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China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. > I frequently think that what is happening over there are the e

China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. > I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments that the Western world would never be able to pull off. Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? I seriously cannot think of an example so Im open to the fact you know more about my known unknowns.

kv_hrishikesh 6y ago
>Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? Are you justifying unethical experiments on Uighurs by the chinese government ?
usui 6y ago
> China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. I agree with you. This is why populations, no matter which population it is, are more likely to accept the government who has substantially increased the quality of life of the average citizen. This is a very hard position to disagree with, I think. Many citizens in the Western world also have had stable political systems despite the massive wrongdoings of their governments because for the most part, governments have not overstepped their bounds in comparison to the stability provided. It's like having a goodness-to-shittiness ratio that each citizen subconsciously evaluates with an accompanying flowchart. The average citizen thinks to himself or herself: Is my government doing bad things? Yes. Is my government doing good things? Yes. Is the government doing enough bad things to make me care? No. If the answer is yes, then the next question is: Do I care enough to do something about it? Most of the time, the answer is no because society pushes me to remain being a busybody (job, life responsibilities, etc.) or I just don't care. > Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? I could have phrased that better: All governments are capable and have a history of some kind of unethical experiment. I think that it is rarer that it is at this level of scale and with this level of technical sophistication. My thought was that generally, a Western government would not successfully pull off this prototype with neither the degree of success or extent. I personally do not know what is happening at the granular level and I do not pretend to know. I wish I did, and for that matter, at any point in time there will be shady things going on that we do not know. Maybe we will learn in a few decades. For the first time, we get to see what control through the digital lens of information technology looks like when combined with the capacity to enact state-sanctioned violence. It's like the cyberpunk genre, except privately-owned corporations do not yet have a significant capacity to use violence. Maybe we'll have the honor of seeing that by the end of this century. On that note, the closest thing the USA has done in subjugating populations of citizens in a systematic way is the internment camps of Japanese Americans for no reason. They apologized 4 decades later. What good is an apology if you've been waiting for most of the victims to die anyway? Nonetheless, it still gained notoriety (eventually), and people still fought for recognition afterward.
- deleted 6y ago
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- udue73uru 6y ago
  It seems like the interesting question is what happens after total authoritarianism. I know many here find the news out of China nightmarish but most of China is on the mainland and the mainland Chinese, while by no means flourishing in utopia, are pretty content on average compared to where they were in the past. This isn't meant to endorse China by any means but if the west is going to keep espousing the uplifting effects of democracy they're going to need some actual benefits to point to eventually since right now the main perk is friendlier trade relations. Latin American democracy is a joke because they love populists (no one actually studying them blames the intervention memes), the EU is rife with corruption and the U.S. is strong but you can be strong without being a democracy. So why should an aspiring African government, for example, strive for Democracy rather than persuing the Chinese model?
  - pasabagi 6y ago
    Democracy developed in a world of totalitarian regimes, and mostly thrived because having officials vulnerable to election cuts down on corruption and incompetence while building government legitimacy and stability. Totalitarian states tend to have a good run, where they have a good leader and energetic administration, then they become lethargic and dysfunctional, and because there's no mechanism to correct this, they start falling apart. (However, this can take centuries). As an aside, I don't think the West has ever been particularly keen on democracy. I think Israel is the only democracy that has ever received substantial military and economic support. For dictatorships, this kind of support is basically routine (see Egypt, for a typical example).
    - udue73uru 6y ago
      Those democracies didn't just emerge in spite of totalitarians though, they emerged because of them and the stability they established. Stable conditions historically lead to democracy but democracy in uncertain circumstances segues into stability much more rarely. Yes corruption is a problem for totalitarians but cracking down on corruption has been a growing aspect of the Chinese model for exactly that reason (whether or not they'll succeed is another matter but it's incorrect to automatically assume that a totalitarian state will be blind to the problem by default). Further, those democracies emerged in a wildly different power climate. A modernized military operating without any rules of engagement is not going to get overthrown by its people when over half the population is content.
microcolonel 6y ago
The productive economy did that, the people. This is not the glowing leadership of the CCP, but a concession they made so as not to end up like North Korea. As for unethical experiments, Mao's certainly top the charts.

kv_hrishikesh 6y ago

>Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? Are you justifying unethical experiments on Uighurs by the chinese government ?

usui 6y ago

> China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. I agree with you. This is why populations, no matter which population it is, are more likely to accept the government who has substantially increased the quality of life of the average citizen. This is a very hard position to disagree with, I think. Many citizens in the Western world also have had stable political systems despite the massive wrongdoings of their governments because for the most part, governments have not overstepped their bounds in comparison to the stability provided. It's like having a goodness-to-shittiness ratio that each citizen subconsciously evaluates with an accompanying flowchart. The average citizen thinks to himself or herself: Is my government doing bad things? Yes. Is my government doing good things? Yes. Is the government doing enough bad things to make me care? No. If the answer is yes, then the next question is: Do I care enough to do something about it? Most of the time, the answer is no because society pushes me to remain being a busybody (job, life responsibilities, etc.) or I just don't care. > Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? I could have phrased that better: All governments are capable and have a history of some kind of unethical experiment. I think that it is rarer that it is at this level of scale and with this level of technical sophistication. My thought was that generally, a Western government would not successfully pull off this prototype with neither the degree of success or extent. I personally do not know what is happening at the granular level and I do not pretend to know. I wish I did, and for that matter, at any point in time there will be shady things going on that we do not know. Maybe we will learn in a few decades. For the first time, we get to see what control through the digital lens of information technology looks like when combined with the capacity to enact state-sanctioned violence. It's like the cyberpunk genre, except privately-owned corporations do not yet have a significant capacity to use violence. Maybe we'll have the honor of seeing that by the end of this century. On that note, the closest thing the USA has done in subjugating populations of citizens in a systematic way is the internment camps of Japanese Americans for no reason. They apologized 4 decades later. What good is an apology if you've been waiting for most of the victims to die anyway? Nonetheless, it still gained notoriety (eventually), and people still fought for recognition afterward.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
udue73uru 6y ago
It seems like the interesting question is what happens after total authoritarianism. I know many here find the news out of China nightmarish but most of China is on the mainland and the mainland Chinese, while by no means flourishing in utopia, are pretty content on average compared to where they were in the past. This isn't meant to endorse China by any means but if the west is going to keep espousing the uplifting effects of democracy they're going to need some actual benefits to point to eventually since right now the main perk is friendlier trade relations. Latin American democracy is a joke because they love populists (no one actually studying them blames the intervention memes), the EU is rife with corruption and the U.S. is strong but you can be strong without being a democracy. So why should an aspiring African government, for example, strive for Democracy rather than persuing the Chinese model?
- pasabagi 6y ago
  Democracy developed in a world of totalitarian regimes, and mostly thrived because having officials vulnerable to election cuts down on corruption and incompetence while building government legitimacy and stability. Totalitarian states tend to have a good run, where they have a good leader and energetic administration, then they become lethargic and dysfunctional, and because there's no mechanism to correct this, they start falling apart. (However, this can take centuries). As an aside, I don't think the West has ever been particularly keen on democracy. I think Israel is the only democracy that has ever received substantial military and economic support. For dictatorships, this kind of support is basically routine (see Egypt, for a typical example).
  - udue73uru 6y ago
    Those democracies didn't just emerge in spite of totalitarians though, they emerged because of them and the stability they established. Stable conditions historically lead to democracy but democracy in uncertain circumstances segues into stability much more rarely. Yes corruption is a problem for totalitarians but cracking down on corruption has been a growing aspect of the Chinese model for exactly that reason (whether or not they'll succeed is another matter but it's incorrect to automatically assume that a totalitarian state will be blind to the problem by default). Further, those democracies emerged in a wildly different power climate. A modernized military operating without any rules of engagement is not going to get overthrown by its people when over half the population is content.

microcolonel 6y ago

The productive economy did that, the people. This is not the glowing leadership of the CCP, but a concession they made so as not to end up like North Korea. As for unethical experiments, Mao's certainly top the charts.