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While this article notes that the Chinese government is one of Sensetime's most visible partners, it doesn't really make it clear the extent to which private se

While this article notes that the Chinese government is one of Sensetime's most visible partners, it doesn't really make it clear the extent to which private sector companies like SenseTime are inseparable from the public sector in China. By supporting SenseTime as its client, Beijing has signaled to investors like Alibaba that it has chosen a winner, and that it will never let SenseTime fail. As with most mainland tech companies, SenseTime will heed the diktats of the central government, much as social platforms like Weibo march in step on censorship requests. One interesting question this raises is: How can non-Chinese compete against such national champions, this intense cooperation between public and private sectors? In the US, those relationships are much more problematic, as the recent uproar at Google about Project Maven illustrates. Not only that, but the US government is neither as aggressive nor as forward-looking about such partnerships, preferring to let market forces have their way. China is tilting the playing field in its favor, while the world's sole superpower is hobbled by clowns and criminals in the executive branch, and corrupt prime contractors pretend to supply the government with tech that they neither understand nor make themselves.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago
The response from the people I've seen who are quitting Google because of Maven seems to be basically: We should all quit! Unfortunately this is a collective action problem and if there is even one group who defects, then a boycott is for naught. Might slow things down temporarily but in the end wouldn't stop them.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  People who are quitting Google because of maven must be at least a dozen. Out of a company of 80,000. They are a rounding error.
  - musage 8y ago
    From a moral standpoint, they're the side with ammo and the others are fish in a barrel.
komali2 8y ago
Like any good futurist or cyberpunk novel, the lines between "government," "corporation," and "individual" are blurring. Imagine how much power Comcast would have if it silently went rogue and threatened to expose the pornographic habits of a few key senators? Or if shell, Chevron, and BP formed a cabal and declared an oil embargo on the USA, refusing to dock their tankers until they were given tax breaks or until the USA put tariffs on competition. Right now China is reminding the world that governments still are the sovereign powers. I wonder when the scales will tip?
- munin 8y ago
  The executives that made those decisions would be found, arrested, and imprisoned, if they were lucky. You can only jerk the little guy around like that. Knowledge is not power, power is power.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Knowledge is power-lite; when properly wielded, you can convert it into reservoirs of actual power.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > The executives that made those decisions would be found, arrested, and imprisoned, if they were lucky To give mechanism to this method, in America power is competitively shared. Those the ISP is blackmailing will stay quiet. But there are others intensely motivated to uncover the crime, both inside the blackmailed politicians' orbits (to preserve their careers post-downfall) and outside it (to boost their careers by taking out a competitor, to themselves or their boss).
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  The world has always had blurred lines between government corporation and individual. There are too many examples to name but the big ones are the Dutch East India Company, Nationalized Railroads in the US in WWI and more recently the "Bailout" of banks in the wake of the real estate collapse. What we've yet to see in history is a corporation that directly and openly challenges a state for sovereignty. I've written in the past that it would be technically possible for a large corporation to raise an army/navy,buy land and declare sovereignty, but that none deign to do it.
Chardok 8y ago
The success of Sensetime and Alibaba's (affiliate of Sesame Credit) large investments truly lead me to believe this is a big step towards enforcing the physical aspect of the Social Credit Score, so its not surprising that the government would be all in for helping them along. My question to your question is, what exactly are we trying to compete towards? I keep reading article after article how China is beating us in AI, but they never explain what that means for us everyday citizens, except for what I can see happening to China. From my perspective, this seems like a frantic push towards omniscient presence in the every day lives of their citizens, which for me completely wipes out any honest benefit AI could provide.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Even China admits that it isn’t beating the USA in AI yet, the articles you are reading, at least if they are from Chinese sources, claim that they will be beating the USA in AI by 2020 or so. This is sort of a meme with the Chinese government, they make declarations about what will happen in the future, and then silently readjust their goals when the previously declared deadline passes. See for example http://reddit.com/china2020 http://reddit.com/china2020. Think of it as more of a pep rally for a sports match up (rah rah, we will win!).
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Forgot the /r/ in the url: https://www.reddit.com/r/china2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/china2020
ttul 8y ago
When the government is your master, you will be innovative only insofar as it is necessary to achieve government objectives. SenseTime may be a great investment because of that implicit support, but it doesn’t make them a great company nor much of a competitive threat to rivals who are exposed to the rigors of the market.
- musage 8y ago
  > Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage have developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped. -- George Orwell, "Nineteen-Eightyfour"
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    That quote is exemplary of Orwell's personal feud with Stalinism rather than an accurate prediction. Historically, neither in the USA or China, has technological cooperation with the military slowed down technological advance (in fact public moonshots were arguably a driver behind most of the technology we take for granted). For a thorough criticism of 1984 as a device to explore technology in the future, I recommend Asimov's harsh criticism of the book. http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
- mistrial9 8y ago
  you neglect to mention -- the ability to implement a technology in systems and in the field. Government "by definition" has the ability to use resources to deploy, to a degree that is not easily understood by an individual.
- siidooloo 8y ago
  Companies that get too intermingled with the Chinese government are likely to fall victim to some corporate version of Lysenkoism. No company is good at everything. All companies fail eventually. But, if you can’t you’ll eventually grind away miss-applying whatever you can do to whatever you’ve been order to do.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hitekker 8y ago
Unrelated but for those wondering, "diktat" is not a misspelling of "dictates" as I initially thought. Instead, "diktat" means "an order or decree imposed by someone in power without popular consent" whereas "dictates" means "an order or principle that must be obeyed". Think "the dictates of the fashion community" versus "The diktats of the dictator"
vertexFarm 8y ago
Okay this is off-topic and I apologize, but what's the justification for the self-proclaimed title of the "world's sole superpower?" Is it just a holdover from cold war-era terminology? How is it quantified? How long are we going to make this absurd boast as we inevitably slide towards the fall of Rome, as all great civilizations eventually do? If it's military might, that may be surprisingly irrelevant as the next century unfolds.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >but what's the justification for the self-proclaimed title of the "world's sole superpower?" The typical justification is that the US is the only nation that unilaterally harasses nations on the other side of the world. When the Russians and Chinese harass other nations those nations are in the same region. When the British feel like making an example of out a country in "our" hemisphere they get permission first.
- jryle70 8y ago
  > Is it just a holdover from cold war-era terminology? This. US and USSR were considered, rightfully, the superpowers during the cold war. "Sole superpower" simply means one has fallen, so the balance has tilt in favor of the US. It wasn't "self proclaimed". It was globally accepted. It plays into American's patriotism but also flames anti-American in a lot of places. If you think it's just American manufactured claim you're mistaken. In the same vein, China is considered "new superpower", also rightfully, considering how they have aggressively expanded their influence around the world.
  - vertexFarm 8y ago
    Thanks. Yeah I had a feeling it was an old term from the fall of the Soviet Union. I really still don't understand why the term is still in use, though. It's not the eighties anymore.
gitgacutils 8y ago
> Not only that, but the US government is neither as aggressive nor as forward-looking about such partnerships What? The chinese modeled their economic system after the US. We love to portray ourselves as having a separation between the "private" and the "public". That is absolute nonsense. The chinese, like the US and europe and japan and south korea and all major world economies, are corporate mercantilists. When the railroads, mining corps, oil corporations, etc needed the natives to be "gone", it was the US government that exterminated the natives. When US corporate interests needed access to central america, it was the US government that cleared the way. When US corporate interests wanted access to the middle east, east asia, south east asia, etc, it was the US government that lent a hand. The US has always been and always will be a mercantilist nation. > preferring to let market forces have their way. You are buying into the propaganda. All "market" forces are human forces. After all, there is no market without humans. > China is tilting the playing field in its favor, while the world's sole superpower is hobbled by clowns and criminals in the executive branch, and corrupt prime contractors pretend to supply the government with tech that they neither understand nor make themselves. Oh ye of little faith. China has destroyed its environment and sold its people as slave labor to the west for development. If you look at US-china trade, 80% of the wealth is in US hands and 20% of it is in chinese hands. Take the iPhone as an example. It sells for $800. What percentage of $800 do you think the chinese gets? What percentage do you think US shareholders gets? Almost all of the iPhone's values goes to US based shareholders. The chinese get peanuts.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  The iPhone’s value is tied up in its IP (software, design) and high end components, none of which are actually made in China. The assembly happens in China, and the Chinese derive some profit from that, but it is related to the actual value being provided.
- oh-kumudo 8y ago
  AKA, industrial policy is not a Chinese invention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_policy Japan is the master of modern industrial policy. Then South Korea/Taiwan, then China, faithfully adapt the Japanese model.
siruncledrew 8y ago
When other countries get brought up, if it doesn't relate to something the US is a leader in, half the time the subject just gets undermined or discredited somehow. Not just China, but even with other Asian/African/European/South American countries. There's some mentality of there's America, and then there's everyone else in the world. I'm sure not everyone has this view, but it comes off as pretty damn self-righteous. It seems like global matters are treated with a double-standard where negatives about America get treated with "C'est la vie", but then other countries people haven't even visited get judged like some "lesser-than". For example, coming back to the US from studying in Germany, people asked what the conditions were like and it was pretty interesting there was this imagination of migrants running wild, riots in the streets, like it was 1939 again when in reality things were pretty much the same. Unsurprisingly, I'm sure the US media doesn't help with their approach to sensationalism.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  It's because of the Pax Americana brought forth by America's global economic, political and cultural dominance since WWII. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana
- dtwest 8y ago
  What specific negatives about America get 'treated with "C'est la vie"'? Americans and the American media are extremely self critical. To counter your anecdote, when I talk to many Europeans there is this imagination that American cities now have gun-wielding criminals "running wild, riots in the streets" when in reality things "were pretty much the same". People who don't know much about places outside their home often fall victim to sensationalist media. And Americans tend to be very inward focused so they are vulnerable to this. However, to say Americans ignore their own problems is blatantly false.
  - Treegarden 8y ago
    Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong I love america for being the epicenter of western culture and its innovation - I even plan on living there for some years. I feel alienated by my own German culture with its weird lederhosen, mozart and the general sentiment for illiteracy regarding all things digital. As far as I know americans think "God" created (or blessed or whatever) their holy country and its the greatest nation on earth. There is the classic american patriotism. The pledge of honor (and that kneeling thing??). Almost half of americans (or at least a very large Marjory) are creationist and believe angels are real. Even some of your presidents do. There are actual fights weither or not evolution should be taught in schools. Your relationship with Religion is also borderline pathological. There are studies that show higher developed countries tend to have atheist or at least agnostic leanings but the US is an outlier here. Your irrational war on drugs is a disaster, it, together with your racist history of slavery and segregation causes your cultural critical problems with your minority communities. Your police acts like there in a war zone. Your media is a shit show of of people throwing mud at each other. If you ever learn german you should watch the Tagesthemen which is the most unbiased and informative news I have ever seen in my life. Alternately I think french24 comes close though I'm not sure. Your relationship with guns is a whole other story as your own students can attest. I can understand the attraction to guns but Jesus you behave like an alcohol addict saying its only medicine. Some other worthy mentions are your commercial prison system that gives you the highest incarceration rate worldwide. I also heard many times your Judaical system highly disfavors the financially weak but I don't know much about that topic. You also have a "fat" epidemic as I have heard. Also your education system is kinda bad and too expensive. To close it off - your politics are highly polarized with borderline retarded conservatives that call everyone soyboys on the one side and don't even get me started on the social justice warriors that took a University president hostage[1] and in general know nothing else but to scream loudly. Cooperation oligopolies are gaining too much control and you see anything remotely welfare related such as the obama health care or free universities as communism. Btw. education is gonna be the most important field in the future. With rising demand for high skilled jobs poor people are not gonna have it easy. So free universities aren't that bad of an idea (and yes obviously they are not free but paid for by the tax payer). Also german A-Level History Lessons are of extremely high qualities so we know all about our past and what lessons that brings with it. One of the most important skill I learned in School was in History where we learned to critically analyse any kind of source. It kinda makes you immune to bullshit media of all sorts. EDIT: I didn't read the source, it was simply the first google match and I just put it there for reference. 1 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i-was-being-sought-police-tell-professor-avoid-campus-protesters-seek-h https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i-was...
imbokodo 8y ago
> Not only that, but the US government is neither as aggressive nor as forward-looking about such partnerships, preferring to let market forces have their way I have not seen this in practice. Wall Street had Glass-Steagall repealed in 1999 which led to the TARP $420 billion bailout in 2008, and Trump just rolled back almost all of Dodd-Frank, so the next taxpayer bank bailout is probably not far off (US taxpayers bailed out S&Ls in the 1980s too). I have not seen much of market forces having their way in the US other than lip service. Also, look at the 1970s history of Lockheed to see a "never let fail - heed the diktats" company. From the 1971 billion dollar government bailout to the 1976 bribery scandal. Probably one of the most government blessed companies in a country full of such-blessed companies.
dis-sys 8y ago
> Beijing has signaled to investors like Alibaba that it has chosen a winner, and that it will never let SenseTime fail. Chinese government invested in many startups, the best example is probably Deng Yaping's search engine company around 8 years ago. Such partnership/investment doesn't guarantee anything, Deng's search engine company died in a pretty normal way.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

The response from the people I've seen who are quitting Google because of Maven seems to be basically: We should all quit! Unfortunately this is a collective action problem and if there is even one group who defects, then a boycott is for naught. Might slow things down temporarily but in the end wouldn't stop them.

oh_sigh 8y ago
People who are quitting Google because of maven must be at least a dozen. Out of a company of 80,000. They are a rounding error.
- musage 8y ago
  From a moral standpoint, they're the side with ammo and the others are fish in a barrel.

komali2 8y ago

Like any good futurist or cyberpunk novel, the lines between "government," "corporation," and "individual" are blurring. Imagine how much power Comcast would have if it silently went rogue and threatened to expose the pornographic habits of a few key senators? Or if shell, Chevron, and BP formed a cabal and declared an oil embargo on the USA, refusing to dock their tankers until they were given tax breaks or until the USA put tariffs on competition. Right now China is reminding the world that governments still are the sovereign powers. I wonder when the scales will tip?

munin 8y ago
The executives that made those decisions would be found, arrested, and imprisoned, if they were lucky. You can only jerk the little guy around like that. Knowledge is not power, power is power.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Knowledge is power-lite; when properly wielded, you can convert it into reservoirs of actual power.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > The executives that made those decisions would be found, arrested, and imprisoned, if they were lucky To give mechanism to this method, in America power is competitively shared. Those the ISP is blackmailing will stay quiet. But there are others intensely motivated to uncover the crime, both inside the blackmailed politicians' orbits (to preserve their careers post-downfall) and outside it (to boost their careers by taking out a competitor, to themselves or their boss).
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
The world has always had blurred lines between government corporation and individual. There are too many examples to name but the big ones are the Dutch East India Company, Nationalized Railroads in the US in WWI and more recently the "Bailout" of banks in the wake of the real estate collapse. What we've yet to see in history is a corporation that directly and openly challenges a state for sovereignty. I've written in the past that it would be technically possible for a large corporation to raise an army/navy,buy land and declare sovereignty, but that none deign to do it.

Chardok 8y ago

The success of Sensetime and Alibaba's (affiliate of Sesame Credit) large investments truly lead me to believe this is a big step towards enforcing the physical aspect of the Social Credit Score, so its not surprising that the government would be all in for helping them along. My question to your question is, what exactly are we trying to compete towards? I keep reading article after article how China is beating us in AI, but they never explain what that means for us everyday citizens, except for what I can see happening to China. From my perspective, this seems like a frantic push towards omniscient presence in the every day lives of their citizens, which for me completely wipes out any honest benefit AI could provide.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Even China admits that it isn’t beating the USA in AI yet, the articles you are reading, at least if they are from Chinese sources, claim that they will be beating the USA in AI by 2020 or so. This is sort of a meme with the Chinese government, they make declarations about what will happen in the future, and then silently readjust their goals when the previously declared deadline passes. See for example http://reddit.com/china2020 http://reddit.com/china2020. Think of it as more of a pep rally for a sports match up (rah rah, we will win!).
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Forgot the /r/ in the url: https://www.reddit.com/r/china2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/china2020

ttul 8y ago

When the government is your master, you will be innovative only insofar as it is necessary to achieve government objectives. SenseTime may be a great investment because of that implicit support, but it doesn’t make them a great company nor much of a competitive threat to rivals who are exposed to the rigors of the market.

musage 8y ago
> Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage have developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped. -- George Orwell, "Nineteen-Eightyfour"
- Barrin92 8y ago
  That quote is exemplary of Orwell's personal feud with Stalinism rather than an accurate prediction. Historically, neither in the USA or China, has technological cooperation with the military slowed down technological advance (in fact public moonshots were arguably a driver behind most of the technology we take for granted). For a thorough criticism of 1984 as a device to explore technology in the future, I recommend Asimov's harsh criticism of the book. http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
mistrial9 8y ago
you neglect to mention -- the ability to implement a technology in systems and in the field. Government "by definition" has the ability to use resources to deploy, to a degree that is not easily understood by an individual.
siidooloo 8y ago
Companies that get too intermingled with the Chinese government are likely to fall victim to some corporate version of Lysenkoism. No company is good at everything. All companies fail eventually. But, if you can’t you’ll eventually grind away miss-applying whatever you can do to whatever you’ve been order to do.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

hitekker 8y ago

Unrelated but for those wondering, "diktat" is not a misspelling of "dictates" as I initially thought. Instead, "diktat" means "an order or decree imposed by someone in power without popular consent" whereas "dictates" means "an order or principle that must be obeyed". Think "the dictates of the fashion community" versus "The diktats of the dictator"

vertexFarm 8y ago

Okay this is off-topic and I apologize, but what's the justification for the self-proclaimed title of the "world's sole superpower?" Is it just a holdover from cold war-era terminology? How is it quantified? How long are we going to make this absurd boast as we inevitably slide towards the fall of Rome, as all great civilizations eventually do? If it's military might, that may be surprisingly irrelevant as the next century unfolds.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>but what's the justification for the self-proclaimed title of the "world's sole superpower?" The typical justification is that the US is the only nation that unilaterally harasses nations on the other side of the world. When the Russians and Chinese harass other nations those nations are in the same region. When the British feel like making an example of out a country in "our" hemisphere they get permission first.
jryle70 8y ago
> Is it just a holdover from cold war-era terminology? This. US and USSR were considered, rightfully, the superpowers during the cold war. "Sole superpower" simply means one has fallen, so the balance has tilt in favor of the US. It wasn't "self proclaimed". It was globally accepted. It plays into American's patriotism but also flames anti-American in a lot of places. If you think it's just American manufactured claim you're mistaken. In the same vein, China is considered "new superpower", also rightfully, considering how they have aggressively expanded their influence around the world.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  Thanks. Yeah I had a feeling it was an old term from the fall of the Soviet Union. I really still don't understand why the term is still in use, though. It's not the eighties anymore.

gitgacutils 8y ago

> Not only that, but the US government is neither as aggressive nor as forward-looking about such partnerships What? The chinese modeled their economic system after the US. We love to portray ourselves as having a separation between the "private" and the "public". That is absolute nonsense. The chinese, like the US and europe and japan and south korea and all major world economies, are corporate mercantilists. When the railroads, mining corps, oil corporations, etc needed the natives to be "gone", it was the US government that exterminated the natives. When US corporate interests needed access to central america, it was the US government that cleared the way. When US corporate interests wanted access to the middle east, east asia, south east asia, etc, it was the US government that lent a hand. The US has always been and always will be a mercantilist nation. > preferring to let market forces have their way. You are buying into the propaganda. All "market" forces are human forces. After all, there is no market without humans. > China is tilting the playing field in its favor, while the world's sole superpower is hobbled by clowns and criminals in the executive branch, and corrupt prime contractors pretend to supply the government with tech that they neither understand nor make themselves. Oh ye of little faith. China has destroyed its environment and sold its people as slave labor to the west for development. If you look at US-china trade, 80% of the wealth is in US hands and 20% of it is in chinese hands. Take the iPhone as an example. It sells for $800. What percentage of $800 do you think the chinese gets? What percentage do you think US shareholders gets? Almost all of the iPhone's values goes to US based shareholders. The chinese get peanuts.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
The iPhone’s value is tied up in its IP (software, design) and high end components, none of which are actually made in China. The assembly happens in China, and the Chinese derive some profit from that, but it is related to the actual value being provided.
oh-kumudo 8y ago
AKA, industrial policy is not a Chinese invention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_policy Japan is the master of modern industrial policy. Then South Korea/Taiwan, then China, faithfully adapt the Japanese model.

siruncledrew 8y ago

When other countries get brought up, if it doesn't relate to something the US is a leader in, half the time the subject just gets undermined or discredited somehow. Not just China, but even with other Asian/African/European/South American countries. There's some mentality of there's America, and then there's everyone else in the world. I'm sure not everyone has this view, but it comes off as pretty damn self-righteous. It seems like global matters are treated with a double-standard where negatives about America get treated with "C'est la vie", but then other countries people haven't even visited get judged like some "lesser-than". For example, coming back to the US from studying in Germany, people asked what the conditions were like and it was pretty interesting there was this imagination of migrants running wild, riots in the streets, like it was 1939 again when in reality things were pretty much the same. Unsurprisingly, I'm sure the US media doesn't help with their approach to sensationalism.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago
It's because of the Pax Americana brought forth by America's global economic, political and cultural dominance since WWII. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana
dtwest 8y ago
What specific negatives about America get 'treated with "C'est la vie"'? Americans and the American media are extremely self critical. To counter your anecdote, when I talk to many Europeans there is this imagination that American cities now have gun-wielding criminals "running wild, riots in the streets" when in reality things "were pretty much the same". People who don't know much about places outside their home often fall victim to sensationalist media. And Americans tend to be very inward focused so they are vulnerable to this. However, to say Americans ignore their own problems is blatantly false.
- Treegarden 8y ago
  Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong I love america for being the epicenter of western culture and its innovation - I even plan on living there for some years. I feel alienated by my own German culture with its weird lederhosen, mozart and the general sentiment for illiteracy regarding all things digital. As far as I know americans think "God" created (or blessed or whatever) their holy country and its the greatest nation on earth. There is the classic american patriotism. The pledge of honor (and that kneeling thing??). Almost half of americans (or at least a very large Marjory) are creationist and believe angels are real. Even some of your presidents do. There are actual fights weither or not evolution should be taught in schools. Your relationship with Religion is also borderline pathological. There are studies that show higher developed countries tend to have atheist or at least agnostic leanings but the US is an outlier here. Your irrational war on drugs is a disaster, it, together with your racist history of slavery and segregation causes your cultural critical problems with your minority communities. Your police acts like there in a war zone. Your media is a shit show of of people throwing mud at each other. If you ever learn german you should watch the Tagesthemen which is the most unbiased and informative news I have ever seen in my life. Alternately I think french24 comes close though I'm not sure. Your relationship with guns is a whole other story as your own students can attest. I can understand the attraction to guns but Jesus you behave like an alcohol addict saying its only medicine. Some other worthy mentions are your commercial prison system that gives you the highest incarceration rate worldwide. I also heard many times your Judaical system highly disfavors the financially weak but I don't know much about that topic. You also have a "fat" epidemic as I have heard. Also your education system is kinda bad and too expensive. To close it off - your politics are highly polarized with borderline retarded conservatives that call everyone soyboys on the one side and don't even get me started on the social justice warriors that took a University president hostage[1] and in general know nothing else but to scream loudly. Cooperation oligopolies are gaining too much control and you see anything remotely welfare related such as the obama health care or free universities as communism. Btw. education is gonna be the most important field in the future. With rising demand for high skilled jobs poor people are not gonna have it easy. So free universities aren't that bad of an idea (and yes obviously they are not free but paid for by the tax payer). Also german A-Level History Lessons are of extremely high qualities so we know all about our past and what lessons that brings with it. One of the most important skill I learned in School was in History where we learned to critically analyse any kind of source. It kinda makes you immune to bullshit media of all sorts. EDIT: I didn't read the source, it was simply the first google match and I just put it there for reference. 1 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i-was-being-sought-police-tell-professor-avoid-campus-protesters-seek-h https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i-was...

imbokodo 8y ago

> Not only that, but the US government is neither as aggressive nor as forward-looking about such partnerships, preferring to let market forces have their way I have not seen this in practice. Wall Street had Glass-Steagall repealed in 1999 which led to the TARP $420 billion bailout in 2008, and Trump just rolled back almost all of Dodd-Frank, so the next taxpayer bank bailout is probably not far off (US taxpayers bailed out S&Ls in the 1980s too). I have not seen much of market forces having their way in the US other than lip service. Also, look at the 1970s history of Lockheed to see a "never let fail - heed the diktats" company. From the 1971 billion dollar government bailout to the 1976 bribery scandal. Probably one of the most government blessed companies in a country full of such-blessed companies.

dis-sys 8y ago

> Beijing has signaled to investors like Alibaba that it has chosen a winner, and that it will never let SenseTime fail. Chinese government invested in many startups, the best example is probably Deng Yaping's search engine company around 8 years ago. Such partnership/investment doesn't guarantee anything, Deng's search engine company died in a pretty normal way.