China, behind the surface, is very anarchic, bejing can make rules all it wants but the local government beyond surface placation won't honor the spirit and restart production of all kind of stuff. Which is fascinating, cause as soon as party rule is threatened, that very same principle ceases to apply.
Any sufficiently big country is very anarchic in that sense. US and India are made of literal states. Russia resembles a medieval feudal structure. UK is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it all would be about 5% population of China. An idea that someone or something could govern such a huge amount of people directly and controlling all aspects of life and economy looks absurd to me.
> Any sufficiently big country is very anarchic in that sense.
The reason most large countries have standardized on democracy + separation of powers + rule of law (in various flavors) is precisely because it's a decent solution to this.
China's governance struggles are because it wants two contradictory things (a) absolute authority of the CCP + (b) absolute adherence to the rule of law.
Unfortunately, explicitly placing a political party made of humans above the rule of law is a recipe for ignoring the latter. First when it's politically inconvenient. Then, once it's become culturally acceptable, whenever anyone thinks they can get away with it.
Xi smartly pushed this back a few decades, to the extent possible, by identifying and pursuing corruption vigorously (from the top) as an existential threat to the CCP. Unfortunately, absolute power... etc. ... and inevitably aspects of those corruption crusades turned into removing political enemies from power.
Authoritarian regimes' greatest weaknesses are corruption and blindness to inconvenient truths.
Democracies' are lack of unity and long term planning.
You should spend some time on YouTube watching videos about China and North Korea. It’s not absurd at all and the psychological mechanisms are well known to anyone who’s spent time reviewing how controlling a population works. Just a minimal cursory review reveals how fear and a rigid hierarchy are all that’s needed.
I was born in the USSR, so, with all due respect, I think I know more about the internal mechanics of undemocratic states than a person who watched YouTube.
I would go even farther, that someone recommending to watch youtube for such a topic is either joking, never been around the block, or literally copy-and-pasting from somewhere else.
Though to be fair, the vast vast majority of HN comments regarding more complex topics are not coming from first hand sources, or those who've had serious discussions with people who've had that first hand experience.
This is not helpful advice: YouTube has a vast amount of video but much of it is misleading, incomplete, or simply wrong and it’s all presented in exactly the same way. If there’s a specific person you think has expertise on a topic you have to link directly to their work.
It's always local lords and barons who make the rules. There are top-down rules, more like guidelines really, which are used to remove local government officials under whatever pretext when things go really south.
The regime exists only because the people believe in the regime.
If the people armed themselves and coordinated, they would outnumber policemen and soldiers.
This is true in China, but it's true everywhere else.
It's true in the west. If people stop complying we would get way more power and overall reduce inequality between the few rich and powerful and politically connect and you everyday Joe.
For the same principle, Russia could never control Ukraine without support, the romans couldn't control their provinces without local approval.
> For the same principle, Russia could never control Ukraine without support, the romans couldn't control their provinces without local approval.
The same principle applies to colonialism. The British in India, the French in Indochina, and countless other examples from history: the imperial power always needs support from the locals, usually the elite or in some way privileged classes whose welfare becomes tied to the rule of the imperial power.
>If people stop complying we would get way more power and overall reduce inequality between the few rich and powerful and politically connect and you everyday Joe.
I dont believe it
Inequality would be even worse and upward mobility would be reduced, at least in the west.
That’s … not how it works. The US had built strong unions in multiple areas of work because people didn’t comply with what was expected of them. This is part of why its middle class became large and monetarily strong. We’re people to band together in defiance of the expectations of the wealthy and political class, they could wrestle power back and rebalance the system. It’s history. Go read it.
Violent uprisings are historically common, including in the Roman Republic and later Roman Empire. They were crushed judiciously early by Rome's farmer-warriors (who had a very martial culture) and hundreds of years later by Rome's professional army. This is the primary way that states de facto have power.
You're right that you can't have a Pharaoh without a huge society built around one, but you don't get that society without a professional force policing the farming of the Nile, and you don't get successful farming of the Nile without a police force strong enough to oppose resistance / enforce retribution on "cheaters" with regard to water redistribution.
Regarding revolutions: sometimes the govt realizes it has a cancer and takes steps to cut it out or irradiate it. Sometimes the cancer wins and the entire body dies. Out of the ashes typically rises...autocracy. You only get something else when the power brokers actively strive to make such a thing, and even then you still frequently end up with autocracy.
> China, behind the surface, is very anarchic, bejing can make rules all it wants but the local government beyond surface placation won't honor the spirit and restart production of all kind of stuff.
While I concede that populations with livable-experience spanning millennia tends to drive Societies in that direction. I think it's more accepting a certain amount of tolerable corruption: China is incredibly corrupt, and will go to great lengths to window dress in order to appear to be either compliant or at least effectively operating within acceptable parameters. This is a common attribute of totalitarian regimes, wherein your proximity to power is what ultimately dictated the level of severity with which you will be punished, my first experience with this was with food: specifically that of organically grown food and came ot a head during the baby formula poisoning event which led to a black-market in HK. Then we saw this first hand how the CCP dealt with Bitcoin, and its continual 'banning' despite Bitmain being led not just by a Chinese national, and then a very member of the CCP itself, but even exchanges like Hubei thrived in this time and held on to a majority of the hash rate.
Long story short: Bitcoin is now banned but there are still a significant amount of miners in mainland despite all the theatrics.
There is nothing Anarchic about it, its blatant favoritism that coincides with all class based structures that congruently emerge within a State: despite all the rhetoric of equality within Socialist/Communist doctrine would lead you to believe it makes you wonder if this isn't EXACTLY what they all lead to. I'm sympathetic to the class inequality of Socialism, and even see the (often misinformed) tenets of Marxism tries to remedy and it's long-term aims but... it's theoretical and practical applications wildly differ from the former and the only result that remains constant is that lots of people end up dying in starvation, pointless wars and land/ecosystems are often destroyed for generations in the process: this came very apparent to me outside of ideological purview during my apprenticeship in horticulture in E. European countries that I visited and then once more when I was living near a hotspot of the collapse of Yugoslavia.
They were taking out mines and other un-exploded ordinance from what was my community's front yard less than a Km away from a park near a marina where mothers walked with strollers around Marina and Promenade and about ~2Km from my very home.
>Which is fascinating, cause as soon as party rule is threatened, that very same principle ceases to apply.
Fascinating isn't the term you want to use here, and I take it you have no one in Tibet, Xinjiang or Hong Kong, because of you did you would see this from an entirely different lens, and nothing is fascinating about it unless you enjoy pointless Human misery/death/subjugation.
It's almost like the application of Law is circumstantial and based on a litany of factors that create an insular ruling class that have no qualm with erasing History by force: even the norms of genocide (HK is mainly Han) ethno-cleansing (Xinjiang) fall apart but are not off the table in order for the CCP to cement it's rule at all costs in ways that actually matter.
The only real experiment of Anarchism that was remotely allowed to stand in China was Kowloon's walled city [0], and to no one's surprise the CCP has been doing everything to hide it's 'shame' and 'colonized' past ever since the uprising in 2019, forcing everyone out and bulldozing the area under 'renovation' and offering the HongKongers little to nothing in return in the process.
> The only real experiment of Anarchism that was remotely allowed to stand in China was Kowloon's walled city [0], and to no one's surprise the CCP has been doing everything to hide it's 'shame' and 'colonized' past ever since the uprising in 2019, forcing everyone out and bulldozing the area under 'renovation' and offering the HongKongers little to nothing in return in the process.
What exactly do you mean? Kowloon Walled City has never been under de facto mainland Chinese control. De jure sovereignty was transferred to the United Kingdom in the early 1990s so that it could be demolished, so by the time Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese, the walled city had no longer existed. So how can the evictions and the bulldozing, carried out by the British-controlled Hong Kong government in the early 1990s, be in any way related to the 2019 protests?
The previous comment sounds and reads like an AI written mess unfornately, since contextual history is one of the harder things to throw out with AI and have it get right.
I've heard from a law student in China that the law is a tool to control the masses. Assuming that is true, ignoring the law is simply taking things under control and bribery is the cost of doing business.
Because in most western nations the government itself is bound by laws. There’s a huge philosophical difference between the way Chinese view law and we do.
It's not - we're mostly better than China but the crimes our governments commit against us are of the same type.
They steal our freedom and profits via taxes.
Taxes in China are not even that high for european standard, but they do infringe more on their citizens liberty.
On the other side, western societies are doing more of that too, between covid, gdpr, and the incoming cyber resiliance act
If you agree with "ignorantia juris non excusat" then student from China is right. Our governments adds tons of new laws every year and only few remove. We have about 2 millions laws, rules and regulations (Czechia). And we still believe that we live in free society.
If you find yourself often linking two totally disimilar things like this you should probably do some introspection.
I know it is popular to tell oneself: "but China", so one can stop thinking about what we can do, but China as of 2023 has 3 times (!) the capacity of installed renewable energy than the US.
You can always find some metric where your side looks better and the other worse, the trick is not to let yourself use it to excuse your own bullshit unless you love to actively harm yourself.
> You can always find some metric where your side looks better and the other worse, the trick is not to let yourself use it to excuse your own bullshit unless you love to actively harm yourself.
This is such an important point. My family’s been in the Los Angeles area since the 1950s and I remember a semi-constant stream of whining from conservatives about California’s environmental laws, and that “someone else will just pollute more” excuse for inaction was a common refrain. This was always annoying because even if we assume that the global situation will get worse, it’s not just less bad than it would have been but also locally they reduced a massive number of deaths, illnesses, asthma cases, etc. not to mention the quality of life improvements from not getting headaches or having days where you can’t see across the street. Even if removing plastic straws or bags isn’t going to save the world, anyone who likes going to the water is going to appreciate not having all of that trash visible.
The other thing we always need to keep in mind is that we are living in huge, well-developed economies with millions of people. We can do many things at once and something like a ban on single-use plastic is not a huge time sink. We banned disposable plastic bags here, and despite all of the dire predictions it took less than a week to adjust.
The snippet from the top comment is worth reposting:
> Yet despite experiencing large seasonal growth this year, the ozone hole is still decreasing in size overall. "Based on the Montreal Protocol and the decrease of anthropogenic ozone-depleting substances, scientists currently predict that the global ozone layer will reach its normal state again by around 2050," said Claus Zehner, ESA's mission manager for Copernicus Sentinel-5P.
It goes "large again" every year with the seasons, but the overall trend is that it's still shrinking:
Claus concludes, “Based on the Montreal Protocol and the decrease of anthropogenic ozone-depleting substances, scientists currently predict that the global ozone layer will reach its normal state again by around 2050.”
Imagine if we'd invented CFCs but hadn't invented a way to monitor atmospheric O3 levels. We'd have burned the entire ozone layer away before we even realised that anything was wrong.
“The eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano in January 2022 injected a lot of water vapour into the stratosphere which only reached the south polar regions after the end of the 2022 ozone hole.
“The water vapour could have led to the heightened formation of polar stratospheric clouds, where chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) can react and accelerate ozone depletion. The presence of water vapour may also contribute to the cooling of the Antarctic stratosphere, further enhancing the formation of these polar stratospheric clouds and resulting in a more robust polar vortex.”
Sounds like more of a natural expansion of the human created phenomenon, hopefully temporary
It does take many years (in the timeframe of decades) for CFCs and other ozone depleting molecules to reach a point where they do damage as it’s heavier than air. 2010 was only 13-14 years ago at this point and those gasses have mostly not made it up that high yet. We won’t know the full scale of the damage that this has done for another 5-15 years.
What we are seeing now is a separate event that had likely originated with excessive, high-altitude water vapor being blasted into the sky due to volcanic activity.
Well, if that's the case, I guess I do owe them an apology. I can accept that it is fact I that doesn't know full the situation, to know that we're still yet to feel the effect of all that - that really sucks
The only reason I can think of is to avoid diplomatic problems. When scientific reporting doesn’t make sense it is either due to ignorance or politics, and I doubt the ESA has an issue with ignorance.
Could have just stated the facts, not even written any of the "Why is the ozone hole so big?" section.
Had they presented facts from their space-borne instruments, analyzed said data honestly, no leading thoughts - would have been plenty; they'd have an interesting article and more importantly not lied (or seen to) to our faces.
> In response to this, the Montreal Protocol was created in 1987 to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production and consumption of these harmful substances, which is leading to a recovery of the ozone layer.
If the hole happened now I’m sure CFC manufacturers would have AI-powered Cambridge Analytica-style social media campaigns creating ozone hole deniers and CFCs=Freedom groups and we would be arguing until the end of time over this as the ozone depleted.
Thank goodness the Montreal Protocol was created in a different era where that couldn’t happen.
I find this kind of sentiment a little vacuous. Charitably, we might say "Much of the non-human life on Earth will be just fine without humans" but the kinds of ecological disaster that would wipe us would would take a significant chunk of other life along with it. Beyond that, what value is a floating chunk of rock except for the very fact it sustains conscious life, the only thing capable of valuing it? Humans, and other forms of life, are pretty much entirely what makes Earth worth caring about at all.
The point is no one is hurting Earth, it is hurting itself because humans are part of Earth. Unless you believe humans are aliens, you have to make peace with that fact
I am quite dubious of this claim. Our current coral reefs didn't exist during the Younger-Dryas. They were dry land. Bleached coral isn't dead. It has just expelled it's algae due to stress. Coral are also broadcast spawners. Polyps ride ocean currents until they find a place to build their home, the actual reef structure. Coral reefs may move around but they aren't going to just go extinct.
But you are human. Even when you try to care for what non-humans value, you're still doing that because of your human values. You literally can't step outside yourself.
It's fair to say that FredPret is evaluating "best" at the same level of zoom as you are.
They point to natural and temporary causes but the effect highlights at least two challenges that will complicate combating climate change: 1) Comprehensive monitoring of local releases into the atmosphere will be required to prevent ugly surprises and 2) Human impact interacts with natural phenomena in difficult to predict ways (the famous tipping points are effectively non-reversible examples of this)
This will make skin cancers slightly more prevalent in southern latitudes but I can’t see any other changes that aren’t marginal. It isn’t great but we are not “fucked” by any means.
Again I disagree. The worst predictions for climate change are not based on very solid models. There are lots of clever people who are skeptical of the doomerism.
As an example, the claim that more people will die from heat waves is correct, but when you compare it to the people who won’t die from cold weather then climate change is a net benefit!
And in terms of environmental collapses, things like the health of ocean ecosystems is more dependent on human activities like overfishing. Focusing on climate change to fix these problems is nonsensical.
That is definitely my biggest worry ocean-wise. I haven’t read many acidification papers but the impression I get is that ocean absorption of CO2 is relatively slow so we will only start to see noticeable changes on the order of centuries. If these problems occur faster than we can decarbonise then we will need to geoengineer ocean chemistry. Although this is a plan B, we will be able to implement it before there are significant enough changes to cause a collapse.
As quite a bit of a doomer myself, I think this attitude is extremely dangerous and really an incorrect view of the situation. Blame is inevitable when facing despair, but I think it's not a great idea to turn this into an issue about blaming yourself or others.
Human beings are terrible at long term risk/reward reasoning. But this is a pretty expected consequence of any evolved species. There is zero pressure in the evolutionary system to encourage a species to develop the ability to both reason about very long term events, and act on them. Evolutionary forces just don't respond to things on this time scale.
Climate change has always had the problem that the easier it was to solve, the more uncertain we were about it's effects. In 1900 we could have easily just stopped progressing, learned to become sustainable and avoided climate change at very little cost. But how would anyone seriously believe and be concerned about an existential threat to their great, great grandchildren?
As the existential risk of climate change becomes more obvious, the cost to avoid it increases dramatically. There is no stopping climate change now, and even limiting its impact (which we can always do) would require a massive disruption to our way of life. We're fighting wars right now to access more fossil fuels, we aren't ready to seriously start keeping them in the ground.
Our tragedy as a species is that we can see how to avoid climate change but are unable to act on it by our nature. If anything us all being "fucked" should evoke a sense of pathos. We're no different than any other living organism exposed to sources of non-renewable, cheap, high density energy. The yeast that die making the alcohol in our beer suffer the same local climate catastrophe as we will.
> We're no different than any other living organism exposed to sources of non-renewable, cheap, high density energy.
But we have money, the only thing we really care about.
We live on a rich rock but for some reason, the whole planet is bankrupt. It's like if we got stolen by our ancestors and we dumbasses like to keep this tradition alive, maybe hoping that we will, us individually, one day, get richer than the guy next door, and feel superior, and maybe, happy.
I agree with you, but this is the European Space Agency which makes it more or less impossible that the syntax is mm/dd/yyyy since that is (as far as I know) essentially exclusively used by Americans.
Yes, but the regular date notation in Europe is dd-mm-yyyy (with dashes, not slashes). My default heuristic is to interpret dashes as dd-mm-yyyy, but slashes as mm/yy/dddd instead.
Are you serious? It "just went away?" CFCs were identified as the driving force, and the Montreal Protocol was ratified by nearly all nations in 1987, banning nearly all uses of CFC. And nations actually put it into effect; it wasn't just a paper agreement. It took decades but natural processes went back closer to its old equilibrium.
If you're kind, unconsciously avoiding something scary. If you're not, unconsciously avoiding something scary while thinking that you are smarter than the rest.
There have been a lot of large volume methane releases too methane are much worse ozone damaging molecule compared to CFCs. Plus Siberia and northern regions with melting permafrost are releasing large amounts of methane.
Edit: found one...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/china-factorie...