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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 10 2019, @01:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the bullseye dept.

Inkstone News:

Federal officials have labeled Boston a major target of Chinese spies who are looking to steal trade and technology secrets from the US.

US Assistant Attorney General John Demers, who leads a federal force against Chinese espionage in America, said Massachusetts had become a focus of his team's work, the Associated Press reported.
...
Massachusetts is home to top-ranked universities including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It also hosts military contractors such as weapon maker Raytheon and defense system provider Mercury Systems.

As part of the China Initiative, officials said they had met with local companies and colleges last week to encourage them to bring suspected instances of espionage to the attention of federal investigators.

Lelling said the large number of Chinese nationals living in Boston also made the city a potential espionage target, but officials added that most were in the US for legitimate reasons, such as study.

Technology workers should keep a close eye on Wang?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 10 2019, @05:12AM (37 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 10 2019, @05:12AM (#827296) Journal

    Orientalism is treating them as inferiors, you fucking idiot. It's treating them like some quaint, charming, half-otherworldly backwater. It's why we get "Chinese food" like Panda Express in the middle of Kansas. It's why most Americans think of the Han as dry cleaner owners, laundry operators, and in general funny little squinty people with big brains and tiny...bodies, shall we say. Caricatures. Harmless little subhumans.

    Admitting that they are not only a threat, but possibly a superior one, is the opposite of Orientalism. It is reckoning with the oldest and largest country and culture on the planet, and recognizing that they are *precisely* as human as us, with all the potential horrors that implies, when you think about a) how the West treated them for hundreds of years and b) our relative positions at the moment.

    They have not, I guarangoddamntee you, forgotten the Opium Wars for one second. I wouldn't either were I part of the CCP.

    Remember that I grew up in Flushing, Queens, NYC, which is currently about as Sinicized as it is possible to get without actually being an overseas territory of China. I can speak a little Mandarin, read somewhat more of both the simplified and traditional character sets, and have been practicing some very basic Zangfu herbalism since childhood. Caucasians look weird to me; I'm used to being an ethnic minority, and coming out to Wisconsin was a rude shock in many ways. So I think I know these people a little better than you do, and one of the things that pervaded all of them was a sort of Han superiority complex. They kept it quiet around the laowai of course, but it was obvious in small ways.

    You, once again, have no idea what the hell you're talking about. Stealing IP isn't also only a Chinese thing; the nascent US did it to Britain left and right, so we've really no grounds for complaint. They are following perhaps the same arc we did, but much less enlightened...and considering who the founding fathers were, that is a terrifying prospect. Brush up on your putonghua, Hallow, and remember, there are FOUR tones and they completely change the meaning of the word.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 10 2019, @01:16PM (36 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 10 2019, @01:16PM (#827413) Journal

    Orientalism is treating them as inferiors, you fucking idiot. It's treating them like some quaint, charming, half-otherworldly backwater.

    OR some other stereotype like the "playing the long game" thing you did in your previous post. If China were consistently "playing the long game" during its history, it wouldn't be a developing country now.

    Admitting that they are not only a threat, but possibly a superior one, is the opposite of Orientalism.

    I don't disagree with that. But I think we need to keep this in perspective. This sort of yellow peril fear is very similar to fears about Japan pervasive in the US in the decade prior to 1990. What changed wasn't so much the developed world (though it didn't stay still), but that Japan showed weaknesses that we didn't realize were there.

    A key problem here is that China has to figure out how to change to an effective developed world country without incurring the weaknesses that so much of the developed world has manifested. That's not going to mean a reversion to its earlier primitive state, but it could end up laboring under long term problems like Japan, US, and a number of other developed countries do.

    Sorry, I don't buy that they're playing the long game, much less playing it well enough to end up on top of the per capita heap. So much of what they're doing is natural short term advantage. As I noted, there's little risk to stealing technology and training new professions in the developed world. One does need a competent state or corporate intelligence network to pull it off, so there is some need for competence here. Similarly, China's trade agreements could transform into more significant advantages later, but it is natural for them to engage in these for the resources they need. Finally, their adoption of capitalism is rather ad hoc. They still don't have rule of law. That indicates to me a lack of foresight. Building up domestic legal infrastructure is a key part of building up a long term economy.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 10 2019, @02:50PM (3 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 10 2019, @02:50PM (#827453) Journal

      It pains me to agree with 'Zumi - but she's pretty damned close to being on target on this. I'll add to her observations, that the Assassin's Mace is quite far behind it's original schedule of "within 20 years", but it is still coming along. I give it another fifty to one hundred years, if it succeeds at all.

      Let me ask you this: how many Americans even bother to think into the future? Our fucking MBA's can't think past the ends of their dicks. Few of our military planners can think even slightly further than that. Which politicians think past the next election? You can't find more than a couple dozen in each million who think beyond their own working careers. Meanwhile, the Han are thinking decades and centuries into the future.

      Sure, they're only human. They may screw the pooch. Or, they may not screw the pooch. But, they do have plans, and we are the pooch.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @06:33PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @06:33PM (#827561)

        we need to use technology to make these parasites obsolete. fuck the federal governments of the world and the mega corps.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 10 2019, @06:45PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 10 2019, @06:45PM (#827564) Journal

          Dafuq you say?

          More importantly, dafuq you mean? Who are the parasites? Aren't they confined to Washington, London, Moscow and Beijing? Let's just dump a few plane loads of DDT on each of those cities, and the rest of humanity can get on with life.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 10 2019, @07:26PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 10 2019, @07:26PM (#827583) Journal

        Let me ask you this: how many Americans even bother to think into the future?

        I'd say about 20-30% of the US population.

        Meanwhile, the Han are thinking decades and centuries into the future.

        Who is "the Han" and how long will Chinese leaders listen to "the Han"? My take is that the leadership is muddling through too. Currently, they are somewhat more competent than corresponding US leadership, but there's nothing to keep it that way, certainly not a (far from unique) Chinese tradition of turning away from wisdom and losing mandates of heaven.

        But, they do have plans, and we are the pooch.

        And?

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 10 2019, @06:58PM (31 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 10 2019, @06:58PM (#827571) Journal

      That's not a stereotype; "the CCP" is not "all 1.5+ billion people who live in China." Stop accusing people of what you yourself are guilty of. It fools no one, we can all see what you're doing, and you lose more respect by the moment every time you do it (and someone like me points it out).

      Even if you don't think they're playing it well, they're still doing it better than the US. Hell, even *Russia* is doing it better than the US, and Russia is...not known for that, shall we say. I don't care what you do or do not believe; China is in an excellent position, or will be soon, to become *the* world superpower, especially if none of the other countries get their shit together. And as Runaway pointed out elsewhere, everyone from Nixon to Clinton handing them the reins of power, through shifting manufacturing there, is responsible for this.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Wednesday April 10 2019, @10:07PM (30 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 10 2019, @10:07PM (#827641) Journal

        "the CCP" is not "all 1.5+ billion people who live in China."

        Who said that? I see quotes as if someone said that stuff, but that never appeared in the discussion before. Nor do I see the relevance. When we speak of leaders of countries, we aren't describing the entirety of the country, but merely its leaders. The Chinese Communist Party is not those leaders either. Instead, that is a valid example of the backwardness that current China has to deal with.

        Many short sighed decisions are being made right now to protect the power of that group.

        Even if you don't think they're playing it well, they're still doing it better than the US.

        At the present. I think we've exhausted this vein of thought. The future will reveal how deep their game is. And ours, for that matter.

        Since we're speaking of the future, what should we do about it? Basically, you have advocated no action about the Chinese climb to power except less Orientalism. Sure, we can do that good idea. But it doesn't really matter that much. It's not a provincial lack of respect for China that drives either China's success or the developed world's somewhat stalled progress.

        Supposedly, China's growing strength comes from its thinking and planning for the future. So what sort of thinking and planning are they doing? What thinking and planning should we do in response?

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 11 2019, @05:49AM (29 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday April 11 2019, @05:49AM (#827782) Journal

          Know what I'd do? Cut off as much in the way of trade with China as possible, no matter how much it hurts, and oh *gods* is it gonna hurt. The US is like a junkie, hooked on cheap manufacturing overseas in China, and like any junkie, there's gonna be hellish withdrawal symptoms. And like a junkie, it may be that we need to hit rock bottom before we as a nation admit we have a problem.

          The old "containment" strategy doesn't work anymore, not in a globally-connected world where the US is, let's be frank here, no longer the big fish in the little pond it was for a few decades after World War II. Plenty of smaller nations have beef with the US, very legitimate beef IMO, and the inevitable consequence would be a China/Russia/Iran axis, very possibly leading to a third World War. That's likely to happen anyway at the rate things are going.

          We've painted ourselves into a corner here. Ordinarily I'd just hope freedom-and-democracy win out, but between the rising tide of authoritarianism in Western countries and the worldwide emergence of surveillance and AI technology, we may actually be headed down a timeline where it becomes utterly impossible to have that happen ever again, short of the Sun blasting us back to the telegraph era with a CME.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 11 2019, @12:02PM (28 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 11 2019, @12:02PM (#827851) Journal

            Cut off as much in the way of trade with China as possible, no matter how much it hurts, and oh *gods* is it gonna hurt.

            Why? I have my own thoughts on that.

            The US is like a junkie, hooked on cheap manufacturing overseas in China, and like any junkie, there's gonna be hellish withdrawal symptoms.

            This trade is also helping China become a better country. And it doesn't help the US do anything with its own economy and well-being of its own citizens. My take is that the US has problems, but trade with China isn't one of them - instead that trade is a way to work around the problems. Thus, cutting off trade with China doesn't actually help.

            We've painted ourselves into a corner here. Ordinarily I'd just hope freedom-and-democracy win out, but between the rising tide of authoritarianism in Western countries and the worldwide emergence of surveillance and AI technology, we may actually be headed down a timeline where it becomes utterly impossible to have that happen ever again, short of the Sun blasting us back to the telegraph era with a CME.

            So how does cutting trade off with China help with this? It seems an authoritarian move that doesn't actually promote said freedom and democracy in any country.

            My view on the matter is that government is the common factor here. Societies with huge, unaccountable governments naturally veer towards authoritarianism. Not only because of the power of the government, but also because government becomes a convenient hammer for anyone who wants society scale solutions or swag. It's insidious, spread throughout society, such as "too big to fail" risk mitigation schemes (and encourages businesses to think short term), scientific funding that undermines peoples' interests in doing their own research, entitlements and "social safety nets" that provide bread and circuses for the masses (and encourage the masses to think short term), huge bureaucracies that do all kinds of things in the background, and ultimately a stagnant society obsessed over controlling and consuming the resources that pass through the hands of this government rather than doing productive, and/or future-oriented things.

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 11 2019, @04:05PM (27 children)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday April 11 2019, @04:05PM (#828061) Journal

              Your last paragraph gives away your essential problem: you conflate anything a government does or may do with "butbut DUH BIG EEBIL GUBBAMINT!" To you, there is no essential difference between those hideous "too big to fail" bailouts that gave the already wealthy utter immunity from their crimes, and trying to keep people from dying horribly on the street.

              I am, believe it or not, a left libertarian. I believe the government should do the minimum possible to, as the Constitution says, provide for the general welfare of the people. That minimum possible, however, may actually be rather a lot. As Einstein is reported to have said, "as simple as possible but no simpler." Maybe there aren't any easy, pat solutions to a problem as utterly gigantic as that. If not? Oh well. Your aesthetic principles don't dictate reality, and your dangerous conflation of government functions blinds you to said reality.

              We need to break this cycle of zero-sum economic thinking, and to do that, we need to get off of the scarcity paradigm for the very basics: clean water and clean energy. We can do this. We have, actually, been able to do this for well over 25 years (yes, nuclear fission, specifically thorium, is going to have to be a tremendous part of this). Once we're not dependent on limited, scarce, polluting, foreign-controlled (hello, OPEC?) resources for the bottom of our energy pyramid, our entire attitude and culture can shift.

              The people stopping this from happening, through regulatory capture mostly, don't WANT that to happen, because it means they lose a lot of wealth. They're willing to throw it all in the meat grinder just to ensure they're on top of the pile of meat as it goes in. This is diseased, and you are helping them.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 11 2019, @11:27PM (26 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 11 2019, @11:27PM (#828369) Journal

                Your last paragraph gives away your essential problem: you conflate anything a government does or may do with "butbut DUH BIG EEBIL GUBBAMINT!" To you, there is no essential difference between those hideous "too big to fail" bailouts that gave the already wealthy utter immunity from their crimes, and trying to keep people from dying horribly on the street.

                I'm sure that yet another measure to drive up the cost of health care will somehow help those people dying in the street. Perhaps by giving them more company?

                I think the universal health care approach is completely misdirected. Back around 1970, the US had a nice health care system. It became very broken over the past 50 years. Some of that reason was due to attempts to make health insurance more universal. I think the considerable disinterest in rolling things back to something that worked indicates that the US will fail as well with its other approaches, such as attempting single payer systems. We're not addressing what went wrong (for example, rigid castes of health care practitioners, out of control malpractice lawsuits, steep regulatory hurdles to testing of medical equipment, medicines, and practices (along with poorly directed funding of medical research which has a serious problem with null hypothesis significance testing), and procedures that have been introduced more to inflate costs of medical care), nor insuring that it won't go more wrong in future decades.

                I am, believe it or not, a left libertarian. I believe the government should do the minimum possible to, as the Constitution says, provide for the general welfare of the people. That minimum possible, however, may actually be rather a lot.

                Obviously, I don't see a case for doing a lot. For example, the vast majority of US-based entitlements seems pretty useless to me. Back in 1970, one could afford one's health care. There's still potential for big costs which could bankrupt people, but you could buy insurance for that. And if some reason you couldn't, Medicaid could cover your costs. Social Security does its job as a pension fund/retirement insurance poorly and is likely to require substantial declines in benefits in order to survive in the future - which will mean that future generations will get less out than they put in. And the various retirement programs for federal employees need to be scaled back.

                All the promises that the politicians of the past century made in order to secure votes sound wonderful, but they don't have to deliver on those promises. We do. And if this continues, we'll get to the point where we can't.

                Needless to say, this has nothing to do with China and its aspirations.

                We need to break this cycle of zero-sum economic thinking, and to do that, we need to get off of the scarcity paradigm for the very basics: clean water and clean energy.

                Ok. So what's the justification for our "minimal government" doing the economic shenanigans to make scarce resources like clean water and clean energy appear to be too cheap to meter? My take is hiding such economic realities, no matter how, is far from serving the general welfare.

                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday April 12 2019, @05:51AM (25 children)

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday April 12 2019, @05:51AM (#828504) Journal

                  You're never going to get this, because you don't *want* to.

                  There is an old Chinese story, possibly apocryphal, that an emperor once dressed as a peasant and went walking through the fields of his subjects. He is said to have heard them singing something which roughly translates as "We dig wells and drink / we till our fields and eat / We rise up at sunrise / we bed down at sunset / What, then, is the emperor's power to us?" And he *smiled,* and kept moving on, knowing that he was doing the right things.

                  The best government is the one people don't have to think about. And people think less about the government when they're not starving or homeless or unemployed. Do you see where this is going? I am not speaking of making water and energy *seem* "too cheap to meter;" I'm talking about actually making it so, or close to so.

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 12 2019, @02:14PM (24 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 12 2019, @02:14PM (#828596) Journal

                    You're never going to get this, because you don't *want* to.

                    Projection.

                    The best government is the one people don't have to think about. And people think less about the government when they're not starving or homeless or unemployed. Do you see where this is going?

                    Sure, this is a really bad case of cognitive dissonance. Let's look at the health care example. Handing control of almost 18% of the US economy (as measured by GDP) to government while simultaneously claiming to be for minimal government on top of that id insane.

                    Further, the US government has already screwed up two single payer systems, the VA and Medicaid. US governments already pay as much in public funds for health care per capita as most health care systems. Merely switching to single payer won't do a thing without significant reform of the US health care system. As I noted earlier, the US had a working system in 1970 (which I might add was equivalent in cost to other health care systems of the day). Why not revert to that instead of making a costly jump to another broken system?

                    As to the thing about "starving or homeless or unemployed", I don't see handing health care to the federal government making any of those better, including health care issues.

                    I am not speaking of making water and energy *seem* "too cheap to meter;" I'm talking about actually making it so, or close to so.

                    I disagree. You need the technology first not the heavy hand of government. And I disagree that this is a serious issue either. Water and energy even in the absence of "too cheap to meter" or government interference are pretty cheap.

                    Further, such games provide even stronger rationalizations for foisting inefficient efficiency schemes on us. It's a short jump from "getting off of the scarcity paradigm" to getting back on the scarcity paradigm with all sorts of bad ideas about how to conserve the resources we just make almost freely available. Markets automatically fix this sort of problem with sane pricing. Figure out how to put one in and you'll fix the scarcity problem as well as it can be fixed.

                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday April 12 2019, @03:44PM (23 children)

                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday April 12 2019, @03:44PM (#828644) Journal

                      We call people like you "amanojaku" sometimes. People who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. You Have A Narrative (TM), and Cthulhu forbid you examine any of the foundational dogma of The Narrative (TM).

                      We HAVE the technology already. And even if we didn't, I find it odd how you don't seem to have any issues with us getting technology trickling down from warfare--the single biggest government spending sink!--and things like the space program, but would be so utterly opposed to R&D for the explicit purpose of generating energy. This leaves aside the national security implications of not being dependent, at all, for anything, on any other nation in terms of energy. You'd think that alone would get you salivating over the idea.

                      --
                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                      • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Friday April 12 2019, @10:35PM (22 children)

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 12 2019, @10:35PM (#828771) Journal

                        We call people like you "amanojaku" sometimes

                        Sounds like "we" need to think about why calling people irrelevant labels doesn't help.

                        People who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. You Have A Narrative (TM), and Cthulhu forbid you examine any of the foundational dogma of The Narrative (TM).

                        Fortunately, I came up with an explanation over the course of several posts for being contrarian. It doesn't need to be a mystery for you.

                        We HAVE the technology already.

                        We have the technology to dump every scrap of trash into the Sun. It costs vastly more money than anything else we could do with that trash, and is a terrible idea from a sustainability viewpoint (since we can't mine trash that we shoot into the Sun). BUT why aren't we doing it already?

                        And even if we didn't, I find it odd how you don't seem to have any issues with us getting technology trickling down from warfare--the single biggest government spending sink!--and things like the space program, but would be so utterly opposed to R&D for the explicit purpose of generating energy.

                        First, they serve a need, particularly warfare. Second, I'm pretty close to advocating for widespread destruction of companies involved in these areas, even if that means growing new businesses from scratch to cover important needs like warplanes or aircraft carriers. The current process in the defense industry is a travesty and will lose us wars in the future. Similarly, white elephants like the SLS prevent NASA from doing one of its more important jobs, exploring space. I'd rather just abandon that pretext altogether, if NASA won't be tasked with most of its funding to do that.

                        As to renewable energy, what good will dumping more public funds into renewable energy projects do? This area is already well explored and developed. It has no critical needs that are going unaddressed.

                        This leaves aside the national security implications of not being dependent, at all, for anything, on any other nation in terms of energy.

                        The US has considerable oil and coal resources, meaning it can handle significant disruptions. And despite the hysteria from the Islamophobes and Russian conspiracy theorists, there's not much of a security implication from buying oil from OPEC and other parts of the world.

                        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:51AM (21 children)

                          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday April 13 2019, @05:51AM (#828890) Journal

                          I give up. You're unreachable, and you've chosen to be. All I can do is leave you to rot in your delusions, and point out to passers-by that you indeed *are* deluded, in case they couldn't see it for themselves. You seem to lack some critical piece of information, or maybe even some actual physical component of your brain (mirror neurons?), and that's stopping you from engaging with reality.

                          --
                          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                          • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday April 13 2019, @12:49PM (20 children)

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 13 2019, @12:49PM (#828943) Journal

                            I give up.

                            I'd rather you think, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

                            You're unreachable, and you've chosen to be.

                            The "I've tried every fallacy I know" argument. I'm unreachable because you aren't trying to reach.

                            All I can do is leave you to rot in your delusions, and point out to passers-by that you indeed *are* deluded, in case they couldn't see it for themselves.

                            Indeed. One wonders who they'll find is deluded? The one arguing reasonably or the one who gives up trying before they even start trying?

                            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday April 13 2019, @06:45PM (19 children)

                              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday April 13 2019, @06:45PM (#829030) Journal

                              It's definitely you, Hallow. As I've said before, I hold little to no hope of ever getting you to do the right thing; all I can do is contain you and help ensure that no one unfortunate enough to get within your blast radius is turned into another walking Klein bottle like you.

                              I sincerely hope you undergo meaningful suffering--not suffering for its own sake, but suffering that makes you learn why your present positions are not only wrong, but harmful. I understand that you are of that type that only learns through personal pain, and wish the precise amount necessary, no more and no less, upon you.

                              --
                              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                              • (Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Saturday April 13 2019, @07:53PM (18 children)

                                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 13 2019, @07:53PM (#829057) Journal

                                As I've said before, I hold little to no hope of ever getting you to do the right thing; all I can do is contain you and help ensure that no one unfortunate enough to get within your blast radius is turned into another walking Klein bottle like you.

                                And I've already pointed ways to raise your hopes, such as rational argument and thinking about the subject at hand.

                                I sincerely hope you undergo meaningful suffering [...] but suffering that makes you learn why your present positions are not only wrong, but harmful

                                Look you're just wrong from basic principles (such as the implicit assumption [soylentnews.org] that the suffering of 1 person justifies inflicting suffering on 100 more). Torturing people who don't agree won't change that.

                                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:31AM (17 children)

                                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:31AM (#829259) Journal

                                  You don't even understand what I mean, do you?

                                  Look, some people just do not understand why they should care about others' suffering until they themselves suffer the same thing. I want you to experience long-term homelessness, extreme poverty, discrimination, illness, and concommittant lack of healthcare, ideally all at once. For as long as it takes for the lightbulb to go off, and not a second longer (though the reality is, if you ever fall into that sort of situation, it will probably be a lot longer, maybe even for a lifetime).

                                  Some people--who need to be beaten with Ye Olde Clue-By-Four until it is reduced to a small pile of Clue-By-Sixty-Fourths--like to say "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged" in lieu of, you know, an actual argument. I find that a converse version often holds far truer: "A liberal is a conservative who's been unjustly convicted and jailed," for example. This is an illustration of my point above: it never occurs to people like you that "the system" is hideously broken and unjust until it's your own ox being gored.

                                  --
                                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:48AM (16 children)

                                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 14 2019, @05:48AM (#829268) Journal

                                    You don't even understand what I mean, do you?

                                    You keep asking bullshit rhetorical questions.

                                    Look, some people just do not understand why they should care about others' suffering until they themselves suffer the same thing.

                                    You apparently are one of those people else you'd have bothered to figure this out by now.

                                    I want you to experience long-term homelessness, extreme poverty, discrimination, illness, and concommittant lack of healthcare, ideally all at once.

                                    And I want you to get a clue. I guess we'll both have to go disappointed.

                                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 14 2019, @06:08AM (15 children)

                                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday April 14 2019, @06:08AM (#829275) Journal

                                      What happened to the long screed full of "obvious rebuttals," Mr. Hallow? Have I touched a nerve? This isn't like you.

                                      Come on. Obviously-rebut me, baby! Rebut it good and hard. If you can. Something tells me you can't, and may even be feeling just a bit stunned now. Maybe a tiny twinge of conscience? I can (but won't) only hope...

                                      --
                                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 14 2019, @01:02PM (14 children)

                                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 14 2019, @01:02PM (#829349) Journal

                                        What happened to the long screed full of "obvious rebuttals," Mr. Hallow?

                                        Another pointless rhetorical question. Those screeds of obvious rebuttals didn't unhappen since they were posted.

                                        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 14 2019, @06:57PM (13 children)

                                          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday April 14 2019, @06:57PM (#829450) Journal

                                          Oh, that's not pointless, Hallow. Your reaction to that last post was very telling...like most of your kind, you haven't got the EQ to realize how much information your side channels leak, as it were.

                                          --
                                          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                          • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday April 14 2019, @11:24PM (12 children)

                                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 14 2019, @11:24PM (#829526) Journal

                                            Your reaction to that last post was very telling...

                                            Only in your imagination. Well, since you've become disinterested in communication, let's review what the thread was about.

                                            You spoke of the 4000+ Chinese civilization and how, somehow, this indicated that the Chinese were good at playing the long game today. A review of the actual history indicates otherwise with many periods of societal collapse and such. Further, it's futile to claim that somehow the competence of past ages has rubbed off on the present when there has been so much corruption and dysfunction in between.

                                            Then we get to your suggestions for fixing whatever is supposed to be the problem, such as massive disruption of global trade and harming billions of peoples' livelihoods for some imaginary fear that the US is "addicted" to productive labor in the rest of the world. Or feeding entitlement programs which harm the US's ability to deal with these problems.

                                            I find it telling that I gave good reasons for doing things differently (such as the huge costs of doing the feelgood things you'd like us to do), and then you did the typical Azuma thing and lost your shit:

                                            We call people like you "amanojaku" sometimes. People who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

                                            Rather for reasons you can't be bothered to notice. Past that, you descended into childish insults and didn't contribute anything further to the thread.

                                            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 15 2019, @05:31AM (11 children)

                                              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday April 15 2019, @05:31AM (#829670) Journal

                                              You're seeing the world through Hallow-shit-colored glasses. Nothing I do is going to get you to take them off. Your concern for "billions of peoples' livelihoods" is a fucking joke, else you'd be ranting about the current US system an order of magnitude louder than even me. You call the distortion of global markets and concomittant wage depression resulting from outsourcing "productive labor," completely ignoring the externalities, as if reality is just a spreadsheet with a P&L statement in it and nothing more. And your attitudes on what you refer to as "entitlement programs" are both fallacious and entirely lacking in nuance. You probably think Social Security is an "entitlement," don't you, you fucking moron?

                                              The rest of your post is a whiny special-snowflake tone troll. Harden the fuck up or get the fuck out.

                                              --
                                              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                              • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday April 15 2019, @01:18PM (10 children)

                                                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 15 2019, @01:18PM (#829797) Journal
                                                What a pile of bullshit. Let's start with the first relatively concrete statement.

                                                Your concern for "billions of peoples' livelihoods" is a fucking joke, else you'd be ranting about the current US system an order of magnitude louder than even me.

                                                While there's a lot wrong with the system, such as its penchant for spying on the entire world, economically, it has resulted in the biggest improvement in the human condition ever.

                                                You call the distortion of global markets and concomittant wage depression resulting from outsourcing "productive labor," completely ignoring the externalities, as if reality is just a spreadsheet with a P&L statement in it and nothing more.

                                                Show us those externalities and we'll compare. As I already mentioned, there are several billion people whose lives are getting better - among other things their wages aren't being depressed. Where's that externality in your P&L statement?

                                                And your attitudes on what you refer to as "entitlement programs" are both fallacious and entirely lacking in nuance. You probably think Social Security is an "entitlement," don't you, you fucking moron?

                                                I think this is yet another way you show your delusion. US Social Security is indeed an entitlement [oxforddictionaries.com].

                                                A government scheme that provides benefits to any individual meeting certain eligibility requirements.

                                                The fact that you display a level of entitlement concerning this entitlement is icing on your particular cake.

                                                My view on this is that we'll need to cut back on those entitlements, including Social Security, if we want to have a future for the US. As I already noted, they do nothing for the future of US society and are unsustainable. They were formed and executed with considerable dishonesty, promising more than they can deliver in the long run. Benefits have to be cut else the US will be in a few decades spending way more than its economy can cover.

                                                I think your indignation is ridiculous given that you were proposing instead a very Chinese way of economic suicide - close ourselves off from the world until a greater power forces the walls down to our disadvantage, like the Europeans did with the Chinese and the US did with Japan.

                                                I've seen economic isolation work, but only if the worker takes considerable sacrifice in the process. When instead it's used to protect a stagnant and corrupt environment - as would be the case here, it just makes things worse.

                                                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 15 2019, @06:23PM (9 children)

                                                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday April 15 2019, @06:23PM (#829965) Journal

                                                  The only way to fix this is to break out of the scarcity paradigm. And private entities are not going to do that, because it doesn't help their balance sheet in the next quarter or two. By the time we get to the point where it would, it'll be much, much too late.

                                                  But noooo, Cthulhu forbid duh eeeeeeeeeebil gubbamint get involved. The CCC was a Communist plot! The New Deal was Satan himself dropping trou and farting into the microphone through Franklin Roosevelt's mouth! Death to gubbamint!!!111one. You stupid bastard. Shut up and go away. You have nothing to contribute, no ideas to solve the problems we're facing with, and all you want to do is sit here and whack off over your own imagined superiority. Fuck off and let the adults do the talking.

                                                  --
                                                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 15 2019, @10:30PM (8 children)

                                                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 15 2019, @10:30PM (#830126) Journal

                                                    The only way to fix this is to break out of the scarcity paradigm.

                                                    And you can do that only if you have the technology to do so. If you don't, you can't break out of the scarcity paradigm.

                                                    And private entities are not going to do that, because it doesn't help their balance sheet in the next quarter or two.

                                                    Depends on the business model. Some do that and some don't.

                                                    But noooo, Cthulhu forbid duh eeeeeeeeeebil gubbamint get involved.

                                                    Pretty much correct despite the eldritch melodrama. Government has the power to warp economics far beyond that of a business trying to make a buck. We already have several examples of what happens when we make via extensive public funding a good appear to be post-scarcity when it's not. It's called tragedy of the commons. The good gets overconsumed because there's no additional cost to the consumer for consuming more. Then the regulatory thrashing starts where the government tries (and routinely fails) to correct for the problems of the previous layers of regulatory corrections.

                                                    One can avoid all that by market pricing in the first place.

                                                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:56AM (7 children)

                                                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:56AM (#830297) Journal

                                                      So we are at what Nobby Nobbs persists in referring to as an imp arse, then. We have historical examples of things like the Civilian Conservation Corps working. The municipal highway system is another. You are drinking clean water and not suffering explosive diarrhea (at least, not from the anus...) because of municipal water supplies; the "free market" solution would be along the lines of Nestle selling you bottled water at $10 an ounce.

                                                      You are, in the most basic and most dictionary-accurate sense, a bigot. You have ingrained dogma ("gubbamint BAD!") which is not even slightly amenable to reason and external evidence. It sounds to me like you don't *want* the problems solved, because of some misguided and utterly ahistorical purity principle concerning what you believe the "free market" to be.

                                                      Get it through your titanium cranium, Hallow: demands for different goods have differing elasticities, infinite growth is a physical impossibility, stable market minima are not the same thing as an actual most efficient solution, private entities are not guaranteed to find either, and humans are *not* rational actors. Your entire worldview is built on a foundation of sewage, and it smells that way.

                                                      --
                                                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 16 2019, @01:34PM (6 children)

                                                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 16 2019, @01:34PM (#830382) Journal

                                                        We have historical examples of things like the Civilian Conservation Corps working.

                                                        Define "working". Sure, the CCC was better than not having it like having a band aid over a wound is better than not. But we wouldn't have been in the situation to need the CCC, if FDR hadn't massively screwed up the economy (for example, massive creation of cartels, and handing way too much power to labor unions, thus screwing up new employment). There have been three slow job recovery recessions since 1900. All three involve heavy interference by a sitting president (FDR in 1933-1939, G. W. Bush in 2001-2008, and Barack Obama in 2009-2016).

                                                        The municipal highway system is another. You are drinking clean water and not suffering explosive diarrhea (at least, not from the anus...) because of municipal water supplies; the "free market" solution would be along the lines of Nestle selling you bottled water at $10 an ounce.

                                                        Unless, of course, I figured out how to get drinking water cheaper. It might be structured differently than current municipal systems, but the water isn't going to cost that much because barrier to entry is low.

                                                        Let's also consider historical examples like ice. The US had a thriving economy in ice production prior to refrigerators. It didn't get dominated by one company providing one expensive product.

                                                        You are, in the most basic and most dictionary-accurate sense, a bigot. You have ingrained dogma ("gubbamint BAD!") which is not even slightly amenable to reason and external evidence. It sounds to me like you don't *want* the problems solved, because of some misguided and utterly ahistorical purity principle concerning what you believe the "free market" to be.

                                                        You have yet to employ reason and external evidence. Just look at this section.

                                                        Get it through your titanium cranium, Hallow: demands for different goods have differing elasticities, infinite growth is a physical impossibility, stable market minima are not the same thing as an actual most efficient solution, private entities are not guaranteed to find either, and humans are *not* rational actors. Your entire worldview is built on a foundation of sewage, and it smells that way.

                                                        And none of that is relevant to our discussion - your entire post to be honest. Markets handle it all quite well. Inelastic goods? Higher prices due to inelastic demand encourage more production. Nobody has a clue what an actual "most efficient solution" looks like. Markets do better than some ignorant top-down fools trying to guess it. One doesn't need infinite growth (and as I have noted in the past, we'll need to grow for some time even if the growth never will be infinite, just due to our needs). And one doesn't need rational actors.

                                                        So what brought up this sudden surge in straw men? There is no real problem with drinking water or electricity the way they're currently priced. And really, a bunch of providers already do some sort of post-scarcity pricing, fixed rate for small users and per unit for large users without a lot of high drama. Nor have I bellyached that much about public infrastructure building, even though at this point, it's pretty inefficiently distributed (emphasis on building new stuff over maintaining the old, and an obsession with virtue/status signaling like building poorly used high speed rails or bike paths over building stuff that people would use).

                                                        You can talk all day (and sometimes do) about "reason and external evidence", but you can't even abandon the crudest sorts of reasoning fallacies. Want me to be amenable? Then actually do reason and external evidence. Don't just talk about it.

                                                        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:19PM (5 children)

                                                          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:19PM (#830517) Journal

                                                          Thanks for proving my point. Bare assumptions are not an argument, and the most telling of them ("we don't need rational actors") pretty much underlies your entire worldview. You are approaching Trumpian levels of self-serving utterly divorced from reality skull squitter. If there were any justice in this world your fingers would detach themselves from your hands and run away from you for the lies and bullshit you force them to type.

                                                          --
                                                          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                                          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 16 2019, @08:32PM (4 children)

                                                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 16 2019, @08:32PM (#830586) Journal

                                                            and the most telling of them ("we don't need rational actors") pretty much underlies your entire worldview

                                                            Do you need to be perfectly rational in anything else you do? Does one need to be perfectly rational when one drives? Mows the lawn? Eats a meal? Reads a book? Why are markets supposed to be a unique exception?

                                                            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:57AM (3 children)

                                                              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:57AM (#830862) Journal

                                                              When the very foundations of a theory that affects the lives of billions are under consideration? Hell to the motherfucking yes, we need to be perfectly rational, or as close to it as we can get. Economics is *predicated* on those assumptions, Mr. Hallow. You do not get to push a theory that relies on A and then continue pushing it when ~A has been shown to be the case. It just doesn't work, and with something with as wide a scope as economic policy, the failure modes are catastrophic.

                                                              --
                                                              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                                              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 17 2019, @12:31PM (2 children)

                                                                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 17 2019, @12:31PM (#830972) Journal

                                                                When the very foundations of a theory that affects the lives of billions are under consideration?

                                                                The answer is no, you don't need perfectly rational being. We have far more than "a theory" here. We have working examples of markets which demonstrate that one doesn't need to be perfectly rational in order to use and benefit from markets.

                                                                Economics is *predicated* on those assumptions, Mr. Hallow.

                                                                No, it's not. This is straw man. You can see for yourself. Just answer the question "What aspect of economics requires us to be perfectly rational in order to use it?" Making choices, the fundamental economic activity don't require us to be perfectly rational. Owning resources and assets don't require us to be perfectly rational. One no more needs to be perfectly rational to use a hammer than they do an economics system. Both are merely tools, independent of the mental capabilities of the people/agents using them.

                                                                Sure there is a theory of economics that assumes agents using the system are perfectly rational. But one can similarly assume that's not true and get a different sort of theory (which just happens to be very close to the perfectly rational ideal). There is plenty of economic theory that doesn't rely on such things. And that's theory. As I noted above, we have a lot more than theory with many working examples of markets and economies to study.

                                                                You do not get to push a theory that relies on A and then continue pushing it when ~A has been shown to be the case. It just doesn't work, and with something with as wide a scope as economic policy, the failure modes are catastrophic.

                                                                Show it's a problem, don't just assert it's a problem. As to "catastrophic" failure modes, when are we going to see those?

                                                                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:15PM (1 child)

                                                                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:15PM (#831247) Journal

                                                                  You wanna see catastrophic failure, look back to the Depression. You know, one of the reasons Glass-Steagall was passed? And guess what got repealed during the Clinton Dynasty?

                                                                  Hallow, you are the kind of person who would jump off a cliff and be completely unconcerned because, until impact, everything is going just fine and there's even a nice, cooling breeze. You're an utter historical illiterate, sitting in the lap of all those who suffered and perished in the labor movements from the 1850s to the 1940s to bring you the 40 hour workweek, disability and labor laws, workers' comp, unions, and everything else that led to you being able to sit here at your computer and smack your benefactors in the face over TCP/IP across over 150 years of space-time.

                                                                  Every. Single. Privilege. You. Have. About the modern workplace. Is due to the very same "liberals" you are constantly castigating. Thank a liberal you are not slaving away in a factory somewhere 14 hours a day 7 days a week only to be thrown out on the spot when you lose a hand in the machinery.

                                                                  And you sit here, either ignorant of this on a scale that approaches culpability or worse, knowing and deliberately dismissive of it, and push for economic policy that will make the Gilded Age look quaint.

                                                                  --
                                                                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                                                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:10AM

                                                                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:10AM (#831463) Journal

                                                                    You wanna see catastrophic failure, look back to the Depression. You know, one of the reasons Glass-Steagall was passed? And guess what got repealed during the Clinton Dynasty?

                                                                    Notice what else is common then and recently with Obama, a US president who substantially messed up the US economy with business-hostile policies. And both have really slow job recoveries.

                                                                    You're an utter historical illiterate, sitting in the lap of all those who suffered and perished in the labor movements from the 1850s to the 1940s to bring you the 40 hour workweek, disability and labor laws, workers' comp, unions, and everything else that led to you being able to sit here at your computer and smack your benefactors in the face over TCP/IP across over 150 years of space-time.

                                                                    Sigh. Once again, labor power increased over that time as well. Similarly, when foreign labor started competing, labor power declined, followed by declines in labor union power and such. The workers about which you wax poetically brought a hell of a lot more than just better labor conditions. They brought modern society. Maybe you shouldn't be smacking them either?

                                                                    There is this interesting pause in the decline of labor power in the decade between 1990 and 2000. At that point, Japan's economic progress had stalled while China was still building up. The US economy did quite well during that time. In my view, that indicates a strong correlation between the power of labor, and the competition for that labor.

                                                                    That's why I continue to perceive these labor problems as temporary. Every country in the world, with the possible sole exception of North Korea, is moving towards a developed world economy. My take is that eventually we'll reach parity with almost every part of the world, maybe by 2060 (where Africa will be the last major hold out yet still progressing rapidly towards developed world status). At that point, what will stand in the way of US labor power will be its own laws. That so many people are more concerned about 40 hour work weeks than in an economy that can support 40 hour work weeks, indicates to me that the US might not do well by this time.