3 ms·

So Chinese citizens have nothing to fear from an AI surveillance state then?

rapnie 6y ago
Capitalism can piggy-back on top of any governance system I think. It might even do that better in China, giving incentives elsewhere in the world to move further away from free and democratic models. In the end, if democracy can no longer satisfy capitalist greed, then it threatens to be marginalized I am afraid.
- smhost 6y ago
  It always interests me when people personify capitalism, as if it has human emotions. Capitalism doesn't require greed any more than it requires anything else. Capital is agnostic as to which behavior it parasitizes. If every business internally came to believe that it was saving the world from climate change for some heroic motive, that would work just as well.
  - rapnie 6y ago
    Capitalism is not an impersonal, innate system either. It is spun up by the people that participate in it. As such it doesn't require greed, but it incentivizes it. It is a system - at least in the form it is evolving to - that cannot, should not act on its own or be left to its own devices. Because its mechanism is "winner takes all, survival of the fittest". It needs regulation to keep it in check, counterbalances. Or else the greediest, those willing to bend the rules or cross them even, will ultimately be the only winners. They'll be the elites, and they exist already.
    - smhost 6y ago
      That's what i'm arguing. It is an impersonal system with its own internal logic. There isn't some cabal of cigar-chomping elites who are puppeteering Capital in accordance with their greed. It's the other way around. It's their greed that's being puppeteered by the logic of Capital.
      - LordDragonfang 6y ago
        I think personifying economic systems as having agency is no worse than person personifying chemical processes as being the result of the reagents "wanting" to be in a lower energy/higher entropy state. Not strictly correct, but useful for discussing among humans whose brains are hardcoded for pareidoliac personification. Also, I find the act of getting hung up over the phrasing of inanimate objects "wanting" to follow the laws of physics just derails the conversation for no good purpose.
        smhost 6y ago
        You chose an example that's maybe the hardest possible subject to mystify, and still science educators find it important to make that distinction about teleology. The fact that human brains are "hardcoded" to overfit metaphors is the entire reason why it's important to point it out.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
sofiabytes 6y ago
China claims to be socialist in the same way that North Korea claims to be democratic. The danger of capitalism in regards to technology is how it grants large amounts of power to a small group who own said technology. In the same way, in China there is an elite who have all the control.
- ttt0 6y ago
  I wonder, what's your standard for socialism? Can you give any example of a socialist society?
  - 1984athrowaway 6y ago
    I'm not the parent, but: that the workers control the stuff they use to produce things with. It only exists in patches today, as worker coops. To make it work in a market economy, it turns out you need a bunch of supporting infrastructure (popular banks and so on) because workers are individually poor. (Greg Dow has done some work on how these structures may be organized, and what the primary problems of worker coops are.<1>) So by this standard, the closest to socialism that stuck around for a while would've been Yugoslavia. However, the political side of that country left quite a lot to be desired, given how it tore itself apart after Tito died. That the workers leased all their equipment from the state also led to some serious soft budget constraint problems, to my knowledge. And by this standard, neither the USSR nor China was or is appreciably socialist. The state substituted itself for the will of the workers and then claimed that since it owns everything, as a representative of all the workers, the workers own everything. It doesn't quite hold water, IMHO. <1> One funny corollary is that it's easier to set up a worker coop the more the costs are variable instead of huge up-front costs: so it would be easier to arrange a software company that way than an industrial refinery, since computers are comparatively cheap. Though maybe not if it's into ML.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      And libertarians say that what we have now isn't real capitalism because of social programs, taxes or because society isn't organized around NAP or whatever. Who am I supposed to believe here? In my opinion it seems just like when some people are quick to call everything communism, but get defensive when you make the slightest critique of capitalism. Just in the opposite direction. I wouldn't even care what terms are we using to describe what, if it wasn't that we're generally operating on this false dichotomy of capitalism vs communism, with nothing in between.
swang 6y ago
The mechanism that drives China now is capitalism under the guise of communism. The same hardships and suffering occurring under capitalism in the West also now occurs in China thanks in part to the GOP of the 90s thinking that it could control China and "convert" it once China got a taste of capitalism. Except China's capitalism now is more efficient and ruthless than the West's: More workers to nub down and only one entity running the government.
SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
> So Chinese citizens have nothing to fear No, they will have different fears. Or if they turn out to have much the same fears, then maybe the political system that they live under is similar too. Point is, the fear says more about that political system than it does about a technology in itself.
LordDragonfang 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
- qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
simonh 6y ago
Socialism and communism aren’t the same thing. You can be a socialist and not a communist. These things are all on a spectrum, or several spectra. Denmark spending an extra 5% of its GDP on the state sector over the US doesn’t necessarily make it more like China in any practical way. In fact the Laissez fair commercial environment in China probably has more in common with that in the US than Denmark. Chinese health care is almost entirely commercial from a practical point of view. Chinese market regulation such as of advertising is very light, much more like the US than Europe. None of that directly follows from political system.

Capitalism can piggy-back on top of any governance system I think. It might even do that better in China, giving incentives elsewhere in the world to move further away from free and democratic models. In the end, if democracy can no longer satisfy capitalist greed, then it threatens to be marginalized I am afraid.

smhost 6y ago
It always interests me when people personify capitalism, as if it has human emotions. Capitalism doesn't require greed any more than it requires anything else. Capital is agnostic as to which behavior it parasitizes. If every business internally came to believe that it was saving the world from climate change for some heroic motive, that would work just as well.
- rapnie 6y ago
  Capitalism is not an impersonal, innate system either. It is spun up by the people that participate in it. As such it doesn't require greed, but it incentivizes it. It is a system - at least in the form it is evolving to - that cannot, should not act on its own or be left to its own devices. Because its mechanism is "winner takes all, survival of the fittest". It needs regulation to keep it in check, counterbalances. Or else the greediest, those willing to bend the rules or cross them even, will ultimately be the only winners. They'll be the elites, and they exist already.
  - smhost 6y ago
    That's what i'm arguing. It is an impersonal system with its own internal logic. There isn't some cabal of cigar-chomping elites who are puppeteering Capital in accordance with their greed. It's the other way around. It's their greed that's being puppeteered by the logic of Capital.
    - LordDragonfang 6y ago
      I think personifying economic systems as having agency is no worse than person personifying chemical processes as being the result of the reagents "wanting" to be in a lower energy/higher entropy state. Not strictly correct, but useful for discussing among humans whose brains are hardcoded for pareidoliac personification. Also, I find the act of getting hung up over the phrasing of inanimate objects "wanting" to follow the laws of physics just derails the conversation for no good purpose.
      - smhost 6y ago
        You chose an example that's maybe the hardest possible subject to mystify, and still science educators find it important to make that distinction about teleology. The fact that human brains are "hardcoded" to overfit metaphors is the entire reason why it's important to point it out.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

sofiabytes 6y ago

China claims to be socialist in the same way that North Korea claims to be democratic. The danger of capitalism in regards to technology is how it grants large amounts of power to a small group who own said technology. In the same way, in China there is an elite who have all the control.

ttt0 6y ago
I wonder, what's your standard for socialism? Can you give any example of a socialist society?
- 1984athrowaway 6y ago
  I'm not the parent, but: that the workers control the stuff they use to produce things with. It only exists in patches today, as worker coops. To make it work in a market economy, it turns out you need a bunch of supporting infrastructure (popular banks and so on) because workers are individually poor. (Greg Dow has done some work on how these structures may be organized, and what the primary problems of worker coops are.<1>) So by this standard, the closest to socialism that stuck around for a while would've been Yugoslavia. However, the political side of that country left quite a lot to be desired, given how it tore itself apart after Tito died. That the workers leased all their equipment from the state also led to some serious soft budget constraint problems, to my knowledge. And by this standard, neither the USSR nor China was or is appreciably socialist. The state substituted itself for the will of the workers and then claimed that since it owns everything, as a representative of all the workers, the workers own everything. It doesn't quite hold water, IMHO. <1> One funny corollary is that it's easier to set up a worker coop the more the costs are variable instead of huge up-front costs: so it would be easier to arrange a software company that way than an industrial refinery, since computers are comparatively cheap. Though maybe not if it's into ML.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    And libertarians say that what we have now isn't real capitalism because of social programs, taxes or because society isn't organized around NAP or whatever. Who am I supposed to believe here? In my opinion it seems just like when some people are quick to call everything communism, but get defensive when you make the slightest critique of capitalism. Just in the opposite direction. I wouldn't even care what terms are we using to describe what, if it wasn't that we're generally operating on this false dichotomy of capitalism vs communism, with nothing in between.

swang 6y ago

The mechanism that drives China now is capitalism under the guise of communism. The same hardships and suffering occurring under capitalism in the West also now occurs in China thanks in part to the GOP of the 90s thinking that it could control China and "convert" it once China got a taste of capitalism. Except China's capitalism now is more efficient and ruthless than the West's: More workers to nub down and only one entity running the government.

SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago

> So Chinese citizens have nothing to fear No, they will have different fears. Or if they turn out to have much the same fears, then maybe the political system that they live under is similar too. Point is, the fear says more about that political system than it does about a technology in itself.

LordDragonfang 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

simonh 6y ago

Socialism and communism aren’t the same thing. You can be a socialist and not a communist. These things are all on a spectrum, or several spectra. Denmark spending an extra 5% of its GDP on the state sector over the US doesn’t necessarily make it more like China in any practical way. In fact the Laissez fair commercial environment in China probably has more in common with that in the US than Denmark. Chinese health care is almost entirely commercial from a practical point of view. Chinese market regulation such as of advertising is very light, much more like the US than Europe. None of that directly follows from political system.