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I'm not a fan of China's actions but your post is both mis-informative and ironic given that every one of your points apply to the U.S. at various points in tim
by Jochim 5y ago
I'm not a fan of China's actions but your post is both mis-informative and ironic given that every one of your points apply to the U.S. at various points in time.
> China is a dirty old dinosaur of an economy, it has double the carbon emissions of the US while only generating 2/3 of the GDP! Horrific carbon intensity. Not to mention all the other environmental destruction it causes. The worker exploitation, the corruption, the human rights abuses, the bullying of its neighbors.
The U.S. produces roughly double the emissions of China per capita. Ignoring population is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. As for bullying neighbours, the U.S. lost both those legs after a long string of funding terrorists, assassinations, and aggressive wars.
> It's modernization strategy consists of copying from the west, and little else innovative, certainly not for its size and wealth. A single American company started less than 20 years ago has already surpassed its entire space program, which sees it losing control of its rockets in orbit and crashing them all over the globe.
Wikipedia has a quote from Alexander Hamilton:
> American founding father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton advocated rewarding those bringing "improvements and secrets of extraordinary value" into the United States. This was instrumental in making the United States a haven for industrial spies.
Industrial espionage was how the U.S. caught up to the UK and Europe. All developing countries will try to copy what's already been discovered because it gets you to the point where you can actually start competing on new technology much more quickly than trying to reinvent the wheel.
- spankyspangler 5y ago> I'm not a fan of China's actions but your post is both mis-informative and ironic given that every one of your points apply to the U.S. at various points in time. It is neither misinformative or ironic, and it's clearly talking about today and in future. > The U.S. produces roughly double the emissions of China per capita. I'm not talking about per capita. Per capita is about the worst metric to use for this, because 1. the environment doesn't care about per capita, it cares about total emissions, and 2. acting like lower per-capita is better creates perverse incentives to increase population and suppress quality of life. Carbon intensity is the relevant metric. > Ignoring population is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Rubbish. I'm talking about facts that have no relationship to population. > As for bullying neighbours, the U.S. lost both those legs after a long string of funding terrorists, assassinations, and aggressive wars. That doesn't address what I wrote I'm afraid. I never said "China does this and USA does not". > Wikipedia has a quote from Alexander Hamilton: Also irrelevant. America (and almost all the world) had slaves. That doesn't stop me from saying any nation that uses slave labor will never be a leading country and will always be looked down upon, at least until [the use of slave labor] is dismantled.