5 ms·

> Highly centralized (command & control) and mercantilist systems tend to do well in the short term, but struggle and founder in the long term. That sounds lik

> Highly centralized (command & control) and mercantilist systems tend to do well in the short term, but struggle and founder in the long term. That sounds like a prayer to me. What evidence is there that China can't win? How are you certain that authoritarian regimes can't both gain and keep dominance over timescale of decades or centuries? Consider that the dominance of democracy is a relatively short term thing on the historical timescale. For the vast majority of human history, civilizations have been ruled by authoritarian dictators. The rise of China could just be reversion to the mean. I don't want totalitarianism to win. But if we just complacently assume that it won't, doesn't that make the worst case scenario much more likely?

chrischen 5y ago
If your system can’t win because it’s inherently better, then maybe your system shouldn’t win? Have a little faith. Our system shouldn’t win just because we are using it. After all, our core beliefs are that it is a better system, not just through our pure force of will. The OP is right, much of China is is still undeveloped and their policies short-sighted and naive. In fact the whole government is so sensitive to face-saving that it screams insecure teenager. Getting worried they might be winning and that we must start to take alternative measures just legitimizes their tactics.
- landryraccoon 5y ago
  I'm curious where you fix the goalposts. The GDP of the Soviet Union never exceeded that of the United States at any point. If the GDP of China exceeds the United States in the near future (which seems quite possible), how does that fact reconcile with your analysis? I find the government of China to be morally reprehensible. However there are plenty of cases in history in the real world where that which is morally reprehensible prevails, at least in the short term.
  - chrischen 5y ago
    If they prevail in the short term then that answers your question. A lot of things prevail in the short term. If they prevail in the long term, then we might need to revisit our morals.
    - landryraccoon 5y ago
      The "short term" on a historical timescale can easily be longer than your lifetime or mine. If China collapses in two hundred years due to it's moral failings, that will be no more comfort to us than the United States collapsing might be to the indigenous tribes that used to live in North America before Europeans arrived.
archibaldJ 5y ago
> How are you certain that authoritarian regimes can't both gain and keep dominance over timescale of decades or centuries? Authoritarianism always comes with a top-down execution structure, which optimises for cost-to-execute but not cost-to-transform. When the need-to-transform exceeds a certain value, it would either have to re-adjust its internal structure or it will crumble (as the cost skyrockets) [1]. Interestingly, the same applies to compiler design, as well as any software systems when viewed at the right abstraction. And from a functional programming perspective, it is also the principle that underlines the famous Alan Perlis' epigram "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing" (which outlines the importance of compiler optimization such as in tail-end recursion.) [1] We're already seeing this in China's aging population crisis (thanks to the one-child policy introduced in 1980 [3]), and I doubt Xi's banning of private tuitions [2] would help (if we take his policy at face value). [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-24/china-bans-school-curriculum-tutoring-firms-from-going-public https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-24/china-ban... [3]: fun fact - this policy had affected many people including myself in a deep personal level. By law I am not supposed to exist (I'm a Gen Z born in China illegally as a second child (after my parents bribed the hospital, and afterwards we still had to pay huge fines)).
- strogonoff 5y ago
  Your point about cost-to-adjust resonated with me. What I’ve found is that designing for software successfully existing over time implies giving up control and instead going up to a meta-level, enabling sound methods of development to evolve—as opposed to defining specific processes, architecture and implementation, which in longer term leads to a situation in which whenever lead developer has not enough time (or is replaced) the software stops living. Something about infinite games in Carse’s and building worlds in Ian Cheng’s terminology. To your footnote, I’ve read that the one-child policy in China was not strictly enforced outside of major cities, and resulted in many children born in the countryside essentially “outside of the system”, not having access to education or healthcare… I wonder how much of it is true.
  - archibaldJ 5y ago
BizarroLand 5y ago
I mean, they seem to win by simply throwing bodies on the pyre, working their own citizens to suicide in order to provide cheap labor to the rest of the world until they get valuable IP and steal it. Capitalism thrives on cheap labor and cannot stop itself from being lead like a lamb to slaughter as long as China keeps pumping out all of those man hours of labor for the taking.
matthewdgreen 5y ago
We've been down this road with the Soviet Union during portions of the cold war, when folks in the West thought that high Soviet GDP catch-up growth would translate into sustained non-catch-up growth and meant non-authoritarian governments were doomed. It didn't work out that way. Democracy isn't assured, we could easily vote it away in the West. But there is definitely a pattern whereby enormous cutting-edge economic growth seems to require relatively free societies. To make a long term bet on an authoritarian approach in a world where those societies exist, that seems like a very risky thing to do.
- random314 5y ago
  Soviet Russia had a much smaller population and market size than China.
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    And China has its own problems, including hugely problematic demographics and an export-fueled economy that is still highly dependent on trade with the West.
    - random314 5y ago
      Your reasoning is based on narratives which I personally always discount. Economists expect China to overtake the US economy in size by the 2030s. This can obviously either accelerate or decelerate and there will be hindsight reasoning in any case. Nevertheless, I don't see any of your narrative based arguments substantive.
- jackcosgrove 5y ago
  All those centuries of authoritarian rule also coincided with technological and economic stagnation. That might not be causal, but I think it is. The industrial revolution came after a number of liberalizing political movements in northwestern Europe.
audunw 5y ago
> What evidence is there that China can't win? There's no evidence here. We're talking about predicting the future in a system that's too complex to make predictions with any certainty. But for those of us following the politics and economics of China closely, it's pretty clear that they're screwed. People said Japan would dominate the world. Then the demographic shift hit them and the economy has been stagnating ever since. China's demographic shift is much bigger and faster, they're further behind (per capita), and they're way less prepared. China has the same problem of not accepting enough immigrants, and they just made it worse by cracking down on after-school tutoring. The vast majority of history is very different from the world we live in today. People can move between countries relatively easily, and all countries compete for the top talent. A huge share of workers these days are knowledge workers. You can't generalise based on history when the fundamentals are so vastly different. China has very little to offer there, and they're increasingly becoming hostile to foreigners. They have an enormous housing bubble. Well, if you can call it a bubble when it's propped up so it never bursts. But much of their GDP is pure waste as they're building apartments nobody lives in, and that deteriorates within years. Why? Because they can't build a trustworthy stock market where people can invest, so people invest in housing. They just demonstrated once again that you should never but money in the Chinese stock market, so the problem isn't getting better. Chinas infrastructure is weak. Many cities are built without proper drainage. Dams are breaking. The US may have a huge infrastructure debt, but at least it was solid to begin with. China has an insane amount of public servants per worker. The whole economy is deeply inefficient, and has only been propped up by a crazy 996 work ethic, one that Xi is now trying to crack down on. Which illustrates the fundamental instability: they can't continue to grow through capitalism anymore. The insane income inequality is becoming a big problem, and the wealthy was accumulating too much power, threatening the power of the party. So Xi is reverting to more traditional socialist policies, to remove some of the power of wealthy individuals and satisfy the public. But that will fundamentally weaken the economy. It'll push them in the direction of economies like North Korea and Venezuela. China is being squeeze from both ends: low value manufacturing is moving to other countries as labor costs in China increases. But China has trouble establishing high value exports and services. How many trusted brands are there from China? Quite a few sure, but not compared to its population size.
- 5y ago

chrischen 5y ago

If your system can’t win because it’s inherently better, then maybe your system shouldn’t win? Have a little faith. Our system shouldn’t win just because we are using it. After all, our core beliefs are that it is a better system, not just through our pure force of will. The OP is right, much of China is is still undeveloped and their policies short-sighted and naive. In fact the whole government is so sensitive to face-saving that it screams insecure teenager. Getting worried they might be winning and that we must start to take alternative measures just legitimizes their tactics.

landryraccoon 5y ago
I'm curious where you fix the goalposts. The GDP of the Soviet Union never exceeded that of the United States at any point. If the GDP of China exceeds the United States in the near future (which seems quite possible), how does that fact reconcile with your analysis? I find the government of China to be morally reprehensible. However there are plenty of cases in history in the real world where that which is morally reprehensible prevails, at least in the short term.
- chrischen 5y ago
  If they prevail in the short term then that answers your question. A lot of things prevail in the short term. If they prevail in the long term, then we might need to revisit our morals.
  - landryraccoon 5y ago
    The "short term" on a historical timescale can easily be longer than your lifetime or mine. If China collapses in two hundred years due to it's moral failings, that will be no more comfort to us than the United States collapsing might be to the indigenous tribes that used to live in North America before Europeans arrived.

archibaldJ 5y ago

> How are you certain that authoritarian regimes can't both gain and keep dominance over timescale of decades or centuries? Authoritarianism always comes with a top-down execution structure, which optimises for cost-to-execute but not cost-to-transform. When the need-to-transform exceeds a certain value, it would either have to re-adjust its internal structure or it will crumble (as the cost skyrockets) [1]. Interestingly, the same applies to compiler design, as well as any software systems when viewed at the right abstraction. And from a functional programming perspective, it is also the principle that underlines the famous Alan Perlis' epigram "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing" (which outlines the importance of compiler optimization such as in tail-end recursion.) [1] We're already seeing this in China's aging population crisis (thanks to the one-child policy introduced in 1980 [3]), and I doubt Xi's banning of private tuitions [2] would help (if we take his policy at face value). [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-24/china-bans-school-curriculum-tutoring-firms-from-going-public https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-24/china-ban... [3]: fun fact - this policy had affected many people including myself in a deep personal level. By law I am not supposed to exist (I'm a Gen Z born in China illegally as a second child (after my parents bribed the hospital, and afterwards we still had to pay huge fines)).

strogonoff 5y ago
Your point about cost-to-adjust resonated with me. What I’ve found is that designing for software successfully existing over time implies giving up control and instead going up to a meta-level, enabling sound methods of development to evolve—as opposed to defining specific processes, architecture and implementation, which in longer term leads to a situation in which whenever lead developer has not enough time (or is replaced) the software stops living. Something about infinite games in Carse’s and building worlds in Ian Cheng’s terminology. To your footnote, I’ve read that the one-child policy in China was not strictly enforced outside of major cities, and resulted in many children born in the countryside essentially “outside of the system”, not having access to education or healthcare… I wonder how much of it is true.
- archibaldJ 5y ago

BizarroLand 5y ago

I mean, they seem to win by simply throwing bodies on the pyre, working their own citizens to suicide in order to provide cheap labor to the rest of the world until they get valuable IP and steal it. Capitalism thrives on cheap labor and cannot stop itself from being lead like a lamb to slaughter as long as China keeps pumping out all of those man hours of labor for the taking.

matthewdgreen 5y ago

We've been down this road with the Soviet Union during portions of the cold war, when folks in the West thought that high Soviet GDP catch-up growth would translate into sustained non-catch-up growth and meant non-authoritarian governments were doomed. It didn't work out that way. Democracy isn't assured, we could easily vote it away in the West. But there is definitely a pattern whereby enormous cutting-edge economic growth seems to require relatively free societies. To make a long term bet on an authoritarian approach in a world where those societies exist, that seems like a very risky thing to do.

random314 5y ago
Soviet Russia had a much smaller population and market size than China.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  And China has its own problems, including hugely problematic demographics and an export-fueled economy that is still highly dependent on trade with the West.
  - random314 5y ago
    Your reasoning is based on narratives which I personally always discount. Economists expect China to overtake the US economy in size by the 2030s. This can obviously either accelerate or decelerate and there will be hindsight reasoning in any case. Nevertheless, I don't see any of your narrative based arguments substantive.
jackcosgrove 5y ago
All those centuries of authoritarian rule also coincided with technological and economic stagnation. That might not be causal, but I think it is. The industrial revolution came after a number of liberalizing political movements in northwestern Europe.

audunw 5y ago

> What evidence is there that China can't win? There's no evidence here. We're talking about predicting the future in a system that's too complex to make predictions with any certainty. But for those of us following the politics and economics of China closely, it's pretty clear that they're screwed. People said Japan would dominate the world. Then the demographic shift hit them and the economy has been stagnating ever since. China's demographic shift is much bigger and faster, they're further behind (per capita), and they're way less prepared. China has the same problem of not accepting enough immigrants, and they just made it worse by cracking down on after-school tutoring. The vast majority of history is very different from the world we live in today. People can move between countries relatively easily, and all countries compete for the top talent. A huge share of workers these days are knowledge workers. You can't generalise based on history when the fundamentals are so vastly different. China has very little to offer there, and they're increasingly becoming hostile to foreigners. They have an enormous housing bubble. Well, if you can call it a bubble when it's propped up so it never bursts. But much of their GDP is pure waste as they're building apartments nobody lives in, and that deteriorates within years. Why? Because they can't build a trustworthy stock market where people can invest, so people invest in housing. They just demonstrated once again that you should never but money in the Chinese stock market, so the problem isn't getting better. Chinas infrastructure is weak. Many cities are built without proper drainage. Dams are breaking. The US may have a huge infrastructure debt, but at least it was solid to begin with. China has an insane amount of public servants per worker. The whole economy is deeply inefficient, and has only been propped up by a crazy 996 work ethic, one that Xi is now trying to crack down on. Which illustrates the fundamental instability: they can't continue to grow through capitalism anymore. The insane income inequality is becoming a big problem, and the wealthy was accumulating too much power, threatening the power of the party. So Xi is reverting to more traditional socialist policies, to remove some of the power of wealthy individuals and satisfy the public. But that will fundamentally weaken the economy. It'll push them in the direction of economies like North Korea and Venezuela. China is being squeeze from both ends: low value manufacturing is moving to other countries as labor costs in China increases. But China has trouble establishing high value exports and services. How many trusted brands are there from China? Quite a few sure, but not compared to its population size.

5y ago