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Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

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628 points nodea2345 | 2 comments | 01 Oct 19 11:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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loquor ◴[01 Oct 19 16:03 UTC] No.21126953[source]▶
This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons:

1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984.

2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and principles they do not forget. China, in comparison, systematically rooted out these values since the Great Leap Forward. The happenings at Hong Kong and Xinjiang epitomize that.

I do think China's expansionist policy bodes poorly for all of humanity.

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1. thegranderson ◴[01 Oct 19 17:48 UTC] No.21128381[source]▶
Point #2 actually follows from Point #1. Hayek makes this argument very thoroughly in The Road to Serfdom:

Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done.

This quote is from the condensed edition, because my paper copy is at home: https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-condensed-edit...

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2. carapace ◴[01 Oct 19 20:04 UTC] No.21129949[source]▶
During the depths of the Cultural Revolution there were incidents of cannibalism committed not out of hunger but out of a desire to prove unquestionable loyalty to the cadre.