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I've been reading articles like this on HN for the last 10 years. I no longer know what to make of them. Ideologically, I'm opposed to the Chinese government a

I've been reading articles like this on HN for the last 10 years. I no longer know what to make of them. Ideologically, I'm opposed to the Chinese government and always felt they deserved to fall, a little like the USSR. The idea of political incarceration sickens me to the soul. So the articles delighted me, a shameful delight in another's misfortune. But these articles come out promising a herald of an imminent decline and they still climb. Now I have a grudging respect for their emergence, and a less rosy view of the virtues of Democracy, after it did little but cause misery in much of Iraq, Afghanistan and Russia. Perhaps this time China will finally succumb to its prophecised doom. More likely, I suspect, I will be reading on HN about another compelling portent of China's imminent decline in a year's time.

truedatone 8y ago
10 years ago.... debt to GDP https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing-up-china-s-debt-bubble-bloomberg-economics https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing-up... 2008 - 150% 2018 - 350% (official figure) 450% (official figure plus shadow debt) gdp growth https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual 2008 - 12% 2018 - 6% children per women http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2010_TFR_1.htm http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2010_TFR_1.htm 2008 - 1.75 2018 - 1.5 China lost 4 trillion wealth to migration https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/02/22/china-capital-flight-migration/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/02/22/china-cap... Nothing goes up forever. Eventually they come crashing down to earth. Noone escapes economics fundamentals.
adventured 8y ago
Oh it was Democracy that caused misery in Russia, not the hang-over and cultural destruction of 70 years of party dictatorship and failed experiments with various degrees of Communism? Not to mention mass genocide, starvation, poverty and oppression on a scale of which humanity has rarely seen. Meanwhile Czech, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - all of which are Democratic, and all of which have had superior economic outcomes to Russia - haven't had that problem. Turns out when you forcibly hold a giant land mass together that shouldn't be together, there is a high cost. Was Russia expected to snap instantly into a perfect Democratic model from that? How many elections did they hold that were Democratic before returning to a dictatorship? Not a very long experiment as it turns out. When did Iraq get Democracy? Was that before or after the vast civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and demolished its cities; or was it before or after ISIS ripped the country in half? Immediately after leaving a brutal dictatorship that had tortured the nation for decades? Another mass of land arbitrarily forced together by a great power, with horrible consequences. Afghanistan got its Democracy with a helping of decades of religious civil war that decimated the country and continues to this day with everything persistently under attack by the Taliban. They're expected to accomplish what beautiful form of Democracy in that atmosphere of on-going civil war? Using those three as examples of Democracy causing misery, is plainly absurd.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  What caused misery in Russia was that after the collapse of the USSR, the way “democracy” and “capitalism” were implemented was by handing over the country’s natural resources, infrastructure, machinery, etc. to a few kleptocrats, with everyone else left to fend for themselves. As far as I can tell this was done with the support and encouragement of the USA and Europe (especially various wealthy Americans and Europeans who made a whole lot of extra money out of it). It took a few years for the Russian mafia to consolidate power, but now the country looks to this outside observer like a mob-owned dictatorship with a weak economy, weak state institutions, little public accountability, no future orientation, poor career prospects for the well educated, etc. The main sources of power are (a) sizable natural resource reserves including gas, (b) nuclear weapons, (c) a shameless government which is willing and able to stir up a lot of shit in other countries. > When did Iraq get Democracy? It’s hard to form any kind of “democracy” when a foreign military comes and destroys your local infrastructure, dismantles your local institutions, kills a substantial proportion of your population, sparks off a civil war, provides local paramilitary groups with loads of weapons, etc.

truedatone 8y ago

10 years ago.... debt to GDP https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing-up-china-s-debt-bubble-bloomberg-economics https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing-up... 2008 - 150% 2018 - 350% (official figure) 450% (official figure plus shadow debt) gdp growth https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual 2008 - 12% 2018 - 6% children per women http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2010_TFR_1.htm http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2010_TFR_1.htm 2008 - 1.75 2018 - 1.5 China lost 4 trillion wealth to migration https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/02/22/china-capital-flight-migration/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/02/22/china-cap... Nothing goes up forever. Eventually they come crashing down to earth. Noone escapes economics fundamentals.

adventured 8y ago

Oh it was Democracy that caused misery in Russia, not the hang-over and cultural destruction of 70 years of party dictatorship and failed experiments with various degrees of Communism? Not to mention mass genocide, starvation, poverty and oppression on a scale of which humanity has rarely seen. Meanwhile Czech, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - all of which are Democratic, and all of which have had superior economic outcomes to Russia - haven't had that problem. Turns out when you forcibly hold a giant land mass together that shouldn't be together, there is a high cost. Was Russia expected to snap instantly into a perfect Democratic model from that? How many elections did they hold that were Democratic before returning to a dictatorship? Not a very long experiment as it turns out. When did Iraq get Democracy? Was that before or after the vast civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and demolished its cities; or was it before or after ISIS ripped the country in half? Immediately after leaving a brutal dictatorship that had tortured the nation for decades? Another mass of land arbitrarily forced together by a great power, with horrible consequences. Afghanistan got its Democracy with a helping of decades of religious civil war that decimated the country and continues to this day with everything persistently under attack by the Taliban. They're expected to accomplish what beautiful form of Democracy in that atmosphere of on-going civil war? Using those three as examples of Democracy causing misery, is plainly absurd.

jacobolus 8y ago
What caused misery in Russia was that after the collapse of the USSR, the way “democracy” and “capitalism” were implemented was by handing over the country’s natural resources, infrastructure, machinery, etc. to a few kleptocrats, with everyone else left to fend for themselves. As far as I can tell this was done with the support and encouragement of the USA and Europe (especially various wealthy Americans and Europeans who made a whole lot of extra money out of it). It took a few years for the Russian mafia to consolidate power, but now the country looks to this outside observer like a mob-owned dictatorship with a weak economy, weak state institutions, little public accountability, no future orientation, poor career prospects for the well educated, etc. The main sources of power are (a) sizable natural resource reserves including gas, (b) nuclear weapons, (c) a shameless government which is willing and able to stir up a lot of shit in other countries. > When did Iraq get Democracy? It’s hard to form any kind of “democracy” when a foreign military comes and destroys your local infrastructure, dismantles your local institutions, kills a substantial proportion of your population, sparks off a civil war, provides local paramilitary groups with loads of weapons, etc.