Hacker News Reader

Comment by spamizbad | Hacker News Reader

The CCP is terrible but there’s no question intellectually they outclass the United States’ geriatric leadership. Much more STEM too. We love our lawyers and business folk, don’t we?

View on HN

Let's not forget that Wilson was a Princeton Professor and Hoover was an engineer. (Wilson appointed KKK members to his cabinet, screened a white supremacist film in the white house, invaded and occupied the soviet union for two years; hoover treated society as a machine that he would "tweak the knobs to try to optimize" - we all know how that turned out) And Coolidge, a lawyer, was arguably the "least bad" president of the 20th c (didn't invade any countries, re-desegreated the federal workforce).

Just to clarify for those reading this, Wilson studied political science and history, and went to law school. He wasn't a "STEM" professor.

Parent comment had three parts. First part was about intelligence in general, second part drew attention to stem in particular, third part was about lawyers and businessmen. I structured my response with deliberate parallelism.

Where's the mention of more STEM? (I was hoping it might have some details, but can't see it)

Shou'en Li's answer to this Quora query[1] is insightful.

> In China, if you want to be a leader, you have to start from the grassroots level to accumulate rich government work experiences after ascending nine levels of posts (section chief, deputy division chief, division chief, deputy director of general office, director of general office, vice-minister, minister, deputy-state leader, state leader). With such experiences, you may have the opportunity to become one of the candidates for leadership.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-Communist-Party-of-China-...

That sounds like the system's ideal - but is that how most people become, say, deputy state leaders? Or can you pay your way in, advance through nepotism, or blackmailing, or mutual corruption, etc?

One reason why Chinese bureaucrats are constantly rotated and not allowed to serve in their homeland is to prevent those.

How is it a good thing to have more efficient dictators?

The best system of government is a benevolent dictatorship. If you can’t make it less dictatorial, at least make it more benevolent.

The problem is a benevolent dictator only lasts part of one lifetime. Then you have to deal with the problem of succession, which in a dictatorship likely means unpredictable chaos

In plato's republic the benevolent dictators choose their successors to also be benevolent dictators, do not know if that could work in real life but the CCP do chose their successors, and not based on blood lines

And Xi has consolidated power and purged all competent up-and-coming potential successors that threaten this power. He shepherded through a modification in Chinese law to allow him to serve for life. Previously, the vaunted governing expertise inside the CCP had an age cap for its leaders. Not inspiring much confidence in their system.

https://in.news.yahoo.com/xi-jinping-undertakes-fresh-round-...

Another thing that doesn't inspire much confidence is looking at Hong Kong. The people there have unambiguously and collectively spoken about their desire to live under this system, often at grave personal risk.

Xi has only served for around 7 years, not even as long as some presidents. Merkel has served for somewhere around 15 years and many senators and congressmen have served for multiple decades.

AFAIK during Plato's life no more than about 40 thousands citizen lived in Athens (along with up to ~3 times more non-citizens). Plato's Republic was about politics in such a city-state, never about a bigger human group (for example one of our current huge nations).

AFAIK during the height of Athenian democracy there were no more than 50k ish male citizens that lived in Athens, and all of the same ethnic group. Democracy only works for politics in such a city-state, never about about a bigger and more diverse non male group (for example one of our current huge nations)

Considering how corrupting power is even in more democratic / power-sharing systems, IMHO I'd amend your statement to read something like "in an ideal world ..."

Of course in an ideal world we wouldn't need a benevolent dictator at all, so, maybe a benevolent dictatorship is never the "best", but, at best, sometimes better than the worst.

A benevolent dictatorship is great for a creative project. As a government it is a dead end and never remains "benevolent" for long.

Power corrupts. The only way to make a government more benevolent is to make it weaker.

The governments of the feudal era, let alone the night watch states of the 1800, were certainly more corrupt than the more centralized nations of China and the US. Disproving this hypothesis that I hear too much.

Were they? Did the feudal era monarchies exert control over foreign governments in far away continents? The feudal era was marked by constant churn and shifting allegiances and there was always somewhere to escape to. Many escaped to the Americas, coincidentally, where they did eventually launch revolutions against the English and Spanish monarchy, which grew quite powerful and corrupt during the Imperial era. At any rate, the entire design of the U.S. is to prevent corruption through decentralization of power. That includes division of power among the Federal and State governments as well as the several branches of government. To the extent that experiment has worked, it has done so through the successful application of those principles. To the extent that it hasn't, it has been when too much power has rested in too few hands for too long.

Yes they objectively were and yes late feudal lords did exert control over far away lands (early ones as well like Charlemagne and even Charles Martel to a lesser extent.) Also the design of the US is to find a balance between a strong federal government and state governments. That is why the issue has dominated our politics, in one form the other, and we’ve had a two party system based around it, ever since.

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "objective". By what objective measure were they more corrupt than the CCP or the U.S.?

Charlemagne exhibited control and influence over a smaller chunk of Europe than the current E.U. The U.S. can almost bankrupt any country at will by freezing it out of the banking system and imposing sanctions.

I do. The local feudal lords were able to treat anyone below them however they wanted and could take bribes without any threat from above so long as they provided the number of soldiers and gold asked.

At the risk of being pedantic, I think it is you who doesn’t understand the word corrupt. The US bankrupting nations it doesn’t disagree with is within the system of rules at play and isn’t corrupt even if it is morally wrong.

The comment says nothing about it being "good."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com