6 ms·

"People hoped that China would open up while modernising, so far it has not worked at all." The same can be said of the US these days. It seems to go backwards

"People hoped that China would open up while modernising, so far it has not worked at all." The same can be said of the US these days. It seems to go backwards for some strange reason.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
The US is still Democratic, you may not like Trump but enough people did.
- na85 8y ago
  The US is an oligarchy.
  - adventured 8y ago
    If the US were an oligarchy, Trump would have never been elected. The most powerful people in the US were nearly universally against his election, including the most powerful billionaires, politicians, media and political families - on both sides of the aisle.
- Retric 8y ago
  USA holds elections, but the system has been gamed enough to convince most people that their votes don't matter. That's dangerous over the long term. Democracy is more about the will of the population than highly technical rules.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    highly technical rules Like the number of voters? I can't help feeling these complaints wouldn't have been made if the result was different. I don't like Trump but it seems he did win.
    - extra88 8y ago
      > Like the number of voters? 3 million more voters voted for Clinton but Trump won because of the Electoral College.
      - titanix2 8y ago
        The electoral rules are the rules. If you contest the result of an election that hadn’t irregularities, you put yourself in the anti-democratic camp. I’m not an US citizen but I start feeling worried about the democracy in general as more and more one side seems to entitle itself to impose its point of view despite loosing elections or referendum.
        extra88 8y ago
        I was replying to a comment about the number of voters determining the outcome, pointing out that it did not and that it's not that simple. I know what the Electoral College is and what it's for.
        Retric 8y ago
        Rules are half of the equation the population must feel the rules are reasonable. Gerrymandering is perhaps the most blatant example, but it's mostly a question of feeling the next election will be fair. If things are down to a coin toss of votes then you can feel it might flip next election. But many US elections don't even have someone running for the opposite party.
      - cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
        Which has been in place since the Constitution was ratified. This sour grapes whining by Clinton supporters is like a baseball team complaining that they lost a baseball game because while they scored fewer runs they had more hits and fewer errors. Except that's not how baseball games are scored, and that's known from the beginning of the game. (Just to get it out of my way: I did not vote for Trump, and I've never supported the man. I'm just sick of people complaining about losing by the rules of the system they knew was in place when they started.)
  - fiblye 8y ago
    >USA holds elections, but the system has been gamed enough to convince most people that their votes don't matter. This has been a concern for Americans since the dawn of the country. Things in the early 20th century were worse than they are now.
    - Retric 8y ago
      The US got surprisingly close to a second civil war during that time period. The issue is large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats feel their votes don't matter. Further, the last civil war is outside of living memory. It's a black swan event which can easily catch people off guard. Rules put in place by people in power have ~zero impact on how much people trust the system.
  - davrosthedalek 8y ago
    What makes me worried is the rise of populist politicians, not only in the US, but also across Europe. It's certainly partly motivated by exactly what you describe. For many people, democracy seems like a theater play performed by the political cast, and not even a good one at that.
  - knorker 8y ago
    > heir votes don't matter. If you live in California or Texas then you pretty much can't vote for President. Your vote doesn't matter.
MatrixAlgebra 8y ago
The US has a far more open economy than China certainly, and is generally one of the most open economies in the world.
adventured 8y ago
In fact the same can't be said about the US these days. The US is liberalizing and I can back that statement up. To prove me wrong, all you have to do is list the large number of rights that have been revoked in the US. You'll need a lot of substantial counter examples for these: The US is legalizing marijuana and many states are working on lessening the criminalization of drugs broadly. The US legalized gay marriage. Meanwhile it's still illegal in 85-90% of the world and 2/3 of Europe. The US prison population has been declining for about eight years and will be cut in half over 20 years at the current rate. The US has very broad bi-partisan support for ending its mass incarceration policies and ending minimum sentencing laws. For one example, the rate of African American female imprisonment has fallen by 50% since 1999. The US welfare state has expanded considerably over the last 20 years and is now among the most generous. It's at the OECD average in terms of GDP spent on its welfare state. That puts it in an elite class of about the best 18 nations based on its current scoring. Criticism about NSA spying is entirely legitimate. However, the US is still actively restricting spying & tracking abuses through curtailing the police. The Supreme Court just ruled on a big one in favor of the people, with more favorable rulings plausibly to come. [1] The Bill of Rights is still working. De facto no such restraints exist at all in China. If all you've got are issues about immigration, that isn't going to go very far when you compare the actual US immigration policies with those of nearly all of the developed world, which overwhelmingly use variations of merit systems to only allow in certain skill classes of people by points. A further group of the developed world isn't open to much immigration at all (that now includes all of Scandinavia). [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/22/605007387/supreme-court-rules-police-need-warrant-to-get-location-information-from-cell-to https://www.npr.org/2018/06/22/605007387/supreme-court-rules...
- oblio 8y ago
  A pretty thorough description but don't forget about perception. The US is bigger than all the other developed countries (in terms of population and natural resources). It's GDP is also higher than that of 80% of the other developed countries. Everyone expects the US to lead.
- PaulRobinson 8y ago
  Your President is behaving exactly like every fascist and dictator seeking to overturn democracy in history has. Calling journalists liars and fake, lying himself, starting trade wars, dog whistling, large rallies to his base, promoting his friends and family, ensuring his own businesses make plenty of money from his being in power, hinting at extension of term limits and applauding China's Xi Jinping's "life tenure"... it goes on, and on, and on, and on... All of the great things you point out stand a chance of being over-turned within the next 6 years. Marijuana and gay marriage might stick, but prison population has a long, long way to go before it's anywhere near the same ratio as other developed nations and in the meantime the US is looking up children separated forcibly from their parents for the "crime" of being immigrants, (immigrants, just like your own ancestors most likely were). The US welfare state is not "amongst the most generous". You've just admitted it's at OECD "average". The fact many other countries are absolute shit, doesn't mean the US is "elite" at this: it's at the bottom of the pile of developed nations, pretty much. The fact healthcare that is free at the point of use is a contentious issue in the United States (but a given in most developed nations), is a pointer in itself to how poor the whole social contract/welfare area is, and how little empathy for misfortune American politics is allowed to have before it is punished by a narrow-minded and selfish electorate. And on your point on immigration and Scandinavia, I don't think you understand how immigration within the EU works, or been keeping up to date with the Syrian refugee crisis, and Scandinavia's response since the start of the Syrian "civil" war. And whilst most EU refugee processing centres are not very nice, and do take some time to do some processing (for legitimate anti-terrorism reasons), they at least do not rip children away from their parents, put them in cells described as "cages" and try and justify this as normal behaviour. My father is American. I spent my childhood in much awe at the potential and its history, even as a young English boy. But its future is far from certain, and it most definitely is not on a course of further liberalisation - quite the opposite in fact. Who cares if you can smoke weed though, right?
dang 8y ago
Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. I'm sure that's not what you intended, but it has predictable effects on HN threads, and they're bad for the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"People hoped that China would open up while modernising, so far it has not worked at all." The same can be said of the US these days. It seems to go backwards for some strange reason.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

The US is still Democratic, you may not like Trump but enough people did.

na85 8y ago
The US is an oligarchy.
- adventured 8y ago
  If the US were an oligarchy, Trump would have never been elected. The most powerful people in the US were nearly universally against his election, including the most powerful billionaires, politicians, media and political families - on both sides of the aisle.
Retric 8y ago
USA holds elections, but the system has been gamed enough to convince most people that their votes don't matter. That's dangerous over the long term. Democracy is more about the will of the population than highly technical rules.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  highly technical rules Like the number of voters? I can't help feeling these complaints wouldn't have been made if the result was different. I don't like Trump but it seems he did win.
  - extra88 8y ago
    > Like the number of voters? 3 million more voters voted for Clinton but Trump won because of the Electoral College.
    - titanix2 8y ago
      The electoral rules are the rules. If you contest the result of an election that hadn’t irregularities, you put yourself in the anti-democratic camp. I’m not an US citizen but I start feeling worried about the democracy in general as more and more one side seems to entitle itself to impose its point of view despite loosing elections or referendum.
      - extra88 8y ago
        I was replying to a comment about the number of voters determining the outcome, pointing out that it did not and that it's not that simple. I know what the Electoral College is and what it's for.
      - Retric 8y ago
        Rules are half of the equation the population must feel the rules are reasonable. Gerrymandering is perhaps the most blatant example, but it's mostly a question of feeling the next election will be fair. If things are down to a coin toss of votes then you can feel it might flip next election. But many US elections don't even have someone running for the opposite party.
    - cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
      Which has been in place since the Constitution was ratified. This sour grapes whining by Clinton supporters is like a baseball team complaining that they lost a baseball game because while they scored fewer runs they had more hits and fewer errors. Except that's not how baseball games are scored, and that's known from the beginning of the game. (Just to get it out of my way: I did not vote for Trump, and I've never supported the man. I'm just sick of people complaining about losing by the rules of the system they knew was in place when they started.)
- fiblye 8y ago
  >USA holds elections, but the system has been gamed enough to convince most people that their votes don't matter. This has been a concern for Americans since the dawn of the country. Things in the early 20th century were worse than they are now.
  - Retric 8y ago
    The US got surprisingly close to a second civil war during that time period. The issue is large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats feel their votes don't matter. Further, the last civil war is outside of living memory. It's a black swan event which can easily catch people off guard. Rules put in place by people in power have ~zero impact on how much people trust the system.
- davrosthedalek 8y ago
  What makes me worried is the rise of populist politicians, not only in the US, but also across Europe. It's certainly partly motivated by exactly what you describe. For many people, democracy seems like a theater play performed by the political cast, and not even a good one at that.
- knorker 8y ago
  > heir votes don't matter. If you live in California or Texas then you pretty much can't vote for President. Your vote doesn't matter.

MatrixAlgebra 8y ago

The US has a far more open economy than China certainly, and is generally one of the most open economies in the world.

adventured 8y ago

In fact the same can't be said about the US these days. The US is liberalizing and I can back that statement up. To prove me wrong, all you have to do is list the large number of rights that have been revoked in the US. You'll need a lot of substantial counter examples for these: The US is legalizing marijuana and many states are working on lessening the criminalization of drugs broadly. The US legalized gay marriage. Meanwhile it's still illegal in 85-90% of the world and 2/3 of Europe. The US prison population has been declining for about eight years and will be cut in half over 20 years at the current rate. The US has very broad bi-partisan support for ending its mass incarceration policies and ending minimum sentencing laws. For one example, the rate of African American female imprisonment has fallen by 50% since 1999. The US welfare state has expanded considerably over the last 20 years and is now among the most generous. It's at the OECD average in terms of GDP spent on its welfare state. That puts it in an elite class of about the best 18 nations based on its current scoring. Criticism about NSA spying is entirely legitimate. However, the US is still actively restricting spying & tracking abuses through curtailing the police. The Supreme Court just ruled on a big one in favor of the people, with more favorable rulings plausibly to come. [1] The Bill of Rights is still working. De facto no such restraints exist at all in China. If all you've got are issues about immigration, that isn't going to go very far when you compare the actual US immigration policies with those of nearly all of the developed world, which overwhelmingly use variations of merit systems to only allow in certain skill classes of people by points. A further group of the developed world isn't open to much immigration at all (that now includes all of Scandinavia). [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/22/605007387/supreme-court-rules-police-need-warrant-to-get-location-information-from-cell-to https://www.npr.org/2018/06/22/605007387/supreme-court-rules...

oblio 8y ago
A pretty thorough description but don't forget about perception. The US is bigger than all the other developed countries (in terms of population and natural resources). It's GDP is also higher than that of 80% of the other developed countries. Everyone expects the US to lead.
PaulRobinson 8y ago
Your President is behaving exactly like every fascist and dictator seeking to overturn democracy in history has. Calling journalists liars and fake, lying himself, starting trade wars, dog whistling, large rallies to his base, promoting his friends and family, ensuring his own businesses make plenty of money from his being in power, hinting at extension of term limits and applauding China's Xi Jinping's "life tenure"... it goes on, and on, and on, and on... All of the great things you point out stand a chance of being over-turned within the next 6 years. Marijuana and gay marriage might stick, but prison population has a long, long way to go before it's anywhere near the same ratio as other developed nations and in the meantime the US is looking up children separated forcibly from their parents for the "crime" of being immigrants, (immigrants, just like your own ancestors most likely were). The US welfare state is not "amongst the most generous". You've just admitted it's at OECD "average". The fact many other countries are absolute shit, doesn't mean the US is "elite" at this: it's at the bottom of the pile of developed nations, pretty much. The fact healthcare that is free at the point of use is a contentious issue in the United States (but a given in most developed nations), is a pointer in itself to how poor the whole social contract/welfare area is, and how little empathy for misfortune American politics is allowed to have before it is punished by a narrow-minded and selfish electorate. And on your point on immigration and Scandinavia, I don't think you understand how immigration within the EU works, or been keeping up to date with the Syrian refugee crisis, and Scandinavia's response since the start of the Syrian "civil" war. And whilst most EU refugee processing centres are not very nice, and do take some time to do some processing (for legitimate anti-terrorism reasons), they at least do not rip children away from their parents, put them in cells described as "cages" and try and justify this as normal behaviour. My father is American. I spent my childhood in much awe at the potential and its history, even as a young English boy. But its future is far from certain, and it most definitely is not on a course of further liberalisation - quite the opposite in fact. Who cares if you can smoke weed though, right?

dang 8y ago

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. I'm sure that's not what you intended, but it has predictable effects on HN threads, and they're bad for the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html