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I love black panthers (black leopards/jaguars) myself. According to wikipedia, any species of big cat that is almost all black is a black panther.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"A black panther is the melanistic color variant of any big cat species. Black panthers in Asia and Africa are leopards (Panthera pardus), and those in the Americas are jaguars (Panthera onca).[1][2]"

I was curious about the population distribution after reading this article. According to this sites below, most leopards in non-African areas are the black colored (melanistic mutation) ones, and that is in mostly south and southeastern Asia.

https://animals.mom.me/countri...
https://outofafricapark.com/me...

Geographic Range

Black leopards occur predominantly in southwestern China, Bhutan, India and Myanmar, and throughout the Malay peninsula including the island of Java. In these areas, melanistic leopards are more common than those with the lighter-colored pelts of animals with dominant genes. In the Malay peninsula, nearly all leopards reported are melanistic. The melanistic mutation is less common in Africa, but individuals have been reported in Ethiopia, Kenya and the equatorial forests of Cameroon. Natural selection may play a role in the predominance of black leopards in Asia, where the melanistic coloration is more of an asset than in the African savanna.

Habitat:

Black panthers live chiefly in the hot, dense tropical rainforests of South and Southeast Asia. They are mainly in Southwestern China, Burma, Nepal, Southern India, Indonesia, and the southern part of Malaysia. Black leopards are more common than light-colored leopards. They are less common in tropical Africa but have been reported from Ethiopia, from the forests of Mount Kenya and from the Aberdares; however, their population in these areas is sparse. One of the reasons that black panthers are able to live in such a variety of habitats is that they can eat many types of animals. Their food includes various species of mammals, reptiles, and birds, all of which live in different habitats.

So the A380 can carry the same amount of passengers on four engines with one crew on one landing slot as two A350 or a two 777 on four engines, with two crews and two landing slots. That equals more efficiency, not less.

Airlines are not operating on crew and landing slot efficiency basis. Crew are comparatively cheap. Landing slots are only critical in a hub model, and these days secondary airports are highly used. For the real metric (fuel per mile per passenger seat), the modern twinjets beat the A380.

link.

The A380 is (was) having order problems. The A350 XWB not so much.

So the A380 can carry the same amount of passengers on four engines with one crew on one landing slot as two A350 or a two 777 on four engines, with two crews and two landing slots. That equals more efficiency, not less.

Airlines are not operating on crew and landing slot efficiency basis. Crew are comparatively cheap. Landing slots are only critical in a hub model, and these days secondary airports are highly used. For the real metric (fuel per mile per passenger seat), the modern twinjets beat the A380.

link.

The A380 is (was) having order problems. The A350 XWB not so much.

Texas has no gun registration laws

Not entirely true. Texas law is fairly relaxed on gun registration but there are some types required to registered to comply with federal law. Gun registration was not the issue here. He wasn't allowed to possess a gun of any description due to a 2015 court order.

and it's not illegal to manufacture your own gun or gun parts...

Generally true though here are some legal issues and they cannot make one that cannot be detected by metal detectors or similar scanning devices. Despite personal use manufacture largely being permitted legally it does not permit someone prohibited from possessing a firearm to carry one which seem to be the case here.

Texas has no gun registration laws

Not entirely true. Texas law is fairly relaxed on gun registration but there are some types required to registered to comply with federal law. Gun registration was not the issue here. He wasn't allowed to possess a gun of any description due to a 2015 court order.

and it's not illegal to manufacture your own gun or gun parts...

Generally true though here are some legal issues and they cannot make one that cannot be detected by metal detectors or similar scanning devices. Despite personal use manufacture largely being permitted legally it does not permit someone prohibited from possessing a firearm to carry one which seem to be the case here.

Texas has no gun registration laws

Not entirely true. Texas law is fairly relaxed on gun registration but there are some types required to registered to comply with federal law. Gun registration was not the issue here. He wasn't allowed to possess a gun of any description due to a 2015 court order.

and it's not illegal to manufacture your own gun or gun parts...

Generally true though here are some legal issues and they cannot make one that cannot be detected by metal detectors or similar scanning devices. Despite personal use manufacture largely being permitted legally it does not permit someone prohibited from possessing a firearm to carry one which seem to be the case here.

I thought this was TX, and I don't believe you have to 'register' your firearms there, right?

Texas generally is pretty relaxed about gun ownership (shocking I know) but in some cases they do require registration according to federal laws.

Specifically
"Texas Penal Code Section 46.05 requires that "explosive weapons", "machine guns", "short-barrel firearms", and "firearm silencers", as defined in Section 46.01, be "registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or classified as a curio or relic by the United States Department of Justice". Prior to May 22nd 2015, Section 46.05 called "registration pursuant to the National Firearms Act" a "defense to prosecution".

Anyway, with that in mind, I'm curious of the law they convicted him of on that front.

I think what happened was that he was legally barred from possessing firearms due to a 2015 court order. Didn't matter how the firearm was acquired, he wasn't allowed to have it due to prior convictions.

That relies on the assumption that you only have 1 standard that no older standards are ever used.

Not at all. I'm well aware of the existing legacy equipment and I understand that people will continue to use it for some time. But you are only thinking of it (understandably) from one perspective. Continuing to sell it going forward is demonstrably wasteful. 9 pin D-sub connectors used to be common and still exist but they aren't sold as standard equipment on most PCs anymore. Those who need them for old equipment either buy an interface card or an adapter. New equipment comes with new ports and you adapt old equipment to it. To continue to sell a variety of legacy ports in new equipment is wasteful. There is some waste and conversion cost to the new standard but in the long run having a single physical connection standard will demonstrably be less wasteful than trying to maintain numerous legacy connectors with physically different connections.

When USB-C became the standard, people didn’t stop using mini-B, micro-B etc and threw away all their devices that used them.

This is a sunk cost fallacy. Nobody is asking them to stop using devices they already have. Those items are already paid for so it doesn't make sense to keep throwing money at multiple legacy ports on the devices they connect to in perpetuity.

That would actually been a lot more waste.

Not at all if you think through the entire scope of the problem. It might be more waste for that individual but overall it ends up being less. You have fewer components to manufacture so the supply chain costs go down significantly. People give Apple a lot of shit for going whole hog into USB-C (perhaps too aggressively) but a big part of the reason they are pushing it is because it saves a LOT of money in the long run. Every legacy port Apple has to support creates a substantial and measurable cost to them and ultimately to their customers. Every PC maker will eventually have to follow suit to maintain profit margins because legacy ports and support are expensive.

Eventually old equipment gets replaced by new on the new standards and saves money in the long run. Trying to stick with legacy ports actually increases cost and waste globally even if it saves it for individuals in many cases.

Ye olde USB 1 isn't going away anytime soon, because it is cheap to implement.

Sadly this is undoubtedly true, at least the first bit. USB-C isn't hugely more expensive to implement but there is a large installed base of USB-A/B cables and ports out there already and that matters. I still haven't seen a printer with an USB-C port though I'm sure some exist. I've never seen a USB-C keyboard or mouse in person though again I'm sure they exist.

That makes it ideal for low-cost, low-bandwidth devices, especially input devices.

The cost argument isn't as significant as many people think. I make cables for a living so I'm more familiar than most with the costs involved. It actually costs more in a lot of cases to use multiple cables optimized for individual tasks than to just use a common cable that works for all, even if it is overkill for some of the tasks. USB-C is being produced at sufficient scale that the cost of it is not (or doesn't need to be) substantially higher than legacy USB connections. Once you include the engineering, tooling, support, warranty, supply chain, etc costs all in, the cost argument for legacy USB tends to be a poor one.

And USB 2 has to stick around for another decade or so because of legacy flash drives and cameras.

Older USB ports will stick around for quite a while but for more general reasons than just those items. Those items could be adapted to USB-C easily enough. It's more general network effects in play. The PC sitting behind me as I type this doesn't have a single USB-C port on it and it's not that old. Even unpopular legacy ports tend to die a hard death, particularly when they are as common as the older USB ports are. Hell we still see PCs with PS/2 ports even today for some mind blowing reason.

I make wire harnesses for a living and you would not believe how many tens of thousands of unnecessary, obsolete, redundant, and superseded connection components are still in use today. I have a bookshelf literally full of catalogs 20 feet from my desk 90+% full of legacy components that still get used here and there, mostly by idiot engineers who make perfect the enemy of good. The big problem in converting is that a lot of existing equipment including a lot of charging infrastructure already has the ports. I think you are about right that it's going to take another 10-15 years to migrate the majority of equipment over to USB-C and to gradually clear out the older ports. They'll never completely go away but it's going to take a while to get to the tipping point where most vanish.

Direct is faster but more expensive.

Obligatory Wendover Productions video.

And if you don't have 10 minutes to kill, here's the moral of the story: When airplanes are full, direct is always cheaper. You pay for less fuel, less labor, less airplane flight time (maintenance), less airport fees, etc. But the challenge has always been filling seats for low-demand routes. Airport logistics aside, you can't fly an A380 between Raleigh, NC, and Dublin, Ireland, because there's not that much demand. And smaller planes couldn't fly over the Atlantic. Hence the need for the hub-and-spoke model of flying: small planes to and from hubs, and large airplanes between hubs.

But now small airplanes -can- fly over the Atlantic. What Airbus loses in the A380, it gains in the Airbus A220, a.k.a. the Bombardier C-Series. (Another obligatory Wendover Productions video.) Now here's a narrow-body airplane that seats 100-130 passengers that -can- fly across the Atlantic, making direct flights between small markets possible. And as December 2018, Airbus has over 500 orders for the airplane, with demand for the airplane continuing to grow. Best yet: Boeing has no competitor to this class of airplane. Airbus has a monopoly on this class of airplane, and it's going to make them rich.

Amazon got slapped down for doing customer specific pricing a long time ago. I don't remember it well, but I think they went the other way. They were advertising an item at $10, but if you were someone they thought *might* be interested with an incentive they'd show you $9.50 to try and make the sale whereas if you were more likely to buy it normally you still saw $10.

Source

Before posting judgmental crap like that, you should know your history: the Global Positioning System project was launched in 1973, and the first satellite went up in 1978. The design was done sometime in-between.

Well guess what: in the mid-seventies, EVERYBODY was coding stuff without thinking it'd still be there 40 years later, saving bits and CPU cycles everywhere they could thinking X or Y weeks / years / kilobytes / megahertz should be enough. Even the long-term thinking Unix people thought 2038 should be far enough in the future.

As I pointed out to somebody else below, America, like most of the west, has gone down every year for the last 10, until this year. China has grown every year ( or flattened for a couple of years ), for the last 30+ years.

And as needed to be pointed out in return: China + India have about seven times the population of the United States. That means that they get to pollute seven times as much. As someone else pointed out, we don't say the Vatican is free to pollute just as much as the United States, because reasons. And much of the pollution generated in China is used to produce consumer products for entitled westerners.

We NEED to quit that and instead, push for SMRs like NuScale.

Yeah, no. Putting risk aside, nuclear power will never touch the cost effectiveness of wind and solar with a 20 light year pole. And the baseload BS that people love to trot out on wind and solar applies moreso to nuclear, as plants shut down for planned (or worse unplanned) maintenance all the time. Which means you need to build spare generators to pick up the slack when one of your plants goes down for days, weeks, months or sometimes even years at a time.

It would be cheaper, take less time, and involve none of the risk to just build extra wind and solar capacity into the grid and back it up with the sort of pumped storage that's used to back up nuclear power, or a Tesla Powerpack like they built in Australia, one that will pay for itself in a couple more years.

Why can China figure out how to construct 18,000 miles of high speed rail, and we can't even figure out how to connect LA to SF?

According to U.S. based airlines, by going from LA to ATL to LA to SF.

it spans 5 time zones. Its kids must have even more problems.

The Chinese have figured out how to stagger school opening times. The students in Xinjiang go to class much later than students in Heilongjiang.

Apparently the Indians haven't thought of that yet.

But it isn't just school. We offices and test sites spanning over 4 time zones. Given that the workday tends to happen when it is light out, Who loses? They start at 8 and end at 5. If I'm calling out west, I have to remember that I can't call a colleague before 11 .a.m. my time and he can't call me after 2 his time.

Except for one assistan I had that couldn't figure that out, and I was on an extended trip to the west coast, and he kept calling me at 0800 his time. After the fourth time of getting me up at 5 in the morning for something trite, I told him the key to his success was remembering the time zone differences. Its just the price we pay for living on a globe - not to mention one that tilts and wobbles a bit. No matter what we come up with. Like Map projections, nothing will be perfect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Well, I guess it's different by about a billion people.

it spans 5 time zones. Its kids must have even more problems.

The Chinese have figured out how to stagger school opening times. The students in Xinjiang go to class much later than students in Heilongjiang.

Apparently the Indians haven't thought of that yet.

it spans 5 time zones. Its kids must have even more problems.

A large impactor in Greenland would melt the whole icecap immediately but temporarily. Could this be the origin of anomalous warming events like the Younger Dryas?

You don't understand the scale of these things. The largest impactor listed this table is 1 km in diameter and hits with 46300 megaton (1.93719e+20 joules). Greenland has 2,850,000 cubic kilometres of ice. To melt that would take 9.506175e+23 joules. Given that the heat transfer would not be anywhere near 100% efficient, you're off by at least 4 orders of magnitude.

Our Siemens trains had their fair share of problems as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

BTW, here are some interesting articles and maps.

Possible, sure, but even here it takes years and a lot of NIMBYism, not just from people but also from municipalities.
This one for example took 169 lawsuits.

Well, until the Yellowstone caldera blows then everyone East of Yellowstone is toast.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Actually, the second biggest population center in California is San Diego.

Citation? Because official designations shows San Diego as the 17th most populous metropolitan area, while the SF Bay area is ahead in 12th place, and the definition of the latter doesn't encompass much of the East Bay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Because he wants to model it after a popular program.

But if he thinks that's ... possible, given the vast differences in character, he's stupider than I thought.

Will that be before or after the san andreas fault opens up and swallows the whole lot?

San Andreas is a transform fault.

It slides laterally. It does not "open up".

It is actually Washington and Oregon that are in danger of being swallowed up. So sell your Microsoft and Amazon stock.

Will that be before or after the san andreas fault opens up and swallows the whole lot?

San Andreas is a transform fault.

It slides laterally. It does not "open up".

It is actually Washington and Oregon that are in danger of being swallowed up. So sell your Microsoft and Amazon stock.

California has a gun homicide rate of 3.3/100k. That is above average, worse than 31 other states.

Gun violence in the USA by state

Why can China figure out how to construct 18,000 miles of high speed rail, and we can't even figure out how to connect LA to SF?

Could that be because we already have a transportation system which beats the snot out of high speed rail? I'd prefer to fly any day compared to the monstrosity they were building.

I mean, this never passed the laugh test. If you want high speed rail, connect the East Coast. Duh. That's the only part of the country with enough people and destinations the right distances from each other to make HSR worth considering.

As a point of comparison, we were planning a trip to France, Germany, and Austria for this summer. Even in Europe, with it's highly touted rail system, it made no sense to take trains to get around. Flying was cheaper and faster. I was quite disappointed because I like taking trains.

New York stores ALSO generally don't have to COMPETE with stores like Target & Walmart, because you'd have to travel 45 minutes & cross at least one expensive bridge or tunnel to get to one.

That's NOT the case in most big cities. A retail store in downtown Miami isn't competing with other retail stores in downtown Miami, it's competing with at least 4 or 5 multi-million foot regional malls and a few "vertical power centers" with big box stores stacked on top of each other within 10-15 miles, including two malls (Dadeland & Merrick Park) & two VPCs (Dadeland Station & Merrick Park) that are adjacent to Metrorail stations, plus a huge outlet mall (Dolphin Mall) across the street from an equally-large regional mall (International Mall) within a mile of the biggest Ikea store I've seen in my entire life & the usual assortment of big-box stores. And there's still Aventura Mall (the #2 or #3 largest mall in America by actual retail space, the Falls (a large outdoor "Lifestyle" mall), and someday... American Dream Mall (yeah, malls are quite non-dead in South Florida... 11 months of steamy rain is a major factor).

My point is, in a city like Miami, the only way ground-floor retail in a skyscraper district can economically compete with that is by collectively BECOMING "an urban de-facto mall with skyscrapers over the anchor stores". And that's exactly what Brickell City Centre is attempting to do... transform a ~6 square block area into a hybrid regional lifestyle power center with skyscrapers. And part of the reason WHY Miami agreed to vacate so many city streets and radically re-design the surrounding road network was the observed failure of traditional ground-floor retail to thrive (or even subsist) in surrounding buildings. The city figured it had nothing to lose by facilitating BCC's 5.4 million square foot urban experiment. Ultimately, we'll see who was right.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

I suspect part of the aminoacids of the protein in food are chemically changed by the industrial processing to unnatural toxic aminoacids.

Here are examples of toxic aminoacids:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I suspect the body could use the unnatural aminoacids to build proteins. Those proteins could cause proteopathy, like for example alzheimer's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I suspect part of the aminoacids of the protein in food are chemically changed by the industrial processing to unnatural toxic aminoacids.

Here are examples of toxic aminoacids:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I suspect the body could use the unnatural aminoacids to build proteins. Those proteins could cause proteopathy, like for example alzheimer's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Our President has proven that our race toward a leader like Zaphod Beeblebrox was inevitable.

You need to read up on how insurance works, viz. probability of payouts - e.g., how actuarial tables work for life insurance. If they get their math right then this is no different from any other insurance scheme, the only winner will be the insurer.

The only "news" here is that the CEO of Twitter had never previously used Twitter.

He's busy tooting on Mastodon ... :-)

The idea that the 1% has all the power is a myth. The IRS tax stats are freely available for anyone to see and analyze. The 1% (everyone making approx $500k per year or more) only accounts for 19% of total income in the U.S. The vast majority of economic power in the U.S. (64% of all income) rests with those making $50k-$500k per year.

Who care about income? Wealth is where the power is.

The top 1% in net worth in the U.S. hold 40% of the nation's wealth. The bottom 50% in net worth of the U.S. population combined hold 1% of the nation's wealth.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (First paragraph and first chart.)

>"there absolutely is an ethical responsibility to avoid purchasing products made in China, just as there is with Israel."

Did you just compare the human rights/freedom situation in China to the free/democratic ISRAEL?? Seriously?

https://object.cato.org/sites/... (USA 17, Israel 49, China 135)

https://www.heritage.org/index... (ISA 12, Israel 27, China 100)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Israel #1 in middle east)

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/2... (Israel #10 of happiest people on earth. USA #14. China- not even on list.)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibra...

I remember once a discussion on the American civil war and I made the comment that as much as I disagreed with the Southern position many things; I agree on the right of people deciding who rules them, so if the majority of people South wanted independence they had the right to Independence.

Someone quickly pointed out my obvious mistake, that the black slaves didn't get a say, and would not have been in favour of splitting from the North. They were ABSOLUTELY right, and the fact that they didn't get a say completely invalidated the South's call for independence.

I think your promoting of Israel as "10th happiest nation", etc is making the exact same mistake. You're completely ignoring all the people living in apartheid in Palestine, you're completely ignoring the daily human rights abuses against the Palestinians, etc.

The European Jews living in Israel may be having a grand time and enjoying all sorts of rights, but the original inhabitants of that land are not having such a great time. Millions live in poverty and apartheid in Israel. Their voice deserves to be represented; just like the blacks in the Southern US deserved to be represented. The same human rights mistakes that happened with the colonization of the Americas and South Africa are happening today with the colonization of Israel and Palestine.

What physics reasons are these? I suspect you are getting confused with the fact that iron-56 is the most stable element going, However out the the ten most abundant elements in the Milky Way galaxy, carbon is number four and iron only number six. Even in the solar system carbon is significantly more abundant than iron.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Now when we have reached the heat death of the universe it will all be iron-56, but that is many trillions of years away.

Unfortunately the paper is paywalled but I think we can safely assume that they collected that data in order to control for it.

No, we cannot. What happens is the researchers collect a bunch of potentially confounding data, and then run it through a standard statistical package, typically the Cox proportional hazards model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The problem is that the Cox model only works if the confounders are linear, time-invariant, and independent. In practice, none of these requirements are met. In addition, not all possible confounders are collected, and they are also not measured accurately. People lie and they have bad memories.

Of course, the statistical calculations don't care if the input is bad, they just churn out some numbers. If the numbers say what the researcher (or their sponsor) wants to hear, they'll publish the results. Otherwise they can easily tweak some parameters and try again, or just throw away the whole study, and try a new one.

And don't forget also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

New Federal regulations actually make it easier to run lightly-modified European train cars in the US

Whatever you do, don't buy them from Italy like we did. We wanted high speed trains to run on our shiny new track, but of course the people with experience in high speed rolling stock - France, Germany and Japan - weren't up to spec or deemed too expensive, so we went with a firm with zero experience in high speed rail, but with a track record (ha ha) of delivering trams and trains that break down in icy conditions. We got our trains, and they broke down when it got cold. Now we have rail but nothing to run on it.

If I read de Laval nozzle equation correctly an increase in the combustion chamber pressure has minimal impact on the exhaust velocity (going from 260 Bar to 300 Bar has less than 1% improvement).

Combustion chamber temperature is a far better indication of efficiency of the engine and has a far more direct impact of exhaust velocity than pressure.

Credit where credit due - design requires 170 metric tonnes of force, test fire got 172 metric tonnes (design works as expected).

Actually there are more jailed people in the USA than in China per capita.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

California's not like the rest of the West. From Sacramento on down there's a lot more developed here than in any of the states on the other side of the Sierras. And a lot of the land that is sparsely populated in California is just straight-up mountains. The flatter parts in between are pretty packed in by American standards, hence the awful traffic even in lots of spots outside the city centers. (And I'm saying this living in one of the less populated regions of the state, which is nowhere near the proposed HSR.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Three words: Interstate Highway System.

It's not the lack of Chinese authoritarianism that's preventing us from making it work. It's our inability to align all our interests and resources to make it happen.

Back in 1956, we passed something called the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. In 35 years, we constructed over 48,000 miles of dedicated highway, three times as much Chinese high speed rail in only double the time. How did it all come together? Simple: the threat of war. Eisenhower was inspired by the national highway system of Germany and how it served as vital military infrastructure for them during World War II. Investing in that infrastructure for the homeland would be a strategic military asset in case of invasion. So far, it's yet to be used that way, but it's contributed tremendous returns to our nation's GDP.

The only thing preventing us from making it happen is a lack of will.

2008's Prop 1A passed with an almost a 50/50 split.

It was controversial at that time, with the main argument against the project being that our state bureaucracy would piss away the money and be unable to complete it. It is an unethical project in that it benefited only coastal Californians, but takes money from Public Works which could otherwise be spent on repairing bridges and dams. Several bridges throughout have been closed for decades because the state never got around to rebuilding them, forcing rural travelers to commute longer distances and trucks to wear out roads on dangerous mountain routes.

The first line of reasoning is that we shouldn't have anything to do with corrupt regimes, and in fact should boycott them. That's the approach we took with Cuba. The result being that Cuba has stayed Communist 60 years with its people still mired in an economic backwater with little knowledge of the free world. Cuba's GDP per capita barely budged for 50 years until Castro gave up power, and his successor began to implement reforms, eventually leading to thawing of relations with the U.S.

The second line of reasoning is that we need to have open trade and tourism with corrupt regimes, so that their citizens become more exposed to democratic ideals and culture. That's the approach we took with China. The result being that Chinese citizens have experienced a ten-fold increase in GDP per capita in the last 45 years since Nixon normalized relations with China. And Chinese citizens, while kept in the dark about certain embarrassing domestic events, are for the most part aware of how people in the free world live and frequently even travel there on vacations.

If you believe in Democracy, then you believe that power ultimately flows from the people. And the only way a corrupt government can truly be overthrown is via the will of the people being governed, not by the influence of an outside state. The most we as outsiders can do is try our best to empower those people. So from an ethical standpoint, the question becomes: Does it help the Chinese people more if we boycott China, or if we continue free trade with them? From a strictly economic standpoint, medieval monarchies were able to hold onto power by keeping the masses in poverty, and thus unable to afford to overthrow the nobility. Modern developed nations eventually reach a point (around $10k/yr GDP per capita) where further economic growth requires the development of an economic middle class. e.g. For the U.S., 58% of the income goes to people making $30k to $200k per year, 15% to people making $200k-$500k, and those making over $500k only account for 19% of all income. As a result, it's the people making $30k to $200k who wield the most power in the country.

So maintaining free trade with a corrupt regime means it must eventually empower its people if it wishes to continue economic growth. Whereas boycotting a corrupt regime means it can keep its people oppressed in perpetuity.

The first line of reasoning is that we shouldn't have anything to do with corrupt regimes, and in fact should boycott them. That's the approach we took with Cuba. The result being that Cuba has stayed Communist 60 years with its people still mired in an economic backwater with little knowledge of the free world. Cuba's GDP per capita barely budged for 50 years until Castro gave up power, and his successor began to implement reforms, eventually leading to thawing of relations with the U.S.

The second line of reasoning is that we need to have open trade and tourism with corrupt regimes, so that their citizens become more exposed to democratic ideals and culture. That's the approach we took with China. The result being that Chinese citizens have experienced a ten-fold increase in GDP per capita in the last 45 years since Nixon normalized relations with China. And Chinese citizens, while kept in the dark about certain embarrassing domestic events, are for the most part aware of how people in the free world live and frequently even travel there on vacations.

If you believe in Democracy, then you believe that power ultimately flows from the people. And the only way a corrupt government can truly be overthrown is via the will of the people being governed, not by the influence of an outside state. The most we as outsiders can do is try our best to empower those people. So from an ethical standpoint, the question becomes: Does it help the Chinese people more if we boycott China, or if we continue free trade with them? From a strictly economic standpoint, medieval monarchies were able to hold onto power by keeping the masses in poverty, and thus unable to afford to overthrow the nobility. Modern developed nations eventually reach a point (around $10k/yr GDP per capita) where further economic growth requires the development of an economic middle class. e.g. For the U.S., 58% of the income goes to people making $30k to $200k per year, 15% to people making $200k-$500k, and those making over $500k only account for 19% of all income. As a result, it's the people making $30k to $200k who wield the most power in the country.

So maintaining free trade with a corrupt regime means it must eventually empower its people if it wishes to continue economic growth. Whereas boycotting a corrupt regime means it can keep its people oppressed in perpetuity.