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Comment by ahtu123 | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling 10 years from now Trump will be funny blip on the radar of how crazy the '10s were while Asia will be quite meaningfully transformed. I wish this was getting as much attention as BREAKING NEWS: Trump/staffer did something dumb. The (soon plausibly) richest and most populous country in the world will soon have a dictator. That's a bit scary.

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Two things give me some hope. 1. I don't think totalitarianism lends itself to economic prosperity, long term. Sure, the right authoritarian can move much faster and implement beneficial changes much more quickly than a democratic government can. But that knife cuts both ways. 2. The entire government system in China, and it's culture, heavily values stability and collective unity (hence it's desire to squash and eliminate anything that may lead to extreme reaction or departure from consensus). But this will lead to calcification, or, if the dictator changes too much or is too heavy handed, instability is inevitable, which leads me to think that the dictator will be changed out.

Ultimately, I think that the power of any society is in the hands of the citizens, and that Chinese culture is extremely pragmatic. They may be able to be kept peaceful for a bit, but if progress starts stagnating or even reversing, changes will happen.

Naively, and based on historical data, I agree with point #1. What worries me about China is that they've had no problem--politically or technologically--collecting massive data sets on their citizenry via a level of mass surveillance that's never been reached AFAICT. On top of that, they're investing hard in artificial intelligence, and the benefits will ultimately be reaped by whoever's in charge of the datasets (in this case, the government). All of that gives them a lot of levers to control and manipulate their citizenry that has not been available to authoritarian governments yet.

I remember reading an intro to Orwell's Animal Farm that discussed Orwell's ability to see the dystopian use of technology, but couldn't see how it could liberate a citizenry from totalitarianism (like the shortwave, for example).

I think the same of this high level tech as well. I could be wrong, but I think individuals do desire freedom and agency, and as long as that desire is there in some, it's going to be hard to squash.

I do hope you're right.

One of my 'in the realm of possibility' dystopian fears is that a totalitarian regime figures out how to (chemically?) keep their society docile. Ideally the populace would still be creative, to an extent, but that might not even be necessary, or compensated for by stealing innovation from other places.

One could argue that this is already sort of happening in many places, without there being a big conspiracy behind it, I guess.

I do too. Things like CRISPR scare the bejeezus out of me for reasons like you mention.

I tend to think that's the killer equation in the US culture, which is incentives that are set up for exposing stuff like this.

We don't need our journalists, politicians, scientists or any authority to be looking out for our best interest.

As long as there are ways for them to further their own self-interest in ways that go against other authorities, we have some folks watching our backs.

But in cases where you fundamentally alter someone's idea of self-interest, you're in a crazy amount of danger. And with the power one can wield, you're in for a lot of unintended consequences. Hopefully Pandora can be restrained just a bit.

See, I'd argue we've already progressed in that direction far more than we realize by reducing so much of our social world to 'transactions'. I grew up in a much more 'traditional' society and the the contrast is quite stark.

Do you mind expanding on the contrast a bit by explaining the more traditional society part?

I was born and raised in southern California, and one thing that I can consistently remember since I was a child was just how transactional southern Californians are in their relationships (as well as generally flaky, and relatively superficial; these are all common stereotypes, but in my experience, they contain a certain amount of truth).

So I know that this dynamic has not only existed for my lifetime, but also well known enough to be a stereotype, and I'm not sure how much it contributes to the larger dangers we've discussed.

'Family' would be one thing. I found that 1) the responsibilities/rights were much broader, and 2) they extended beyond just siblings, parents (and perhaps grandparents).

If one of my siblings were to have financial trouble, or to start a business, it wouldn't be strange for me to decline helping them, whereas in the more traditional culture this would be considered rather selfish. And on the latter culture, when your parents get older and less useful to society, they move in with one of their kids (and often help out with the child-rearing). Putting them in a home would be unacceptable.

Furthermore, many of these things would extend to uncles and aunts and cousins, where in my current culture it's pretty normal to only see those at 'special' family occasions.

I also found that the relationship with neighbors and small businesses in the area were a lot more 'familial' in nature: 'watching the shop while owner does x', the shop-owner getting particular products just for you, but also a sense of loyalty. If you need a haircut/pedicure/etc., and a family member offers that service, it would be considered offensive to go to another place.

Basically, a lot of the stuff that 'we' would put in the transactional sphere were often much more like how we'd interact or deal with immediate family. A lot consisted of favors you'd do, with the implicit agreement that someone should do something equivalent for you. These intricate 'networks' of favors combined with various social obligations led to ties that were much stronger, obviously, than a purely commercial interaction.

I'm rambling a bit; still early here. I suppose a good book on the matter is Debt by David Graeber, but looking at how various immigrant communities operate can also be enlightening. I've experienced similar kinds of quasi-commercial relationships with the Turkish shops in my neighborhood, for example (I would fix their computer, they'd hold on to my house key for a friend to pick up, no shopping without chatting, etc.).

This is by far the most insightful and knowledgable viewpoint regarding this news I've seen online. And I am Chinese-American.

It's part of the same larger pattern. The entire world seems to be moving toward totalitarianism to varying degrees. I have yet to encounter a really good explanation of why this trend is occurring across so many nations and cultures.

The explanation is the rise of populism following a bad economic episode. What you are seeing now has been seen in the 20's and 30's. If some good social policies had been implemented and the gains well distributed in the prior decades of growth this wouldn't be happening. But humans won't learn until forced to.

That's surely valid to some extent but I don't think it goes back far enough. I've seen this trend firmly in place since 9/11 or shortly thereafter and across virtually every segment of society.

Hasn't that always been the case? Powerful people always wanted more power, throughout history. Now nuclear essentially makes it impossible to go to war with powerful countries, so we're stuck with bullies doing whatever they want. If the bullies are smart enough, they won't attack other powerful (i.e. nuclear) countries.

While fussing over every misstep of the administration is a distraction, this is an unfortunate time to have a US President who seems uninterested in global politics.

For sure. Russia and China have their most keen global political leaders in a generation and the US is infighting.

The US is infighting because the electorate wants to be infighting. When the citizenry is so sheltered and content to know nothing about the world this is what happens.

>When the citizenry is so sheltered and content to know nothing about the world this is what happens.

I thought we were supposed to learn that lesson after 9/11?

We learned the wrong lesson from 9/11 buddy. Look at the TSA still going strong, all the domestic snooping, and an imperial presidency with open-ended powers unchecked by Congress. Over all the conclusion has been to not deal with the world's problems, kick everybody that might cause problems out, and close the door.

I agree. Maybe my sarcasm was a little too veiled. :)

Trump will be a blip provided a Congress willing to check his powers is elected to office, and doesn't itself go down the same path. It might be one election away from stacking of the courts and all that jazz. Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

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