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China is fascinating. On one hand... - China has done better than any other country on Earth at poverty reduction. Chinese policy since Deng Xiaoping lifted h
by dcposch 10y ago
China is fascinating.
On one hand...
- China has done better than any other country on Earth at poverty reduction. Chinese policy since Deng Xiaoping lifted hundreds of millions of people out of subsistence poverty. Free markets were a big part of this, but so were Special Economic Zones starting with Shenzhen, a culture of sharing IP, massive govt investments in infrastructure, research and education.
- China are also the most successful urbanists today. Many of those 100s of millions of former rural poor are in cities now. In the time it took California to debate building a single High Speed Rail line from SF to LA, China connected their whole country with trains that are much faster, much more useful (because they go directly into urban centers and connect to fast local transit), and much cheaper. Ours still isn't done.
--
And yet, at the same time, China also seems to be prototyping some kind of grim meathook future.
- Extremely aggressive surveillance. Near zero respect for privacy. Govt deputizing the tech sector to spy and censor on their behalf.
- Cities with toxic air. Check out this glorious ad in Beijing right now: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1JrMsKUAAAopPT.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1JrMsKUAAAopPT.jpg
- A closed, censored alternate internet
- "Social Credit" Scores based on surveillance, which look like a frighteningly powerful way to neuter dissent
China moves faster than we do, both for better and for worse. I guess our challenge is to emulate the things they're doing right (eg the vastly more efficient and effective way they build transit), while stopping our own governments from repeating China's mistakes and acts of authoritarian overreach.
- patmcguire 10y agoI like the phrase "grim meathook future"
- schoen 10y agoApparently its origin is https://nullrefer.com/?https://www.jwz.org/blog/2005/09/the-grim-meathook-future/ https://nullrefer.com/?https://www.jwz.org/blog/2005/09/the-... (which I didn't know). Edit: thanks to people in this thread for pointing out JWZ's anti-HN redirection and a workaround to hide the referer header.
- ThrustVectoring 10y agocopy the link and open it in an incognito tab - apparently the web host really doesn't like Hacker News and redirects the link to a NSFW image.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- macNchz 10y agohttps://nullrefer.com/?https://www.jwz.org/blog/2005/09/the-grim-meathook-future/ https://nullrefer.com/?https://www.jwz.org/blog/2005/09/the-...
- schoen 10y agoI tried presenting the bit.ly link as HTTPS to avoid making the link use HTTP.
- macNchz 10y agoI initially posted the bit.ly link thinking it would strip the referrer but then when I tested it I was still getting the imgur page so I looked for something else. Regardless I almost don't want to give someone traffic who does obnoxious things based on http headers.
- schoen 10y agoThanks for the revised link; I've edited my comment to use it. Edit: there's some irony in the way the post on that page criticizes someone for making the contents of a URL unstable ("because he doesn't know what the 'U' stands for") while the page itself displays deliberately different contents depending on how people found it.
- techbio 10y ago...and with an earlier partial origin from Hunter S. Thompson, with "reality" predating "future": http://www.whysanity.net/monos/fearandloathing.html http://www.whysanity.net/monos/fearandloathing.html
- battlebot 10y agoIt has a cyberpunk ring to it.
- finid 10y agoSorry, but judging by how things are going in western nations, especially in the USA, we're more likely to emulate their "mistakes and authoritarian overreach" before we even break ground on that rail from SF to LA.
- dcposch 10y agoThat is incredibly depressing. Good chance you're right, but that doesnt mean we should give up. Politics is critical, and as technologists we can't just opt out and hope things will work out. We have to win these fights.
- finid 10y agoBut we can't really discuss these type of issues at length on HN. It'd be deemed to political.
- ACow_Adonis 10y agoAs technologists, we're often the ones implementing and designing the systems, infrastructure and algorithms that make such a thing not only possible, but likely :(
- battlebot 10y agoI have witnessed that very thing more times than I like to admit. I fail to understand what, other than sheer greed, motivates tech people to help build these police states. It's going to come back at us in terrible ways. Technology doesn't care whether it kills us all, it is completely value neutral. Only we can make the right choices. I once worked at a place that was bidding on surveillance tech for some public transit systems in Australia and the cavalier attitude that management had about privacy was sad, to say the least. They just didn't think it was their job at all to decide what is right or make any ethical judgements whatsoever. To them, mass surveillance was merely a way to make a lot of money and that's all. They didn't care who got hurt when that tech eventually makes it to less democratic nations to be used to suppress and destroy the human spirit. Well, that company went under, but others succeeded.
- noonespecial 10y agoI'd argue that the vastly more efficient and effective way they build transit is possible because of the authoritarian overreach. It has to be easy to build a new railway when you can just send the police to evict everyone in the way.
- loeber 10y ago> China has done better than any other country on Earth at poverty reduction This is only true if you're applying a ludicrous double standard. China has done better than most other countries at this because China was extremely poor just a few decades back. Nowadays, much of China is still very poor. Of course it's much easier for China to slash its poverty rates than for an already-developed nation. The real thing to ask about is how long it will take China to bring a western middle-class style quality of life to its citizens.
- tim333 10y agoChina was the world's largest economy before about 1900. They have done an impressive job at screwing that up and then recovering a bit. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/23/article-2163610-13BFDBFA000005DC-981_634x286.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/23/article-2163610-13...
- dcposch 10y agoIm comparing China to other countries that were similarly poor in 1980-- much of the world, including the second biggest country, India. China did much better than them. I don't think any other society in history has lifted as many people out of poverty in as short a time.
- mistermann 10y agoDid American corporations not gift China with a massive amount of free, working out of the box technology to get them going?
- maksimum 10y agoAre you referring to surveillance/data processing technology specifically or technological advances in general? If it's general advances, I don't see how it's really relevant. To some extent, similar technologies are available to all countries at this point, so its down to governments and society wrt how productively these technologies are leveraged. The classic example of this is how landline telephony is much less prevalent than cellular in much of Africa. Landline technology was effectively skipped. I don't think African governments and societies are benefitting at the expense of western cell phone businesses. It's not a zero-sum game in this respect.
- panic 10y agoChina is very interested in appearing successful. My impression is that they focus on this appearance (building large public projects, making internationally-tracked numbers go up) more than on the human costs involved.
- battlebot 10y agoI wish at the very least that our tech companies would stop abetting these crimes against humanity. We should be trying to liberate these people, not use tech to forever enslave them. It's sick.
- simonh 10y ago> while stopping our own governments from repeating China's mistakes and acts of authoritarian overreach But you can't so easily dissentangle the one from the other. A lot of their development is so quick because they ride roughshod over property rights, safety standards, environmental concerns and individual liberties to push them through.