On a broader scale, the marriage of far left and islam are not from some love of shared values. Its from the love of shared enemy, capitalism and western civilization.
I think the biggest reason is that leftists favor weak groups. Muslims are poor and relatively powerless globally so leftists see them as oppressed and deserving sympathy. Combine that with Jews being the polar opposite and it's clear why leftists would favor Palestinians in that war. But yes, anti-Westernism is probably a factor too.
I don't understand why leftists are so ravenous about Palestine, but NOT batting any eye about the [actual] genocide of Christians in Nigeria. I think their empathy comes from a good place, at least in their minds, but it's so selective.
I'm not saying, I'm better, I'm pretty apathetic. But I don't get it.
Because Christians are powerful in America, so as a group, they appear to Americans to be privileged, not oppressed. It's groups that matter, not individuals.
Feels more like a psy-op than anything else. Some on the left can't resist protesting war crimes despite understanding the nuance and that is used to call them the "enemy of western civilization."
It comes from a need to support slaves, or weak powerless people.
Slaves as a term isn't as relevant today as it was centuries ago, but still it captures the idea of a class of "oppressed and powerless" people well.
In an extreme twist of irony however, both Christianity and Judaism are religions born from slaves, hence the emphasis on classic liberal values (love thy neighbor as thyself). Islam however is not a slave religion, and was born from power, on the other end of the spectrum (kill non-believers who don't convert)
Yes, this exactly. And IMO, mainstream liberals have drifted so far left on some issues, that these views are just... commonplace. Saying this as a disaffected registered democrat.
Then someone should take the case to the WTO Appellate Body(0), unfortunately Trump and Biden have blocked appointments to it since 2019, so WTO rules cannot be enforced.
There are a million ways to cheat trade, the WTO was created to handle small disputes, not large structural imbalances. International Law was highly flawed in that regard owing back to Bretton Woods.
But of course it benefits everyone at the expense of deficit countries, so why change or truly address the literature. Appealing to international law today as such is just appealing to entrenched interests.
But the matter of fact is that in a true free trade regime, imbalances should rebalance back to zero. The fact that the deficit is only growing is more than enough evidence that China is obviously the violators here. And everybody knows this.
Under a multilateral Bancor System which Chinese economists themselves advocated back in 2009, China would have been immediately subjected to massive FX overvaluation to degrade their conpetiveness.
> Under a multilateral Bancor System which Chinese economists themselves advocated back in 2009
I had to look that up and this stood out
> U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner expressed interest in the idea of greater use of SDRs as a reserve. However, he was criticized severely for this in the United Statess, and the dollar lost 5 cents against the euro in exchange markets following his statements. He and President Barack Obama shortly afterwards backtracked Geithner's comments.
Yeah, the US was wrong there and in Bretton Woods. But unless if this an exercise in nationalist polemics, that doesn't change the fact that China is the prime violator in such a system by virtue of their surplus, not the USA which runs a deficit.
China is just undergoing its own Industrial Revolution which the western world already participated in. They Chinese Industrial Revolution was sparked
in the rural village of Xiaogang. The local farmers were fed up with the communist control, lack of freedom, enforced collectivism, stringent quotas and all. A group of 18 farmers (illegaly) divided their communal farm and went into competition. They outperformed the allocated quota by a large margin. Even the communist government could not ignore the results of this capitalistic experiment. Then they slowly allowed this freedom across the country. Engineers were running the country back then in the communist era too. Soon China opened up to foreign investments in their special economic zones, that enabled technology transfer.
You see, this is the natural result of private property and freedom. People will trade/exchange/compete resulting in better outcomes for all. This is the same thing that happened in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Europe/America and pretty much all developed countries.
CCP has largely adopted capitalism in the economic sector. It still controls other freedoms, mainly speech, press etc.
America is drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape. America and Europe did move fast when it was young, just like China is doing in its young phase of this industrial revolution.
I am no American or Chinese. Just an independent observer from a third world country.
I can’t remember where I heard this from but I once heard that the ideal political system isn’t democracy, it’s a benevolent autocracy. While the CCP may have some corruption, I do get the impression that it is mostly benevolent and serves China’s best interests. Relative to autocracy, democracy is slow and pulls in different directions due to party politics and elections.
I went to a museum in Hong Kong recently. It had a very obvious Chinese bias, but it clarified some things for me about how China sees itself. The CCP sees social cohesion as critical to the security of the state. If we look at Western countries like the US and UK, social cohesion is weakening, we’re extremely divided and addicted to bickering amongst ourselves.
Take the Charlie Kirk murder as a recent example which has sparked heated infighting between the left and right in the US. You’re all part of the same country but you pull in completely different directions and hate each other. Driving wedges like this is a tool adversaries can use to dismantle democracy.
The question is always how much violence is required to suppress dissent. Especially given the recent history of Hong Kong.
Some influencer called Matt Forney was calling for a ban on the Democrat party in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder. I can see how a one-party state might be achieved with popular support in the US.
> I can’t remember where I heard this from but I once heard that the ideal political system isn’t democracy, it’s a benevolent autocracy.
I don't think this is true. An autocracy is like a super weapon. Even if the power was held by a 'benevolent' group/individual, there's no guarantee that they will keep being 'benevolent', or that someone else doesn't take over, either diplomatically or by coup.
Democracy isn't perfect, but it does protect against autocrats taking your rights away, and you having no way of defending yourself.
Most people think democracy is necessary for economic development. Taiwan/Singapore/South Korea, were pretty much authoritarian yet developed economically immensely. Democratization came much later.
Well the idea was, adoption of capitalism and economic freedom will eventually lead to political freedom. It did happen that way in many countries, but China is still yet to happen.
The thing is that you almost need strong authoritarian control to transition society from agrarian to industrial state. You don't achieve that with globalization and open markets, but instead you nurture and develop your industry (which of course developed democratic countries find uncompetitive and undemocratic). Once you get your industry going, you can start opening up both markets and society.
You forget that it was ultimately the people themselves that made those countries have political freedom because they wanted it themselves right.
People knew what autocratic government was like, and couldn't get rid of it soon enough.
If any of you are playing with the idea that autocracy might actually be good for a country; do this thought experiment: instead of thinking your favorite group would wield that power, what if your least favorite group would have that power? Wouldn't you be thankful for the protections that the law gives you in that situation? Taking away the protections of people, means that there's nothing you can do when you get targeted. And in an autocratic society that's just up to a single opinion which you don't control.
> America is drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape.
You must be joking...
- Unlike most OECD countries, the U.S. lets employers fire workers without “just cause” or severance.
- The U.S. is the only OECD country with no national paid parental leave mandate.
- There is no federal privacy law or something like GDPR
- No nationwide rules or regulations on Payday lending caps with interest often >450% APR
- Fines for U.S. workplace safety penalties are flat and modest
- TSCA lets many chemical substances stay on the market, while for example in the EU, the REACH program requires precautionary testing and registration.
Just because some regulations that you would like to exist, but don't, doesn't mean there aren't regulations that exist, but shouldn't. I'm most US states you need a license to cut hair. I'm summer states you need a license to braid hair. These licenses are actually expensive and hard to obtain, keeping a lot of talented people from actually working in the field. I bet in China you can just cut someone's hair.
On the other hand, just because you can point to some regulations that exist, but you rather wouldn't, doesn't mean that regulation in itself is bad.
99% of cases, we started out without regulation, but then something bad happens what made us create the regulation.
In china everybody might be able to cut hair, but also anybody is able to drill water wells, and cause massive sinkholes and subsidence all across china. In china you can pollute all you want, and the citizens just have to deal with warnings about toxic air outside on the weather forecast.
Also I'm sure that if you were to ask an actual barber about that licensing they would be able to tell you plenty of good reasons for why that exists. It's not entirely impossible for a barber to screw up somebody's scalp when bleaching their hair for example.
The situation in China is actually even worse. There are environmental regulations, but enforcement is easily evaded through bribes or CCP connections.
Every so often there is a disaster that forces the government to start a much-publicized campaign. A few of the worst or least connected offenders get punished and then it's back to business as usual.
So really, if you're just anybody and start polluting, you'll quickly be stopped. Meanwhile the state-owned steel mill next door has been blasting out unfiltered coal exhaust for decades.
Look for a broad-strokes summary of environmental laws in China [0]. Note the following paragraph:
> The standards detailed in the action plan focus on several harmful substances, including particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Each of these pollutants has defined permissible levels, which are critical in guiding both regulatory authorities and industries in their compliance efforts. Over the years, the Chinese government has intensified its efforts to monitor real-time air quality and ensure adherence to these standards
Now try to reconcile this with the actual air quality [1] [2]. Note that September is far from the peak, when it gets cold and dark the air quality in many megacities becomes off-the-charts toxic.
This leaves two possibilities: either the state is too weak or too corrupt to enforce these laws. Since the PRC is far from weak and its organs are very powerful, this only leaves one possibility.
I ask every new barber I use why the regulation. The answer is the same every time: "You don't want your ear cut off by accident".
But I know why the regulation exists: it's to protect existing barbers from unlicensed competition.
> But I know why the regulation exists: it's to protect existing barbers from unlicensed competition.
Ah okay, so you ask them why, and if they don't give an answer you agree with, you conclude that you're right anyway and they secretly have an ulterior motive? What kind of answer would be able to change your mind?
> drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape
I think that's wrong and it's biasing your interpretation of what is happening. First of all I don't think they are 'drowning', business and projects get started every day in Europe/America, and obviously there's great prosperity being created. Secondly, I don't agree they're unnecessary.
It's like saying that someone remodeling the first floor of a large apartment building, can move faster by just knocking down walls instead of first hiring a building inspector to identify the load-bearing walls.
Of course if you're an autocratic country that doesn't care about anything else than the currently stated party position, you can do things that are impossible in other places. But they're obviously going to run into problems doing this. And some kind of problems aren't of the kind that you can fix afterwards by a policy-change.
It's like the story of the tortoise and the hare. Careful consideration might slow you down at first, but it will end up saving much more time by not having to fix mistake as well as redo it better.
> America is drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape
Which regulations are unnecessary?
Those that make it more difficult to hire foreigners?
Those that put requirements on energy providers to invest in excess capacity so you don't end up in blackouts every time the grids are stressed?
Those that prevent companies from collecting minor data online?
Those that force major websites and devices to serve people with disabilities?
Or the national standards for healthcare data privacy?
I could go on and on, but every time people complain about regulations, they seem to be coming from a place where they don't realize that regulations have a purpose in general, they ain't there for the lulz.
Sure, there's always things to look at and review, that's the nature of progress, but to say that companies are drowning in regulations, what are those regulations?
Are you sure we can't find plenty of examples that would require more?
I'm very sympathetic to this point - regulations are usually there for a reason, and it's important to know what it is - but there's always a grey area between genuine public need and regulatory capture by special interests, which the incredibly dysfunctional nature of US politics hides.
The big ones are probably zoning and protectionist car regulations.
(Note that having a one party state makes a lot of the problems of partisanship go away. However, the problems of "working towards the leader" and the tendency to hide unfavorable news leading to poor decisions are still there. The tradeoff that China has is that, so long as high levels of growth can be delivered, political unrest can be contained, or dealt with by blaming "corrupt local officials" who can then be "dealt with".)
Yes, in China the government comes, takes your land, pays you pennies, and builds a railroad on it.
Yes, in China there's less regulations when building nuclear plants, that makes it easier to do so there. Where would you rather live, close to a Chinese or an American one knowing the second had to nail 10 times more rules and inspections?
Some are necessary and some are not, or can be streamlined.
In the context of the article, where it discuses China can develop things fast while America cannot, lets take California highspeed rail.
- The Buy America law hinders supply choice
- Crash test standards are much higher than Europe
- Lot of consultation/assessment and pretty much any lobby group could block the construction
- Sue friendly environment, so makes things costly.
America is not drowning in unnecessary regulations, it's just struggling to accept that the rest of the world is recovering from the various atrocities of the past few hundred years, from which America remained relatively isolated due to its several lucky circumstances.
Have you ever lived in China or the west to see the systems work? What makes your observation worthwhile?
>clue
If it was so easy most developing countries more free, i.e. less politically controlled would be replicating PRC. But they're mostly not. Overwhelmingly not. What happens in most places is wealth/elite capture process grab most of the gains, which is typically meagre to begin with (i.e. not enough to lift out of low/middle income level), because most places don't have leadership in place to attract FDI to get that ToT to move past middle income. PRC didn't just "get" that all that because a commune did well and go lol free market, they playedout/engineered an entire Sino-Soviet breakup and slap Vietnam to invite US to the party after USSR (who was also tech power at the time) was stingy with ToT (due to other dram). Then it's meticulous process of state manipulating politics / organizing infra construction and JVs to get what's theirs.
THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WITH ALL MODERN DEVELOPED SUCCESSES, i.e. asian tigers, they get on the good side of the rich hegemon + some competent execution. Even petro / resource state, muh free market isn't enough. Need to badwagon with someone who can offer ToT. Conversely all the resources in the worlds (IR, VZ) doesn't matter if you're sanctioned by the hegemon and prevented from muh free market activities if you can't even buy the tech stack to extract, or if you did can't see in the common market.
> pretty much all developed countries
Essentially all old stock developed countries developed from excess extraction from colonialisms/slavery. It wasn't freedom, it was some form of market + imperial industrial policy. Bluntly it was simply taking a shit load from others from barrel of the gun to accumulate riches that snowballed growth. Loot a bunch of people and use the gains to buy yourself nice things, put your kids and grand kids+ through school, and 200 years later they think it was because of the market.
PRC moving FAST without that stupid levels of external extraction or basically direct subsidies from US (most of the other tigers, or newly minted wealthy petro states essentially all US satraps) is wholly different scenario. It's actual state-building and domestic mobilization (bluntly: extracting domestic labour) maybe not explicitly by engineers, but by career bureaucrats under an incentive structure where their career path is tied to building national power. PRC also unique outlier in that they are large enough to resist US containment now that US decided to breakup and contain. Big enough to now be 2nd bandwagon option since PRC has enough tech stack to replace US in most categories.
Contrast to now shitholes like Iran and Venezuela, was doing well when band wagoning with US, then broke up, and US acrimonious in breakup, so they get less than nothing for spurning US in the first place. It wasn't because they somehow got more authoritarian / corrupt - scraps of pie usually enough in sufficiently rich countries, it wasn't because they can't free market inside country either, it's because they lost access to global market ran by US, which is fundamentally not a free market but a pay to access market, i.e. postwar PRC/CCP couldn't even pay to modernize postwar due to sanctions. Hence they turn into basket cases when that access is lost, because there's isn't a magic domestic configurable, free market or not that can make up for enforced isolation due to loss of global access.
why the negativity? no one bats an eye when ronaldo/messi or steph curry or other top athletes get insane salaries.
These AI researchers will probably have far more impact on society (good or bad I dont know) than the athletes, and the people who pay them (ie zuck et al) certainly thinks its worth paying them this much because they provide value.
I'm going with envy. Athletics is a completely different skill from software, and one that is looked down on by posters here, judging by the frequent use of "sportsball". "Sportsball" players make huge salaries? Whatever, not my thing, that's for normies. But when software researchers make 1000x my salary? Now it's more personal. Surely they are not 1000x as good as me. It seems unlikely that this guy is 1000x as skilled as the average senior developer, so there's some perceived unfairness, too.
But I counsel a different perspective: it's quite remunerative to be selling tulips when there's a mania on!
It may be envy, but I’m still not sure a direct comparison makes much sense, given how much of a different creature engineering LLMs is from what most devs are doing.
I think negative feelings are coming from more of a “why are they getting paid so much to build a machine that’s going to wreck everything” sort of angle, which I find understandable.
My personal negativity stems from Meta in particular having a negative net impact on society. And no small one either. Everything Zuckerberg touches turns to poison (basically King Midas in reverse). And all that money, all that progress, is directed towards the detriment of everyone but a few.
In contrast, a skilled football player lands somewhere between neutral and positive, as at the very least they entertain millions of people. And I'm saying that as someone who finds football painfully dull.
Salary caps are more about keeping smaller clubs competitive. Is it really the case here? I think if this guy's company was acquired for $1B and he made $250M from the sale, people wouldn't be surprised at all.
You must not follow sports very close. Every time a young supports signs his first big deal, people freak out and compare it to the last superstar's deal. "Young players getting too much money before they earned it" is a trope at this point.
Sports teams pay Ronaldo, Messi, and Curry because they win games and that puts fans in seats and attracts sponsors that pay those teams money and turn a profit.
When someone had a successful business model that offsets the incredible costs let me know, but it is all hypothetical.
I think the reason for the negativity in this forum (and other threads I've seen over the past few months) is because people are engaged with AI and it seems are deep down not happy with its direction even if they are forced to adapt. That negativity spreads I think to people winning in this which is common in human nature. At least that's the impression I'm getting here and other places. The most commented articles on HN these days are AI (e.g. OpenAI model, some blogger writing about Claude Code gets 500+ comments, etc) which shows a very high level of emotional engagement and have the typical offensive and defensive attitude between people that benefit or lose from this. Also general old school software tech articles are drowned out in comparison; AI is taking all the oxygen out of the room.
My anecdotal observation talking to people: Most tech cycles I've seen have hype/excitement but this is the first one I've been in at least that I've seen a large amount of fear/despair. From loss of jobs, automating all the "good stuff", enriching only the privileged, etc etc people are worried. As loss aversion animals fear is usually more effective for engagement especially if it means a loss of what was before - people are engaged but I suspect negative towards the whole AI thing in general even if they won't say it on the record. Fear also creates a singular focus; when you are threatened/anxious its harder for people to engage with other topics and makes you see AI trend as something you would want to see fail. That paints AI researchers as not just negative; but almost changing their own profession/world for the worse which doesn't elicit a positive response from people.
And for the others, even if they don't have this engagement, the fact that this is drowning out other things can be annoying to some tech workers as well. Other tech talks, articles, research, etc is just silent in comparison.
YMMV; this is just my current anecdotal observations in my limited circle but I suspect others are seeing the same.
Ronaldo competes in a sport that has 250 million players (mostly for leisure purposes) worldwide, who often practice daily since childhood, and still comes out on top.
Are there 250 million AI specialists and the ones hired by Meta still come out on top?
Huh the pool being so small is exactly why they’re fought over. Theres tiering in research through papers and products built. Even if the tiering is wrong, if you can monopolize the talent you strike a blow to competitors.
Crab mentality, the closer proximity to your profession / place in society the more resentment/envy. This is a win for some of us in tech, it's just not us, so we cannot allow it! Article even mentions the age of "24" as if someone of that age is inherently undeserving.
Anyone is free to use the well tested scientific methods to show if a claim is true or not (medicine or otherwise). There is no need to prefix it western-, modern-, traditional-, chinese, ayurvedic- etc. If it works it is just medicine.
There is no such things as chinese physics, ayurvedic chemistry, traditional biolgy.
