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As a Brit I'm here for it to be honest, I'm tired of America with everything that's going on. China is not perfect but a bit of competition is healthy and need
by ifwinterco 6mo ago
As a Brit I'm here for it to be honest, I'm tired of America with everything that's going on.
China is not perfect but a bit of competition is healthy and needed
- barrenko 6mo ago[flagged]
- HatchedLake721 6mo agoUK has the people but not the electric grid/infrastructure to compete. EU/France has Mistral.
- whywhywhywhy 6mo agoFrance has mistral and the energy infrastructure to compete, the EU has nothing.
- Cthulhu_ 6mo agoNot so much a trade war as basic economic forces, and it's been going on for much longer than that. When infrastructure improves, companies and customers can look further to get their stuff done. If it's cheaper to do your industrial or manufacturing work abroad and have it transported to your country, that just happens. The powers that be try to slow this down by banning imports outright (you can't for example import American chicken into Europe because of food safety laws), or high import taxes (Chinese EVs have a 50% import tax in Europe and the US to protect the local car manufacturers. Which is fair because the Chinese EV manufacturers are state-sponsored so their prices are unfair. Then again, western companies get billions in investor money to push the prices down).
- calgoo 6mo agoYou mean the west handed their industry to china over the last 15 years? Its not like the US is any better off in this. The EU is not a country, so you can't talk about it as if it was. Each country has their own companies and industries. There is AI in Europe, and its growing, however we might not be as "energetic" about destroying our countries to build giant data centers to serve our billionaire overlords. That does not mean that there is no investment, there is, including a bunch of American corporations like Amazon. But there is also a lot of corruption and bribing (lobbying - lets call it what it really is, no more whitewashing) going on around that too. So again, stop referring to EU as a country, we are not, and it just annoys any Europeans as it comes of as "Americans who don't understand the world outside of the USA".
- tomhow 6mo agoPlease don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hsiudh 6mo ago"not perfect" is a _very_ big simplification of what China is though
- rglullis 6mo agoIsn't that the same to every major superpower?
- FuckButtons 6mo agoNo. There is no moral equivalence with totalitarianism.
- ywvcbk 6mo agoModern China isn't exactly totalitarian though and US is rapidly converging with China in that regard anyway.
- bwv848 6mo agoHow totalitarian is exactly totalitarian? I asked chatgpt and it gave few points - Control goes beyond politics - A single, all-encompassing ideology - No meaningful private sphere - Mass mobilization and propaganda - Extensive surveillance and repression Seems like China is ticking all the boxes.
- drcongo 6mo agoHonestly thought you were listing traits that the US has now till the last line.
- bwv848 6mo agoReally laugh my ass off, so much whataboutism and American centrism when the debate is whether China is trustworthy on AI. Given your ignorance you should go and do your research, but I will help you a bit here. - Control goes beyond politics state corporation monopoly, 党支部 in private sector, crackdowns on NGOs and charities. - A single, all-encompassing ideology Party led, mandarin speaking Han Chinese nationalism, blended with Little Pink's unquestionable support for Xi and the party. - No meaningful private sphere 社区网格员 - Mass mobilization and propaganda We saw mobilizations on Chinese social media, attacking celebrities who don't openly say anything the party wants them to say. Mobilization in real life is rare though, cos it had shown it can backfire. - Extensive surveillance and repression Do I really need to explain this?
- timmmk 6mo agoFellow countryman here. I came here to say the same thing
- jurgenburgen 6mo agoI don’t know if we’re ahead of the curve but that tired feeling has started turning into hate here in the EU. I guess being threatened with invasion does that to you. The next decade is going to look very different with America Alone.
- koe123 6mo agoI grew up in the states when I was younger, always feeling some closeness to Americans even after I moved back to Europe. With all that goes on it has changed. Recently I sat on a plane near some Americans discussing their holidays here, and I noticed I felt contempt. Sitting their with insane privilege as their government torches the world. Individuals remain individuals, and one really ought not to be prejudice. However the lack of resistance I see in in the “land of the free” as their “democratic” institutions collapse just makes me believe they never cared at all. In France cars are torched if the pension age is raised. In America the rise facism apparently doesnt matter to them.
- n8cpdx 6mo ago[flagged]
- Cthulhu_ 6mo agoIt's probably a bit more nuanced than "half this, half that"; when you look at the facts, most voters aren't that extremist. A lot of votes vote one way or the other because they would simply never vote for the other. This is why the swing voters / swing states are so important in the US, because only a few million are flexible enough to switch sides. Of course the core issue is that there's a two party system; while I'm sure that in a healthy democracy the current republican and democrat parties would be the bigger ones, they wouldn't have a majority.
- drcongo 6mo ago> A lot of votes vote one way or the other because they would simply never vote for the other. This, for me, is the crux. Politics is treated like a team sport in the US, you pick your side and cheer them on no matter what. And team sports in America are even more bananas - you grow up supporting the Brooklyn Dodgers and a few years later they're 2.5k miles away with a new name. This seems a perfect example of what's happened / happening to the Republican Party - it's not the same party any more, but everyone who tied their entire personality to cheering for the red team is still cheering for it as it burns the country to the ground. I predict that inside ten years it will have also had the name change and probably be run out of Florida or somewhere.
- lifeisstillgood 6mo agoAs a different Brit I do not accept such moral relativism. China’s governments actions are on a completely different level - for example: “”” Since 2014, the government of the People's Republic of China has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. “”” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin... https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/china/report-china/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/eas... Yes Trump is clearly trying Totalitarianism in America, but it is orders of magnitude different from what is happening in China.
- junnan 6mo ago[flagged]
- amunozo 6mo agoWhy do we ignore all the human right abuses the US perform abroad? Iraq, Afghanistan, now Iran, Gaza and Lebanon through Israel, support to Saudi Arabia (which would not exist without the US), El Salvador... And inside it's also horrible with its treatment to immigrant. That should be at least comparable (if not worse) than what China is doing.
- OCASMv2 6mo agoYes, El Salvador is so evil for imprisoning dangerous criminals and protecting innocent lives.
- amunozo 6mo agoNot for imprisoning, but for imprisoning them in draconian conditions, without proper judgements, etc. Have you seen those prisons for fuck sake?
- samrus 6mo agoThis is how china tried to justify its genocide against uighers. Was theboutrage against that just politically motivated? Or do americans only care about ethnic cleansing when theyre not the ones doing it
- falkenstein 6mo agoamerica is a continent. let’s take back our vocabulary (fellow european here). the little orange man shows very well what i mean when he started giving names to the gulf of mexico.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago"In English, North America is its own continent as is South America. The two can be collectively labeled the Americas or the Western hemisphere. Canadians frequently refer to themselves as North Americans and never as Americans. To insist this change is to demand the entire world’s lingua franca redefine words and thereby cause mass confusion for its speakers simply because doing so would be consistent with an arbitrary definition found in a foreign language." https://scrupulouspessimism.substack.com/p/america-means-the-usa https://scrupulouspessimism.substack.com/p/america-means-the...
- 8note 6mo agosouth americans is how north americans refer to south americans though. south americans just call themselves americans. there arent all that many canadians; whats the need to index so hard on what we think?
- floam 6mo agoI doubt many Spanish or Portuguese speakers refer to themselves in English. Regardless, sure South Americans can absolutely call themselves Americano in the continental sense. But I know in Brazil for example "Americano" is casually understood to mean from the US, and in general South Americans are more likely to identify as argentino, brasileiro, chileno, colombiano, etc., or as sul-americano/sudamericano. Most importantly, when speaking English, virtually all will avoid American for themselves because they know in English it means estadounidense.
- cg5280 6mo agoIt's also a country. Not sure what insisting we change our demonym accomplishes.
- nailer 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- ogogmad 6mo ago> GDP per capita lower than Poland > now poorer than every state in America You've confused the mean with the median. GDP Per Capita is not a measure of how well-off the people in a country are. American states have a lot more income inequality than the UK does, which (due to positive "non-parametric skewness", I think) pulls their GDP Per Capita upwards.
- ifwinterco 6mo agoI'm not arguing that the UK is a particularly well run country, I just provided the context that I am British because it felt relevant
- jbkkd 6mo ago> GDP per capita lower than Poland Not true. While Poland's GDP per capita has been on the rise , it is still nowhere near the UK's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28no...
- rib3ye 6mo agoIt’s a shame your country couldn’t get back its technical edge.
- chrsw 6mo agoI'm American. If the choice is between the current US direction or China, then no, I don't think the word "healthy" should be anywhere near this discussion.
- eejjs 6mo agoI’m also a Brit and agree 100%. We need to accept that being too close to America is harming us and start funding projects to protect our assets e.g talent leaking out to American entities.
- hart_russell 6mo agoAmericans are also tired with what’s going on.
- jazz9k 6mo agoSure, but to claim that China is the better alternative is absurd.
- stronglikedan 6mo ago> I'm tired of America with everything that's going on. Yeah, me too. All that pesky saving the world stuff that we do on the regular is so exhausting sometimes.
- fn-mote 6mo ago“Saving the world” recently has meant being involved in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran. None of those have brought me a feeling of being part of saving someone.
- Petersipoi 6mo agoPreventing the number one sponsor of terrorism from getting a nuke absolutely saves people. Even if you don't like the externalities of it. Or is the HN crowd still believing the "we just want nuclear energy (with highly enriched uranium)" story? I genuinely don't know. Humans have a near infinite ability to stare at the sun and insist it's dark, so long as it supports their world view.
- peterashford 6mo agoEven US Intelligence didn't believe they were close to getting a nuke. And given that they were in negotiations about controlling their nuclear program before the US attacked, it's hard to credit US foreign policy on this front
- geon 6mo agoWho has been saved? The US has been doing much more harm than good.
- MiiMe19 6mo ago[flagged]