> It's scary how effective the US and China are at propaganda warfare. Consider discussion on HN. TPP is said to have been about "free trade". I've seen litt

> It's scary how effective the US and China are at propaganda warfare. Consider discussion on HN. TPP is said to have been about "free trade". I've seen little mention of hegemony, or of corporate capture of US policy. None of TPP's ISDS enabling companies to sue governments for profits lost to health regulations, even as the public health disaster of junk food is extended throughout the Americas. Nor of requiring China to change its industrial policy, to optimize for industries shaped like US pharma. This on a site focused on an industry with a different shape, that has long recognized itself as ill served by patent policies optimized for pharma. When the current round of trade negotiations was breaking down, there was some discussion in business press, that pharma was perhaps pushing too hard, and would be wiser to get a less aggressive deal signed now, and push further later, rather than risking all. But on HN, you'd not even hear they were a player. You'll see no mention here of the Unequal Treaties, nor analogies to the Opium Wars. China must change it's laws to be more like ours, as is only proper. Even those laws, like copyright term extension, which we feel were against the public interest, and pushed through by corruption. It's the principle of the thing...? Sure, HN's competence is largely localized to tech. It's been observed that its discussion of other fields, like medicine, can get quite bad. International trade policy is not a core competency. But I feel like I'm watching a page out of history. Yet another war frenzy, and the choice to set aside institutional and societal intellectual integrity and competence. Perhaps someday, the NYTimes will yet again apologize, and FOX won't... and neither will undo harm and lost opportunities, raise dead and wreckage. But HN does have a core competency of tech. So what would it take, to create a discussion medium which might do better? In which topics like this could fruitfully be worked through? Regardless of ignorance and emotion. And of well-funded expert disruption. Where pro-life and pro-choice communities could coexist, incentivized to remain, and productively engage? /r/The_Donald and Sanders. #TSLA and bulls. What would it take to create a sane public dialog in the United States?