Slashdot Mirror
China In the Habit of Copying and Redirecting US Sites?
Want to know why US web companies have trouble making it in China? gaz_hayes passed us a link to the blog commiepod, which suggests that successful US websites are targeted by 'Chinese government backed companies.' "These companies copy the site, deploy it on a .cn domain, and then DNS poison or forcefully lower the bandwidth the US site. Just a few weeks ago google.com and google.cn were DNS poisoned across the entire Chinese internet and were being redirected to their Chinese competitor Baidu. This probably explains Google's 3rd quarter market share in China." This is a fairly serious accusation; anyone else have first-hand experiences that would back this up?
It's almost like the Chinese are a little leery of the US having a very large amount of control over the Internet. Not that I condone their actions (if this is true), but I can't say I'd be totally surprised.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
This smells fishy, because if I remember correctly, Google owns a significant share of Baidu.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
China proves that Fascism, not Socialism, works. China is a vindication of everything the post-Socialist Fascist movement thought was in need of change in Socialist ideology to make it work. As a result, China has many of the benefits of capitalism, but has the state control of the means of production that Socialism provides. If it's mostly high-ranking aparatchiks and military officers who own most of the corporations in China, it is only semantically different from the corporation, known as the "Communist State" in China, from owning it in its name.
Of course this would be a surprise to the morons who think that Fascism is just a dirty word you throw at someone you disagree with. Most people forget that Fascism was a movement with a clear-cut platform, that was a true hybrid of Socialism and Capitalism. It is "right-wing" in the sense that it is "to the right of Socialism and Communism." It is, in essence, where the "left and right" meet up on the spectrum. If you look at the Fascists' planks, you will see that they had many left-wing tendencies, such as seizing the war profits of the military industrial complex, heavy taxation of income, and strong government **control** of the means of production through counsels of industry and regulations.
Communism is utopian. It is built on 19th century pseudo-science, and it ought to be no more respectable to be a Communist than to be a Phrenologist.
I am not surprised at China doing this. It make perfect sense from the economic nationalism of Fascist policy.
i think the USA should pull the plug on them, (physically remove their intertubes from connecting to the US intertubes)...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"Replacement of Google with Alternative Search Systems in China — Documentation and Screen Shots"
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/google-replacements/
Last Updated: September 24, 2002
On this basis: "Google censors itself for China" — http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4645596.stm — Wednesday, 25 January 2006
Define ethics and business ethics within the context of a multi-billion dollar market. Do not be shy!
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
No surprise.
I used to work in China quite alot and found the only way I could get decent Internet access and get things done was to VPN back to the UK office and then surf from their gateway - the slight delay was quite alot better then the local service.
I got used to shitty performance, websites suddenly dying for no reason, 30 second delays on some sites and others almost instant.
As with most things Chinese, we may see this at dodgy behavior - to them it is a normal business practice. As I once stated on a thread about Chinese knockoffs the problem is not to "stop them doing it" but is rather "to make them understand they are doing something wrong in the first place".
Well, AFAIK (or as the article states), the chinese government has got nothing to do with this. It's chinese companies that are DNS-poisoning and so on. So your "fascist"-accusations don't seem that appropriate as comments to this article. Maybe to another about China, but not this one.
Communism is utopian. It is built on 19th century pseudo-science, and it ought to be no more respectable to be a Communist than to be a Phrenologist.
All economic and political models are NOT true science anyhow. All economic and political models benefit different people in different ways and no math will tell you the "right" way unless you first prove that person X deserves more than person Y (or that there "should" be an imbalance in the first place). Plus, much of economic models depends on consumer psychology, which is also a fuzzy science. At best models may tell you how to maximize something based on assumptions, but those assumptions and the weights on them are usually subjective.
Table-ized A.I.
Works for whom? and in what sense?
How could we 'fsck /mnt/zh/' if we pulled the plug?
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
...the bad English of the article.
I know some people in South Africa had this problem when going to yahoo.com they were redirected to Baidu. http://mybroadband.co.za/news/General/1678.html
Gosh, this is terribly exciting. I'm talking to the internet. Hello to all of you! I bet you can't believe it either!
I even have a computer. I didn't really want one but the nice man said it was necessary. He was very, very considerate and insisted on getting me the best. Apparently this is an 'Alienware' because the company makes computers that the most of the internet can read at once. That means, dear readers, that more of you can read what I write!
I really think that two thousand pounds might be a teeny bit much to let me talk on the internet but, as he says, the latest 'blog' software is terribly complicated. Oh, gosh, look at me using technical terms like I am some kind of techno-grandmother! Blog means 'web diary', although that doesn't really make much sense to me at the moment. I'm sure I'll get it later.
Anyway, all the best for now. I'll write more to you later. Don't forget to leave your computer on so that it gets to you!
Yours,
Mildred
This Internet 2.1 blog for user Mildred is powered by The Cheapest Blog Host On The Internet! , the revolutionary web 2.0 metalayer. Get yours now! blog navigation | previous post | first post a link to the next post will be in a comment to this post
First Thailand banned YouTube, then two weeks later Siam Tube is launched.
I've only ever heard accusations of this stuff with Baidu, so the article subject talking about "in the habit" is misleading, because it made me think this was for other companies too.
They actually do worse things, like torturing Tibetan nuns, and you worry whether you can access your favourite search engine in China?
When I was in China this august I used internet cafes a lot. I really didn't notice any slowdowns. I was able to check Fark, Slashdot, Digg and the stories with no problems.
Then again, I wasn't really paying that much attention to how fast the pages loaded, only whether or not they did. I was worried about blocked pages.
Yeah, it "works," but that doesn't mean it's especially great.
This is in the same way that a state that simply jails dissidents "works," but I think government should be much less coercive.
Someone has copied a number of pages from my site. A link to my original URL was included, though. When I finally found a mail address, the person replying was apologetic and claimed to only have done it because my pages were so slow to access from China. He/She removed the page, but there were copies later of other pages. I gave up asking for removal -- it cost me a lot of time just finding the mail address in that case. Everything is in Chinese. It's a bit annoying, but there's not much I think I can do and I don't think anyone's trying to steal from me.
It works the same here in the US. There are many types of shares: some voting, some non-voting, some that confer a vote only in special circumstances. So a person can own 100 percent of the non-voting shares - which may be the vast majority of the value of the company - and still not be able to vote.
The most important thing about the electronic world is that, unlike the real world, there are very little laws or conventions. Western powers have been too busy taking bungs from music cartels for legislation on downloading mp3s to actually have time to make any real difference.
Were the Chinese up to no good? Possibly - but who can blame them - the internet is a incredibly easy place to play dirty tricks and have absolutely no repercussions. In the world of international dirty tricks there is very little that you could normally do to cause trouble that didn't involve significant risks on the world stage (espionage, corporate theft, political interference). The internet is one vast playground which is completely risk free. Do what you like, and if anyone complains just say it wasn't us. The Russians did it a couple of months ago against Estonia.
The people we elect to represent us and our interests should have been working to create a world wide communication network that could not be corrupted or used against us, not taking dirty money to allow corporations to attempt to paint a mum who uploaded a short clip of her son dancing to a song as being a shoplifting thief.
We (as a nation) still buy "Made in China" crap and help support their economy.
I thought we (the US) weren't friends with "Commies."
sigh.
You make an intelligent and well stated argument. The meaning of the word Fascism is misunderstood this days. The common unwashed masses have no idea of what Fascism is other than a word you throw around to discredit those you disagree with. I'm sorry to see this modded down as it really makes me question the actual average IQ of the /.er to which I assumed in the past to be well above the mean.
Start the fsck with nohup first.
Excerpt:
Table-ized A.I.
How come there's no mention of this on slashdot.cn?
Mod up please.
'Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.'
'All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. '
Two descriptions of Fascism by Benito Mussolini which apply to today's China perfectly. Though as you rightly point out meaning of the word Fascist has been lost on those who nowadays use it merely as an insult. Those same people are those who usually cannot accept that China is the archetypal Fascist state, in my view even more Fascist than Italy ever was in the 20s.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I'm sure all those with firsthand experience are busy complaining about it right now, on slashdot.cn.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
When in China, China will do as you do; So, tough-shit fools, if local law is not fully understood ....
... start with the "Art of War, Sun Tzu" (http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.1b.txt), remember words are literal and speculative (what if~s) in all cultures, and only fools/idiots hear their own limited meaning.
... are losing, but it does not mean WW0011, nukes, chem or bio.
... asymmetric warfare is being used like the old 20th century cold-war proxy-skirmish/conflicts.
...well... a whoops (WW3~nuke, ~chem, ~bio ~...) could might/maybe happen. However, we should never blame the irresponsible drunk-driver for murder-1/2 ... someone sold the car, served the drink, issued the license, did not take the keys, let the repeat offender off with a stern scolding, recommended rehab until it works, then the a USA supreme court elected the S&M sycophant drunk POTUS.
... got any kids ... tough-shit ... their future does not look very promising unless they emigrate to China, Canada, Norway ....
China is a sovereign state, ruled by a communist-oligarchy, and does not require permission from corporatist or deist (as in the US/EU...) to do what China (at least the communist-oligarchy) deems best for China (at least the communist-oligarchy).
Also, for those that do not understand China
China is winning and US, EU
For China, Saudi, faux-prophet fanatics
Anyway, I guess, anyone-anywhere with a Flaming Bush as leader
Funny is as funny does
!HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Huh? Models are used to predict future actions and behavior, at least in so well as human behavior can be modeled. I think you meant "system," not "model." For example, neoliberal economic policies are a type of 'system.' Modernization or dependency theory, however, are models used to make predictions. Though I'll give you that sometimes they become confluent, but the system is what manfests in reality and the model is used to try to, well, model that system so as predictions can be made that might, just might, help policy formation (whatever your idealogy).
So, systems may have parts which are most difinitely subjective. Models, though, are kinda like throwing yarrow sticks in I Ching - they're around to predict behavior. But, even though I want to make a career of poli/sci, I've gotta say that modeling human behavior is sometimes as futile of a predictor as is the I Ching. You know what I'm talking about, we've all read Asimov's Foundation on here... right?
Also, assuming you disagree with my above diatribe, we does it matter that this is subjective. We're dealing with humans here. And when dealing with humans there are a host of value judgements which must be made. That's just the way it is. In criminal and civil law, in deciding what OS you like best, what politician you want running your little burg, etc. These crys of "everything is subjective and therefore of little value" strike me as fatalistic and overly relativistic - at some point you must make a decision, knowing full well that not everyone will agree with you (b/c that's impossible) and that you might be wrong. Really though, I am surprised that we're still around to argue about it though :) How's the saying go, "World War Three will be fought with nuclear weapons, while World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones."
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
I didn't know DNS was susceptible to lead. Maybe they're using GHB.
"that's just business"
China proves that Fascism, not Socialism, works.
But for how long? I think Fascism is unstable on the scale of decades as long as trade is free and easy.
Modern economies depend on economic growth. If the elite capture all of that, you end up with terrible social stresses from the inequality, and you limit growth through lack of consumers and limited productivity. If you distribute the gains more widely, lots of people end up with luxuries like education, time to think, and the belief that the elite is no better than they are.
Once you have a comfortable middle class, I think it's hard to avoid ending up with democracy. South Korea could have been called Fascist during their period of military dictatorship, but they've turned out pretty well. I expect China will go the same route as the gerontocracy dies off.
This is unquestionable true. We see it everywhere in China. Tor saved our life!
This is an imbalance that was counter to the proclaimed idea of equality, and it was very real in the USSR. In Stalin's time, for example, a professor could afford a personal chauffeured car, a maid or two, and the best living accommodation - this was when people were paid for their worth. After Stalin things changed: a scientist went hungry (130 R/mo) and an uneducated metal worker at a factory (400-500 R/mo) started buying cars, dachas and tourist trips. This was one of those things that doomed the USSR; I can't imagine a more stupid idea than to herd your best and brightest into the lowest class. Many of them escaped to Israel and the USA as soon as they could; it was simply insulting for them to remain, be paid a pittance, and see their skills wasted on picking up potatoes in the field with locals just sitting around, smoking and crudely joking about it.
Communism goes even beyond that; but enough to say that Communism is based on the concept of unlimited availability of all worldly goods, and on unlimited consumption of those as your needs dictate. We can see Communism practiced on board of Enterprise in Star Trek, for example. Crew members can replicate anything they want and build whatever they like; use Holodecks as much as they want; and they are careful enough to take only what they really need, and not more. This is currently impossible because of many reasons, with unlimited availability of everything as one quite obvious example, and with a need for a "new human" as another concept that has no basis in reality.
Communism (or socialism) works for ants, but humans are possessive animals, with urge to own everything and control everything. You can't build socialism with those humans. But at least the basic capitalism can channel those human urges to the greater good of the society; socialism and communism just pretend that those urges do not exist. Capitalism is simply socialism with a working method of enforcing the rules.
I agree. This story smells extremely fishy indeed, and not just because the "news source" reporting this has only been around for a week or so. Read here for another possible angle about what's going on here. http://kschofield.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!4C58DDFAA6673C69!1362.entry The fourth comment down is the most pertinent information about what this may be about.
I can't imagine China would subvert such a large percentage of searches - that would be *really bad* for business (and public) relations with the west - also there would be a lot more information out there if this was actually happening on such a large scale.
China proves that Fascism, not Socialism, works. China is a vindication of everything the post-Socialist Fascist movement thought was in need of change in Socialist ideology to make it work. As a result, China has many of the benefits of capitalism, but has the state control of the means of production that Socialism provides.
No, it doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination. All China has proved that some organized method of industrialization proves an increase in the standard of living and wealth of a nation. Really, prior to the mid 1980s, China was so screwed up that just about means of exporting goods to the USA would improve them.
Seriously... this sort of myth was really born of the "Hitler Miracle", about, how the Nazi regime supposedly turned the German economy around in the midst of the Great Depression. Sure, Nazi propaganda would have us believe the in the midth of Hitler's German economic juggernaut, but the truth is, if you look at the statistics - EVEN THE BRITISH WERE OUT PRODUCING THE GERMANS. I won't belabor the point of American production, because the Americans had population and other advantages over Germany. Instead, let's look at the British, whom had less population, less natural resources, and still managed to produce more aircraft and more warships than the Germans, ultimately cutting Germany off from the sea and then taking Germany out of the air.
Essentially, all Germany could do was build a bunch of U-Boats that were just facelift improvements from World War I designs (the "modern" U-Boat came way too late to make a difference). Germany built two primary battleships - Bizmarck and Tirpitz. By contrast, the British built 5 battleships of the KGV class, more than a few aircraft carriers, and plenty of not only fighters, but also four engine heavy bombers. Germany could never build 4 engine bombers in number, becuase despite having an entire continent at her disposal, the Germans always had engine shortages...
And, why was that?
It's because fascism is a crooked and corrupt institution, and crooked institutions are not efficient. Tales of Nazi looting of other countries abound, but there was massive disorganization, massive crime... really, just imagine a bunch of thugs in a command economy, telling corporate bosses what to produce for war armaments... eventually, the whole thing would collapse... as indeed, it would have, under its own weight, had not the weight of a few million Allied soldiers and thousands of tons of Allied bombs not helped it along.
And that's ultimately what's going to happen with China. Already, rumours abound about problems in the Chinese banking sector, there's inflation being swept under the rug, and there's all sorts of inefficiencies creeping in that are just swept under the rug.
Bottom line is, fascist regimes always produce good economic results, only because we believe them when they tell us that we do. At some point, freedom really -does- matter, and that will catch up to China.
This is my sig.
Karl Marx founded communism on materialist principles, not utopian ones. It doesn't mean all of his theories are correct, but they are not utopian. In fact he founded his school of thought in response to utopian socialist/communist ideologies of the time. I don't know how rational our system is with the president talking about God all the time and appealing to his base with his supposdely shared belief that some Jew 2000 years ago had magic powers.
Marxism is scientific insofar as it is consciously built on materialist, scientific notions. It is not scientific insofar as when it is incorrect. I would say even most educated Americans I know have no arguments against Marxian thought since they know nothing of it. They say "People will not act a certain way because human nature is..." or something like that which is never a scientific, rational argument. There are strong arguments against Marxian thought, but they are more along the lines of "Marx's economic system does not translate values to prices correctly". But most Americans, even educated ones, know too little about Marxism to make arguments against them.
Also, while Marx's socialism involves a proletariat-directed taking over of the economy by the state, there are other forms of socialism, like the anarcho-syndicalists who think economic decisions should be made by workers at their place of employment. Or people who advocate workers councils and so on. Many on the left question whether the USSR was what Marx intended, and Lenin himself talked about pulling away from socialism during the New Economic Policy. Only to Americans does socialism mean big government versus small government, in Europe it means who will control the "means of production".
These crys of "everything is subjective and therefore of little value" strike me as fatalistic and overly relativistic - at some point you must make a decision, knowing full well that not everyone will agree with you
I was mostly addressing the label "pseudo-science". Whether an idea has "value" to us and whether an idea is perfect science may indeed not be entirely related.
Table-ized A.I.
Who needs them, when you can go to http://www.baidu.com/ and look for "www.google.com", see the results... Try clicking on the google link.
Give me a break. Just compare Google.com's top "tiananmen square" result to Google.cn:
This one is for China
This one is for the rest of us
I support China's inclusion into the global economy. It helps raise many millions of people out of poverty, while providing solid incentives to move forward politically. However, let's not fool ourselves... China has a long way to go.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Think about what it would mean if they let Google expand as it wants. All those advertising revenues ... gone. Control over which websites appear in searches (and at what level) and which don't ... gone. A great way for their security forces to keep tabs on what searches are made ... gone. A natural niche for their home-grown search engine company ... gone.
If the same thing were happening to the US, we would be seeing plenty of legislative initiatives that would somewhere feature the magic words "national security".
China has a more practical approach to addressing the issue that doesn't involve legislative initiatives, but the ethics and the net effect seem to be quite comparable.
What was that complaint again?
Who are those alleged people you speak of? I use "fascist" as an insult, and I am totally with you on China being the archetypal Fascist state. You're even nice enough to explain why I think fascism is evil:
That is as good and succinct a definition of Fascism as I have ever seen, and it makes me sick every time I read it. It's the antithesis of democracy, and I, for one, quite enjoy my freedom thank you very much.
One could argue that the Soviet Union's problem was their political system, not their economic system. They may not have been wealthy with shiny gizmos, but they could potentially produce enough to feed, cloth, and house everyone. Many Russians want the Soviet Union back, in fact. Capitalism is hard to get right it seems.
In Stalin's time, for example, a professor could afford a personal chauffeured car, a maid or two, and the best living accommodation - this was when people were paid for their worth. After Stalin things changed: a scientist went hungry (130 R/mo) and an uneducated metal worker at a factory (400-500 R/mo) started buying cars, dachas and tourist trips. This was one of those things that doomed the USSR; I can't imagine a more stupid idea than to herd your best and brightest into the lowest class.
But this assumes that fast technological progress is a good thing. Some argue it isn't, suggesting it causes too many upheavals if introduced too fast. (I don't necessarily agree, but can't say I can prove its the objective choice.)
Note that the US may be doing just this also by offshoring all the non-people-facing technology/sci work to the 3rd world because their lower labor rates.
Table-ized A.I.
My guess would be that, backstab and all, Google makes more money this way than if they withdrew from China.
. We can see Communism practiced on board of Enterprise in Star Trek, for example. Crew members can replicate anything they want and build whatever they like; use Holodecks as much as they want
It's funny, but, as much as StarFleet goes on about how they have eliminated scarcity, they never seem to have enough starships to go up against heavyweight enemies like the Borg or the Dominion. And, in TOS, Harry Mudd made "money", somehow. And, somehow, Federation personel would have to come up with that Latinum to visit DS9's bar! Surely the Ferengi do not take goodwill as payment!
This is my sig.
We should cut the Internet backbones to those commie fuckers (China) and isolate their entire goddamn country from the rest of the world until they stop fucking around.
There is http://solidot.com/ and the highest score is usually 2 (nobody visits it enough to be eligible to moderate).
Are you insane ? Basic logic shows us that any "fair" system must balance 2 things. It cannot neglect one for the other. Which is exactly what you do.
1) it must maximize wealth creation (obviously critically important)
2) it must distribute that wealth "fairly" among a number of people, and systems (e.g. money needs to go to police as a whole too)
Obviously the way capitalism works is by making concessions (but not too large, see progressive income tax and such) on point 2 in order to have more wealth to divide. It's been by an order of magnitude more succesfull than any other system. (An american "poor" person has a 2 bedroom apartment, a car and multiple tv's and computers on average).
Capitalism accepts temporary unfairness by creating rules that WILL even out the population in the long term.
The way communism (and socialism) works is by just using violence to do everything the way "it should be done". Which obviously immediately translates to the way a certain person or small group of persons thinks it should be done. This is what you're advocating. And yes, in theory it can be done better. However we are only human, and any socialist system will fail. It may take a while, but it's fall is inevitable. Don't ask what happens if an economy collapses, you don't want to know. Perhaps consult some people who've been to Zimbabwe. Iran is also in serious danger of having it's economy "fail", so perhaps there will be lots of people to ask what happens in that case too soon.
Is a person with a personal car, a 2 bedroom apartment, and multiple tv's and computers really "poor" ? In a lot of countries such a person would be considered very wealthy. E.g. in Iran.
exp(i*pi)+1=0
Which is fundamentally no different than today's "Climate Science" being based on models based on assumptions. At least economists are willing and ready to admit that their models are not fully accurate and should only be used roughly, not cast into stone.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Google failed to be a big hit in China partly because of its ability to search for censored stuff, and also because, its bad marketing strategy in China. While Baidu actively go into cities open up new offices, Google's marketing ppl just sit in their big headquarters waiting for businesses to come. This doesn't work in China, if they ever learnt from Dell. But still, one day the red army will conquer google HQ, one day.
Wow, you are so clever. I love the way you took that guy's paragraph, changed one word, and then humorously pointed out that you "fixed" his assertion about China. Fuck, you are brilliant. Could you next lecture us on how George W. Bush hates black people and Wal-Mart pays below average wages to its workers?
1. Wikipedia is redirected to Baidu knows, which is a copycat (I would call it plagiarism) of wikipedia minus all "unwanted" information of the Chinese government.
2. youtube is redirected to 6 rooms, another idea copycat.
The political system was just fine until Gorbachev started messing with it without understanding how it works. The old system was just like what China has now - a rule of few, and you could be one of those few if you are smart enough and if you know the right people. The economy was bad, that's the real problem.
Why was the economy bad? Because they couldn't "produce enough to feed, cloth, and house everyone." Most of the USSR is too far North, and agriculture there is a risky business. Summer is only 3 months if you are lucky, and if you are not then the year's harvest is dead (rains, for example, make it impossible to gather whatever you grew.) This is the reference to Ph.D's slogging through the potato fields and picking potatoes from the deep mud with their hands, one potato at a time. It's no Idaho there.
Clothing was generally OK, as long you don't demand variety. Most men wouldn't even realize that such a thing exists :-) But housing was terribly bad. The problem was so bad that most cities had mandatory residence permits (some still do) and it was almost impossible to get some of those, like in Moscow. With a permit you could rent from the state, but there was very little of available living space, and the growing population ate up all the new construction. Many families lived in a small apartment for their whole life, including their children and sometimes grandchildren. Why so? Because the state had a specific plan for new construction, and so much space, and so many workers. A capitalist would ask "why not to buy more land and hire more workers" and a socialist would reply that there is no money to pay for the land because the rents are unreasonably cheap (25R/mo, for example) and the construction workers are expensive (300R/mo) and there isn't enough of them anyway, and the machinery is in short supply because (points to another Ministry, across the road.) Dependencies everywhere; right now the free market fixes most of them, but 30 years ago it was impossible. If you wanted to open just a private car wash, with nothing but a bucket and a brush, you couldn't do it - such things were against the law, only the State could own means of production. That got dumped in 1990, in the first phase of Gorbachev's reforms.
But this assumes that fast technological progress is a good thing
Technological progress buys you better and faster tools to build more houses, to grow more food, and to make better clothes, for example. If you don't do that then your naturally growing population will starve (and that started to happen in 1980's.) Also if you don't employ your scientists then don't be so amazed when they leave the country, and then don't wonder why your TV is still black and white, and not that color-HD-whatever that Japanese watch every day. Military is also a major consumer of technology, and if you get rid of your scientists the generals will be very upset, and a wise man should not upset generals needlessly.
Note that the US may be doing just this also by offshoring all the non-people-facing technology/sci work to the 3rd world
"They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." (link.)
Doesn't prove much. We know the Chinese are sensitive to a lot of "political" topics. But this article is claiming wholesale highjacking of commercial sites too. That would kill business with those industries. People already know the Chinese speak with two languages when cutting a deal. One is the obvious, the other is the hidden one you have to learn by feel. This would suggest that even a deal made in both languages isn't worth the paper it is printed on.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Google has about as much choice as China in who sees what results, ie, none at all. If Chinese citizens do not like the results they see on Google's searches, they won't use Google; it's not as if Google can make the search for "fuzzy animals" always come up with furry porn and continue to have a revenue stream.
Are you seriously trying to say it's OK for China to hijack the presence of a company that actually has a presence there?
And that "national security" legislation sure worked great when those Jap fucks started putting Ford out of business.
What's that? Oh, we didn't do that? Shit, I guess you're right.
Basic logic shows us that any "fair" system must balance 2 things.
There are more than those 2. For example, "and not damage culture and good-will". It is claimed that excessive capitalism creates an "ugly" competitive selfish culture.
The way communism (and socialism) works is by just using violence to do everything the way "it should be done".
What definition are you using? Note that some things called by these titles are not really these titles.
Further, some "socialists" claim that the existence of capitalism ruins the socialistic systems, keeping them from working to its full potential by shortcutting the process via flooding the marking with goods from over-caffeinated over-worked de facto indentured servants. (It is hard to test this without nuking all the capitalistic countries.)
This is what you're advocating.
No I didn't. I am just saying its a subjective choice. Science will not and should not dictate how people "should" behave. At best it is a predictive tool, like "if you do A and B, then C will happen". Whether A, B, or C "should" happen is another matter.
Table-ized A.I.
To prevent stuff like this happening in the US, we need net neutrality.
So this is what Brin had sold his soul for: a Faustian bargain where Mephistopheles doesn't keep his end, and never intended to.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Technological progress buys you better and faster tools to build more houses, to grow more food, and to make better clothes, for example.
And nukes, genetic monster corn, and displacement via automation, etc. It is not a free lunch.
If you don't do that then your naturally growing population will starve (and that started to happen in 1980's.)
You are assuming that population should "naturally grow".
and then don't wonder why your TV is still black and white, and not that color-HD-whatever that Japanese watch every day.
Like I said in another message, competing with Capitalists is not necessarily the ideal goal.
Most existing economies are mixed and the people there see little reason to change. They don't have fat HD TV, but they also don't have nearly the risk of massive depressions and layoffs. (Economists still debate over the cause of the Great Depression, meaning it could happen again because they haven't solved the first one.)
Table-ized A.I.
I was checking my logs and noticed the entire site being downloaded by two computers on the same subnet. It was really clunky, not wget or anything, just a couple people downloading with Firefox. They grabbed everything -- audio files, images, attachments. So I checked it out -- China. Contacted the admin and got a note back saying, "Sorry, we liked your site and wanted to make it easier for Chinese people to find." It was sort of flattering.
Honestly, the more I hear about China, the more it sounds like the (stereo)typical massive corruption scenario.
I.e., no need to assume that there's some government hand behind it, or some meaningful form of protest against the west. It can be simply that some guy running their DNS servers/proxies/great-firewall/whatever got a nice bribe to redirect the lookups to someone selling the same kind of product, or an importer, or really whoever was willing to pay.
The way the kleptocracy/corruption scenario goes is, basically, it doesn't matter how much you're paid, it only matters how much you can steal/embezzle/get-as-bribes. Whole hierarchies are formed where any job worth anything (in loot/bribes/whatever) is essentially either given to party leaders' relatives or auctioned to the highest bidder. And then it's considered pretty much normal and expected that you'd get your money back, and a nice profit, by stealing/embezzling/demanding-bribes/etc. Whatever works, really.
My favourite example of what corruption _can_ do, and incidentally also is (A) about China, and (B) nicely illustrates that there is no need for it to even be motivated by some higher ideals or nationalism, is the Battle of the Yalu River in 1894.
Among various surrealism of it all, many shells used by the Chinese fleet were filled with sawdust or cement, because some enterprising souls in the navy had embezzled the funds for cordite and split the loot with the manufacturer. Or stuff as monumentally surrealistic as that a battleship was missing two main guns, which again had been stolen and sold on the black market. Yep, you've read that right: big f-ing guns off a battleship, simply dismantled and sold on the black market.
You also find such surrealistic stuff, as that the fleet's second in command -- no doubt, some fellow with either high placed relatives, or who bought the job fair and square -- deliberately didn't relay the order to deploy into battle formation. The formation where the big ships could fire at the Japanese was also the formation where the Japanese could fire at the ship he's on, and, you know, he wasn't going to do stupid stuff like risk his own life for his country. At any rate, someone felt protected enough to ignore a direct order, even if it cost the country a humiliating defeat.
That's the kind of thing that corruption can do. Someone didn't give a fuck about their country or about sticking it to the foreigners. They just cost their country a humiliating defeat, simply because, you know, there was something to steal or he had bribed someone powerful enough to ignore a direct order.
So, regardless of whether you wish to see a continuity of that in China or not, well, that's how far corruption can go.
And you don't even have to look one century back, the (ex)communist block provides a ton of more recent examples. And not even just the commies. Just about anywhere where some people were given enough unchecked power, some enterprising souls proceeded to sell their influence for cash. With similar results.
The more devastating result being that they invariably destroyed a whole country's culture in the process. The little guys were allowed to steal or get a bribe worth maybe 1$, so they wouldn't mind when the party leaders stole a million bucks in one fell swoop.
So now look at this particular incident, and you tell me if you really need some higher reason or motivation than bribe to explain it.
It's freakin' sad, that's what it is.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Perhaps you could help me to actually do something about starving people instead of accusing me without facts.
I actually have an interest in philanthropy and I do give money and sometimes food to starving and homeless people that I am aware of their situation, as well as food and temporary shelter/healthcare to stray animals, and donations to various organisations (but never tax-exempt, but even if I were in the US I wouldn't base my donation decisions on tax reasons). I also have set up a project to offer free computer infrastructure and web/cvs/svn/imap/email/ftp hosting to free software developers.
There are also many people who spend much more than me on computers and other much more unnecessary stuff, and drive SUVs, but I refuse to buy a car or even a motorbike (admittedly not needed in EU as much as in the US).
So, if you want to do something about hunger etc, and not just to whine at people who use computers for their work, you could perhaps point me at the direction of people who you know are in need of assistance and help me verify their situation. But random whining doesn't help, does it?
China is not fascist IMHO because they don't have an institutionalized ideology of racism and military expansionism. I just think western political science doesn't have a word yet for what they are yet.
China runs like a communist state in that "The Party" makes all the decisions. As Lenin said, "the party is the vanguard of the proletariat [the people]" -- so the proletariat should just shut up. People join the party and then are slowly promoted up the ranks, appointed to various positions, committees, etc. based on internally made decisions by fellow party members ("Inner Party Democracy"). At the very top is the central committee and the chairman of the central committee is nominally the head of the government.
Here's a good article on political reform within the party and the strengthening of "inner-party democracy":
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/2007/09/19/123161/All-eyes.htm
The economic system is different from the west in that banks run with heavy state influence but never contract credit. In the U.S a bank makes a lot of bad loans -- it goes out of business. They all tend to do that at the same time when credit stops expanding -- which causes a contraction in lending, which causes a slowdown in the economy.
In China bank make tons of bad loans to people the government wants them to and the loans never get paid back. The banks get continually bailed out by the government and so the credit cycle doesn't really happen. The problem with this system is that if the banks lend money to inefficient industries, or cronies, inflation will get rolling along. China counteracts this by regularly executing corrupt bank officials. They also stomp on asset bubbles by doing things like raising taxes and instituting mandatory down payments on real estate loans.
In the west we have the law and only the law and lots of lawyers to go with it. In China they have the law and a lot of arbitrary rules made by party officials that they change from time to time. The whole thing hangs together IMHO because of a strong sense of solidarity and patriotism within the party and brutal action against dissent from outside the party and corruption inside the party.
Usually new ideas get introduced into the party dialog by internal party think tanks who make speeches and float trial balloons which are collectively accepted or rejected by the higher levels of the party.
It's a different system but it works. The problem is is that these kinds of systems have to be particularly careful to keep power evenly distributed -- and keep out Stalin like sociopaths -- in order to prevent the party from becoming too rigid or power from becoming too concentrated and thus making irrational policy decisions and stifling "legitimate" criticism as happened during Mao's reign.
Pure, unmitigated bollocks. Capitalism does not channel selfish urges "for the greater good of society" it channels them for the good of the individual. Sometimes that benefits society as a whole, sometimes it doesn't.
Oh, and you might have an urge to own everything and control everything, but don't project your megalomaniacal tendencies onto the rest of us.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Indeed. Oh wait, China? Sorry, I thought you were talking about a different superpower.
Last year and through part of this year, there were reports of some sort of DNS poisoning in China involving vnet.cn. See: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=60083 for one report of the behavior. In the link I posted, the user was worried the problem was due to some sort of malware, but I witnessed the same behavior firsthand (domain names apparently at random resolving to a vnet.cn address) where the problem was not due to malware local to a particular user's machine. In the cases I witnessed, the DNS servers were operated by China Telecom.
Communism is utopian. It is built on 19th century pseudo-science, and it ought to be no more respectable to be a Communist than to be a Phrenologist.
Not necessarily. See, here's the rub. Communism is actually the ideal social structure, except that in populations about ~500 individuals, it doesn't work because human nature derails it. There are many communist communities in north America, just under different names. Hutterite colonies, Amish colonies, etc. All of them succeed because they are relatively insular, and stay small. When a communistic community grows beyond a certain size, it inevitably self-destructs. To avoid this, the colony starts a new "daughter" colony as the population increases.
I live in the People's Republic of China and this has never happened to me before. I occasionally cannot access Google, however that usually goes away after three minutes. I can see it happening here, however I cannot vouch for the validity of accusation.
A janitor should be paid a living wage. But you don't get 8 kids by accident, no one put a gun to his and his spouses head and forced them to breed. It was a conscious decision.
And frankly, I don't want to reward someone for mindlessly breeding way outside their means, it only encourages the behavior as it is. Earth is at a tipping point as it is with human population.
If he wants 8 kids, lets him make sure he can afford it first.
Works with software.
*sighs* Germany's problem with production was that it kept trying to produce the best and strongest, which is no way to win a war you're in the middle of. Instead you just produce the stuff that's good enough for your needs. Because they kept attempting to keept their war machine on the bleeding edge in a war of survival, they kept having to do things like retool production lines and tech the workers how to build the new tech. Britain did no such thing, instead relying on technology like the flipping Sten gun. THAT is why Britain was consistently able to outproduce the Germans.
For a while, until I had my preferences set up, Google.com would constantly redirect me to Google.co.uk, which was annoying because the same search at work would result in something completely different from home.
Could this have happened in China. Perhaps the server was misconfigured?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Let me remind most of my usa brothers, and sistas ^.^, in most of the world and till a few generations ago here as well, it is not Economics, but Political Economics. To wit: Yo, man, are you free after Political Economics 101, for lunch?
> This is a fairly serious accusation; anyone else have first-hand experiences that would back this up?
Indeed.
After the Google->Baidu situation, I got fed up and started pumping all my DNS usage through tor-dns-proxy.
All the comments just went directly to all sorts of China-bashing and wild speculation. I believe hearing about something like this a few years ago, when google refused to censor itself. Ever since google starts to censor itself I have not heard anything like this. This has nothing to do with foreign companies making money -- plenty of foreign companies are making big bucks in China, but this has everything to do with censorship. When google started self-censorship, it already lost the head start and had to fight an uphill battle to gain back the market.
NO, NO, NO!
Do not start redefining terms and definitions at your own political whims.
Even though I'm sure the majority of us are in agreement that corporations should not have a pervasive influence over a government, although Fascism as it was defined by Mussolini may very well apply to China, you can NOT apply this sort of thinking in reverse.
You could potentially make the argument China controls the media in a manner similar to what was suggested by Benito Mussolini, hence China shows characteristics of Fascism. However, you can't do the opposite: China embraces corporate-controlled capitalism, and since China is Fascist, all Fascists embrace corporate-controlled capitalism.
Although my example is a bit extreme, you're effectively doing the same thing.
And this has happened over and over and over again throughout history. If a political leader can draw a connection between his own personal opponents, and an ideology that is widely feared by the public, he can then contort this fear in a manner as to to defeat his opponent. Such ideologies in recent history would include communism, fascism, and nazism.
Over time, this strategy serves to contort the very meaning of that ideology. When communism emerged, and the Russian revolution occurred, several American leaders took a look, and decided that communism might not be such a fantastic idea. Unfortunately, the layer of FUD they applied was far too thick, and every one of the USSR's missteps got incorporated into the definition of "communism"
By the time Stalin took power, the Soviet Union had strayed completely away from Marx's original set of communist ideals. The fear element was now in place, and McCarthyism was born. (The Soviet leadership did the same exact thing on the opposite end, committing a number of heinous crimes in defense of their beloved "communism")
Whilst attempting to be as "un-communistic" as possible, America shunned some of the more favorable aspects of the ideology for very little reason. Sure, a monolithic communist government will probably never work, but that's not to say that nationalized healthcare, and a properly funded public education system will spell doom and gloom for the nation. Marx got those ideas from the French Revolution, which was also more or less the inspiration for the US Constitution.
This is also the reason why we see Godwin's Law all over the place. There's a BIG difference between exclaiming "He's just bad as the Nazis!" and "He's a Nazi!". Please tread lightly.
If nothing else, it makes history a real pain in the ass to study. (When exactly did the definitions of 'Liberal' and 'Conservative' reverse, whilst both completely separated themselves from the European definitions of the words? Don't you see what problems that could cause?)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Only if you know nothing about modern China. A great deal of China's economy is now controlled by businessmen. Successful businessmen keep close links with government, but to the end of greasing their way rather than the state controlling them. And in rural areas, peasants have been doing pretty much what they want for a few decades now. There is less "within the state" in China every year.
Actually, this may well be how Fascist Italy really worked (I know less about Italy than China), but in both cases the ideals, like the Communist ideals in China before that, are just empty slogans. You take them at face value at your peril.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
If China is deliberately doing this - block China completely, they have just become a bigger threat than we can afford to deal with.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You are assuming that population should "naturally grow"
This is something that a government can not control, unless it is truly totalitarian, and the USSR (for example) wasn't that bad. China tried (tries?) to control the population growth, with mixed results. But in a generally free country people can move around, create families, make children. The philosophers sitting at the top of that Ivory Tower may disagree, and they may prescribe zero growth to the nation, as their charts recommend, but how do you enforce that without infringing on many of the rights of the people? You can't just turn a dial and set zero growth to most prosperous cities, and 10% growth to agrarian regions, and -10% growth to already overpopulated places...
Like I said in another message, competing with Capitalists is not necessarily the ideal goal.
And from the position of a wise, old man you are absolutely right. However a stupid 15 y.o. teenager will gladly start a revolution to get a free iPod. It takes a great deal of knowledge of both societies to understand advantages and disadvantages of each, and then to choose the optimal compromise. You can not do that if all you know is the conditions "here", and the conditions "there" are repackaged to amplify the good, suppress the bad, and sold to you under the shiny cover of the "America" magazine, for example. You can get a lot of mileage from describing the new, shiny cars that an average American can buy; someone who can't afford even a badly made local car will be duly impressed. The cost of medical service (free in USSR) may be not mentioned so prominently, and people who expect it to be free will not even know why they should ask. A Soviet worker would never ask about your insurance premiums, or about your University loans - they didn't exist in the USSR because they were not needed. If you only tell him about your new car, and not mention the loan behind it, the worker will get wrong ideas (like free money, or streets paved with gold ... all that.)
the people there see little reason to change
The people can be easily shown such a reason, even if the reason is false. As an example, the US population believed, and still believes, in many lies about Iraq. There is nothing strange, then, if some other society is led to believe that every family is entitled to one new, shiny car, and a house, and a TV with 1000 channels, and... (people's greed is limitless.)
But of course you refer mostly to the modern situation, where F/OSS distribution model has certain likeness of Communism (from everyone according to his capabilities, to everyone according to his needs, and there is no Government.) I guess the p1rate scene also follows, including music, at least on the consumption side.
So they can do that if they want to and there is nothing wrong with it either.
Catch 22: They have the right do anything that we are unable to prevent them from doing.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The expression "A == C" can incorporate ("A == B" and "B == C"). There is no need to elaborate on the obvious. Capitalism benefits the society more than it hurts, or else it could not survive; just ask the corpse of feudalism, for example. My original statement is true.
Oh, and you might have an urge to own everything and control everything, but don't project your megalomaniacal tendencies onto the rest of us.
References to humans in general are of statistical nature. I can imagine that some people will refuse a free check worth $100M, but I strongly suspect that majority of the population of this planet will grab it as fast as they can (the current exchange rate notwithstanding.)
OK, I see a lot of posts here with some misleading info. Just to clear the air:
1. Foreign companies can own 100% of China enterprises (in some industries), and this is called a WOFE (Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise)
2. For any company to operate a web site in China, they need an ICP (Internet Content Provider) license.
3. Only domestic PRC entities (citizens), can get an ICP license (any foreign ownership and ICP license cannot be issued)
4. There are ways around #2+#3, through a legal loophole which is quite simply, a) the foreign company has their in country manager or other domestic person setup a 100% domestic owned PRC company to get the ICP license. b) the foreign company has a proxy agreement and share pledge with the "official" shareholder(s) of that PRC domestic company which are side contracts giving control and management of the domestic company to the foreign owned (WOFE) of the foreign investors. c) The WOFE also has a contract with the PRC company to extract all revenue out through a "technical services and management agreements". d) The WOFE then is able to book all the revenue from the company, making it a synthetic subsidiary and thus getting around all the laws forbidding foreign investment in the PRC company. (interesting note, this structure was designed in the 70's to get around foreign investment limitations in petrochemical industries, and is now used by all the major internet and game companies listed abroad, ie: tom.com, sina.com, snda.com, Google, Yahoo etc.)
5. The telcos here (China Netcom and China Telecom) often seem to re-direct traffic as the post claims. I have seen google.com traffic redirected for an entire weekend to 114.cn, which is China Telecom's lame search engine! Baidu.com redirect I see much less often. There are also many others for instance ALL traffic was redirecting to Yahoo.cn on my cable broadband connection from my house yesterday, no idea why Yahoo.cn, but it was.
6. A lot of traffic to the China internet portal kings is fake, by fake think how gold farming in MMOGs works, people playing for gold and getting paid 0.50 cents an hour to play in China. I have heard *rumors* from insider friends saying that many portals pay people the equivalent to click on links all day.....think market cap and ad revenue reporting.....it would not surprise me in the least but I can't say I have seen it personally.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Back on topic: China's experience is not that of the West. The West looks back to the success of Athens, of the Roman Republic, and of the near-democracy of the northern European tribes (the Saxons, for instance; even the Iriquois Confederacy in America). China on the other hand looks back to many centuries of imperial glory that were far in advance of anything the Roman Empire ever achieved. Unlike the Romans, the empire wasn't degenerate from a republic. Unlike the Romans, posts under the emperor were largely based on merit - anyone who could score well on the exams was given authority to match their proven learning and intelligence.
The Chinese went wild for Mao because they have fond cultural memories of life under great emperors. Mao didn't work out so well, yet still their cultural memory has little place for democracy. The Nationalists - their one "democratic" leadership - were mobsters through and through. Mao was a relief after that. Even Hong Kong was only given democracy as the Brits left; it had been under thoroughly imperial governance up until then by the Brits - and quite prosperously and delightfully so as far as the inhabitants were concerned.
The saving grace for the rest of the world is that the Chinese have most often been an inward-looking, rather than expansionist empire. But what they're looking at as examples of progress are Singapore - not exactly a Western democracy in fact, despite pretenses - and what the Brits did with Hong Kong - an unelected government favoring largely-uncontrolled business operations. Taiwan would be a bright light, except Taiwanese businesses are so invested in the mainland now the last thing they want to see is a truly democratic government there that might do something drastic like expropriate their factories in favor of "the workers," or some other throwback to the Maoism that's still given some respect there.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Russia, China, Japan, Germany and Italy are all friendlies today. They are not the 'enemy'. The 'enemy' of today, are a bunch of religious freaks hiding out mostly in the Middle East.
The economic policies of China was communist for a few decades, but presently it is a capitalist/socialist mixture just like any western country, so you can't hold that against them - not our business anyway.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Socialism has at least one major fault: it depends on people taking their share of the common wealth, proportional to their contribution.
No. Control by the workers of the means of production is designed precisely to tackle exploitation. Only under capitalism can people take a "share of wealth" grossly disproportional to "their contribution", through asset investment.
A genius scientist can be entitled to millions of dollars, but he is not married, lives at his lab and needs nothing.
You'd be hard pressed to find a psychologist that doesn't consider "genius" to be identifiable by about the age of 5-6. A genius is formed of a mixture of good genetics and early nurturing environment. He will always receive greater admiration than the average Joe, and he will always have an easier time conquering problems; to give him lots of money in addition to these unearnt gifts is nothing to do with entitlement. It's merely the capitalist way of making sure he's on your team.
A family of janitors with 8 kids needs everything they can get from the society, and they are hardly earning anything from the society for their work.
Last I checked, society needs janitors. Since you put so little value on those who keep the buildings in your neighbourhood clean, I suggest you lobby for them to all be fired. Meanwhile, to keep things balanced, I'll lobby for AstraZeneca to fire all its scientists. We'll see who among us feels the effect first, OK?
In Stalin's time, for example, a professor could afford a personal chauffeured car
Why? Did he need his equipment to be carried around? Was it because he was often taking his underlings on field trips? Please, reveal to me why a dedicated professor would be interested in a chauffeur.
After Stalin things changed: a scientist went hungry (130 R/mo) and an uneducated metal worker at a factory (400-500 R/mo) started buying cars
So the problem was that during Stalin, millions of workers went hungry, but after Stalin, a few professors went hungry? And to you, this is a retrograde step? (Except they certainly didn't - the professors always had it better. But never mind.)
I can't imagine a more stupid idea than to herd your best and brightest into the lowest class.
Quite, you're revealing your fascist colours; you'd prefer that the weaker starve and only the stronger survive.
Many of them escaped to Israel and the USA as soon as they could
So some academics see their jobs as a means to an end (wealth) rather than an end itself (scholarship). Never encountered a good academic with this attitude, however.
it was simply insulting for them to remain, be paid a pittance, and see their skills wasted on picking up potatoes in the field with locals just sitting around
I recall one of my better tutors, Cambridge grad, deciding to work as a miner for a year or two straight after graduation. Why? Picking potatoes / mining coal might be below your brilliant mind, but to his brilliant mind, every man could pull his weight wherever it was needed; he didn't see his brain as a "get out clause" from doing dirty work.
Communism is based on... unlimited consumption of [all worldly goods] as your needs dictate
There is sufficient wealth in Sweden, say, for no man to starve, nor to die from lack of medical care, nor to go without shelter. So, taking "needs" to be those things, it is possible to create a socialist country in which there can be consumption "as your needs dictate"; and a more capitalist country, such as the USA. You're complaining that a goal is unattainable, when it has been reached already - assuming one were to redistribute a tiny proportion of wealth for remaining cases of homelessnes, etc. - by many first world countries.
humans are possessive animals, with urge to own everything and control everything
I have no urge to own anything beyond
Fascism is the opposite of liberty, not democracy.
Liberty and democracy are not the same thing. One is far more valuable than the other.
DNS poisoning is very likely against PRC law as much as it would be against US law. Why would companies think they could get away with this? The fascistic system prevalent in the PRC that means that 'favors' go both ways.
Fascism, in practice, is a shell game, robbing peter to pay paul. Compared to communism, it can appear better but the improvements are unsustainable. Eventually you have to reform fascism out of the system or you have to suffer a collapse.
That being said, The PRC is *huge* and the shell game could go on before the collapse for a very long time. You can make good money in a crooked game like a Ponzi scheme. You just have to know when to get out. How much of the magic in the PRC is real and how much is a fascist con game is one of the biggest economic questions on the planet everybody's afraid to ask.
I'm in China right now and I can say with authority that you're wrong.
For the record, I'm an American born Caucasian currently in Shenzhen province.
The Chinese are better capitalists then any American ever dreamed of being.
They might not openly admit it, but they LOVE capitalism.
"Money talks and bullshit walks" Nowhere in the world is that more true then in China.
They might call themselves communists, but that's a load of crap. Money is the only thing that matters on this side of the pond.
While your concepts on fascism are interesting, it's not that complicated here. China is a very simple place. Dogs eat dogs and then they pick their teeth with the bones. If you're not ruthless enough to eat another dog, they'll come chomping at your tail.
As for the original topic, there is SOME validity to it, but it's not as rampant as the article makes it sound. Google is definitely slower in China then it is in Hong Kong. (Hong Kong, while part of China techcnically operates under it's own separate government). They don't block it or redirect it though, it's just much slower.
When I was in China last April and went to slashdot I got redirected to some site all pink and pretty. If I remember correctly it was about ponies. I thought at the time it was strange but now I know it was the gvt.
using System.Awesome;
More insightful points here please ^
Bingo. So someone mistyped or misremembered a url, and their Chinese ISP helpfully redirected them to a search engine.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
The fundamental biological reality of populations is that there is a carrying capacity past which populations crash in horrible orgies of disease and violence. Animal populations tend to have spikes and crashes. Humanity used to suffer those too until we started to have technological progress so rapid that we lifted our carrying capacity consistently beyond our population growth. Doing away with that is speaking out in favor of massive plague deaths, starvation, and war. There is no "neat" alternative because you simply are not going to get a significant portion of humanity to turn against the impulse to genetically compete. The PRC has done it but only through immense, horrifying violence and even they figured out that they've screwed up. Look up the 4-2-1 problem and you'll see how the PRC may ultimately fail because it's going to go gray before it gets rich.
We're far more in danger of demographic collapse than a population bomb. For the past two decades everybody's been adjusting their population estimates downwards. Get with the times.
This is exactly what China wants to do if they want to be major players in the global economy.
Think very hard about this approach if you want to play in the global market!
Sorry, you've got it backwards. Marx's ideas in a book were theory. When people actually tried to apply them and didn't give up in disgust in a few months, you always ended up with the same sort of stalinist violence, repression, and aggressiveness. People have been getting away with arguing that "true marxism" has never been tried for a century now. Give it up, it has been tried, repeatedly, and results in rivers of blood.
Control by the workers of the means of production is designed precisely to tackle exploitation.
Are you serious? Paying 130 R/mo (USD $5/mo) to an engineer to design stuff is not an exploitation? A worker in socialism has no say in his salary; it's not even negotiable, it's set by the charts, and those charts are prepared high at the top.
Only under capitalism can people take a "share of wealth" grossly disproportional to "their contribution", through asset investment.
Someone bought their money, must be a fair deal then. A corporation is not required to go public, you know.
You'd be hard pressed to find a psychologist that doesn't consider "genius" to be identifiable by about the age of 5-6. A genius is formed of a mixture of good genetics and early nurturing environment. He will always receive greater admiration than the average Joe,
You have somewhat interesting ideas; but in the real world - in any country - smart children are usually just beaten up for all their smarts. The crowd does not like non-conformists.
and he will always have an easier time conquering problems; to give him lots of money in addition to these unearned gifts is nothing to do with entitlement. It's merely the capitalist way of making sure he's on your team.
It's a different way to describe his value to the capitalist, and through him - to the society.
Why? Did he need his equipment to be carried around? Was it because he was often taking his underlings on field trips? Please, reveal to me why a dedicated professor would be interested in a chauffeur.
Most dedicated professors had poor eyesight, were too busy to learn driving and car-care, and the service was affordable to them, and they could work in the car. You have a market demand and a market offer, and they met.
So the problem was that during Stalin, millions of workers went hungry, but after Stalin, a few professors went hungry? And to you, this is a retrograde step?
Ignoring the numbers that you offer no citation for, one professor generally has a societal value far exceeding that of a large number of minimally educated machinists, drivers and factory floor cleaners.
Quite, you're revealing your fascist colours; you'd prefer that the weaker starve and only the stronger survive.
Sorry, you are introducing undefined, foreign concepts here (weaker, stronger.) I thought socialism is based on distribution of wealth per value added to the society, so why do you object that very thing?
So some academics see their jobs as a means to an end (wealth) rather than an end itself (scholarship). Never encountered a good academic with this attitude, however.
They were paid little, and ordered to work beneath their level (gathering potatoes, for example.)
I recall one of my better tutors, Cambridge grad, deciding to work as a miner for a year or two straight after graduation. Why? Picking potatoes / mining coal might be below your brilliant mind, but to his brilliant mind, every man could pull his weight wherever it was needed; he didn't see his brain as a "get out clause" from doing dirty work.
I agree with your tutor. However there is a big difference - he DECIDED to work as a miner, not was ORDERED to do so against his wishes and contrary to his studies.
There is sufficient wealth in Sweden, say, for no man to starve, nor to die from lack of medical care, nor to go without shelter.
No, there is not. I have some Swedish friends, by the way, and they tell me lots of stories about Swedish politics. But in any case, no country has inexhaustible resource of everything.
So, taking "needs" to be those things, it is possible to create a socialist country in which there can be consum
...foreign airlines fly in US airspace all the time but just aren't allowed to go between two US destinations. This restriction was removed 30 years ago when the industry was deregulated.I think you've got your inspirations a bit turned around, there.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"This is a fairly serious accusation; anyone else have first-hand experiences that would back this up?" Who cares? China is allowed to do whatever they want. Neo-cons say so.
The company I work for had that happen almost two year ago. We noticed a little funny traffic, and traced it back to a Chinese outfit which had a similar domain name, and acted as a proxy: When you went to their site, they would parse the request, get the real info from our page, fix the links, and send it back to the user. We didn't figure they wanted to actually follow through on the order fulfilment, but rather just wanted to get credit cards as people tried to check out.
A lot of folks will tell you that trying to block based on geo isn't very productive, but I can tell you from experience that every
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Americans do. Read about it on other world sites (for example, Fox news, washington post, white house news, Weekly World News, national inquirer,pravda, Xinhua, ).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The biggest reason is that Germany never managed to pull itself up out of the 'craftsman' style of industry, where production relied on highly-trained workers who saw production of an individual item through from start to finish, instead of the assembly-line style of industry, where each worker performs a single specific task on a succession of items, and only has to be trained to do that one task, rather than on the whole production process.
The result of this was that German equipment, where it was not being built by slave labor, was extremely well-made and often years ahead of the equivalent Allied equipment in design, but production could not readily be increased, and the production costs were much higher than the Allies'. And the constant drive to come up with something better and more powerful kept design works cranking out concepts whose construction and testing consumed valuable manpower that could have more profitably been employed elsewhere.
I just got back from a year in Beijing, and I totally agree that the Chinese system is dog eat dog. But that's the utter problem with it. Because there is no such thing as say, a level regulatory field, or an unbiased legal system, the dogs aren't competing in a market economy per se, but in a power economy, which is exactly what TFA is all about. You and I both know that Baidu is inferior to Google in terms of returning proper search results, but Baidu called in favors from the China Telecom or whoever, and it had nothing to do with what is normally understood as "competition" or "capitalism" and everything to do with corruption and collusion.
Instead, let's look at the British, whom had less population, less natural resources, and still managed to produce more aircraft and more warships than the Germans
Um, you are aware that, at the time, Britain still controlled a vast, world-spanning empire, right?
That's interesting and well-argued, but I believe the post you responded to is talking about economic protectionism, not invading other countries and installing favorable governments in them. I don't think there are any economic benefits to "nation-building" in and of itself.
China sells lots of stuff to other countries and doesn't allow other countries to sell it very much stuff. They do this in many ways, some official and some not. For example, it's very difficult to open up a business in China as an outsider. They also peg their currency's exchange rate to the dollar, to ensure that it is easy for Americans to buy Chinese and difficult for Chinese to buy American. And on the shady side of things, I'm sure that bureaucrats go out of their way to make things difficult for foreigners, and then there's the whole issue of piracy and their general attitude towards our notions of "intellectual property." There's other stuff, such as them owning large amounts of foreign currency which, if they dumped it, would be very bad for our economy, but I'm not so well-versed in that.
That's what they mean by "have the world by the balls." It ain't military. It's the fact that if they wanted to, they could make our economies crash.
Note that some of the biggest corruption I have seen in China are orchestrated with the help of US and other foreign investors, corporations, etc.
Take for example a large NASDAQ listed company, that was under internal investigation last year. I can't name names, but this is second hand knowledge from someone I know involved as a customer to this company and questioned in the investigation. Here goes:
1. NASDAQ listed company founders and management write a huge option on their shares with a foreign bank. The shares are in lockup and due to be able to float in 6 months. The price that the bank pays, is based on a price they can sell (estimated) at the end of the lockup period in 6 months.
2. Investigation begins, because of revenues being booked through companies the auditors (and competitors) have never heard of. It comes to light in the investigation, that the revenues are actually the proceeds from the share option sale (management and founders), to drive up stock price before the end of the lockup period.
3. Underwriters, major investors (big names in US and Europe, can't say the names here) are all aware. Auditors are paid off. One board seat is changed. The truth is buried. The news never comes out because too many investors, banks would get burned.
4. Stock still flying to this day. Fact is the company is a great model, but a big part of the accelerated growth prior to lockup expiring was fraud. Investors, bankers, underwriters knew it. Corruption on a mass scale involving US and European banks and investors.
So, this is why I call China "the wild east". Things can go very backward fast and it is very hard to see the "real" picture in anything you do here.
That being said, there are companies, like GE, that do very well in China while staying for the most part very "clean". It is not impossible to succeed in China without being corrupt. But the stories of corruption I have heard involving foreigners number at least on par with those involving locals only.............its a human disease not a "communist" or "socialist" or even "democratic" problem.....its human.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Not strictly relevant, but I live in China and have been suffering at the hands of Baidu recently and not had any clue what was happening. Seemingly random links on UK sites would send me to baidu.com repeatedly - The Guardian's football rumours page last night, for example. Unlikely to be a spyware problem.
Well, I guess some companies are run by morons because no matter how bleeding heart liberal you are, you should remember Tiananmen Square. That really did happen and it wasn't in some fantasy either, real people died and were imprisoned over a peaceful demonstration asking for (what most of the free world sees as) basic human rights.
Just a thought.
My not responding to your flame is in no way indicative of my submission to your statement, it just means I don't have t
*sighs* Germany's problem with production was that it kept trying to produce the best and strongest, which is no way to win a war you're in the middle of.
But that's NOT TRUE at all. If it were true anywhere, it would be only true in the case of tanks, where the contractors were heavy machine makers and so treated each tank as a hand crafted thing. But even then, the Russian T-34 was a far better tank than the Panzers Germany entered the war with.
Beyond that, Germany sacrificed a lot for expediency. The entire U-Boat war was a concession to not build the best. The famed type XXI U-Boat, which could have been a game changer, was kept on the drawing boards to build the earlier designs. Germany cancelled construction of potential aircraft carriers, never built additional battleships... her whole naval strategy was to fight a sort of a guerilla war.
German infantry, for example, went to battle with a bolt action rifle, whereas her Yankee counterparts had the superior M1 Garand. And, you say, the "best"... German logistics trains relied in large part on steam locomotive engine and horse drawn transportation. Last time I checked, a truck was better than horse. The careful researcher will also note that the USA, incidentally, developed steam locomotives that significantly outperformed their German counterparts.
And have a look at aircraft, again.... the BF-109 and Spitfire were fairly close aircraft going into the war and throughout the Battle of Britain, but, again, the Germans had no equivalent to the Lancaster Bomber.
It goes on and on and on... Really, we have to look at the German Armed Forces for what they were. It had some modern tactics to help it early on, but, ultimately the whole thing was a mishmash of some misapplied high tech propaganda pieces to mask the overall inferiority of the whole thing. None of German's high tech weapons - the King Tiger, the V1 and V2, the ME-262, and the type XXI U-Boat, did a damned thing to change the outcome of the war, and her low tech weapons were simply not up to scratch.
Germany had an army that entered the war with tanks that weren't even as good as their French counterparts, a fighter aircraft that only matched the best the British could produce, had no real logistics support, a navy that lacked the capital ships to challenge its obvious rival, radar and signals intelligence nowhere near as advanced as her British counterparts. German communications was so bad that not only were all of their tactical communications read by the allies, the Germans didn't even realize that they were being read, despite obvious failures.
This is my sig.
"I'm sorry to see this modded down as it really makes me question the actual average IQ of the /.er to which I assumed in the past to be well above the mean."
A high IQ does not imply a detailed study of history. As evidenced by the posts that get modded up, most people here get their knowledge of history from a combination of The History Channel, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and assorted games and movies produced by Steven Spielberg.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The result of this was that German equipment, where it was not being built by slave labor, was extremely well-made
That's actually not true. German stuff wasn't made anywhere near the quality with the allies at the time. You color your characterization of American manufacturing with experiences based on cars of the 1970s. The fact is, until the Japanese came along in the 1980s, American manufactured stuff, was the best quality stuff in the world, and, was better by far.
Seriously, have a look at how many German tanks and aircraft kept breaking down, even before the advent of slave labor. German quality sucked, and then it got worse.
The whole myth of German quality in World War II came about because of pissed off Sherman tank drivers going up against Tiger tanks, which, were better armoured tanks. Seriously, as much as everyone prattles on about the quality of German Steel, those fans can find 50k tons of German Steel in the Bizmarck at the bottom of the Atlantic, but American face hardened Bethlehem Steel is still sitting pretty in the USS New Jersey (BB-62).
This is my sig.
It may be possible to control population growth by offering certain incentives, such as luxury goods (better TVs, chocolates, etc.) for those who have fewer children. If you have extra children, they don't starve, but the family won't get the "fun stuff" either.
Table-ized A.I.
Their entire site was copied wholesale - down to the flash apps, branding and graphics - by a company in Beijing.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
You're being a Nazi apologist.
You don't think the allies kept their gear on the bleeding edge? Ever hear of Radar? Ever compare 1939 RAF plane tech with 1945 RAF plane tech?
Wikipedia and the web in general are full of people like you - always spouting off about 'if only Hitler hadn't done this' or 'if they hadn't made this mistake they'd have won'. Fact of the matter is that both sides made mistakes, and we won.
If Britain out produced the Nazis, have the decency to give them credit for it, FFS.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Great post - the Chinese powers will keep the economic miracle going until the Olympic Games at all costs because to do otherwise would be to lose face. As most people know in Chinese culture (actually many Asian cultures) losing face is almost worse than death. I spent a few months in China at one of the big network labs there and it was clear everybody went around trying to save face at all costs. It was more important than getting the job done. My view is that the obsession coupled with fascist - that is authoritarian, tendencies in the country is ultimately a disaster in the making. Unfortunately we will all be affected by the economic collapse if it happens. Despite the almost universal adulation for the Chinese miracle (US business 'cos they think, erroneously, that they will make money out of it; the rest of the world because they are rooting, erroneously since China is a fascist state, for America to fall from number one) there is an element of the king without clothes about the whole Chinese boom. I guess we will have to wait and see, but take care of you investments in the months straddling the Beijing Olympics.
This has been reported at least a month ago, see http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9043243. I agree it's probably not governmental, just "ordinary" corruption. Pay off a few ISPs and collect a few days worth of revenue before people complain.
Maybe in Soviet Communism, but that is not the be-all and end-all of socialism. Communism is a form of socialism, but socialism is not Communism.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I had a pro-taiwan-independent blog years ago. Through SiteMeter tracking records, I found my blog posts were copied and "translated" into simplified Chinese characters.
there's no foul play involved. someone prolly tripped over the ethernet cables in the data center and pulled the plugs out of the server by mistake.
The GP asked what countries China had invaded in the past half century. Links were provided. And you get modded up?
Simply stunning.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If fulfilling my selfish urges make me better off, and your fulfilling your selfish urges make you better off, and the GP fulfilling his selfish urges makes him better off, we're all better off. So how do you go from "we're all better off" to "we're not all better off"?
Congratulations on being the exception that proves the rule. Look around you and read through some history books, and you'll notice that the vast majority of people are greedy and megalomaniacal. Like it or not, greedy, selfish people make the world go round. Under capitalism we reward them
"Under Capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it is just the reverse." - John Kenneth Galbraith
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Fascism(from the Italian for a bundle of sticks) was an Italian version of national socialism(little N not big N) which is to say "socialism for me and people like me and we'll make money off other people". The modern idea of Fascism comes from an unfortunate alliance between Mussolini and Hitler and the general confusion between "national socialism" and the "National Socialism" of the Nazi party in Hitler's Germany.
It might also be noted that the idea of a fascist mainland china is rather an amusing idea as the KMT(or GMD depending on your choice of spellings) of Chiang Kai-Shek was modelled very heavily after Mussolini's Italy, and was decidedly fascist in nature. I'm not entirely sure how the Chinese would feel about the idea that they had the same political system as the people who initially ran Taiwan, but I can hazard a guess.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
At least they'll be easier to level out when the US gets the sense to start emptying out their nuclear arsenal across their country.
Interesting comments, about the war production of UK vs. Germany.
"fascist regimes always produce good economic results, only because we believe them when they tell us that we do."
I think it was MIT's Lester Thurow who recently argued, from electricity statistics and other measures, that there was little chance China could really be growing at 10% or more per year. He estimated the growth at more like 5-6%
Historically, China's had a tough time holding itself together, and so you can't help but wonder whether they'll manage this time around. Not counting WWII, they went through three major upheavals (1911, 1949, late 60s) just in the past century.
Well, sorta. There are people without scruples anywhere, and the large mass is just as easy to lead in whatever direction you wish everywhere.
The difference, the way I see it, is that some countries are fighting harder to control it (mind you, not 100% successfully) while in the others the whole system and structure degenerated into something where everything is for sale. Justice, quality controls, etc.
And yes, it's nothing surprising that individuals without scruples or morals from the west, just see the situation in China/Africa/Ex-USSR as just another way to do business and just another opportunity. I'm sure they'd do the same at home, whenever it looks like they can get away with it. In fact, there are more than enough cases where they tried, and some where they even got away with it.
The difference is really the extent to which they can get away with it.
And I'm still under the impression that democratic societies experience the problem to a much lesser extent, given enough time to fight it. It's not that the kind of person who makes it to the top in the west is any better. It's just that they're a lot more watched and controlled. Whereas wherever whole hierarchy pyramids are really that pyramidal, with each level being judge, jury and executioner for the level below, eventually some enterprising souls make it to the top who just sell the jobs below them to the highest briber and their influence to the highest briber. And from there it just propagates.
The difference in the west is basically just that what looks very superficially like a pyramid is really a lot more complicated than that. You have the press poking his nose at higher levels. You have whole pieces like justice which are (more or less) outside the normal pyramid and given free hand to poke their nose above their level. You have the guys at the bottom actually controlling more or less what those at the top do. You have investors and unions controlling what the CEOs do. Etc.
Not saying that corruption doesn't happen in that kind of a system. It does. But to a much more limited extent and in more secrecy.
Whereas totalitarian places tend to congeal that structure really into a pyramid. The press is a part of that pyramid, and the guys above it dictate what it can print. The police and justice are a part of that pyramid, and the guys above it dictate what it can investigate. Etc.
It's a system which can _only_ generate corruption, given enough time for the right sociopaths to rise to the top. Because essentially they've just risen above the levels where the safeguards apply. And they can further control and pervert those safeguards.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Then, and if it ever came to that, I think that's ultimately why you have an army. Defending your own ports is certainly a better use for it than, say, overthrowing foreign governments because you think you can embarrass the French by showing the world that they are as moronically unethical in their arms sales as you are, when actually they aren't.... Then gamble on welcoming yourself to the finest US armaments on your doorstep when we decide to stop its pain (should the country in question hold a post-1980 trade treaty or MFN).
Unfortunately for you that the USA still retains a large enough capability to reverse the damaging effects of this form of globalization. Hopefully there will be a leader that will recognize the benefit of restoring our nation from nearly 30 years of its damage. When American corporations stop bullying foreign governments, we can talk about how foreign governments should be nicer to American corporations. When foreign governments such as China's can no longer influence our government in any way wrt trade, then the discussion can begin. No sooner.
...to be the goals of the entire world, but only in so far as they inure solely to the benefit of the USA. I make no apologies to that issue as long as the nation in question threatens the USA's sovereignty in any form.Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
are you being deliberately obtuse ? ... but they continue to fund it, and a recently-surveyed majority support invading Iran, a completely brain-dead exercise. Americans will stand for anything, so long as it's SOMEWHERE ELSE.
Empires acquire territory, historically and currently, because THAT's how they acquire the resources in those territories.
Whether those resources are mineral, labor, agricultural or whatever is the same and always will be, and yes, this applies directly to the US current invasions and occupations of foreign lands.
Where do I go next ? Oh, the US has cut it's military? You're funny - military is the US single largest export, and US military funding is larger than ALL other countries combined.
Next: Americans will never stand for it, they're all pissy about Iraq
And aside from your other pseudo-intellectual posturing, it wasn't Bush that ran into Iraq, he's just the meat-puppet figurehead, and it was not stupid to go after those resources, just maliciously greedy.
The rich American class have already divested themselves of US-denominated assets (check it out yourself), because the recent exercise in maintaining US petrodollar hegemony is visibly going down the toilet, and THAT's what the Iraq exercise is about, given as Saddam was switching to petro-euros, and anything he did was tolerated up until then. Now the US rich have shifted their funds out, they're safe, it's a guaranteed freefall "correction" for the rest of the american populace - good luck with the depression, it's going to hurt a lot.
And last, but not least by any measure, glorifying war and dominion seems to be the only consistent theme in American media of all flavors that goes unchanged from decade to decade to decade. Wake up, fool - your exceptionalism underpants have worn a little too thin for everyone else's comfort, and you're looking more like an asshole every day. And advertising your asshole is going to attract some particular kind of attention too.
It has nothing to do with bigotry. I have nothing against the Chinese as such, and in fact I'm somewhat an admirer of their history... until the Qing dynasty took over.
China can just fucking clean up their corruption, and then I'll have nothing against it any more. That's all.
But in the meantime, a system where someone can just bribe the right people and get away with using cheaper toxic glue or paint in kids' toys (kids _will_ try to bite anything they lay their hands on), or with using highly poisonous ethylene glycol in toothpaste instead of the more expensive glycerine, is a place I can only have contempt for.
Even nationalism is that-a-way, but kleptocracy and corruption are a whole other direction of its own. Replacing the paint and embezzling the difference isn't some great act of rebellion against the foreign powers. It's just a dumb theft that hurts their own country and company.
And I'm willing to bet that they're doing the same to their local market too. At the very least, when those toxic toys or toothpaste are sent back to China, I'll take a wild guess that you won't see most of them in a landfill. Some enterprising soul will find a way to sell them. Re-labeled, if needed.
At any rate, as I was saying, I have nothing against the Chinese. The big fuck-up that is China for the last couple of centuries straight, though, that's another story. Either they figure out a way to clean up that act, or, well, trust me, I don't feel the slightest guilt for having contempt for corruption and dishonesty. If that's bigoted in your view of the world, fine, I can live with that. Quite happily.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And I assumed he meant the ever-expanding resource utilization of software - RAM, disk space, processor speed, network bandwidth, etc.
If you want China to stop having influence on the US through trade, then step one is for the US to stop doing trade with China, don't you think? Trade is influence.
The point I was making, the point you missed, and the thing that the US seems chronically unable to get its head around, is that everything is a two-way street. If the US wants to recede into hardcore isolationism, most of the rest of the world will, I am sure, breathe a sigh of relief. But by definition, it cannot both do that and arse around with everyone else's economies and/or politics.
To be blunt, for an American today to whine about other people not respecting US sovereignty beggars belief.
because their quality really has gone downhill. For example, 3 years ago, I bought up a number of GE CFL bulbs (25-27). More than half of them are burned out already (used at most 2 hours a day). To make matters worse, the real issue came 1 am when I flipped on the lights, and I could smell smoke within about a minute. Suddenly, smoke was pouring out, and sparks and a flame were shooting out of the base. We no longer leave these lights on with nobody home except in 1 contained lamp (with 3 4 watt bulbs). Since then I have started buying Phillips bulbs that are made in Mexico (none have burned out). All in all, the Quality coming from China truly sux, and GE has joined them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
German communications was so bad that not only were all of their tactical communications read by the allies, the Germans didn't even realize that they were being read, despite obvious failures.
I'm no expert, but I thought the Enigma encryption was generally considered to be excellent (for the time), and that it was an amazing feat that the Allies were able to decrypt German communiques.
> Works for whom? and in what sense?
The Chinese system is clearly producing wealth, which is the usual capitalist definition of a "working" system.
The old East European / Soviet communist systems wasn't working in that sense, at least since the 70's.
North Korea is a prime example of a country with an economic system that doesn't work today.
Actually, communism does work ok for some human social groups. Places like monasteries, communes, even families. The problem is that communism is a really shocking economic model for a country. The whole idea behind communism (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need) relies on the people earning the most to be willing to give that up for those earning the least. In any of those groups I mentioned above, all the people who are going to be giving something up, enter the group voluntarily. Monks join knowing that all their work goes towards the common good, same deal for communes. And parents (generally) have children knowing that they're going to be supporting them for a good 20 years or so.
The problem is when you impose that sort of system by fiat. Generally, the group of people who earn the most includes the hardest workers, the most intelligent people, and the canniest business men. The group of people who earn the least includes (is not solely composed of, but definitely includes) everyone who is just to plain lazy to get off their arse and work. The former is not generally well disposed to gift the product of their labour to the latter. So they either give up on work, and become a leech on the system like everyone else, or leave and go somewhere their talents are rewarded.
Of course, the other big problem with communism is who gets to decide what is defined by "need". Does the Comrade Chairman need an expensive German motor car to show other nations that communism is successful and profitable more than the workers need heating during the winter? I don't know, but it's Comrade Chairman who makes the call.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Sure just destroy all the other systems (how ? nukes ? military force ? "revoluation" (which is the same thing) ?) and socialism will work.
Well yes, perhaps, but so will cave dwelling.
Obviously even when all other systems get destroyed socialism will claim it's share of bodies.
Well then science states this : if you create a socialist state, it will fail. It may take an arbitrary long time, but it will fail.
Since you will have civil war starting the moment the economy collapses (history teaches us this), advocating communism/socialism is advocating what the consequences of it are
Essentially, all Germany could do was build a bunch of U-Boats that were just facelift improvements from World War I designs (the "modern" U-Boat came way too late to make a difference). Germany built two primary battleships - Bizmarck and Tirpitz. By contrast, the British built 5 battleships of the KGV class, more than a few aircraft carriers, and plenty of not only fighters, but also four engine heavy bombers. Germany could never build 4 engine bombers in number, becuase despite having an entire continent at her disposal, the Germans always had engine shortages... The British hardly out produced the Germans in terms of aircraft, at least not by means their domestic industrial ablility alone. If they did If it hadn't been for massive American injections of both Aircraft and aviation materiel they would have come up significantly short. Exactly why people insist on ignoring the American Pre-Pearl Harbor contributions to the British war efforts mystifies me but the American contribution was significant. As for the British taking the Germans out of the air, this is pretty much a myth. It was the Americans and their 8th Air Force that did most of the work in this regard, at least over the Reich it self and in the west. Another forgotten major contributor to the task of destroying the Luftwaffe is the Soviet VVS Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily) or Red Air Force. Soviet Air Force contribution and Soviet army efforts in general are almost universally ignored by western observers or at best their contribution to the destruction of the Third Reich are relegated to a footnote. The British night bomber offensive over Germany was much less damaging to Germany's industry than the American one. And hitting industry, communications and most of all synthetic fuel production was what mattered. The RAF certainly did a lot of pure damage but this was mostly concentrated on massacring Axis Civilians. The single minded determination with which Sir Arthur 'Butcher' Harris pursued this goal (rather than hitting German industry where it hurt like the American tried to do) long after the RAF had gained the technology to perform precision night attacks hurt the Allied war effort. Even in 1945 the man was orchestrating large scale anti civilian raids like the one on Dresten rather than hitting militarily important targets and this to the disgust of many of his RAF bomber unit commanders in the field. To make matters worse some of his obsession with anti civilian operations even rubbed off on the US 8th air force leadership. In 1942 anti civilian raid made sense in a macabre kind of way but in 1945 they were plain stupid and even Churchill (who at one time contemplated allowing Harris to use chemical weapons in his anti civilian raids and was only talked out of it with great difficulty by Sir Alan Brooke Chief of the Imperial General Staff) finally acknowledged this.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The big 'why' here is not why American companies have a hard time in China, but why people on Slashdot just swallow this sort of FUD hook, line and sinker.
American companies have a hard time in China because they are not Chinese - it's as simple as that, really. Perhaps you are not aware, but European companies have always had a hard time getting in to the American market, just for comparison. Or the japanese market, the Malaysian market etc. There is nothing strange in it, it is a different culture, different laws, and it is far away. People will always be a bit sceptical about foreigners and foreign companies - add to that the fact that America does not have the best reputation in the world; certainly not in China.
Apart from that, the Chinese have a huge confidence in themselves nowadays, and you can see why: their economy is rocketing and they feel they have good reason to believe they will soon be stronger than the Americans anyway. When America was booming, a while back, it was the same - Americans wanted American goods, like everybody else in the world, and foreign companies were met with a 'Yeah, come and take US on' from American companies. It was very hard to get into America, and it has nothing to do with America 'poisoning' foreign companies in any way.
The big 'why' is 'why the hell do Americans believe in this kind of stupid conspiracy theory?' - I think it is because it is hard to face up to the fact that America is falling back in the competition. But that is the wrong way - like children saying 'he was cheating' when they lose a game. If that is the best America can do, then China deserves to win.
If US practice hardcore isolationism, the China Prime Minister will quickly comes to the White House and kiss whoever in charge' asses just to ask him/her to reverse that decision. US is powerful enough to retaliate and kill China economically if pushed to the corner. This can even be done without sending a single soldier for an invasion.
If USA practices isolation, the rest of the world will panic, not relieved.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
How I sincerely hope you are right.
But Britain out-producing Germany in the run up and during the war cannot be totally attributed to Democracy vs. Dictatorship. Fact is, Britain at the time was the Empire of the world. Its battleships had been patrolling the world seas virtually uncontended since Trafalgar, for more than a century. The technical know-how of the British Naval Engineers can not be compared to that of Germans who had lost all their colonies after the Great War, and had no real experience of warfare prior to WWII. Britain's officers had seen action dozens of times during the 20th century, from India to South Africa and Sudan and thus had first hand experience in warfare. During the Boer War and also fighting Cuban nationalist, they had come into contact and learned the tactics of guerilla warfare, tactics they successfuly taught the French to be used during resistance. The German officers in comparison had been totally isolated from war experience in the intermittent years.
Obviously it also helped that the British government consisted of men like Attlee, Eden and Churchil, against nutcases like Himmler, Goering and Hitler. But that's perhaps a validation of your argument in itself: that in democracies, great men will eventually come to power at the times of need.
Like you, I also still have faith in freedom and democracy. One should not forget the hard-learned lessons of history. I'm sure democracy will catch up with China, but I shudder at the thought of how ugly it can get before we reach there.
--
All correct observations, and my compliments on such detailed knowledge of the era.
It should however be noted that Germans knew of their inferiority to the British Navy and Air Force when WWII began. They did not however expect Britain to enter the war. Britain itself had been caught off-guard. The war, though a certainty in 1939, was not expected until a couple of years later. The British believed that 1939 Germany would not be in a position to wage war across Europe, and would not do so.
Hitler, who himself put no value on the treaties he had himself signed, thought as much of Britain's pledge to defend Poland and the Little Entente. He was also misinformed of the British public opinion and thought a democracy would not take the chance of turning against its public opinion, which even in 1939 was still in appeasement mood. He underestimated the effect of his attack on Poland on the British public opinion. Morover, Hitler had succeeded in misrepresenting his power. Britons at the time were mislead into believing that the German Army and Navy were superior, a belief which as you pointed out, was wrong. However what you can observe with the benefit of hindsight that the German basic machinery was inferior and their gadgets had no real effect, was not so obvious to the British generals of the time.
Your comparison of German vs. Russian, American and even British defence force are thus, a bit misleading. In 1939, Russia and USA were not among the allied forces, and Hitler assumed that it would be himself and Italy vs. an already captured Austria, some german speaking central European areas, the Little Entente, Poland (all of whom had no significant military power) and a France that was deeply in crisis. Comparing Allied machinery at the end of the war, with what Hitler believed he was against in 1939 is a bit misleading.
--
You seem to have very misguided notions about what humanity actually is.
Yes, well, that's all insightful and all, and I'm not trying to exonerate the dumb outsourcers. But that's really a whole other problem. It's orthogonal, if you wish.
Basically we can agree that someone _should_ have kept an eye on the potential thieves, _but_ that doesn't mean I'll have any less contempt for the actual thieves either. It's just different problems. Someone was incompetent or maybe gullible. They don't get much respect from me for that. But someone else was actually dishonest, and not as in "little white lie", but to the point of being outright "evil." (Sorry, toxic toys and toothpaste and medicine in the name of a quick embezzle, I can't name it anything else than evil. It's even the disproportionate kind of evil where the gains are a tiny fraction of the damage done.) And for that they've fully earned my heartfelt contempt.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think that's a false analogy. China today works inside the dreaded "global economy" - all of their wealth (and hence everything skimmed off the top) depends on exports.
Also, a difference between China and Germany is the people in charge - ok, it may or may not satisfy a definition of fascism, but the fact is that the people at the top really are extremely competent. As someone else pointed out, the Wehrmacht was run by a bunch of complete tools. In fact, it's one of the most interesting facets of the Chinese resurgence that they seem to have come up with a genuine meritocracy. Witness the Bush administration's attempts at "diplomacy" in North Korea and the Middle East - Condi's megaphone treatment seems not to work too well, whereas the Chinese have delivered excellent result with Kimmy. For a start, the Chinese Communist Party seems to have abandoned any sort of ideology whatsoever, reverting to a sort of base pragmatism. Also notice how the Chinese are exploiting their position vs. the USA when it comes to the dollar situation, the Iraq war and so on.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
Facisism does not require an "ideology of racism and military expansionism" that was mainly an claim spread by the communists, there are plenty of examples of facistism that do not claim thaose ideas, just look at South America .
As for China and racism just look at Tibet or Xinjiang or how non-asian coloured people are treated. If you don't believe that China has military expansion on its mind look at Taiwan or any military examination of China by any outside country.
Just a point on Deng Xiaoping - AFAIK he was considered one of the moderates within the Party, a true communist (as opposed to the decidedly un-communist Mao) and an excellent civil administrator. He was actually sidelined by Mao for years, kept around to sort out the problems Mao caused and keep the country running - the importance of which Mao learned very well when he nearly lost power during his "Great Leap Forward" (or, more accurately, "Terrible Famine caused by Incompetence"). He seemed to be close to Zhou Enlai, who was for a long time considered a paragon of Confucianist ethics, supple as a reed and is a fascinating character well worth study, but that's another story. Back on Deng, I heard an amusing recollection of his negotiations with one Margaret Thatcher over the future of Hong Kong - they say as soon as she opened her mouth he raised a hand and said, "Dear lady, if you do not agree with me now to return this city to me in 1997 as stated in the lease, I shall invade this afternoon!" The thought of a million Chinese pouring over the hills was enough to convince her. Anybody who can shit up Maggie gets my vote. If you were allowed to vote, that is.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
A good point on Fascism, however an indispensable component of it (at least as most people understand it) is extreme central control of individuals, effectively making any sort of political discussion or dissent illegal. During the 60's and 70's, this was large in evidence in China, especially during the Cultural Revolution where widespread cultural and political purges closely mirrored the Fascists of Germany and Italy, however this is long since dead. So no, I don't accept that it's Fascism as we know it. In fact, last time I was there, I was sat in a restaurant somewhere in Jiangsu province having a long and interesting discussion with some locals about Mao and the merits and failings of the current government. Many people there still love Mao (plenty hate his guts, I should add), even though they know all about his crimes and his failings. Why? Because they love his power and his ability to make them feel big and important, a feeling they had long since gone without. The methods are of secondary importance. I got a strong impression that the way the Chinese think about this sort of thing is very different to us (they still revere Genghis Khan, for heaven's sake!) and so I get a bit touchy when discussions like this fail to account for the sort of psychological difference they have from us. The Chinese today are quite unlike any other countries our great Anglospheric civilisation has had to deal with before, or at least, since the Opium war. Oh hell, they're still mad about that!
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
in democracies, great men will eventually come to power at the times of need.
'Eventually' is starting to wear a little thin around here...
Communism (or socialism) works for ants, but humans are possessive animals
Your analogy is not valid. Ants, bees and termites in the same colony share the same genes. An ant colony is a single organism split into many parts rather than a society. It functions as a single organism, determined by bettering the changes for gene survival, not survival of individual ants (most of whom are incapable of producing offspring, anyway). In a human society, unlike the ant colony, individuals bearing different genes compete. This is explained well in The Sevfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Like I said in another message, competing with Capitalists is not necessarily the ideal goal.
Uh, you can't really choose not to compete - unless you restrict the ability of your population to emigrate. Even then you still HAVE to compete, unless you internally possess all the resources necessary to sustain your economy. And even then you're depending on the benevolence of your neighbors not to overrun you.
If you allow free travel then your best and brightest citizens will realize they could be a whole lot better off elsewhere, and they leave. If you don't possess all the resources you need then you find that some capitalist country across the ocean can afford to pay $20/barrel more for oil than you can (because they are more efficient and can make a profit even with a higher cost of raw materials) - and now you can't buy oil.
And eventually, if you isolate yourself for too long, you end up being the Incas in the world of the Europeans. Granted, nuclear weapons may have helped put an end to the arms race, but you'll find yourself conventionally outgunned in every way. Any attempt to maintain parity of arms will bankrupt your economy - since you aren't competitive.
Competition really isn't optional in the modern world. EVERYBODY competes whether they choose to or not - if they opt out they really just lose out. Even the USSR was highly competitive, but it was more about political power and favoritism than money.
I tunneled out over SSH to post this. It might just be the HTTP proxy here where I teach, but I doubt that my employer would bother blocking slashdot.
...I wonder what bit of network crappiness caused that.
A belief that economic improvements in a country (like China) may have influence on political life in it is of course reasonable. Assuming that this influence can be leading to democratisation and more human rights is just naive however. Even if it does we may be not there to see it happen when it eventually does.
for example, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/enigma_04.shtml
Well you only mentioned Tibet and East Turkestan (chinese: Xinjiang or "western frontier") which the Chinese communist army occupied after WWII when Mao Zedong took over China. Those two examples are admittedly the most criminal cases, with 100% of these completely non-chinese populations and their nations under brutally oppressive military occupation, merciless sinicization programmes and mass settlement of ethnic Chinese into their nations.
Your most significant omission was South Mongolia, the more populous part of Mongolia, where now after two generations of Chinese occupation and mass settlement barely over 10% of the current population are ethnic mongolians.
Still, after expanding the Chinese empire over Tibetan and Uighur (East Turkestan) territories the Chinese communists went further on to extract northern Pakistani and Pakistan-controlled Kashmiri territories in exchange of military and nuclear aid to the Pakistani regime. That partnership also helped the Chinese to geographically and politically isolate democratic India. (In Nepal the Chinese have played and armed all sides, from the Maoist guerillas to the King and now the post-royalist government; I am not certain if Nepal has made any territorial concessions to their "new neighbors" now occupying Tibet.)
In 1962 the Chinese invaded nothern India and annexed further high altitude territories historically inhabited by ethnic Tibetans but belonging to India.
On the eastern side of India the Chinese have allied with the Burmese military regime, again receiving territories from northern Burma in exchange.
Chinese Communist Party's army (the euphemisticaly named "People's Liberation Army") has also annexed small border territories from the little buddhist Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.
In late seventies the "PLA" invaded Vietnam and managed to annex some Vietnamese territory but at a heavy cost.
Where's Manchuria (where the last, and foreign, emperor of China's Qian dynasty hailed from) today? Manchus purportedly represent one of the smaller four stars in the Chinese Communist Party's battle flag (aka the current chinese national flag; the big star in the middle represents the Han chinese), but where is their country, ethnic population or language now after over half century of CCP rule? Manchuguo has ceased to exist in any form other than its largely chinese-rewritten history.
North Korea has also surrendered some historical Korean territories to their Chinese backers in exchange for political and military support. The free (South) Koreans aren't too pleased about that.
The Chinese and Soviet-Russian communist empires also fought brief border wars in Central Asia swapping minor territories but without larger annexation of foreign land either way.
That probably covers most if not all of China historical and newly-acquired (through imperial expansion) neighbors!
Adding this ongoing feverish expansionism of the modern (communist party) era to the millenia-old assimilation and sinicization policies, it is absolutely ludicruous to claim that China isn't an imperialist state. What makes it even more sadly laughable is that the Chinese nationalists and ethnic Han chauvinists (incl. the State), who are the key proponents of China genocidal policies, just love to rail against foreigners over their mercantilist-era meddling in Manchu-ruled China.
In fact the whole massive Chinese propaganda machinery, from cradle to grave, is geared towards justifying Chinese imperialism and ethnic Han chauvinism and superiority over lesser "minorities" while bedeviling any foreign interference in "China's internal affairs" (which naturally includes all occupied nations and territories).
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Point of order: in Mandarin Chinese they refer to the tragedy at Tiananmen Square as 6-4 (pronounced i>liu si in Mandarin) because it happened on June 4th. It's similar to the way we refer to the MLK "I have a dream" speech as the March on Washington rather than the National Mall. Notice the lack of info about the speech in the second link. Is that censorship? Nope, just culture.
That said, China definitely censors search results about 6-4.
I basically agree. However, there are limited options. Who wants war with a nuclear armed China? Pretty much nobody. I think the best we can do is help China be stable and reasonably prosperous and hope that one day the children or grandchildren of today's leaders in China decide to grant human rights to China's people. It is very likely I will not live long enough to see that day, but I suspect that day will come. I think the path Nixon put us on with China is the right one.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
USS New Jersey saw service as part of fully functional task forces, with a wide array of support vessels. You simply can not seriously compare the scenarios.
And more on-topic -- a big reason the Germans didn't invest in a lot of carriers and battleships is that it was rather pointless to do so. Doing so would have taken a lot of resources away from the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffle -- and the only real point to a German blue water Navy in a European conflict would be commerce disruption. You don't need aircraft carriers for anti-shipping missions for coastal defense when you control the North Sea (and later the French Channel coast), you can use land aircraft (with less weight due to less stress tolerances, hence greater range or increased payloads) from land bases. You don't need battleships or battle cruisers to do commerce raiding -- especially when you're up against a historically Naval power anyway, you're much better off in investing in Wolfpack submarine tactics, avoiding the patrol grids the Royal Navy operated to slip out into the Atlantic shipping lanes [exactly what Bismarck failed to do and what kept Tirpitz tied up in the North Sea]. They had to either out build the Royal Navy entirely (leaving far less for the land forces) or effectively flank them by avoiding the surface battle and trying to simply make the U-boats cost the enemy more than the inevitable loss to antisubmarines patrols would cost Germany.
Remember also that Germany didn't think it would need a massive navy to support a cross Channel invasion (unlike in World War I) because the Luftwaffe had the range and (supposedly) the power to both keep the Royal Navy and Air Force occupied or disabled while the transports made the hop.
Of course, Yahoo and MSN are also censoring search results. At least Google says "some results are being omitted due to local regulations" or some such. Google functions as the 'least evil' search engine in China, and thus Google is possibly doing more good than not being there at all. (Oh, and not telling people information they want to know is very different than telling the government where the activists are.) Google might be able to exert more influence in China be staying out of China and lobbying for reform, but that seems highly unlikely.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Uh, you can't really choose not to compete - unless you restrict the ability of your population to emigrate. Even then you still HAVE to compete, unless you internally possess all the resources necessary to sustain your economy. And even then you're depending on the benevolence of your neighbors not to overrun you.
This is one reason why the Soviet Union wanted to remove capitalism, it's Great Evil, from the world. Again, I am not agreeing with it, only explaining how the "system" would have worked.
Table-ized A.I.
Well then science states this : if you create a socialist state, it will fail. It may take an arbitrary long time, but it will fail.
Please clarify with evidence. As mentioned in another reply, the theory is that capitalism ruins socialism because socialism cannot compete with exploitation (which is compared to slavely in their belief system). Thus, if one rids the world of capitalism, things would allegedly be better off. Of course, it is hard to test this thoery.
Table-ized A.I.
Another take.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Mod parent up.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This Internet 2.1 blog for user Mildred is powered by The Cheapest Blog Host On The Internet! , the revolutionary web 2.0 metalayer. Get yours now!
I use google as my default search engine in Firefox... I was traveling in China last month, and I too noticed strange things about google.cn and google.com. About 1/2 attempts to access google.com were redirected to some other search engine, and when I did get through to Google.com, the results would often load very slow.
At the time, I didn't think anything of it and attributed it to the WiFi connection at the hotel I was staying at; however, all the other sites I used seemed to load w/o delay.
It would not surprise me one bit, as the Chinese government is known to give unfair advantages to Chinese gov't backed businesses.
Depends over what time scale.
Deng Xiaopeng started de-communizing the Chinese economy around 1980. It wasn't until the 1990s, that it was possible to connect the vast, underutilized and underpaid Chinese work force together with Western markets and know-how.
It was an unique circumstance, and while a somewhat mercantilist, zero sum viewpoint on the part of the government probably helped, this does not prove that "fascism works". It does not show that an advanced county like the US would benefit by adopting a fascist ideology. It does not show that China is capable of operating as an advanced economy once the process of moving all of the globe's industry there has gone as far as it can go.
I personally have grave doubts about China's stability, because industry and government are so closely tied together, and the system does not allow the government to be replaced in an orderly fashion. Rapid growth covers a multitude of errors, and the system is geared to operate in bonanza mode. What happens when the bonanza ends? It seems to me much like two houses of cards that are braced against each other: the political and economic.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you mean in terms of military production, then that's true. However, the Nazi government made no real effort to ramp up military production until the war was well under way, and it was abundantly clear that it was not going to be short--not before 1941, at any rate. By that time, it was far too late. Everybody seems to think that Hitler had a "time-table for the conquest of Europe, and that he planned WWII because he was some sort of Hollywood villain who loved to cackle madly while the world burned.
Actually, he screwed up very badly, even in terms of his own stated objectives. Nobody wanted another Great War--not the people, certainly not the German generals, and not even Hitler. He had been in the trenches, and knew what it was like. Sure, he had his plans of conquest, but they involved expansion toward the East, against Poland and Russia—countries that he thought would not be aided by the Western powers. The truth is that he got intoxicated by his own success, and started to believe in his own infallibility. He thought he could attain his objectives both by acting according to his immediate impulses and without a major war. You have to remember that though Hitler was by no means stupid, he was ignorant of the world outside Central Europe. He didn't understand, for example, the effect his abrogation of the Munich treaty (breached when he occupied Bohemia and Moravia--the Czech "rump" state) would have on domestic politics in Britain. The result--total loss of face by the British "peace" party, led by Chamberlain, and rise of the "war" party under Churchill--set the stage for the Anglo-French reaction to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939.
It is only in the light of this interpretation that Germany's total lack of economic war preparation can be understood. The Nazi government didn't expect another major war, so it made no effort to build up war production. Projections by German generals and government ministers held that Germany might be prepared for a major war in the mid 1950s...NOT in 1939!
So the argument that Fascism is not good for the economy can't be supported by the (true) allegation that Germany's war production was woefully inadequate. They weren't trying. In terms of normal economic production, the Germans were doing quite well--especially if you consider the fact that the industrial heart of Germany—the Ruhr region—was under Anglo-French occupation until the mid 1920s, and that Germany was struggling under the enormous demands for "reparations" made at Versailles.
I agree totally that the Nazi regime was a bunch of crooked bullies. But since when have the terms "crooked" and "busines" been incompatible? —Indeed, the barons of industry found the Führer quite congenial.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
MOD PARENT UP! - I too have friends who have complained that google.com was really slow in China!
That's both the funniest and saddest thing I've read all day week. Ethnic Han-chinese chauvinism and their regime's brutal military invasions and ongoing occupations of neighboring nations, to add to the sixty-odd so-called already sinicized "minority nationalities", is what defines the Chinese Communist Party's claims for "legitimacy" in the eyes of the actual Chinese.
Do you actually believe that the Tibetans, Mongolians or Uighurs -- all completely non-chinese people (in terms of language, script, history, ethnicity, identity, religion...) -- have any say in their own affairs?? Or is it possible that the massive Han-chinese army contingents based on their home soils along with the Chinese police and paramilitary forces enforcing the Han-chinese populated and controlled Party organs might have something to do with the current "chineseness" of these occupied peoples?
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Are you seriously suggesting that the Iowa class is just so great
It was a joke. But, in all seriousness, most naval buffs would say that Iowa one on one would make short work of Bizmark.
And more on-topic -- a big reason the Germans didn't invest in a lot of carriers and battleships is that it was rather pointless to do so.
You may have followed up my ridiculous comment with one of your own!
Without a Navy, Germany had to worry about potential landings in any number of places, from Norway to Italy, to even several places in France. With a Navy, that whole problem goes away.
To elaborate : if the Germans had a real blue water navy in World War II, and held control of the oceans, there's no American resupply of the British, no British reinforcements in Africa, and certainly no D-Day. The German cession of the blue water to the Allies ultimately doomed in the west. Had Germany a Navy, she hangs onto Africa, doesn't get invaded, and probably gets to move some 100 divisions to the East to fight against the Red Army. For that matter, Italy doesn't get invaded, and the Germans get to commit all of THOSE divisions to the eastern front.
The USA and British did their best to either disable or convince the French Navy to join the allied cause, for a reason.
This is my sig.
Your comparison of German vs. Russian, American and even British defence force are thus, a bit misleading. In 1939, Russia and USA were not among the allied forces, and Hitler assumed that it would be himself and Italy vs. an already captured Austria, some german
Well, here's the thing. Anyone who had taken the time to read Mein Kampf would have seen that Hitler essentially arguing (and predicting), that he would a) first avenge Versaille against France, and then b) take over Russia and take the land for Germans.
So yeah, circa 1939, its true, Poland was the belligerant, with UK + France entering, but UK entered really because they did wake up, if a bit late, to the idea that Hitler meant what he wrote in that book. The idea was that if Poland could hang on, the allies could stop Germany in its tracks, but Poland collapsed much too quickly, the Norway plan failed, and then, France collapsed. For the allies, everything really just went wrong early in the war.
The thing that really screwed Hitler up was the British. He could never really wrap his head around the idea that a generally pacifist, liberal people like the British, that have such mastery of the seas, and their own empire, would actually risk everything to stop the Germans from embarking on a genocide. There was really no need for the British to declare war on Germany because of an invasion of Poland, and I don't think Hitler, in his warped mind, ever understood, or believed, that sometimes, great nations just do things because they are right.
This is my sig.
You're absolutely right "you Capitalist running dogs!"
Thanks for seeing the humor of the condition.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I understand Japan ain't a centrally managed economy.
... and others, we did not treat anyone like our wonderful ....
... you can leave your country or you can make it better.
The Soviets in the '60s we treated like the enemy, which they were at the time.
The Nazis in the 40's only the Northeast USA Christians spoke of retro-emigration.
In all those situations
perfect trading-partner friend China, Saudi, Mexico
Compared with reality Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Vietnam
PLEASE, consider the dark-humor harbinger of truth/spin.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Socialism has at least one major fault: it depends on people taking their share of the common wealth, proportional to their contribution.
The correct quote from Marx is:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
"the USA is the best country on Earth and we should start acting like it." LOL? You don't think we act like we're the best country on Earth?
Well, I'm a bit late to this thread, but I'll throw in my $0.02 anyway. About a week ago, I saw an interesting line in my /var/log/secure:
Nov 14 14:13:46 [xxxxxx] sshd[21321]: Bad protocol version identification 'GET http://www.google.com/ HTTP/1.0' from 69.182.111.5
I'm running ssh on a nonstandard port, so it's even weirder. As I began to check on that IP address, things got stranger still. Running nmap showed a bunch of ports open: ftp, http, dns, pop3, and some Microsoft specific stuff. I tried to log into ftp, and got the following message:
Connected to 69.182.111.5 (69.182.111.5).
220- Web2.hamiltonjones.com WAR-FTPD 1.67-05 Ready
220 Please enter your user name.
So, a whois on hamiltonjones.com said that there were 2 DNS's:
Domain servers in listed order:
WEB1.HAMILTONJONES.COM 69.57.156.24
WEB2.HAMILTONJONES.COM 69.182.111.5
Apparently it's one of Hamilton Jones' DNS. However, it seemed weird to me that the web port would be open for it. When I hit the IP with a browser, I got an error trying to redirect to f7smq058.superoureland.org. A whois for superoureland.org shows Chinese contact info, and a Google on the domain shows the domain is in some RBL's. Since it's running some Microsoft stuff that showed up from my nmap scan, I'm guessing it's been root'ed.
At the time, I posted around, and someone on a board speculated that it might be some Chinese using that DNS as a way to tunnel around the Great Firewall (TM). Now, after reading this info, I'm not so sure.
Communism (or socialism) works for ants, but humans are possessive animals
Or, as one of my favorite economists once said,
Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.
They need a new moderation for your comment: (-1, delusional)
Yeah, the US is such an economic juggernaut that people are starting to ask for Euros instead of Dollars. Oops, maybe people aren't so willing to let the US fuck them in the ass for profit anymore. The US's economic free ride is ending. The question is how our actions will be repaid when we can't just throw money around anymore.
I mean, when contractors start asking Canadian companies to pay them in loonies, you know the shit has hit the fan.
DNS is still subject to junk being given out.
Here's a potential solution:
1. Any TCP handshake includes a challenge/response. TCP already includes a "random number" -- the sequence number. Take it, apply a secret key, and that result is included in the handshake response (handshake packet 2 to verify the destination host, and packet 3 to potentially verify the originator of the conversation).
2. The public key is placed in the DNS.
If you can control the mapping from "domain.com" to "133.233.111.2", then you can place the expected public key there.
If you are hijacking,
Oh, phoo. This prevents "Attacker.com" from listing "192.168.1.5" as an attack on an internal server, but it does nothing to stop a full DNS hijack by the ISP.
Anyone got a solution other than requiring SSL sockets / https? Just imagine a site that is suddenly presenting a new certificate, that still verifies, but is issued by the same DNS that was responsible for the hijack.
(Hmm... Security basics question here. You ask the site for proof of ID, and that proof of ID includes a "who to ask to verify this proof". So you verify with the very person that the fake certificate tells you to verify with, and it naturally passes. It can't be that easy to break SSL/https:, so what am I missing?)
But Britain out-producing Germany in the run up and during the war cannot be totally attributed to Democracy vs. Dictatorship.
I can give you that point, based on the word "totally".
Fact is, Britain at the time was the Empire of the world. Its battleships had been patrolling the world seas virtually uncontended since Trafalgar, for more than a century.
Actually, the Germans did contend with the British for sea power leading nearly up until World War I. World War I really was Germany's chance, but in the lead up to the war, Britian turned on the jets and launched 8 battleships in one year, and guaranteed itself mastery of the waves. Germany never challenged Britian on the seas. Ironically, if Germany
had been as aggressive navally during World War II as she was in World War I, she would have certainly knocked the British down a peg.
The technical know-how of the British Naval Engineers can not be compared to that of Germans who had lost all their colonies after the Great War, and had no real experience of warfare prior to WWII
I think you meant to write that sentence differently. Germany from World War II and before meant Prussian leadership (which really no longer exists today in the way that it did). Prussia had a long and worthy tradition in battle going at least to Napolean. But certainly modern Germany crushed the French in 1870, knocked the Russians out of World War I, and damned near beat a combined British and French army... except, again, the Royal Navy starved them...
Really, one could argue that, in World War II, Hitler was really refighting World War I... and probably thought that, if they beat the French + UK, (which they could not do before), they should easily knock the Russians out (which they did before). Unfortunately for him, while the French did get worse, the British and Russians did get better, and Germany going into the war did not address an underlying cause of her defeat in World War I - crushing naval inferiority.
This is my sig.
The irony is that even the soviet union was capitalist in a sense. They just didn't trade in cash. The main currency was political power, and the market in political favors worked pretty efficiently.
I'm not worried about capitalism being banned from the Earth - I think it is the most natural form of government and inevitable barring some change to how human brains operate.
This is a correct formula - for COMMUNISM and not for SOCIALISM. For the latter it is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work" - exactly as I said originally.
No, we argue that it's never been done - sure marxism has been tried, but yeah, you always end up with a dictatorship. That's kind of the point.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I assume you are talking about oil, right? No, US dollar will not be replaced with other currencies anytime soon. The 2 biggest oil consumers in the world is still USA (the currency which oil is traded with) and China (who tied their currency with US dollars - thus what happened to US dollars also affect theirs). So no, you are the one who doesn't know how reality really works.
Okay ... the basic way this proof goes is like this. You have a singular entity that runs the state, right ?
... we're talking some 60-80 years tops.
There is a chance this entity fails "catastrophically" in a year. It's not 0. Let's call this chance x. Then it will fail at 1/x years. The basis of socialism and communism is this centralisation.
Capitalism doesn't have this problem because you have many competing entities, which means the chance of one failing is larger than the chance a communist state will fail in a given year. Let's call this chance y (it can be quite high, like 20%). However the chance for a catastropic failure of a capitalist state is y^n (n being the number of companies, divided by 5, because you assume that 20% failue in economy is already catastropic).
Now since we have historical data we can predict how long it takes. It seems to depend on the population size. For capitalism to fail we're talking thousands of years. For socialism
Water is wet, gravity is a law, marxism leads to dictatorship, *that's* the point. When you get me your dry water and your non-gravity affected matter I'll be happy to start discussing marxism again but until then, it's a proven bloody system that should not be tried anymore. 100 million deaths is enough.
marxism doesn't lead to despotism because you can't get there. Trying for marxism will get you despotism most of the time. Democracy ain't perfect either, though - you can have two parties with stability and limited participation of the electorate, or lots of parties with less stability and more say from the electorate. The hybrid approach where you decentralize a lot of the operations while centralizing only what's necessary works pretty well, but it isn't stable either.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
olympics web sites to go to the goatse guy
The Great Depression came close to toppling capitalism. If it wasn't for the war, it very well may have changed the face of economics forever.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm not sure what kind of crazy backwards world you're living in, but over here in reality land it's the sellers who dictate what kind of currency they get paid in.
If OPEC decided tomorrow that they were only going to accept Vietnamese Dongs as payment, your options would pretty much dwindle to:
1) Invade enough oil producing currencies to guarantee continued supply.
2) Start buying all the dong you can handle.
Not using oil certainly isn't an option for you guys, at least not for very long.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
That was of course 'oil producing countries'. I was too busy thinking about the US people handling all that dong to correctly outline my argument.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
If OPEC elects to sell in Vietnam Dongs (which is highly unlikely to happen), USA will simply buy from non-OPEC members such as Norway, Malaysia, Brunei etc. There are shitload of oil producers out there that are not members of OPEC. If OPEC switch to Dongs while non-members oil producers sells in US dollars, OPEC members will be priced out by non-members and their revenue will drop because of the decreasing oil price caused by competition between OPEC and non-OPEC members.
OPEC is not that stupid if you ask me. There is no way they will make the oil market to be sold in 2 different currencies (in your scenario, US dollars vs Vietnam Dong). This will cause competition between the 2 and oil prices will heavily drops.
You are the one who does not know how the oil industry works.
The reason why OPEC gets to set the price of oil is that they represent the majority of the world's oil. If you like Norway can cover your countries needs (which have already been described as the largest in the world) you'd certainly be able to call your bluff.
That is, of course, assuming that Norway doesn't already have all of their oil supply committed to other countries.
Naw, I'm almost certain they're holding onto it in case the US stops by for a few million barrels a day.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
You apparently do not understand how the oil market works. If OPEC switch currencies, do you think non-members will follow suit? Why would they if they (non-members) can keep oil price high by staying with US dollars? Norway (and others non-members) will be scrambling to sell to US and China (who will buy in US dollars too because yuan is tied with US dollars) leaving OPEC members who just seen their reserve plummets with Vietnam Dong. Norway and others will make sure USA at least will be served even if this means that they have to reduce shipments to other countries.
And Vietnam will not like it that their currency is used as denomination for oil. They will surely do it like China and tied it to the US dollar or a basket of currencies such as the mix of US dollar and Japanese yen etc if that happen.
You dodged my question: Why would Norway and the non-OPEC countries suddenly feel obligated to sell 100% of their oil to the US when they already have existing customers who they sell to?
You have assumed that this is the case, but these countries will sell it to whoever is paying the most (or more likely they will continue to supply their existing buyers at the increased price).
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Why Norway and others will sell to US in dollars? This is because of 2 reasons; It is more profitable to sell it to US dollar because the price is higher and another reason that is more important, which is not to antagonize USA (like what Saudi Arabia is doing at the recent OPEC summit - even the kingdom is not that stupid to do so).
Norway and others can do it because oil contracts are signed in length measured in months, not years, to take into account of fluctuating oil prices? Did you ever seen oil contracts signed in terms of years?
No, the question wasn't 'why will they sell to the US in dollars'. The question was 'why would they sell to the US at all?'
These countries already -have- existing customers, and the only way that you're going to convince them to switch to the US is offering more money. Of course, that -still- doesn't guarantee supply, that just triggers a price war.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Price war, I'm surprised you actually get it. Price war is not something OPEC desires. If OPEC switch to Vietnam Dong, it means there are 2 suppliers of oil, one selling in Dong, another selling with US dollars. US and China only want to buy in US dollars because at intial phase, OPEC oil in Dong will be expensive compared to non-OPEC oil in dollars. Seeing that selling in US dollars will give short-term profits, non-OPEC members will be scrambling to sell to US in order to get more profits.
Drill this fact into your mind before replying. Existing customers of Norway etc only have short-term contracts with Norway. There is no such thing such as long-term contracts in the oil industry. Thus switching customers is really a non-issue and not that hard to do. Do you really think it is that hard to switch customers? Money talks, and with USA, prestige too.
OPEC then sees US and China (take into mind that yuan is tied to US dollars, thus China will not want to buy oil with other currency, especially with the current trend of plummeting dollar. Actually China is a special case and they may buy from OPEC because of their mercantile tendencies) buying oil from non-members with US dollars, they will naturally have to reduce price to compete with non-OPEC members. Assuming that they did not return to US dollars, US will return back to buy oil from OPEC members, with Vietnam Dong. Seeing that happening, Norway and co. will reduce their price to compete and voila, a price war has happened. This is an oversimplification, but that's the gist of it.
The winner is US (and China). The loser is oil-producing countries. And Vietnam (but knowing them, they will just peg their Dong to US dollars - and OPEC loses).
Do you realize that USA does not says anything when Iran/Venezuela threatened to change the currency OPEC trade their oil in? This is because if this happened, USA will profit overwhelmingly in medium and long-term. Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmednijad are either posturing to appeal to their citizens back home or does not really know how the oil market works at all. If OPEC switch currencies, competition will exists than the consumers (like USA) will win in the end.
They'll go to their existing buyers and say "Pay us more than the US, or we'll sell to them." The existing buyers then go "Sure." I fully understand that there are no long term oil contracts, but there is just no reason for Norway to automatically switch to supplying the US. If only because of the existing business relationships, they'll offer their existing customers a chance to outbid the US first. This will drive the price up even further and ultimately it will be cheaper for China to convert their currency to dongs (or more likely the Euro) to buy their oil.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Haha, that is not what will happen if OPEC switches currencies. If Norway does that, their current customers will point to the price at NYMEX or ICE and say a hearty 'fuck you'. Selling oil at a price more expensive than market price, in a very competitive market is basically an economic suicide.
Given that Norway can only sells oil at a certain price point (for God's sake Norway is not a Microsoft-like oil producing monopoly to the point that they can single-handedly control the price - there are a shitload of oil producers out there), Norway can choose to continue selling to their current customers or get in USA favor by selling to them instead. You did not have to be a rocket scientist to deduce who Norway will sell their oil to. If Norway won't, others will do it. There are plenty of non-OPEC members who are more than willing to sell oil to USA. Even Hugo Chavez will do it.
You think that people will sell oil to the US ignoring supply and demand.
If there is more demand for USD based oil than supply the price will go up. You seem convinced that this is the case, therefore I don't see how you can deny that.
Now, if you're saying that Norway's preferred customers will switch to buying oil in dongs because it's cheaper.. you're pretty much saying that eventually the market will stablise on the dong (or the Euro.. or the whatever).
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Generally, supply and demand rules usually takes place, but this is USA we are talking about.
If OPEC switch to dong, the price will be higher than it was before the switch, at least in the beginning. Chavez and Ahmednijad want a switch not because they hate America, but because they feel the oil is undervalued in the current trend of dropping dollar value, which to a certain extent is true.
So, at that time, US and China and others will want to buy US dollar oil from non-OPEC members because it is cheaper. OPEC sees this and lower their dong-based oil. Plus, as you said, demand caused US dollar oil to rise. US/China and others see this and their next (very short contract) contract will be from Saudi Arabia in Dong. Norway and other non-OPEC members see this and they do what OPEC has done, which is lowering their price, and USA+China switches again to US dollar oil. This will repeat ad-nauseum.
The market will never stabilize on Vietnam Dong oil or US dollar oil. The competition will be huge and the winner will be USA and other consuming countries. The oil-producing countries will not get the huge profit they get now. Meanwhile, Vietnam's economy will be terrorized by the hugely fluctuating value of their currency and the government will peg the currency on US dollar or a basket of currencies that has US dollar in it.
If OPEC unilaterally switch, the oil market will not be stable again but the price will go on a downward trend. Which would be a win to consumer countries.
But not for the US Dollar. One of the prime reasons the US dollar is in such demand is that it's the only way to buy oil.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Nice. Then, how to cast Capitalism in those terms? "Take your money, while slowly killing you."
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
No it did not. It set it back 10 years, not more than that. Agreed it was a disaster but if you want to see the difference between "toppling" an economy, first check what happens in zimbabwe (and what's going to happen in Iran soon) THEN compare it.
Another bigger reason why US dollars is hot is that many of the central banks of other countries do not want the dollar to slide too far down compared to their currency thus making their exports to USA more expensive.
Granted, but that's only true as long as they can't find alternate buyers for their goods.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
There are no alternate buyers actually, no EU being tariff-happy and even more so with China/India who does not liberalize their market yet.
I know here in Australia, we've diversified our exports significantly by including China, Japan and Europe who together now make up the majority of our exports.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
China is not an option really, with their currency tied to US dollars and that their market is not liberal enough. Liberal factors also affects both Japan and EU. US market is desirable because it is one of the most open economies in the world.
Barring a bullet or a profound change of heart, your average revolutionary leader who says I'm a marxist will end up quickly being a dictator. It's practically a mathematical equation. People still advocate marxism and expect not to be treated like they advocate dictatorship. That's wrong.
Whether other systems are right, wrong, or indifferent is a different conversation. Can we not muddy the waters?