> Common sense says countries rise and fall in cycles
Oh common sense. If you believe all countries are autocracies, maybe. But to examine the trajectory of the US on a "Chinese timescale", the US rejected autocratic rule, built a system that decentralizes power, uses ambition to check ambition, and provides for frequent, peaceful transfer of power. To an autocratic Chinese bureaucrat, this is all wasteful shortsightedness, but allows the US to pivot, change, adapt, etc at very fast pace, at least for government.
I do not believe the autocratic bargain that China has made with its people is stable, lasting form of government, even as they seek to export it elsewhere. The fundamental trade is individual voice in politics for breakneck growth and dramatically increased standard of living. However, if you are one of the few young people born in China recently, what breakneck growth? A vicious gauntlet of schooling, the great filter in the gaokao, only to work for 996 company until you cannot anymore.
We can see what happened in places like Venezuela or Argentina when the government breaks their end of the bargain, as will likely happen to other autocratic states.
Plus, China's growth to this day is built on the back of foreign, primarily American, consumption. If they ever beat us too badly, they go down with us.
They'd need to find alternate consumer markets to alleviate this, and what are their options? Domestic is out, China hasn't managed to create a domestic consumer market with their current demographics, which are only getting worse as their baby bust deepens.
Europe? Similar demographic issues, simply not enough consumption to replace the US and greater economic protectionism.
The 3rd world? Maybe, but first you have to develop it, and even if you could manage that they have nationalist impulses of their own. You think India is going to willingly offshore their industry to China on the scale of the US?
The American system for all its many flaws is extremely dynamic. Trump and his policies are mostly bad adaptations, but they are attempts at adaptation, and the attempts aren't going to stop. The US has changed radically in the last 10 years; there's no reason it can't change just as radically in the next 10.
Because that would lead to mass unemployment and deindustrialization, as China lacks the wealth among the lower classes and the demographics to consume everything that it produces.
Yes, in China's case through mass exports. What you're suggesting is North Korean Juche. Turning China into a larger North Korea will not increase its prosperity.
But you have made no argument for why that must continue, only presented that is the status quo.
China is huge and I am simply wondering, why does it need to export? Except for oil, it has pretty much any resource needed to sustain a high technology economy.
Please, there are no similarities between North Korea and China.
The argument is self-evident. Businesses need sales to make money. By refusing to allow them to export, you artificially limit the sales they are able to make. Businesses with fewer sales make less money, businesses that make less money employ fewer people. People without jobs tend to have problems securing food, water, and shelter, and start to get angry enough to topple governments.
Sometimes they win, sometimes the government just kills all the angry people, and you end up like North Korea or Russia under Stalin (or China under Mao).
There's also the fact that China is an aging population and is structurally incapable of having enough children to create a self-sufficient consumer economy, unless they suddenly develope a love of immigrants.
The Chinese model is 100% not exportable. It is in essence a benevolent dictatorship that actually seems to be functioning. It’s exactly like having a good monarch and if you look at history, good monarchs, were not all that frequent.
Agree with this however I wonder how functional it would be in a war - benevolent Xi, like all those good monarchs of the past, still has to quash rivals and every so often purges his top brass to put loyalists in, which we can see how effective that is in Russia right now (no comment on current US administrative choices in this regard, but at least historically, our generals were career military)
A benevolent dictatorship that actually seems to be functioning... at the moment. If you look at the last 30 years, it looks like it works. But if you look at the last 70...
Well yeah, it's not likely the next person holds this up. It doesnt take much for this type of power to go to someones head and they start making really bad decisions.
This comment might hold water in 2006 or 2016 but it rings hollow in 2026. Who elected/congressionally-approved Jared Kushner to run US foreign policy?
I'm sorry to hear you feel it rings hollow. As you know, the secretary of state is Marco Rubio, who is appointed and confirmed by the senate (bipartisian-ish, I might add).
I am no fan of Kushner, but saying he runs US foreign policy is generously misleading at best.
It is a fact that Kushner (plus Witkoff) has been playing the role of primary diplomat of the USA in critical matters of peace and war. In many cases, Rubio is not even present at these key foreign meetings.
The belief that autocracies will inevitably fall (or perhaps that "the arc of history bends towards justice") is hopelessly naive. Technology is a force multiplier with the power to entrench autocracy, forever.
Still you will not be able to give any existing example that lasted longer than 100 years. There are examples like Sayfawa dynasty which is counter-example to your claim about technology being multiplier
there is competition in technology field, and autocracies are not most competitive entities compared to say public corporations. Its still not clear who will win (common folks unlikely though)
The problem always was that the central planners never knew enough to plan the economy right. Well, with enough technology, enough reporting into the central database, they theoretically could know enough.
And that might actually work, if that were the only problem. But it's not. The deeper problem is that people work better when they get to share in the proceeds. People didn't work very well in the "worker's paradise". They worked half-heartedly, doing the least they could to get by, and production (and quality) reflected it. (This isn't exclusive to communism, though. Large corporations can have similar issues.)
It's the promise of a reward that makes people work better. I don't think it necessarily needs to be a share of the proceeds. Athletes push themselves hard for recognition and some monetary reward. A planned economy could have something like that to motivate people.
It's not just large corporations, it's arguably most jobs, and it's getting worse. Wageslaves don't get to keep those proceeds either, not enough bargaining power.
Fall how? Please be specific. The people will rise up to take down their evil leaders? With what weapons will the people be armed? With what weapons will their evil leaders oppose them?
I find your framing somewhat historically inaccurate. China did not make an "autocratic bargain" with its people.
Democracy and Liberalism are offshoots of Christian culture that originated in Europe and spread to the former European colonies (including to Venezuela and Argentina) and post-WWII to the allies.
Although China flirted briefly with liberalism and democracy those remained foreign concepts and did not permeate Chinese culture.
So therefore to me a more correct historical reading is that China, a fairly insular culture, was pretty much always ruled as an authoritarian inward focused realm and it still is today. I think it is also an unjustified assumption that China would fare better under a liberal democratic regime. For example, currently the CCP keeps all the Chinese oligarchs in check. A liberal democratic China would find it much harder to control those oligarchs.
Argentina and Venezuela are completely different situations where the population is a mix of different cultures and ethnicities and unlike China they had been injected with a heavy dose of western liberal democratic tradition before they regressed back to authoritarianism.
Bottom line is, I think people tend to have this really weird blind spot to culture and history when they discuss politics.
Security concerns aside, it's a big part of why the Chinese don't like it so much. Same with the Russians and Ukraine. It's embarrassing for nationalist narratives if there's a group of your people that prosper under the Other system.
> Democracy and Liberalism are offshoots of Christian culture
That would be news to the pagan ancient Athenians who invented democracy (although the Indus Valley Civilization may have beaten them to it). The Athenians were clear-eyed about the dangers to democracy and developed procedures like ostracism to deal with the threat from the inside.
Shangahi went from a dusty fishing village to one of the largest, most populous metropolises in <50years.
> Democracy and Liberalism are offshoots of Christian culture
cmon, democracy as a word should tell you that is not be true. Earliest is probably Greek, about 500 BC. Notably, this is before Christian culture existed, unless you want to talk about the "borrowing" from older religions.
> China flirted briefly with liberalism and democracy
Otherwise known as the Chinese Civil War :)
> China, a fairly insular culture
Modern China, 90% Han Chinese. Han were not always on top, notably China was ruled by outsiders (most famously the Qing imo), but also Liao, Jin, Yuan dynasties. Phrase is "conquest dynasty".
> Democracy and Liberalism are offshoots of Christian culture
This is completely wrong. "Christian culture" was perfectly content with feudalism and the absolute monarchy for over a millenia. The French Revolution was explicitly secular and anti-clerical, because the King had total support from the Church.
Similarly, "Christian culture" was used to justify slavery. So when it comes to Liberalism, can we correctly attribute it to the Enlightenment thinkers instead of the obscurantist Church?
The "the trajectory of the US on a 'Chinese timescale'" barely even registers. While the CCP might not be that old, China considers itself an ancient society with a level of historical coherence that makes the United States rather insignificant as a lesson in political history.
You've offered a hugely reductive and rosy view of American history. Democracy is easy until it gets hard. America has fought a civil war before. The Congress basically does not function anymore ergo the "imperial presidency". The balance of powers the framers created when the country was a sparsely populated periphery of 3 million people has changed dramatically. George Washington rejected a partisan affiliation and regarded it as a societal disease. He was elected unanimously. Without his personal touch, the country probably would not have survived into the 19th century.
America has come into superpower status as the rest of the world destroyed itself. Post WWII, the quality of our politics have steeply and sharply declined, go back and watch debates from the 1960s. The same civil war cleavages are being debated today, with far less eloquence than a Buckley Jr or a James Baldwin.
People outside of the United States seem to imagine the rest of the world is naive about democracy. No. Rather when you are an old enough society, you experience more things and understand democracy has its own risks - just as any form of government. Democracy is not as easy or "self evident" as Americans think. The nature of American democracy has already changed radically since the founding. If you factor in "universal suffrage" to mean "democracy" then the United States hasn't even existed as a true democracy for 100 years.
Are you really that bullish on the United States a century from now? Based on what? It seems obvious to me the next century will necessarily trend towards multipolarity. The chances of any American being born today having a better life than their parents have to approach the chances of techno-utopian fantasy. Which will only be attained if Americans learn to live with China as a partner not an adversary. Chinese scientists may cure cancer. They will innovate and solve other problems for the good of all mankind. Meanwhile in the United States your politicians can't even achieve universal healthcare. That is just one example where the United States has continually failed to make change at pace for decades. WWII recedes farther and farther into the background. So does the Pax Americana. China is not the enemy of the average American. It's just an obvious smoke screen for the homegrown problem - greedy elites robbing the country blind, buying elections and achieving corruption at a scale that makes "democracy" seem rather unattractive entirely.
Please consult your history. I don't even necessarily disagree with your view on China. But it's not made better by essentially setting up a straw man, by suggesting the United States "as a democracy" is somehow especially immune to the same sorts of vicissitudes of history that may inflict themselves on China.
The more I read about American history, the less I think "democracy" really had anything to do with America's success. It does make for nice mythology though. Perhaps it is an accompanying comfort that history is highly contingent, and that it really could have worked out in a myriad set of ways.
I am not Chinese, but the CCP loves to insinuate that the middle kingdom is 5000 years of uninterrupted rule. As we both know, that is hilariously untrue.
> Are you really that bullish on the United States a century from now?
Yes, of course, and I am happy to put my money where my mouth is based on asset allocations. I can also freely invest in the outside world, without CCP capital controls. I can freely insult the US president, congress, and judiciary by name, and not worry about disappearing for 6 months. I don't need a cadre of police to throw an old man who advocated for democracy in jail in HK either.
> greedy elites robbing the country blind, buying elections and achieving corruption at a scale that makes "democracy" seem rather unattractive entirely.
ah, come on now. We both know who comes out worse in that scenario, the princelings make Kushner look like a saint.
"Please consult your history?" You could replace "China" with "The USSR" in this post and be almost indistinguishable from arguments straight out of the 1950s.
You point to universal healthcare, the modern European welfare states that other nations including China have modeled were not high-minded cultural endeavors. They only exist because the devastation of the great depression and WWII made them necessary, and a greater need to make peace with actual communists/leftists that were never a strong political force in the US precisely because we were spared the devastation of WWII.
As for corruption, China recently discovered that many of its nuclear missiles had their fuel stolen and replaced with water and the lids of many of their silos failed to open. Yes the US is having unprecedented problems with corruption at the moment, but the Chinese model is hardly superior in this regard.
Fair enough. We can point at each other or come up with examples all day long. Like I could say the United States didn't want to grant civil rights to African Americans as an example of some "high-minded cultural endeavors", but rather they wanted to avoid something like another civil war? Plus it made it sort of "awkward" shall we say for Americans to tell the Soviets and the world about human rights while bludgeoning black people in the streets for having the audacity to ask for basic civil rights.
I mean do you think any society does anything "high-minded" spontaneously? Or are we going to be adults here? You come up with some example that makes China bad. I come up with a counter. I'm not really interested in such a tit for tat. Because it obscures the central point:
The United States hasn't been around for very long. Again, as a "true democracy" not even 100 years. The overriding point I'm trying to make is to suggest that a common hubris found in American discourse should be measured. I'm not under any illusions about China or Europe. All societies have problems. The question is why is the United States any better? And why should I have confidence in that based on a track record of only a few centuries? Especially if the recent trend of the past few decades (closer to a century) has gone sharply down? No, it did not just start with Trump. And it will likely not just magically end with him either. Why does American political discourse constantly fall over itself to talk about Trump as a singular figure while ignoring the tens of millions of the electorate who keep voting for him and have kept him afloat as the dominant political force for a decade?
They will not just disappear. In my mind, the United States is just as likely to elect an even more odious figure in the near future as it is to "move on".
You can say "The Chinese model is hardly superior".
Someone else can say "The United States model is hardly superior".
It's not very interesting. The only point I'm making is maybe treat the other country with some basic respect, as a partner not an adversary. And don't allow your politicians at home to construct foreign scapegoats to distract from their internal responsibilities. The invocation of the Soviet Union along these lines is rather apt. If the Soviet Union's fall was so self evident based on its fundamental nature, one should probably be led to question how much blood and treasure America threw away because its elites convinced its people that it was an existential threat. This trend from Vietnam passed through to Iraq and now to Iran is not looking great. I mean really, what is the trend I'm supposed to see? Can you really blame some governments, especially those outside the "West" from looking for alternative global governance in China?
China does not treat us as a partner any more than we do them. They have spent decades exploiting good will and abusing any attempts at genuine partnership. I don't blame anyone for looking for alternatives to the US in the current climate, but I doubt they'll find a better partner in China. Perhaps more reliable in the short term, in the long run China will try to run the same extraction game on its new "partners" just as it has done in the US.
Don't get caught up in their "thousands of years of history". They had thousands of years of history before Kublai Khan, they had thousands of years of history before the first opium war. They still have issues with older citizens stealing toilet paper from public restrooms because they were so heavily traumatized by Mao's famine, and Mao himself would probably have had you re-educated for suggesting he had any historical ties to Imperial China. The current leadership are the successors of that government.
The Soviet Union's fall was hardly self-evident before the 1970s, for some decades their GDP growth was surpassing the US. Khrushchev's aggressive speeches are now seen as naive bluster, but there was some hard data to back them up when he made them. The US adapted, as we always have.
I'd say the US has a number of structural advantages over China that it is currently squandering, but that won't always be the case. Demographically we're going to be the last major consumer economy standing as the century winds on, we maintain the strongest military in the world when fully committed (Iran isn't even half-hearted, it started out as an unpopular war and nobody wants a land invasion), our natural resources are plentiful, and neither the Euro nor the Yuan nor gold are capable of replacing the dollar.
Sure the Trumpers aren't going away, but they are fundamentally incapable of governing and have no real successor to Trump, who is fundamentally incapable of grooming a successor. They were politically irrelevant for the longest time, and only matter now because the establishment failed to maintain living standards. They lack discipline, organization, intelligence, and numbers. All they have is a blatant disregard for any rules, including their own; the longer they're in charge the more enemies they make. Like the communists who attempted to take Berlin by force in 1919, they will wake up one day to find themselves having crossed a line with far less support than they imagine. I doubt they'll take it well, but they won't last.
> China does not treat us as a partner any more than we do them.
I don't think this is accurate. What do you mean by this? What about the extent of trade between the two countries? It has dipped from peaks, but the story of Chinese growth and American wealth are intertwined. In what sense is this not a partnership? Because they stole some IP along the way? Or the access to their market comes with other costs? On balance it still works out for the average American, who enjoys cheap products. It's akin to the battle over Chinese AI. VC investors in the US would probably benefit from some kind of embargo against Chinese AI models. Would American consumers? It's the same sort of issue with Japan in the 80s, which is when Trump first really started talking about tariffs. Japanese vehicles are some of the most popular in the United States. The American consumer has benefitted from Japanese competition. Why can it not be the same with China? Because the Chinese government supports Chinese businesses? All countries do so. Who bailed out the American automakers? The American taxpayer. America worked in recent days to prop up the yen. Do you think this is a coincidence given the amount of US debt the Japanese hold? The Chinese also hold a large amount of American debt. Why are we not partners?
> we maintain the strongest military in the world when fully committed (Iran isn't even half-hearted, it started out as an unpopular war and nobody wants a land invasion)
This gets said a lot. The problem is why is America not fully committed? You can't really have it both ways. "We're so powerful when we commit" without acknowledging why you don't commit. Why does no one want a land invasion? If the American military is "the strongest military in the world when fully committed" what's the big deal? Commit and invade then if it's so easy.
We know the answer. A reasonable follow-up question then is what is the advantage of "the strongest military in the world when fully committed" if your society does not want to take on the cost of ever fully committing? Are you suggesting the United States is more likely to want to incur costs against powers like Russia or China than it is against Afghanistan or Iran? If Americans don't want to invade Iran, why would they want to break a Chinese blockade of Taiwan? So what good is it? One of the virtues of democracy is actually it is harder to declare war. This is why the imperial presidency was created. If you're familiar with US history you would know an overriding popular view was avoiding foreign wars. Including WWII. FDR couldn't really help in Europe as much as he wanted, because Americans weren't interested in sending their blood and treasure to die an ocean away, especially after WWI. He had to wait for the Pearl Harbor attack, which galvanized support overnight. Why does America no longer employ conscription? Because wars aren't popular. It's actually in my view a pretty disgusting "adaptation" that a democracy has created an all volunteer army. This is not in keeping with basic democratic ideals, going back to ancient greece. If a land of "all men created equal" goes to war, all should have to sacrifice. Instead we send mostly poor kids to have their legs blown off in Iraq while at the same time people in the oil or defense or finance industry get to print money for their children. Why are the elites so hated in America? It's not about wealth alone. I keep hearing about how powerful the US military is, but all I actually see is a string of military failures from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to now Iran. These are impoverished, backwards pariah states. Why would I conclude the United States would do better against a power remotely approaching a peer?
> our natural resources are plentiful
So are China's. It's why the "trade war" failed.
> Sure the Trumpers aren't going away, but they are fundamentally incapable of governing and have no real successor to Trump, who is fundamentally incapable of grooming a successor. They were politically irrelevant for the longest time, and only matter now because the establishment failed to maintain living standards.
This is an overly optimistic read. They were actually never "politically irrelevant". The faction of America they represent has always been relevant. It was merely the case that American elites could control them. Trump was never taken seriously by said elites, who repeated your sentiments pretty much verbatim. He proved them wrong. The information world we live in now is changing the nature of public discourse. Nothing could be of greater consequence in a democracy. Parties, and the public are not as easily controlled. What is going to reverse this trend? Just think about the information the average American had access to in the mid 20th century compared to now. Why would you look at the history of American politics and demagogues and conclude it will get better? How will living standards improve? Why is it inevitable that America will solve this? Seems like wishful thinking.
The invocation of 1919 Berlin as if this is some comfort is quite ironic. The saving grace of Trump is he really doesn't care about anything but himself, and so doesn't really believe in anything. You may not be so lucky the next time the Democrats choke away an election. The failures of 1919 Berlin would metastasize into another form of extremism in a nearby city that led to another failure in 1923. But then it was 1933. The history of this period tells us that many figures and people oscillated between "left" and "right" extremism as they worked to find an answer that resonated in a rapidly changing and destabilizing world. Hmm, much like the one we find ourselves in today. They've taken the White House twice now. The communists in Berlin in 1919 never tasted that sort of power. I'm not sure you're making the correct analogy. I'm also not sure I would celebrate the murder of German communists by proto-Nazis. Personally, a rather odd data point for you to single out as a reassuring one.
In any event, I am not sure why you are so confident that America is so immune to something approaching a similar fate. Germany was not some backwards society. This was the land of Kant and Hegel and Frege.
Just as the land of Washington, Jefferson and Madison found itself mired in fratricide within a few generations.
One doesn't have to get even halfway to such a 1933 outcome for things to get very bad. America has not been around for very long. Why so confident of such a short track record?
I simply suggest you not engage in hubris. Widen your imagination of the possible. And recognize we are all human. Citing some point about Mao or toilet paper is about as useful as bringing up Abu Ghraib or American slavery. The Chinese can also adapt if you haven't noticed. It's not Mao's party anymore.
What is the path for America's future? The world is getting smaller and more competitive. Your comfort in demographics might be warranted, but as it stands today there are over a billion people in China. Is the future for America better if the Chinese are our foes? I guess I just don't understand this constant drumbeat of conflict. We should not envy the progress of a billion people on the other side of the world. China doesn't setup bases in Mexico or Canada. It doesn't try to assert itself in the "Gulf of America". It doesn't support a separatist movement in Hawaii. Whose kids are going to die fighting China in the Pacific? Are you going to volunteer your kids? On what basis? A 21st century update to Wilsonian idealism? That which Americans already saw fail?
Maybe we should then pull back on the illusion of conflict and work together. I think the only people who will benefit from conflict (if any) are the elites, who will never send their kids to fight. Americans and Chinese may have more in common than you are led to believe. The fact you don't even think we are partners paired with the casual confidence in which you articulate your hubris is concerning, and suggestive that the forces of conflict are already succeeding to quite a dangerous degree.
> I don't think this is accurate. What do you mean by this?
China has never abided by WTO rules and has engaged in rampant dumping for decades, among IP theft and other unfair practices. I don't blame them for doing so, I blame our leadership for allowing it, literally selling them large pieces of our industrial plant at times. China was wise to not allow American companies to fairly compete domestically. We should have done the same from the start instead of hoping that free trade would magically make China more Democratic, which I'm now convinced was just a smoke screen for the corporate class to get cheap labor.
> This gets said a lot. The problem is why is America not fully committed? You can't really have it both ways. "We're so powerful when we commit" without acknowledging why you don't commit. Why does no one want a land invasion? If the American military is "the strongest military in the world when fully committed" what's the big deal? Commit and invade then if it's so easy.
We don't commit precisely because we are so dominant there is no need. The last war that seriously threatened us with military defeat was Korea. Everything from Vietnam on has been wars of choice for various ideological reasons and economic motivations, we lost most of them strategically, and even after all the wasted blood, capital and good will and time America maintains its position.
In an existential conflict against a peer power, where the threat was undeniable, things would look far different. Just look at public opinion at the start of Afghanistan. It's a shame Bush and Obama bungled it so badly.
> So are China's. It's why the "trade war" failed.
Unlike China, we have oil, and the ability to cut off their supply from the gulf. China's strategic resource edge is in things like rare earth smelting. We could build smelters, we have the rare earths and the technology. We just don't want to, and we'd need some serious protectionism for them to be competitive with China's pricing.
> This is an overly optimistic read. They were actually never "politically irrelevant". The faction of America they represent has always been relevant. It was merely the case that American elites could control them.
They weren't controlled, they were bribed with better standards of living. Easy to be apolitical when you have a job, a house and your bills are paid. These were the cynical, nihilistic people who generally stopped at annoying their families with conspiracy theories at Thanksgiving, and didn't vote because you can't trust the system. It wasn't until things got bad enough economically that they attracted enough support to both get engaged themselves and be a movement of any consequence.
I invoke 1919 Berlin because the Spartacist uprising shares a lot in common with MAGA. A movement born of resentment with little else to offer, which is why their uprising failed. They also got closer to real power than MAGA ever has, Germany essentially didn't have a government when they tried their uprising. MAGA meanwhile is running head-long into the political barriers of American federalism. They've done some damage, killed some people, and will likely do more, but for the time being the system is containing them as designed. Why do you think Trump turned outward to Venezuela and Iran? He ran into the classic problem of being stopped when tried to press his domestic agenda, so he turned to foreign affairs as the President has a lot of direct power there. He's hardly the first President to do so.
As for optimism, go look at the results of every election that's occurred at any level since Jan 2025. MAGA is the forcing function for change, the response is already in motion. They will likely lose the House and possibly the Senate this fall, particularly if Iran holds out that long, and then Congress will actually be motivated to act.
> What is the path for America's future? The world is getting smaller and more competitive. Your comfort in demographics might be warranted, but as it stands today there are over a billion people in China. Is the future for America better if the Chinese are our foes? I guess I just don't understand this constant drumbeat of conflict. We should not envy the progress of a billion people on the other side of the world. China doesn't setup bases in Mexico or Canada. It doesn't try to assert itself in the "Gulf of America". It doesn't support a separatist movement in Hawaii. Whose kids are going to die fighting China in the Pacific? Are you going to volunteer your kids? On what basis? A 21st century update to Wilsonian idealism? That which Americans already saw fail?
> Maybe we should then pull back on the illusion of conflict and work together. I think the only people who will benefit from conflict (if any) are the elites, who will never send their kids to fight. Americans and Chinese may have more in common than you are led to believe. The fact you don't even think we are partners paired with the casual confidence in which you articulate your hubris is concerning, and suggestive that the forces of conflict are already succeeding to quite a dangerous degree.
Unfortunately we don't live in the United Federation of Planets. China has their ambitions regardless of what I would like, and I think the world is a better place if America has more influence over the South China Sea shipping lanes than China does. It's notable that Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines would tend to agree, although I'm sure Trump has shaken their faith in that perspective.
The Hong Kong protests weren't that long ago, and MAGA's unprecedented abuses via law enforcement in the US are just an average Tuesday in China. I despise Trump, but Trump's America is a better place for most people than Xi's China
> We don't commit precisely because we are so dominant there is no need.
> Just look at public opinion at the start of Afghanistan. It's a shame Bush and Obama bungled it so badly.
This seems contradictory. The first seems like wishful thinking/unclear rationalization. The second implies a contradiction. Why are the polls relevant unless you mean to suggest this war involved more commitment? Yet it also ended in failure?
What was the last war America won against an adversary like today's China? Who is signing up for such a war today? If all these other wars have been a "war of choice" why would war with China be any different? Are you under the impression a Chinese move on say Taiwan will be preceded by an attack on the US homeland?
Anyway we'll have to agree to disagree on most of the rest. I don't know what metric your using to define "MAGA" but I don't think I share it. 80 million people roughly voted for the Jan 6th guy. His coalition is (or at least was) pretty wide. He will probably lose the midterms like most presidents. It's not clear he really cares or that it will really matter.
Anyway, I hope you are right and I appreciate the back and forth. Thanks!
> This seems contradictory. The first seems like wishful thinking/unclear rationalization. The second implies a contradiction. Why are the polls relevant unless you mean to suggest this war involved more commitment? Yet it also ended in failure?
I'm saying that America was not really all that motivated for Afghanistan (aside from the start), Iraq, Vietnam, or any major conflict since Korea. We can lose and life goes on. The stock market stays up, businesses keep doing business, the government stays in power, the conflict isn't existential in even the most minor sense except for that tiny minority that's directly involved. And those conflicts were largely insurgencies and attempts at nation-building.
A kinetic war at sea with a nation state like China is what America was built to fight, although perhaps less so now that the Trump admin has wasted most of our advanced munitions on Iran. They have a navy for us to sink and fighters and bombers to shoot down, and if we do that well enough we win! There's no caves to hide in, no religious insurgencies to plant IEDs, no land to occupy, no nation-building.
I'm not saying we wouldn't have casualties, but I think in a conventional war we'd do better against China than Iran.
> Anyway we'll have to agree to disagree on most of the rest. I don't know what metric your using to define "MAGA" but I don't think I share it. 80 million people roughly voted for the Jan 6th guy. His coalition is (or at least was) pretty wide. He will probably lose the midterms like most presidents. It's not clear he really cares or that it will really matter.
Most of those 80 million were not hardcore MAGA, just uninformed and pissed at Biden for whatever reason. Plenty of them have fallen off the train in the last year and a half. Between DOGE, ICE, Epstein, Iran and stepping the corruption into overdrive, there's at least one major thing that will keep many of them from voting for him again. Even the MAGA base started to turn on him after the MOU with Iran came out, he had to backtrack on that quickly
The issue is recognition. Everyone can see and admire shiny tools. Very few people can look at an empty editor or stub and see a good new product/feature. So lots of focus on tools, because lots can see it, and little focus on the what, because it is obscure, difficult to see, etc by most.
I like to marie kondo my tools -- if it is not bringing me joy to use or making my life easier, I yeet it. If it is, it stays.
Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt.
Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it).
It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.
I'm not sure there are all that many winners. There are those that lose big time with some places potentially becoming uninhabitable, and those that merely have to spend a fortune on new flood prevention infrastructure, deal with massive changes to how they do agriculture and forestry in a new climate, and in the future deal with streams of climate refugees from countries on the list of even bigger losers.
Russia and Canada might end up winning from this, but for everyone else it seems like a big negative, with some silver linings
Climate change will almost surely increase growing seasons and agricultural productivity in higher latitudes (for some crops). It will be extremely crop and cultivar dependent, I expect lots of R&D to go into crops that can deal with wider vairety, and generally hotter, conditions.
Where "winning" means surviving in relative comfort until global society disintegrates into a constant state of famine and war and you run out of local resources.
that carbon capture tech is called tree/forest btw. if we plant trillions of trees, we win, not sure how many millions of people and years it would take. probably less than half a war
there are other factors at play like AMOC halting and breakdown of habitats that are codependent with other habitats. you dont get to pick and choose regions since earth is a huge interconnected system itself.
stop drinking the tech kool aid and start with degrowth.
I recently read capitalist realism by Fisher, and I think it is impossible (or very close to it, barring major war/plague/thanos snap) for something like degrowth to be seriously considered. There are simply waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to many incentives at multiple levels and across traditional alliances against it.
Very impressed at net cost. I used to run a small ecom business targeting total prices in the range of $3-10. At $3, payment processing is nearly 11-12% of costs, which is absurd, more if you amortize the occasional chargeback/fraud. Lightning can do it for <<0.1% net cost even at the low end, which is incredible. There are plenty of these kinds of vendors on eBay, Aliexpress etc that would be willing to adopt with a bit of help.
For whoever posted, your cost calculator should be first thing on the page, and you "How we calculated this number" link is broken
I would guess the price for payment processing drops tremendously when you don't need to handle fraud or chargebacks at all. It's for sure worse for consumers but I do think it has its place (for example adult content that has huge chargeback risk or straight up blocked by other processors).
> for example adult content that has huge chargeback risk or straight up blocked by other processors
This has the default inverted.
The best place for the traditional payments system is when you're making a large purchase from a questionable seller, and then you're willing to pay extra for the assurance that you can reverse the transaction.
If you're making a small purchase or buying from someone you regularly do business with, why would you want the cost of other customers' chargeback fraud or use of stolen cards to be added to the price you pay?
lightning is a pain to set up, you have to open a channel and keep funding it - so if we are talking about small amounts these costs should definitely be added to your calculation. or you use lightning via an exchange - but that again kinda defeats the purpose of bitcoin. in fact all of this could probably be achieved much simpler by just using a stablecoin on tron, solana or one of the ether chains and forget about the whole lightning sending and bitcoin hedging. I doubt you can get lower transaction costs end-to-end staying on btc.
They are both useful. Monero is a bit more tricky to use, there is no concept of Lightning network, you still have to wait around 7 minutes for the transaction to settle.
It's not bad, but it is different. The transparency in Bitcoin is a feature not a bug.
It very much is not. If I use cash to commit a crime but then deposit it into a KYC bank account which is then used as a side channel to get me caught does not mean its the cashes fault.
XMR privacy and anonymity can not protect you from going out of your way to convert it into inferior surveillance currency which then gets you busted.
That's basic logic and should be a obvious technical limitation.
If they've attacked it via netflow analysis, then it doesn't matter to a criminal whether or not it's a problem in the protocol because how is a criminal supposed to use it if not on the internet?
By "practical terms" I mean that a criminal sitting in prison isn't going to care whether the vulnerability that got them there was layer 7 or not. It doesn't fucking matter to them at that point.
Everything on the internet is vulnerable to netflow traffic deanonymization; it is a fundamental limitation with the design of the internet. The only thing that stops these attacks from being more common is the relative difficulty of obtaining the required data.
>Everything on the internet is vulnerable to netflow traffic deanonymization
that is not how they get busted, monero literally has protections against that like ring signature and dandelion. They get busted by leaving xmr monero ecosystem to cash out to surveillance currencies like btc or tether on a KYC CEX.
Again, the anonymity of cash (which isn't that anonymous actually but thats another topic) is useless if you deposit them into a KYC ATM.
That's more the fact that lightning is a bit of a pain to use. It has a chicken and egg network growth problem, which is doubled on top of the chicken and egg problem of its host crypto
That does not make any sense. btc even lightning still has about 100 times the user and ecosystem. Nobody uses it because it obviously it is not secure.
Because it isn't about CSAM, IMO. You see this with plenty of social issues, notably firearms ownership. The claim is we will restrict/license/outlaw xyz for the kids, but really, a data-drive approach would have focused on different things entirely (eg additional behavioral health services for kids, suicide prevention etc)
The same technology/access used for CSAM identification can find copyrighted files, materials that don't support current government, etc. Full E2E encryption seriously raises the cost of mass surveillance, and why the US government fights it at every turn going back 30 years.
I'm taking a guess at what the OP meant, but people focus on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Supposedly most incidents and deaths are caused by handguns. They're more affordable, and easy to discretely keep on your person. A data-driven policy would focus on them first, but it's easier to rile up the public about AR-15s so we keep doing the less-effective thing.
It looks like Connecticut first enacted body armor regulations in 1998, the year after the North Hollywood police shootout with a pair of heavily armed and armored men:
Why did Connecticut do it, as opposed to other states? I guess CA would've made sense for that example. I understand such events would be used to argue in favor of the policy, but it seems like if it was just the event, other states would've done the same. And other countries do it as well, without as salient an event.
The decade-old ban was enacted after the 1997 North Hollywood shootout, a confrontation between police and two heavily armored bank robbers that injured officers and civilians. The state Legislature passed the ban in 1998 as a measure to protect police.
The law was subsequently revised to pass court scrutiny and reinstated:
What I could find was that there are estimated to be about 350-500 million firearms in the US. The closest thing to a breakdown was 30-50 million semi-auto rifles, and probably close to a 60/40 split handgun to long gun over time (article shows trends). Murders per year using rifles and shotguns were less than 600 combined. Handguns accounted for over 6000.
So the number of hanguns is maybe something like 20% higher than long guns, but murders using handguns are 10x higher than with long guns.
Rifles are problematic as a single category since that involves hunting rifles. We can look at machine guns as a category that is neither rifle or handgun, and with limited use in hunting.
That said, the death rate of machine gun ownership may still be lower than handgun ownership, with a possible explanation being that it is easier to buy a handgun compared to a machine gun. A further jump into the data would then explore who are the buyer demographic of a handgun compared to a machine gun, and how machine guns compare to handguns in locations where both has similar restrictions on those who buy them.
An other avenue to explore would be to look at purchases of ammunition to determine which guns are actually in use for non-murder purposes. Hunting ammunition for example may show a much more common use than guns used for non-hunting purposes, and thus have a lower murder rate per shot. Machine guns and handguns might share a much more similar profile in that regard, possible normalized towards how much ammunition each use in a target range.
Relatively inexpensive plastic semiauto pistols, ruger is overrepresented, are purchased in small batches by people either pressured into it or who make their living marking them up and reselling to people who couldn't pass the background check. The majority of those sales go through a small number of known registered firearms dealers. The straw buyers are the ones breaking the law, but the dealers who knowingly selling to them aren't. There should be some policy fix, but the best I've seen is a state that limited purchases to 3 per month per person. It drastically slowed the flow into those groups driving up prices as old ones were recovered from crime scenes etc. Money and macro also has a good episode where they talk about how neighborhood beautification worked better than gun control for this type of violence. The scary rifles get used by the mentally ill because they look scary, and the large number of deaths at once combined with the inability to control your risk and the more privileged socioeconomic class of those harmed makes it more visible.
This is simply untrue, there are no full auto handguns legally sold to the public. Semiautomatic yes. And yes, some guns are way too easy to convert to full auto.
Not to get too off track, but it's actually an interesting case in that it's one of those where weighting for prevalence of ownership wouldn't matter for the purpose of discovering the more effective measure. If you did something to restrict handguns you would prevent more death than restricting other firearms.
Also, not that it has any bearing on what I said, but I'm decidedly pro-gun for any repliers who want to follow up on this tangent.
Certainly anyone promoting this as a policy goal would brush over the fact that you stated, and exagerate the benefits. However I doubt everybody owning a handgun would go out and buy a rifle. There is also the likelihood that many situations involving the use of handguns would not eventuate if the person in question had a rifle instead.
But again, I'm not actually in favour of this anyway.
Are handgun deaths predominantly murder, or are they mostly accidents? If the latter, then I don't think it's odd to go after AR-15-type weapons, which usually end up killing people during mass shooting incidents.
The second militia act of 1792. Though that required you to have a gun. Which in some fashion required monitoring. In modern times many states require you to have a permit to own a firearm and states regularly prosecute people without a license. In Washington state they have laws about safe storage and the police can come into your house to inspect your storage solution without if someone calls them and says you aren’t storing it properly. There’s a constant stream of cases fighting these laws in court. In the 2025-2026 SCOTUS term there were 14 petitions for cert.
This entire time. It’s a gradient and it has been getting worse annually. But the firearms tracking is only for regular people not criminals, funny that, it aligns with the problem OP outlines: it has nothing to do with helping and everything to do with controlling and subduing those who have the ability to stop them.
Yea, until at least one non-ringleader Epstein party participant goes to jail, I'm not going to believe the US actually gives a shit about protecting children.
There’s no concrete evidence that anyone besides Epstein (and by extension Maxwell, who assisted Epstein) actually abused children. Besides the testimony of Virginia Giuffre, nobody else has claimed they were sexually assaulted as minors (Sjoberg was groped by Prince Andrew at Epstein’s home when she was in her early 20s). And neither the FBI nor the Palm Beach PD found physical evidence of such or communications between Epstein or others indicating this was going on.
Why would you expect anyone else to go to jail under those circumstances? Proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt seems very unlikely
Just in case someone might mistake this comment to imply there wasn't actually a large-scale CSA-as-a-service business happening on his island - FBI has officially declared the number of minor victims to be over a thousand: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1407001/dl
It was an industrial-scale racket. It is impossible for that kind of number of victims to be just for one person or group's recreation.
I think you linked to the wrong document, unless you're taking "Epstein had over ten thousand pornographic videos and images" as "there were over one thousand minor victims" which doesn't follow as a logical conclusion.
> The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors
> Consistent with prior disclosures, this review confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims. Each suffered unique trauma. Sensitive information relating to these victims is intertwined throughout the materials.
The second quote doesn’t explicitly say “minor victims”, but the whole document is focused on that, mentioning that “One of our highest priorities is combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims.”
I read the whole thing twice because I was fairly sure I missed something the first go around and still missed that second quote. My reading comprehension is atrocious. Thanks and sorry dartharva.
I'd at least expect there to be an investigation, based on the huge volume of information that already exists. Unless we believe that the files are just 3 million pages of casserole recipes and that the people who visited just went to play Settlers of Catan.
> Why would you expect anyone else to go to jail under those circumstances? Proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt seems very unlikely
It's actually pretty easy to prove guilt in the US. But it becomes a lot harder the longer the distance from the crime. In particular, witnesses die or leave. Heck, investigators die or leave which makes discovery for the perpetrator even harder on the FBI.
Further, the bar for civil litigation is lower than criminal. The FBI refusing to prosecute means that victims have a very hard time pursuing civil cases even if the FBI were to lose their case. The FBI has way more evidence that a victim can have.
The most non-nefarious but still shitty reason I can think of for why the FBI hasn't gone to trial is because they know each of these cases will be long and expensive because of the perpetrators. That's caused them to collect way more evidence than they would have if this were just a normal person.
Funny how the FBI is only careful and pensive when perpetrators are rich.
There is if someone would follow the money trail. Plenty of hard facts to reach a guilty outcome. And over half of the papers haven't been released. If someone motivated comes to power there is a good chance.
The thing is that a society does not always do only ONE thing. You mentioned that there are better ways to protect kids. But maybe they cost more (e.g. banning firearms is dead cheap, while setting up a structure with lots of psychologists specialized in teenager problems is really expensive).
Also you can do one and the other ... at the same time. E.g. suicides of kids/teenagers (<= 19) in Germany in 2025: 216. That is, compared to the population in this age group, 1.38 per 100'000. In the USA that ratio is 9.4 in the age-group 15-19 and 2.3 in the age group 10-14.
And keep in mind, the total deaths by firearms in Germany in 2024 was "just" 168 (we have 1/4th of the US population, in the US police forces alone killed more people ... the total number of 44'000 firearms deaths in USA/2024 is even more staggering). Even if I multiply the 168 by 4 for the population difference ... then 672 vs. 44'000 is still a point of shame for the USA.
So in Germany, we do BOTH better regarding firearms AND regarding health services on kids. And if the USA truly would try MAGA they'd actually copy good results from other countries. So a real-MAGA-person must be against liberal firearms distribution AND for better social health work with teenagers.
BTW, the USA ideology of "the population needs arms to fight a corrupt state" is laughable. When you had your armed religious sects clash with the state, then the state always won. They still have more and better weapons and armor. On the other side, if you look how east-europe shed off their socialist regimes 40 years ago, than nowhere was an armed general population involved. So one can conclude that private firearms may as well be highly regulated and diminshed.
Banning firearms isn't "dead cheap" if you have 400 million in existence. The enforcement would cost a lot, even if you didn't perform a mandatory buyback program. Germany doesn't have an outright ban on guns, but strict regulation. Running the regulation costs money.
A note about copying - you have to look at the culture to see if how things will work. Germany has vastly different socioeconomics than the US, and socioeconomics are major factors in crime and homicide. Not to mention the percentage of people who own guns and are pro-gun are vastly different. Applying the same regulations in the US will take decades for criminals to no longer have many guns and then they will switch to knives and screwdrivers as we see in the UK, which has about dowluble the violent crime rate as the US after accounting for differences in the stats (somewhat culturally/socioeconomically similar). So it might make the gun numbers better, but it won't solve the real drivers.
The best approach would be to address the underlying factors and causes of all violence while still allowing freedoms for the 44% who do not support stricter regulation.
> will switch to knives and screwdrivers as we see in the UK
London, with a population of ~8 million has the same murder rate as new Orleans, which is 300k people. Not as in x murders per 100k, but as in total murders in a city.
In terms of knife crime the USA has a slightly _higher_ rate of knife crime than the UK. Bear in mind the UK counts attacks with knifes as knife crimes, where as the states only appear to include death by knives.
Which means that even if you took away gun deaths (~70% of all us homicides) you're still more likley to be stabbed in the USA compared to the USA.
If we want to compare cities to New Orleans, then you might as well compare them them to Birmingham. Even with firearms being banned you have a murder rate of 28/100k vs 40/100k. Violent crime between the cities is actually equal at 55/1k.
Yeah, stabbing deaths UK vs US is about half (175/70M UK vs 1600/350M US). But if comparing at the national level, 360/100k US vs 1200/100k UK.
So it really comes down to each person's systems thinking approach and which stats they care about.
The reason why I was talking about knife homicides specifically is that comparing knife crime between the us and the uk is hard. the UK systematically records crimes where knives are involved at a national level, the USA doesn't really.
But brum has a murder rate twice that of the national average. Even so its not 28/100k its around 1.25/100k which is still just over a quarter of the _national_ gun homicide rate of the entire USA.(~4.3/100k)
The point is, the UK is demonstrably less murderous than the USA. Even the UKs most murderous city is safer than Sanjose, which accordign to the stats I can find has a 3.2/100k murder rate.
> Applying the same regulations in the US will take decades for criminals to no longer have many guns and then they will switch to knives and screwdrivers as we see in the UK
That seems like a thing to pursue rather earlier than later if it takes so long to bear fruits. Knives and screwdrivers are at least only used for close-up combat.
>The best approach would be to address the underlying factors and causes of all violence while still allowing freedoms for the 44% who do not support stricter regulation.
To have the money for that you would need abolish capitalism I guess...
> The claim is we will restrict/license/outlaw xyz for the kids, but really, a data-drive approach would have focused on different things entirely (eg additional behavioral health services for kids, suicide prevention etc)
Well, most of Europe simply has banned guns in the hands of civilians instead, so that's some data as well.
The only reason why the US is so extremely lax on firearms is because people keep blathering on about how guns are the last line of defense against a tyrannical government - and yet, what do the most rabid of these people do? Vote in and defend a literal tyrant.
>The only reason why the US is so extremely lax on firearms is because people keep blathering on about how guns are the last line of defense against a tyrannical government
No, it’s because the right to own firearms is very explicitly stated in our constitution and the constitution requires an extreme super majority to update. A 50%+1 majority is all that’s required to ban civilian ownership of guns in most parliamentary systems, not so in the US. The culture is downstream of the law.
> the right to own firearms is very explicitly stated in our constitution
The right to bear arms does not necessarily mean firearms. Arms doesn't necessarily even have to include firearms, and America is already pretty damn strict about certain armaments, such as sub-machine guns.
Americans are allowed to have certain firearms, sometimes, in some places. I'm not sure how one squares that with the blanket statement from the American constitution that Americans have the right to bear arms, unless it's simply an impossibly poorly-informed citizenry
You can personally interpret the US constitution however you want, I suppose, but the only interpretation that matters is that of the Supreme Court. And they have held over and over that 2A includes a right to many different kinds of firearms.
I feel like you're the one who is poorly informed?
(For the record, I am in favor of strong gun control laws, but your statement just ignores reality.)
Yep, alongside "Congress shall make no law" which says it's fine for anyone who isn't Congress to infringe your free speech, or for Congress to do it in any way that isn't making a law.
Yes, judges have the power to say the constitution is just toilet paper. That's why the constitution is currently just toilet paper. Including both the first and second amendments.
thats very very obviously not how it works or was intended. then they could just come up with "rules" that are not laws, and then rules say cannot have arms.
all these insane and VERY OBVIOUS attempts to bypass the constitution should result in official doing it be put in jail FOREVER
What you miss is that US Code defines militia as the explicit militia that you mention, but also the implicit militia. That implicit militia includes others not in the national guard.
It's also worth mentioning that most states have similar language to the second amendment, including states whose constitutions were implemented prior to the bill of rights, lending to the credence that this is a right of the people, and not of the state. The 10th amendment was supposed to be for the rights of the states.
I'm truly not missing this, it is the original intent of #2A. Activist judges misinterpreting it after the fact does not change that, neither does Congress later passing laws to "clarify" away the original intent.
The more… enthusiastic gun people among us think that the national firearms act (which strictly regulates automatic weapons) is an abomination.
It’s unique in that it’s the only right that aligns with business marketing. Peddling fear, mostly to insecure men, has sold hundreds of millions of guns.
The fetishized nature of modern gun culture killed, in addition to people, a lot of shooting sports and hunting.
I grew up in a small hunting town (I'm in my early 30s), where most high school boys (most girls didn't hunt, but some did) had a rifle and/or shotgun in their truck, mounted against the inside back of the cab where you could see it plain view.
We had 0 homicides from guns in the 19 years I lived there, there was 1 suicide by gun that I know of.
Many of us grew up hunting to feed our family. This is in Colorado.
I shot my first pistol around the age of 5.
I accidentally went to 7th grade with ammo in my pocket because we were hunting that morning. I went to the principal, he told me just to put the ammo in my locker.
With that being said, you'd be hard pressed to find a group of townspeople more respectful of guns.
It's not a gun problem, it's a culture problem.
Not saying that there's not "insecure men" out there that are the victim of marketing, etc, but a lot of us grew up with guns and see them as a tool.
My mom grew up in a small town (village? settlement even?) like that (surrounded by nature, lots of hunting, animals can wonder in town) in a country where guns weren't free.
Every family still had a rifle, getting license isn't that hard when you could answer questions about your intentions.
No handguns though, not very useful for self-defense or wildlife. I believe mom made and shot her first arbalest around 6-7 yo though.
Similar cultures, but one of them allows for outsiders to screen potential gun owners, and the other doesn't. Which, I believe, is the point – there always will be mentally unwell or ill-intentioned people. There should be a way for a small town to revoke the trust of allowing weapons in their hands.
I think we’re closer than you think. I grew up in a similar place - my school had a rifle and trap team. Great place to grow up. I’d often go out for the first they day turkey season and miss school.
Reality is shooting sports licensing churns significantly and has for many years - the people doing it get older every year. Some of the stats look better becuase many states offer more deer tags to fewer hunters.
There is a huge culture problem. Army LARPing and conspiracy move guns. Legal arbitrage makes the retail channel a haven for smuggling. Marketing lands heavily on that and politics. The sportsman (and often conservationist) is a relic notion.
No part of Europe has “simply banned guns”. Some countries have stricter policies but it’s possibly to own a gun in every country. Some countries are famous for gun ownership, eg switzerland that expects men to keep their militarily issued gun in the home.
A couple of dictionary checks suggest some set of:
- Ruler who is unrestrained by law or constitution
- A usurper of sovereignty
- Ruler who uses power oppressively or unjustly
Obviously b) is not applicable as per GP. He has also been constrained by the supreme court and others multiple times in this term, which suggests a) is a stretch. c) probably a fair accusation, though I'm not sure I would agree.
Hitler was not elected Chancellor by the German public. Germany had/has a mixed-member proportional system, meaning that coalitions may form after everyone votes President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after negotiations among conservative politicians who believed they could control him. The Nazi Party was the largest party, but it won only 33.1% of the vote in the final free Reichstag election of November 1932 and never secured a popular majority. Once appointed, Hitler exploited emergency powers and political intimidation to dismantle democratic institutions and convert his government into a dictatorship.
During his political ascent he used his Brownshirts - a large, organised paramilitary force - to assault political opponents, break up rival meetings, intimidate voters, and fight street battles, helping destabilise the Weimar Republic and suppress opposition.
Your comment implies that Hitler seized power despite a lack of popularity. The historical record shows that Hitler was wildly popular in Germany, even up to the end of WW2.
I very clearly provided the exact percentage popularity he had at the height of his democratic rise. Whether you'd like to accurately call that less than a third, or "wildly popular" is I suppose subjective.
> Well, most of Europe simply has banned guns in the hands of civilians instead, so that's some data as well
No, that's some bullshit. How do you think we eat pheasant and rabbit and venison? Show me a pheasant farm and I'll show you forty acres of unfenced woodland littered with empty cartridges.
My guess is the person is drawing from one country and applying it to all. The rules are varied all over the EU. e.g. You can buy pheasant, rabbit and venison at the butcher shop where I live. No hunting required, which you can do but requires a special permit, next to the weapons permit for the shotgun and is very limited in scope.
I'll wager that rabbit and that pheasant that you see skinned and cleaned in the shop were shot by a man in a field. I'm open to counterexamples, so let me know what your butcher tells you.
I like your attitude of charity - we should not rush into judgement. But mschuster91's comment said:
> most of Europe simply has banned guns in the hands of civilians
This is bullshit. GP must be aware that they are profoundly ignorant on the topic, so why are they holding an opinion, let alone posting it? Should we tolerate bullshit on HN?
Holy smokes is the browser versions of PPT, OneNote, word etc buggy, I could not believe that was an actual released product. Random page crashes, refresh loops, etc, all for the crime of using firefox on a mac. The bottom of their test matrix sure, but not exactly netscape on windows XP.
Here's an idea for you -- property evaluation. It's not hyper-specific to your monitoring system, but it would be very interesting to understand before buying a house:
1. How loud the neighbhorhood is over time periods, eg sat night vs tues morning
2. air quality, enviromental factors, etc.
3. What percentage of vehicles/people/devices are net-new (over a time period) versus recoccuring, as identified by MAC.
I would personally pay in the low hundreds to understand overall loudness levels for a house I am about to buy, although I am fairly sensitive to sound. My wife would probably pay for the new-new people metrics.
IMO, you could charge a per-device report and deploy a unit for a week, much like a home inspector report. It would give you a revenue stream on the buy or sell side, and let you own your devices as you iterate on the sensor package.
Oh common sense. If you believe all countries are autocracies, maybe. But to examine the trajectory of the US on a "Chinese timescale", the US rejected autocratic rule, built a system that decentralizes power, uses ambition to check ambition, and provides for frequent, peaceful transfer of power. To an autocratic Chinese bureaucrat, this is all wasteful shortsightedness, but allows the US to pivot, change, adapt, etc at very fast pace, at least for government.
I do not believe the autocratic bargain that China has made with its people is stable, lasting form of government, even as they seek to export it elsewhere. The fundamental trade is individual voice in politics for breakneck growth and dramatically increased standard of living. However, if you are one of the few young people born in China recently, what breakneck growth? A vicious gauntlet of schooling, the great filter in the gaokao, only to work for 996 company until you cannot anymore.
We can see what happened in places like Venezuela or Argentina when the government breaks their end of the bargain, as will likely happen to other autocratic states.
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