statistics, albeit necessarily only a "partial truth" (nobody knows exactly what is going on across the country, not even the government). Perhaps if you raised concerns regarding a specific point it would be possible to respond more fully.
You clearly have a wealth of expertise that I don't, and because of that, I again thank you for your original comment. It's probably better for me to simply consider your point of view rather than try to question it using second-hand data.
And why do you suppose these ostensible 'China bashers' believe what they do? Do you believe that people just wake up one morning and say to themselves: 'I'm going to go online and hate on China today' for absolutely no reason at all?
They're literally inundated with the message in all media. The US government spread rumors about Chinese vaccines it knew to be safe to convince people not to take them. The US has budgeted 1.6 billion dollars for propaganda activity against China.
The coordination and omnipresence of the western media is the most impressive thing I’ve ever experienced. Once you catch them all lying about incontestable truths in unison, the charade falls apart.
Americans grow up in this soup. They even have rebellious media companies that say edgy things, but all tow the party line. It’s genuinely incredible.
Out of pure curiosity, do you have a few examples of this that you can cite and provide indisputable information to demonstrate it?
It happens all the time and it would be quite a bit of work to prepare a list to the level of un-disputability on my part (which seems to be required as Hacker News is feeling very pro-establishment at the moment), but a recent example of this is the failure of the Iron Dome system against Iranian rockets.
Videos online very, very clearly showed many rockets bypassing the system, with some interceptions in the video that made it all the more obvious how many rockets were not being intercepted. All western media claimed the Iron Dome was exceedingly successful and blocked 90%+ of the missiles. This was also not corroborated by non-western sources. It wasn't until Planet Labs released evidence of dozens of strikes on an airbase that this specific messaging decreased.
At that point, they didn't acknowledge that 'error', but instead shifted the narrative to say that the attack, which Iran gave several hours warning of and had explicitly designed not to take lives, had failed because nobody got killed.
Israel coverage in general is a great topic to witness this phenomenon.
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That's not nearly the impression that I got from reading the GP comment. Did you mean to reply to a different one?
If anything, it seemed rosy; for example I was under the impression that China had cracked down on VPNs. But if GP says they're still widely accessible, then it leaves me with the impression that China has more free access to information than I previously thought.
"High profile coverups, the national pension fund has been emptied. Chinese with money seek to escape overseas. The education system is terrible."
The picture being painted is of a doomed, sinking ship.
It strikes me as a picture filled with both positives and negatives, and the point being made is not that China is a doomed sinking ship, but that the challenges it is dealing with aren't analogous to the ones faced by the US in the 19th century. (I don't know if wealthy 19th-century Americans did or did not aspire to move their wealth to Europe or send their kids abroad for school, but at least, the argument being made by the poster suggests a belief that they were not).
Not a great picture, but also not really any different than the US or other western countries.
China has much more freedom than I was led to believe growing up. The restrictions seem pretty neatly constrained to things that are genuinely threats to public safety, “social harmony”, or national security.
It seems scary until you think about the kind of information warfare that a certain cross pacific neighbor likes to employ, frequently.
1.6 billion dollars for propaganda is a lot of money. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/
> anti-Chinese propaganda
Please tell me you're kidding. There is way, way more pro-Chinese propaganda online than anti-Chinese. So overt at this point that you'd have to be willfully blind not to notice.
I don't use TikTok, which might explain the discrepancy.
Either do I, as I was born a few decades too late for that. But there is a lot on Reddit and other popular forums. And on HN, even in this very discussion.
Especially in this very discussion.
What is the difference between propaganda and someone expressing their view?
Whether it is a subsidized comment, for starters.
This is closer to truth
China is on its own league. The nation has repeatedly claim the largest nation under the same culture heritage and political evolution, and economy development for over 2000 years, non-stopping. And among the time, claimed the longest period of time among the most powerful nations as well.
China's transformation since 1840, is a 200 years turmoil that repeated before in that 2000 years history. When Xi Jinping proclaimed that now is the juncture of major-changes-unseen-in-a-century, the idea is that China was already in a changing period that unseen in thousands of years, which was proclaimed by Li Hongzhang.
You see, China as a nation understand her own heritage and destiny.
Her role is to be the manifestation of the Mandate of Heave, to build the great harmony that everyone under heaven can life peacefully together.
That's different than western heritage, which is built upon dominance and hierarchy.
Both are powerful systems that align with some of the most fundamental aspects of human nature. And each of these 2 systems also internally manifested the counterpart. For example, Chinese system emphasize hierarchy from the Confucious, and a spirit of rebellion ignited by Chen Sheng & Wu Guang's line of "Are kings and nobles given their high status by birth?". West system emphasis harmony in Christian teaching.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-gran...
> to build the great harmony that everyone under heaven can life peacefully together
Do the Taiwanese feel comforted by statements like that?
Or the other countries like the Philippines and Vietnam that dispute China's excessive maritime claims. That claim isn't really surprising in light of the rest of their comment which is essentially repeating the PRC creation myth.
Perhaps "harmony" is a polite word for what remains after you subtract all dissonant sounds.
Not wrong.
None of political is moral. Only morality makes political bearable.
Great harmony is not "everyone feeling good"
Great harmony is about creating a system that can peacefully forcing everyone into their position and not go out of boundary.
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> What was that about
You said it yourself. Your entire comment is whataboutism. The discussion was about China, not the history of the US.
Not only is it blatant whataboutism, but the whataboutist analogies for the US of Alaska, Palestine and Cuba are also completely nonsensical, as the US didn't conquer any of them. I suppose though that being nonsensical is on theme for PRC nationalists arguing online.
> US didn't conquer any of them
Ah dang ya got me! The brutal repression and other antics by the US is totally justifiable now. How could I not have thought of this highly misleading/misinformed technicality. You win!
> PRC nationalists arguing online
This is the final defense. “Anyone who doesn’t hold my opinion is a shill”. The indoctrination runs deep.
If the rest of America is as taken aback as I was when I learned the truth and saw the situation for what it is, oh man.
The logical inconsistencies of the propaganda can only hold up for so long, I hope.
But they can’t let people find out. Because it would reveal just how shitty we have it, for no goddam reason, and how good life could be. Keep coping I guess.
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This thread has devolved into something quite gross, though I shouldn't have expected anything more, based on your first comment. Have a nice day.
From my perspective, it had already devolved when you started making dishonest whataboutisms and accusations of being "indoctrinated" in your comments. Just to humor you though, what is the "truth" that you say you were enlightened of?
> You said it yourself
LOL what.
It's called 'perspective', not 'whataboutism'. 'Whataboutism' supposes a level of equivalence that does not exist here.
Westerners whining about Taiwan is like a serial robber complaining that their victim didn't capitulate.
You're deluding yourself. You literally tried to turn a discussion about something the PRC likes to say into a discussion about the US. Why, exactly? Some notion that the PRC can say sweet lovely things while acting completely differently, and we should totally not criticize them because someone else has done something you view as equally bad?
That is exactly a demonstration of whataboutism. It is a bad faith technique intended to derail the conversation and stop the criticism.
Take a hint from the Sagan quote in your bio.
It’s because the conversation is ridiculous. Because I’m ashamed to be an American witnessing people trash a relatively poor country that actually takes care of its citizens when conditions are so bad in the US. When my tax dollars go to antagonizing nuclear armed Russia and committing various genocides, wasting resources on almost 1000 military bases abroad, but somehow I have to pay off students loans for a degree that not only ultimately benefits this country more than what I paid for it, but also could be easily paid for by reducing global military waste slightly. And that’s just the start.
Have a little perspective yeah? Good for you that you’re so far removed from the material reality of most of the world, so that you can be detached from what’s going on, so you can ignore what the US does, so you can go after the WAY WAY WAY more peaceful China.
Oh and BTW, Taiwan is a separatist territory from their civil war. If the US was to lose Hawaii in a civil war, what do you think they would do?? Except it’s worse than that because Taiwan becomes a blockade/choke point against China. China, a fairly peaceful developing country of 1.4 billion people who apparently needs to be choked out by a rich country of about 1/5th that. That’s psychotic.
People really need to learn history and stop applying ridiculous double standards.
Given its support for the Khmer Rouge, its invasion of Vietnam, its tacit support of the aggression against Ukraine, and its menacing actions against the Philippines, and its intimidation of expats abroad (nevermind what it threatens to do to Taiwan) -- I wouldn't put China in the "WAY WAY WAY more peaceful" category.
It also isn't being "choked out" by anyone and never will be.
On almost 1000 military bases abroad
I know that must feel emotionally invigorating to believe, but it turns out it's just a number that gets copy-pasta'd around in order to get you riled up. If you do you homework on the number, you will quickly find (1) the larger number is for all worldwide facilities, the vast majority being in the US of course; and (2) the actual number of foreign "bases" is much smaller (e.g. 128 according to the Congressional Research Service), and many of these are still largely foreign-run and/or barely count as "bases" in any meaningful sense (the U.S. and/or NATO just has an office or a token presence there, etc).
So reality is infinitely more boring and that's a huge bummer of course, but that's how life is unfortunately.
> I know that must feel emotionally invigorating to believe
Have a little class please.
> the larger number is for all worldwide facilities
Pointless distinction and missing the forest for the trees. Just close up shop. Don't spend 1.6 billion on anti-China propaganda (google this). Don't spend $800+ billion on endless wartime activity.
> I wouldn't put China in the "WAY WAY WAY more peaceful" category
The more you learn about both American and Chinese history, the more true this becomes. Suppose China invaded a sovereign country for their oil rights? Or directly funded terrorist regimes across the globe? Or toppled democratically elected governments to install brutal regimes? It just keeps going to the point where it's somehow unremarkable and it becomes background noise. It's psychotic. This shouldn't be so normalized.
> It also isn't being "choked out" by anyone and never will be.
Google "china containment". Then also mentally reverse the roles between China and the US to give yourself a little objectivity on the matter.
There's way too much to refute in your statements that I literally just don't have the time so I encourage you to do more research on them, including the extent of Khmer Rouge support and the US role in supporting them among SO, SO MANY other brutal regimes.
You seem to be on the right track in your other comments regarding Israel, so I hope you can eventually see through the fog of propaganda on this issue. Just like how western media lies in unison about the situation and events in Israel/Ukraine, as verified by on-the-ground sources, it also does with China. It's really not that clear cut.
Pointless distinction and missing the forest for the trees.
Don't know what to tell you, but you were literally off by a solid order of magnitude with the "1000 military bases abroad" figure, which means you were also wrong in the forest/trees sense. It isn't nitpicking at all to point this out. I'm not saying the US military footprint above isn't a problem. But for some reason you seem determined to present a characterization of this footprint that is numerically much larger than it actually is.
Including the extent of Khmer Rouge support and the US role in supporting them
China's support for the KR was unquestionably far, far greater than the material support they are alleged to have indirectly obtained from the US (and even that is hotly contested). It seems you're trying to point to a near-equivalence between their respective roles here, but there just wasn't one, or anything close to it.
There is the rather more subtantial issue of the US appatantly tolerating China's support for the KR (via statements we have from Brzezinski et al). But that's still different from the matter of the far greater outright material support that China provided (well over $1B in aid, training KR troops on their own soil -- and of course invading Vietnam in response to its own defense against the KRs aggression against it, in turn supported by China).
And either way, it simply veers off topic: you were trying to say China was "WAY WAY WAY more peaceful", to which I said "yeah, like their support of the KR for example", which you attempted to water down with "but US also through something into the KRs tip jar, allegedly". Nevermind the fine-grained detail on those cover programs -- whatever the US did at the time, it does not detract in any way from the decidedly non-peaceful role that the PRC played in that conflict.
Google "china containment".
Make of the policy what you will. The point here is that for some reason you're using wildly exaggerated and emotionally manipulative language ("choked out") to talk about it. Which I find to be (1) not useful (2) boring.
You don't have to like what the US does in the world, but there's no need for all factual distortions and weird, emotional language, please. And you can definitely spare us this rhetoric about "peaceful China".
Your fixation on numerical specifics and word choices misses the point entirely. The issues here are clear-cut patterns of global interventionism, both recent and historical, that have wide-reaching impacts. Nitpicking about base counts or who funded whom doesn’t change the reality of these policies’ effects on actual people, nor does it excuse moral double standards.
It's telling that you’d rather split hairs on specifics than engage with the ethical implications of systemic militarization and the resulting destabilization worldwide. I’d hoped for a meaningful discussion about the costs and consequences of these actions on a global scale, but you seem more invested in technicalities that derail any serious dialogue.
So, if the best you can offer is dismissive corrections and patronizing asides, then I think we’re done here.
Again, pointing out that you're off by 10x isn't "nitpicking", and that wasn't the only matter of concern in regard to issues of basic factual integrity (and logical coherence) of the stuff you're saying. We definitely seem to be speaking different languages in any case, so I agree that we can close up shop here, and move onto other things.
"through" → "threw"
Personally I'd support a supermajority process, similar to a US constitutional change, started in both mainland China and Taiwan so they both have the same constitution.
Once that happens the merging of the countries could carefully proceed.
I'm not sure how you're going to get both population, subdivision, and political supermajorities for the same new constitution in both countries though.
Hot take:
China is rising. They’re clearly prioritizing the wellbeing of their people through infrastructure and social programs.
They’ve also developed a reputation among the global south (as well as the majority of their neighbors, despite western media) as a benevolent “win-win” trading & investment partner.
Given these developments, I think it’s possible that Taiwan will agree to some kind of “100 year transition” to full reunification in the future, once it becomes clear that they’re better off under PRC rule vs American occupation.
They don’t even need the same constitution. Hong Kong has it’s own constitution. It’s not even a state, it’s literally just a city.
The entire point of my solution is to prevent another HK situation. It's quite likely it still wouldn't work (deep state, backsliding, etc.), but it's a total no-go otherwise.
Looks like you only read the first paragraph of their comment.
Not surprised.
But all Chinese knows the art of tense and relax, forward and retreat. If you think Chinese are depressed because of some GDP numbers, then you are a normal non-Chinese individuals.
When I say Chinese being fundamentally different, I do mean that normal non-Chinese individual indeed cannot make sense of China.
This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure the Chinese I've met have been taught this technique. Also, I don't think most people in any given country usually get depressed about GDP numbers. They'll more likely get depressed when they can't find a job.
Can't wait to pull out Manifest Destiny again! :DDD
Going to be training my nephews on raid techniques and Sun Tzu...
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Both of you need to read the article
Not really. As the top voted comment here says
> A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers, who could just take and print his works.
I mean where was the railway invented for example.
Yes, the US copied from England for some things. But the electric power industry, for example, came from Edison.
The point is that the US got a huge jump start in 19C from copying - and often improving - other countries technology. Sure lots of fundamental inventions - like Edison came at the end of that period but it doesn’t negate the jump start.
So ‘the US invented its technology’ really doesn’t describe the position accurately. Nor is the contrast with China as stark as you imply.
Robert Hammond beat Edison to starting a formal electric power supply company by a few months and continued on for a number of years after Edison's first effort folded.
The Pearl Street station began in 1881 and was delivering power to customers in 1882. It was far more advanced than Hammond's which strung a few overhead wires to arc lamps, and Hammond's work never went further and was a dead end. Edison's company evolved into General Electric. By 1884 it was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps at 110V.
see "Edison" by Josephson starting page 251
Quoting from page 256:
More than fifty years had passed since Michael Faraday had discovered the mechanical production of induced electricity and had been possessed by a vision of the future electric power. It needed Edison, however, as well as Faraday, Ampere, Arago, and other scientific explorers, to make the Electrical Age.
"Scientists and inventors have more in common than in difference," James G. Crowther has written in discussing the relation of invention to science. A Faraday might discover far more new scientific facts than Edison, and in this their roles were different. "But the importance of Faraday's discoveries cannot be explained without reference to the work of Edison... This is why Edison is truly a 'man of science.'"83
It was Edison who had finally applied the knowledge of electrical science that had been accumulating during those fifty years in a decisive form (his "system") and boldly imposed it upon the "new" commodity, electricity, which thereafter was introduced to practical usage on a large scale. Thenceforth, the mass production and sale of electric current was to be carried on in all the world's markets. His successful carbon filament lamp, taken together with his System of electrical distribution, constituted the key invention in this technological drama. More than any other individual, he gave impetus to the advance of this new art, creating new wealth immeasurable, new convenience and enjoyment, and a new tempo of life.
As did the steamboat, the telephone industry, the telegraph before that, and much more.
Ah yes, Thomas Edison, truly an example of not stealing inventions.
The topic being domestic inventions...
Edisons contribution was to capitalize on the discoveries/inventions of Volta, Faraday, Siemens, Gramme, and Tesla, helping to popularize and push electricity into the market. Not insignificant certainly, but if we're talking about doing the actual inventing here, I don't think that supports the thesis.
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> Patented ideas he stole
Things that were patented that he then stole, or things he patented that other people really originated at their core? Former is silly, but latter: Lightbulb, xray, moving camera, phonograph are some things that were originated by others and refined by him, but that are often completely attributed to him. Again, his contributions are not insignificant, but highly misleading in the spirit of the topic regarding China and the trope that they can’t invent new ideas but that America did. All ideas take lots of collaboration so it’s just wrong to make those kinds of statements.
> won all cases
You mean the patent office awarded him patents, not that he is the undisputed originator of the idea, surely? The legal complexity and resource hungry nature of the patent system makes this a pretty moot point. Even today, patents are largely pointless if you can’t wage a long drawn out legal battle. The robber baron era was not a more just time.
Building the first electrical power grid is quite significant, yes, but still irrelevant, because the core tech is still non American. Many innovations must be made to take those foreign ideas and implement them, yes, but how is that different from what’s going on in China?
The original claim is that they don’t invent anything, only copy. Its a common narrative that’s not only an untrue cope, but also blinds people to the fact that they are on a trajectory to surpass in innovation, in addition to implementation.
And on the bandsaw, it’s very international as well.
> the trope that they can’t invent new ideas
I didn't write anything like that. I wrote that you can grow faster by copying existing ideas that have been refined and put into practice than by reinventing them.
You might want to read a biography of Edison, not just a summary on the web. The one by Josephson is good, and goes into considerable detail.
Edison did not invent a glowing wire, nor did he invent electric arc lamps. However, both of those were useless as light bulbs. Existing lightbulbs at the time were low voltage, high current. The lightbulbs didn't last very long, and so were useless. They also consumed enormous amounts of power.
Edison's innovation was to go with high voltage, low current. This cut the power consumption way down. The next problem he had was the filament burning up. This problem he managed to solve with a vacuum pump. Voila! A long lasting, cheap, and cheap to operate, light bulb.
This is why he received the credit for inventing the light bulb, as it was the first practical light bulb. This is why all the other patent suits against him on the invention failed.
If you are interested, feel free to read the Josephson book which covers the patent suits. I don't think you can just dismiss them with Edison had the resources to defend his patents, nor can you dismiss them with the litigants being paupers. The litigants who didn't have money got money to pursue the patent cases from investors who knew that if they won the suit, they would get rich.
Everyone was aware that an entire industry was up for grabs, and so they poured money into fighting Edison. These when on for many years. They had every opportunity to make their case(s).
But Edison prevailed.
As for the bandsaw, I said the invention of the circular saw revolutionized the lumber industry, and that invention was I think from the Amish.
What Edison did was make things that were practical.
BTW, Edison invented electronic vacuum tubes, but he failed to recognize what they would be good for. Would you say he invented the entire electronics industry up until 1960? I wouldn't. It was others who turned the vacuum tube into a practical and incredibly useful device.
Edison invented the idea of a commercial invention lab, and produced so many practical inventions that revolutionized life that he is a contender for inventing the modern world. It's hard to understate his impact.
Interestingly, the Wright Brothers inadvertently invented the modern directed research and development laboratory. I'm probably the only person who ascribes that to them, but before the Wrights, people just tried random things (including Edison). What the Wrights did was:
1. research everything known about the topic
2. identify each problem that needed solving
3. develop prototypes to test and solve each problem
4. put the solutions together to solve the whole problem
and voila! it worked! and everybody else has followed that pattern since.
> 19th century US invented its technology. China simply copied it - which enables much faster growth until one runs out of things to copy.
This is what I would rather focus on. If Edison can be credited with inventing as much as you say, I don’t see why you hold this belief regarding China.
If you define “invention” as the core concept of a mechanism/process/etc, then Edison did not invent much at all, and perhaps China has a lot to prove.
If you define “invention” to include all improvements to technologies which at their core already exist, then China is already the leading innovator globally.
Yes, China has been playing catch up, but I hate narratives that would paint an entire nation of 1.4 billion people as some kind of mindless robot state.
I’ve worked at two market leading, trend setting, American flagship tech companies which did competitive analyses on mass market Chinese tech products. Incidentally, they were at times when Chinese products were beginning to overtake the American ones. People were pretty shocked overall, and shortly after both of these experiences, on both occasions, the US imposed trade restrictions on the respective products.
I remember a while ago, the thought that China was innovative would have been laughed at as it was a silly idea. They were just a factory, no more. Now, people get mad at you for stating the truth that China has evolved and is now out-innovating us. I think it’s fear based. The media paints a grim picture about what it’s like there, but breaking out of the western bubble has been enlightening and humbling.
I now firmly believe that China will be the first to some kind of AGI, I think their EVs will dominate all global car markets, they’ll build embodied AI robots at scale first, their chips will eclipse Nvidia’s finest soon enough, their space program will be more advanced, etc
Most importantly however, their green tech is outpacing us. The west really dropped the ball on what is the second greatest threat to long term survival of organized human life. For the sake of humanity, I hope they’re able to continue this advancement trend unimpeded, since they’re the only signatory of the Paris accords who are taking this seriously and not just meeting but exceeding targets. I hope they can equip the world with their inventions soon enough.
Let's take an example. One country invents a tractor, and makes improvements on it for 100 years. Then, another country that does agriculture by hoe and shovel, buys a modern tractor.
Which one is going to experience faster year over year growth in the next year?
If you bring a cellphone to an isolated Amazon tribe, have you just implemented the most rapid advancement of technology known to man? It’s a ridiculous, meaningless question.
Where is their industrial capacity? Where is their university system? Or their self defense capability? A space program on the way tomorrow perhaps?
Why is it that China’s development outpaces India so much? Why does China have 28,000 miles of high speed rail, doubling in the next decade, when the US has 50? Why did China roll out 5G before the west, when there wasn’t anything to steal yet?
Does the US need to steal some high speed rail technology from somewhere so that it can grow?
These aren’t matters of technology at this point. They are growing fast because they’re committed to it. The growth capacity has been there for so long in the west, but we prioritize the wealth of elites instead. At this point they have a better space station and a better moon landing / colonization plan. Their green tech is better, their batteries are better, their robots are better, their EVs are way better.
This idea that they should slow down because there’s no more technology to steal is inconsistent with the fact that they have in so many areas surpassed us rather than asymptotically approaching the status quo.
Comparatively, the trajectory of material conditions leaves the US in the dust, if it hasn’t already for most of the US populous.
It makes me sad because I’m an American, but it gives me hope because the US may finally start competing in areas like infrastructure, housing, and education rather than letting the private sector take the wheel.
> rather than letting the private sector take the wheel.
China's growth came from letting the private sector take the wheel.
That's the literal opposite of the truth and basically just neoliberal propaganda. It's also quite an amusing take more broadly, considering that the market reforms were implemented by the original Communist revolutionaries, people who were deeply committed to Marxism and vehemently opposed to that idea.
China's system is defined by not letting the private sector take the wheel. Capitalists (major owners of capital, the 0.1%) have very little political power vs. in the West, where policies are almost wholly driven by the private sector.
Marx actually believed that Capitalism was a necessary step to Socialism, which would then turn into communism. Lenin added that a vanguard party would be required to oversee that transition. The CCP fulfills that purpose in China. When the Chinese leaders decided to allow some capitalism, they did so with heavy restrictions, referring to it as a "bird in a cage" policy. They quite explicitly did not allow the private sector to take the wheel, and that continues to this day.
The real history of China in the last 100 years is extremely fascinating once you get past all the western propaganda. If you want to see what happens when the private sector takes the wheel, look up "shock therapy in Russia".
I can't believe your above comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42024093 got flagged. u/dang, can you explain that?
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I’m not really sure what’s being argued here?
The concept of a light bulb existed. That’s pretty definitive to me. There was even a dispute he had to settle about it.
> thought up the idea of doing that search
Come on now…
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