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Comment by miked | Hacker News Reader

>> we aren't allow to know when our troops fire on civilians in another country.

Except that most of the Entitled Class, from academia to journalists to Hollywood, has made an minor industry out of supporting totalitarian apologists such as yourself. A prominent example: the New York Times has refused to return the Pulitzer awarded to its pro-Stalinist reporter Walter Duranty, who lied so thoroughly about the Ukranian famine of the 1930's.

Sometimes this apologizing is done directly (as above and as with the fawning support for the late Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm), but more often through moral equivalence arguments such as yours.

My wife barely survived the Great Leap Forward. She spent years of her childhood hungry, only to come to this country and read people like you. Unlike you, she's very clear on the difference between Chinese Socialism and America's (semi-)free system.

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The difference is that the USA has managed to take the killing out of their borders, but aren't any better. This lets them portrait themselves as innocent.

Your quality of life is product of a market sustained by wars and extortion of other countries. The quality of life of the chinese that live in cities are sustained by the rice pickers of the countryside. THAT is the real difference.

> Your quality of life is product of a market sustained by wars and extortion of other countries.

Their cost of war probably outweighs by far any direct/indirect profit they can expect to get out of them. In addition, there are plenty of prosperous countries that are not involved in any wars.

> The quality of life of the chinese that live in cities are sustained by the rice pickers of the countryside. THAT is the real difference.

Fixed pie fallacy. Rich people are not rich because they exploit poor people.

> Their cost of war probably outweighs by far any direct/indirect profit they can expect to get out of them. In addition, there are plenty of prosperous countries that are not involved in any wars.

You are telling me that, for example, Iraq was invaded, for what exact reason, if not for their massive petroleum resources? Menace of WMD? C'mon. The "plenty of countries" you mention is a small fraction of the world, and are extorting and exploiting the third world.

> Fixed pie fallacy. Rich people are not rich because they exploit poor people.

Yeah, great call. Except I never said people in the city are rich because of the contryside. I said they are sustained, they need food and other goods produced by agriculture and such, which is only produced in the countryside. If your born on the countryside, they don't even let you move to the city.

> You are telling me that, for example, Iraq was invaded, for what exact reason, if not for their massive petroleum resources? Menace of WMD? C'mon.

There were certainly a few interested parties which have/will indeed greatly profit from the war. I'm not denying that. As a whole though, I'd be surprised if there is a net gain for the US considering the astronomical amount of money the they have spent on the war.

> The "plenty of countries" you mention is a small fraction of the world, and are extorting and exploiting the third world.

Which country is Sweden exploiting? Which country is Switzerland exploiting? The vast majority of third world countries are sovereign and free from foreign exploitation. In fact, many third world countries receive foreign aid from the US.

> I said they are sustained, they need food and other goods produced by agriculture and such, which is only produced in the countryside.

Agreed. What's your point?

> If your born on the countryside, they don't even let you move to the city.

That's not true at all. I'd say about 90% of Shenzhen people were born in the country-side. You very seldom meet someone who was actually born in Shenzhen given that the city is ~30 years old.

> I'd be surprised if there is a net gain for the US

You must be trolling

> Which country is Sweden exploiting? Which country is Switzerland exploiting?

Essentially trading manufactured goods for raw goods

> Agreed. What's your point?

You cryed "fixed pie fallacy", but it doesn't apply. "Such and such fallacy! Over!" cryes are extremely annoying.

> I'd say about 90% of Shenzhen was born in the country-side. You very seldom meet someone who was actually born in Shenzhen given that the city is ~30 years old.

If the government needs people in a new city, it will make sure that people will move to that city. But if a man born on the countryside wants to move to the city, he will not be allowed to do so, at least not near as easily as in any western country.

See. I am not arguing that China has a better way to run a country. I'm just saying that first world countries are no saints either.

ShenZhen is the WORST example you could make. It is a Special Economic Zone, created as an experiment to look at the effects of urbanising the country side...

Go next door to Guangzhou, in the evening and walk along the streets and count the "migrants" (what Chinese call people from the country side in the cities) sleeping on the sidewalk because they have no "right" to housing or "legitimate" work.

I'm from ex-USSR and have never been to the US, so my view is kind of balanced. I think the US was able to come up with the most universal product of all times: the american dream. Everything else is just execution.

There were wars throughout the history, but previously there were no ways to make another country people wish to change their believes and become the consumers of another country way of living on a mass scale.

No, the quality of life that America still enjoys is the legacy of an extraordinary free market system, one of the first and still most powerful that has ever existed. That market system developed the most advanced and successful capital market in history (that no longer exists), which is why America even still has the dollar global reserve currency, because the 'ol green back was "good as gold" for 150 years. Even today in its deteriorated form, the US monetary system is considered radically safer than all but a few in the world. That market system hinged in part on what was at the time the strongest private property rights in history, and a great judicial system to protect them.

China to this day is struggling just to emulate the kind of innovative success in free market economy that America pioneered centuries ago.

To the extent China is enjoying any success today, it's largely due to free market style reforms of their economy, attempting to abandon the destructive policies of Communism. There's no little irony in the fact that as China has moved more Capitalist, America has shifted far more Socialist (with predictable results).

Which countries did America extort from 1800 to 1965 in order to build its formerly tremendous wealth and resources exactly?

Are you talking oil? America discovered oil, and invented most of its processes. It also discovered oil in the Middle East using said technology, and that oil was then nationalized across the region and countless contracts were violated in the process.

Are you talking industrial technology? America was one of the few countries (eg along with Britain and France) leading the industrial revolution.

Are you talking computer technology? No comment even necessary.

Are you talking biotech? Again, no comment even necessary. Who did America steal its biotech from? Cambodia? Afghanistan? Vietnam? China? Panama?

Pick an industry, pick a technology, you'll find America's entrepreneurial fingerprint all over it.

Yes, you are right, the USA has used it's superior technology and industry to gain advantage of other countries.

I was merely pointing out that america, too, causes great destruction (outside their borders), and takes advantage of underdeveloped countries, selling their technologically manufactured goods for cheap raw goods.

I am not saying that it is more destructive than China (which is highly subjective), nor that america must stop or any such nonsense, which you seem to believe I'm heading to. I just want you to acknowledge that america is not morally immaculate, quite the contrary.

What is 'subjective' about 38,702,000 people murdered?

There is something deeply, profoundly morally wrong with you that you have attempted to equivocate that number away for the sake of your ideology.

Polite debate fails here. This is unforgivable. You must become a different person to the one you are now, the one who can put these weasel words on a web forum to try to blur distinctions that must be made.

"Murdered"... No, there was no intent. They starved, because of a number of counter productive measures. Mao would not instigate the great leap forward had he known the consequences in advance.

Hiroshima/Nagasaki was murder

Rape of Nanjing was murder

The holocaust was murder

Great Leap forward was a very big unintentional mistake.

Absolute numbers are deceptive (and depressing) when talking about China, but it is often better to look at percentages.

Your Attack on the GP's morality is uncalled for. I think you need to check your own ideology and emotion at the door, and discuss things rationally.

English is not my first language, yet I am sure I expressed myself clearly. I said it is subjective to say the USA are more destructive than China, not the other way 'round like you seem to have understood, or wanted to understand.

Just off the top of my head, the cotton industry and banana industry are notable counterexamples to your argument.

And yet the banana industry was financed in great part by american companies which established banana republics throughout the world. To be honest, there's not a whole lot of innovation in the banana industry as far as I've seen it or heard from people who worked in it here in Costa Rica. Also, never mind that most US territory is not well suited for banana plantation.

>America has shifted far more Socialist (with predictable results).

Good lord, wtf are you talking about? Please keep your glaring demonstrations of ignorance in politics off this site. There are plenty of other sites for that.

> attempting to abandon the destructive policies of Communism. There's no little irony in the fact that as China has moved more Capitalist

I think you need to read more Marx. Capitalism is the way you generate the capital to fund Socialism. Marx was aware that even if your own country was Communist, others wouldn't be, so their would be a "Opening up" phase where you move your country through Capitalism, until internal capital is enough to keep your entire population 'comfortable'.

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