I respectfully disagree that waning respect for America in this context illustrates what you say it does. Chinese culture is fundamentally opposed to American culture, and those things you mention, open democracy, religious and cultural tolerance, etc. are expressions of American culture. What nations like China and various others respect about America is money, and how to make a lot of it even at the expense of American people and industry, all while laughing at how we live our lives and making a mockery of us. As a person of Asian descent and having lived amongst other non-American groups, I can say most do not want to live like Americans at all and often spit on "western values". They love our money but they don't give a damn about our democracy and cultural tolerance. Hate to say it, but it's for the most part accurate.
Sorry, but you can't use HN for nationalistic flamewar, and statements like these are way over the line:
Chinese culture is fundamentally opposed to American culture
laughing at how we live our lives and making a mockery of us
spit on "western values"
I appreciate that your background and personal experiences may give you a special perspective on China-related topics, but you need to share that with others in a much more neutral way if you want to post about this here.
My family includes Indonesian, Philippine, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Cantonese folks. Prosperity is the core reason they are interested in the United States, and to that reason those "western values" are just ancillary.
> Hate to say it, but it's for the most part accurate
I hate to say it too, but statements such as yours, filled with sweeping generalisations, oversimplifications and us-vs-them outgroup nonsense like they want to "spit on our values" usually turn out to be very very far from accurate, and indeed say more about the speaker than the subject at hand. Chip on your shoulder much?
I'd like to think - and have generally observed - that 99% of people from anywhere are not in fact greedy sociopaths, but instead decent people trying to live good lives inside their own cultural and economic context.
Crossing into personal attack is not acceptable here, regardless of what appeared in another comment. Please review the site guidelines and don't post like that to HN.
Please note that going on about downvoting also breaks the guidelines, as does generic ranting about "useful idiots". We're trying for (much!) higher level of discussion quality than this. If you wouldn't mind helping out with that in the future, we'd be grateful.
Ah, right you are. I've been punished here before for not adhering to those rules.
I didn't mean it to be a personal attack. I'll be more attentive going forward. Thanks for the reminder. I also aspire to a much higher level of discussion and I appreciate your efforts.
You failed to understand that at least majority of people who engage in economic activities are greedy. This is also what communists deny the most and why they always fail.
> You failed to understand that at least majority of people who engage in economic activities are greedy. This is also what communists deny the most why they always fail.
This makes no sense at all, and is an argument against capitalists at least as much as communists.
Up your game if you want to convince anyone of anything.
I disagree with you. Having some really close friends (either first gen, or second/gen, born here), i'd say their values are pretty western overall, with a dose of 'immigrant mentality', which honestly is not much different than immigrants from poorer European nations.
Sure, they go back home to visit, and they don't want to go back and live in China.
On the other hand, I have met few folks that defend the Communist party, and the values of an autocratic government, and these people were almost all late comer (they came in the US for masters, or later in life), and still on some kind of visa.
So, given enough time, and a green card the overall attitude changes a lot, and makes folks value the US lifestyle more.
As for second and third gen, the well educated ones are all very Americanized.
You must be trying to be facetious because you are providing an excellent example of an Asian intolerant, closed minded, and prejudicial. You are mouthing the worst propaganda of Chinese Communist, that Chinese culture is not suited for democracy. Chinese want democracy and rule of law every bit as Americans, maybe more so because they suffer under misrule every day. Daily interactions with the outside world may not bring democracy today but they make Communist lies a little harder to maintain, a lot more expensive to enforce, which in a today's tight budget environment -- as a struggling economy must bring -- becomes yet another argument to relax control. The draconian measures and civil unrest of "Cultural Revolution" are unimaginable today precisely because of greater economic freedom and online communication; the people simply will not tolerate it. Western values have permeated the society long ago. The hottest IPO of the day is a Chinese emulator of Starbucks selling coffee; how like Americans do you want the Chinese be?
Please do not engage in nationalistic flamewar here even if another comment went there first. Having this site not burn in flames requires users to resist being provoked and stay within the site guidelines themselves.
If they spit on our western values, what do they love and embrace instead (aside from money)? I would think there are many universal values shared which is why our peoples are quite compatible.
Maybe it's a good thing. Moving away from seeing America as an economic goldrush where everyone can come and "get theirs", and more toward a place where people actually live in. This is my home, not an all you can eat buffet. If America cannot take care of its own poor and suffering, what are we doing trying to take care of the entire world?
Prosperity is not a zero-sum game whereby more Chinese success in America means less success for the native born. The is nativist/nationalist myopia.
A waning respect for America illustrates that America has failed to make the case for western values to the Chinese people — open democracy, religious and cultural tolerance, etc — and we risk losing ground in other areas of the world (The African continent, for example).
> Europeans, along with Canadians and Mexicans, are the most skeptical that the U.S. government respects Americans’ freedoms. Majorities in Spain, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Canada all say that the U.S. fails to respect the rights of its people.
But in many cases it's close to it. A company that reduces its expenses by 5% will eventually bankrupt its competitor that wasn't able to do so (all else being equal). A 5% contribution to efficiency allows it to take over 100% of another company's market. The success of a company is in a very large part determined by its competition - more competition means starting a new company is harder.
It isn't zero sum, technically. But in the world of investing, in order to get the gains that people are always gunning for, someone else has to lose. Otherwise no one could ever get more than however much the GDP grows at, assuming no population growth. I don't see how this is any different.
How can we possibly make the case for Western values credibly when so many people in high profile positions in Academia, Politics, and Media openly call for abolishing them?
Prosperity may not be a zero-sum game, but prosperity is a meaningless metric without understanding its association to power. Power is a zero sum game.
During the 1800s both britain and the US became very prosperous. Unfortunately, our prosperity outstripped britain's prosperity and that power differential ultimately spelled the end for the british empire.
Also, stop using "western values". It's an oft used propaganda nonsense hardly any intelligent person believes.
Since when are "open democracy", "religious and cultural tolerance", etc "western values"? What about racism, genocide, nuking cities full of civilians? Human experimentation, rape of the environment, gluttony?
Lets hope china doesn't adopt "western values" since the world doesn't need more of what happened to libya, iraq, syria, etc ( not to mention exterminating continents full of people ).
Nativist/nationalist myopia is certainly a bad thing. But so is the pathetic globalist hippie myopia.
As for the african continent, what they need is more nationalism. After all, nationalism is what made britain, france, US, germany, south korea, japan, china, etc wealthy and prosperous. What african countries need is are strong and stable governments willing to sacrifice for the good of their nations. Sadly, this means kicking out european parasites destabilizing their countries, it means getting rid of european bankers controlling their banking systems, it means taking control over their natural resources from european countries. Sadly, if any african country tried to take control over their destiny, europe would destroy the nation via sanctions, funding terrorists, etc.
In a few years hopefully we will have a different administration and will open our borders again to all especially those from countries where the regimes are oppressive like that of President Ping of China. I would welcome a liberal immigration policy. Talent is the next oil and America if it wants to stay vibrant and dominant in the world needs to be a place where the best of the best come — but not only the best, everyone else is welcome, too, because you never know what a good education and opportunity will do for an ambitious kid. Immigrants often start foundational companies that go on to employ you and me. But this administration is so xenophobic it is hurting America’s ability to be the melting pot of culture and ideas. Just as Facebook is having a hard time convincing top talent to join it I worry about America not being a place that the next Satya Nadella wants to immigrate to.
That’s because there’s currently a queue of many hundreds of thousands of Indians applying for green cards and citizenship.
It’s not inefficiency, it’s the system working as designed: controlled flow of immigration, and a chance for people from many countries to immigrate.
Trump’s immigration plan (calling it a plan is generous) would get rid of per-country quotas in favor of a points-based system. It would probably be good for primary applicants, but bad for their parents, aunties, and uncles.
Well, my aunties and uncles filled jobs that might have gone undone as they were getting acclimated and integrating. They cleaned offices, worked at convienence stores, eventually went to school and became accountants and engineers. The falling birth rate means immigration needs to increase and people need their families for some normalcy. A PHD who can’t come and live with her family in the states will take a post at a tech accelerator in Paris if they offer to sponsor her family as well. Again, talent is the new oil and the US can’t afford to lose that battle if it wants to stay relevant.
Chinese immigrants are not coming here to live on welfare, but to participate in the economy. That increased economic activity creates wealth with which we can help our own poor.
But they bring their parents which they often put on SSI ($800 a month) and other freebies. Trump immigration proposals would end this, but unlikely to pas.
These people are not going there to be taken care of. They are there to exploit economic opportunities, for which they also make their own substantial contribution.
Now that increased competition may create scarcity for natives, so you want to skew the market to favor yourself.
Now I'm not saying that is wrong, but the absence of laws favoring native citizens shouldn't be framed as some great philanthropic sacrifice either.
This is a typical hypothesis of the nazis in germany.
The truth is somewhat more complex because it's our own governments who don't take care about their people despite having the money and the power.
E.g. in germany the taxes for the richest got cut more and more over the last decade or so until there are some of those who don't pay anything at all.
There is companies like Google, Facebook, Starbucks, Ikea etc. who nearly don't pay any taxes in countries like germany.
On the other hand the citizens are forced to do labor without meaning and/or without enough wages to survive old age. If you have to retire in germany you are screwed if you had the wrong job nowadays - you see the retired collecting bottles and waste in the streets because they don't have enough for a good life anymore.
If our governments would take care of the people which they definitely could we'd have more than enough to share with the people who have to flee our guns and bombs we sold to their enemies before (to give the earnings to the richest again).
Sorry, America doesn’t want to take care of its own. There’s more than enough money around, more than enough space, more than enough resources. There’s no will. Not collectively, anyways. That’s got nothing to do with immigrants.
Me first, mine second, community last, “the other” coming to treat America as an all you can eat buffet of social services is the enemy. Which is crazy because America doesn’t really, uh, have social services. Which I think was the point of your post.
It was easy to figure out which are the fakes, but I am very impressed and spooked at the idea of this technology improving, then getting into the wrong hands.
I'm not too spooked. I think as a society we're just going to learn to distrust recorded+reproduced media by default. Already we don't trust photos much for their potential to be a manipulation. You could call this a loss, sure - but maybe we should just never have in the first place. Photo manipulation is a very old practice.
There's already businesses that sell camera apps (or cameras? my memory is a bit dim) that save a photo along with a cryptographic hash to prove authenticity. Their customers are for example insurance companies, which require their clients to take pictures of damaged property etc. for claim filings that way.
> I think as a society we're just going to learn to distrust recorded+reproduced media by default.
There have been instances of of deceit, but in general the ability to give some credence to leaked political tapes has been a positive thing for society.
With this avenue for political exposure disappearing and totalitarianism making a comeback, it is a bit worrisome how we will continue to blow the whistle on politicians when being present with a camera isn't even enough.
> Photo manipulation is a very old practice.
But not modern audio or video. We're running out of options.
> There's already businesses that sell camera apps (or cameras? my memory is a bit dim) that save a photo along with a cryptographic hash to prove authenticity
This only works if the photo is of yourself and you want to prove its authenticity. If the photo is of someone else, it's still your word against theirs regardless of what hashes you have.
Yup. Media will be signed cryptographically and your belief in the media will correspond to your trust in the signer. It will destroy the usefulness and damage of anonymous publication of recorded evidence. Bad for transparency, good for privacy.
We can't even get people to look for a green lock icon in their URL bar. I really doubt the kinds of people that are most vulnerable to these attacks will suddenly develop an interest in cryptography.
And if the fake confirms someone's worldview or serves their interests, confirmation bias will take over and no "fancy math" is going to change their mind.
I don't think we'll adapt "suddenly," I expect we'll have to experience some major news stories getting redacted due to deepfaked evidence before this reaction becomes mainstream, but I think it's coming. I also don't think an interest in cryptography is necessary, it's not like I expect people to read public keys directly. There will be some system that shows something along the lines of "Confirmed by $USER_NAME" under the media. You don't need an interest in video codecs to appreciate YouTube. And I have seen people reject faked evidence, such as fake screencaps of tweets, even when it backed up their worldview. We're not perfect at it, but I think we're getting better.
Do you not see the problem in societies being unable to share trusted and accurate information about reality? I mean that is 100% required for any interpersonal relationship between two people let alone a community.
I do see the problem. I'm saying that ship sailed long before the computer age. Photos have been manipulated with analog means before. Currently we're in a state of still placing undue trust.
What I'm hoping is that we'll find means to actually build trust, e.g. with signing as we discussed here. I'm not entirely confident in that, but wouldn't it be nice if we engineers had a hand in building some useful tools for society? :)
It would be slightly harder. What I'm looking out for here is voice distortion and the unnatural flow of speech, and it's present in every Faux recording. It's just unnatural compared to how JR normally sounds.
Also Asian myself. There has never really been a place for us on either side of the political spectrum. The left does not treat us as they do with other minorities, so they don't care about screwing us over while the right generally only uses us to pretend that they care about minorities to appeal to centrists/other.
While the right's policies may benefit us a bit, culturally the right will be just as happy to screw us to benefit themselves/their majority constituents when the time comes.
Most Asians I know are very well educated and doing well. I bet they are probably much better off compared to other minorities in the US. When I was doing PhD 90% of my classmates were Chinese. I think it is a bit of a stretch to to say Asians are completely getting screwed in the US.
That's exactly what I mean though, your conclusion that Asians are better off than other minorities just because you saw a bunch of Asians in your elite college (who were most likely foreigners coming to study abroad anyway and not American citizens) is justification the left uses to disregard us lesser Asians in lower economic classes.
Pertinent to TFA, if this adversity score weighs economic factors more heavily than racial ones, then it might actually be more beneficial to Asian Americans than previous affirmative action implementations.
Same goes for every single place I worked at. Asians are by far the most prominent minority group. What should I base my argument on? Your experience? Why dont you counter argue with facts and hard statistics to disprove me?
Good thing in Japan, even if one or two people litter, there's at least 100 other fine people who will be there to pick up after you happily without even thinking about it.
What if we had prison cities where prisoners can live "freely" and have their own economies and stuff? Let's see how they like trying to live normal lives with other people who have no qualms about stealing and killing to get what they want, just like they may have done themselves to innocent people before they were imprisoned. Will the criminals learn to get along or will they end up killing each other? I wouldn't care because they're in the prison city and not anywhere near me and other normal people, which is what prison is for right? Maybe we can even free those who prove themselves to be outstanding citizens in those prison cities.
> What if we had prison cities where prisoners can live "freely" and have their own economies and stuff? Let's see how they like trying to live normal lives with other people who have no qualms about stealing and killing to get what they want, just like they may have done themselves to innocent people before they were imprisoned. Will the criminals learn to get along or will they end up killing each other?
A small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.
I highly doubt the 10 cents per bottle is the exclusive reason--I wish that article talked more about it. The $0.10 could pay for the other reasons, but I think it's equally about infrastructure and culture as it is about cost.
Culturally, people are only willing to put up with so much. There's a Penn and Teller BS clip where he has like 10 unique recycling bins and is explaining sorting to them. I've been to towns where you have to haul all of your trash out, but at Disney they found that people aren't willing to carry trash more than 30ft.
I feel like I do more than most. I set aside batteries, and hoard the few single use bags I use. I drove to a Best Buy because I saw they had battery recycling, but when I arrived they excluded alkalines. I'm honestly not sure which plastics my curb-side accepts. I know that's what the number in the logo is for, but I have trouble finding it and I'm not sure what's accepted. I wish there was a simpler system, like the plastics were dyed blue, had a blue stripe, or something distinguishing.
Is their program successful because of the $0.10 redemption? Or is it because they have a lot of redemption centers? No city I've lived in honor redemptions for curb-side, which is often a large percentage.
> I highly doubt the 10 cents per bottle is the exclusive reason--I wish that article talked more about it. The $0.10 could pay for the other reasons, but I think it's equally about infrastructure and culture as it is about cost.
i believe you are correct. note my response to another poster about returning bottles and cans here in oregon.
Incentive for who though? For the homeless and very poor, who probably will not even be the ones purchasing those bottles(at least at the same rate as those in higher economic classes) in the first place? We need to make it worth it for the good number of consumers who buy these things, so that they don't litter in the first place and put more thought about those $0.50-$1.00 per bottle they're tossing out. Yes, this may make it so that less bottles are available for the homeless/impoverished, but I think we should be doing way more for them than giving them the scraps that are 10 cent bottles...
The UK introduced a carrier bag charge scheme. Overnight usage dropped 80%, and that was for a 5p charge. Now I don't think many people would stop to pick up 5p off the street, but people will jump through the hoops to avoid paying the 5p. These things work, even at a relatively low threshold. Don't forget you're only aim to nudge what people know they should already be doing.
a little more than that - oregon has bags that can be returned full without counting and left in a secured room to have the money deposited to an account a few days later. given that these are typically at grocery stores and several of them add on a redemption percentage (fred meyer adds 20% for in-store credit use), the number of non-homeless making returns is high.
It’s a psychological effect. Same reason why Whole Foods charged $0.25 to get a cart, and then returned you the money. People tend to return the carts after paying the money.
I don't think this is the whole story, since as far as I'm aware the only people who get the redemption are people who put very low value on their time because it's inconvenient to actually redeem bottles.
"Pant"[0] is very common across most of northern europe- what you tend to find is that people will pilfer public trash cans to get bottles and cans to dispense, in Sweden where I live it's 1kr (or 10c in USD) for a can or small bottle, and large bottles being 2kr.
Not everyone is so fortunate to have gainful employment, especially not as gainful as the normal user of this site.
Same here in Helsinki, Finland. People will root around rubbish-bins, and collect the cans/bottles. (Especially in parks, and next to tram-stops. Basically places where people are likely to have had a drink and not recycled themselves.)
How is it inconvenient? I have a bag where I drop all my cans and bottles, when I go shopping I take it with me. Every supermarket takes them regardless of where they came from. No extra trips or detours required.
It's actually a problem at the moment. After the raise to $0.10 deposit, some people started hauling bottles over from Washington. The way the program is funded depends on less than 100% of bottles being returned.
We need something national. And just bottles isn't going to cover it - single use plastic products are cheap enough, and companies have no incentive not to use them, so of course everyone else ends up dealing with them.
Ultimately 100% of deposits were collected, the aim should be to pay out 100% again. That's the aim, that's what success looks like. Now I have no idea how these systems are usually funded, and this probably is quite usual. But you can't complain when your system does what its supposed to. When the return rate reaches 100% then you can celebrate success and start complaining about imports.
Australia has it per state and they have the refund logo printed on the bottle label. Bringing bottles from another state will result in a fine if caught.
Not saying it’s a problem. It is that way to prevent people from buying bottles in Indiana, not paying the deposit, and driving to Michigan to get 10c a bottle.
Small deposits certainly add up. Here in Helsinki you pay 0.15 - 0.50 extra when you buy bottled/canned drinks, and you can return the empty containers to pretty much any shop to get your cash.
There are homeless people who survive on the income from collecting bottles in the city-center, in parks, and even from rubbish-bins. It's not unusual to see a small group of people with large plastic-bags containing hundreds of empty cans/bottles.
In California they have CRV, which is a kinda significant recycling amount.
However it doesn’t stop people throwing away plastic stuff. What it _does_ do, is create a job for the army of homeless people to go around collecting bottles so they can claim that sweet cashback.
It’s effectively a very strange way of employing people at far below minimum wage to keep the streets clean. Very odd.
You jest, but that's not far from a good idea. You obviously don't need a blockchain, but you could do something like printing a UID on each bottle and scanning them before giving the refunds.
You are right it was in jest. I stopped short of the colacrypto coin. But your idea sounds good too just some scan and each bottle can be accounted for and at the end of the year have some idea how many make it to recycling.
Most of Australia has 10c deposits on plastic bottles. You virtually never see them laying around outside. Its fairly common to see homeless people walking around with bags full of bottles they found in public bins or on the street.
We also have a 10c charge on plastic bags at supermarkets and you rarely see those floating around anymore and people use them multiple times now.
Coffee cups and fast food boxes are all over the side of the street unfortunately.
Its amazing what a massive difference such a tiny fee can make.
I had a real littering problem around an area I used to live in, council installed a recycling station that people could bring bottles to for a cash reward (10c a bottle).
It worked. Not only did people stop throwing the bottles on the ground as much, we had people driving around the area trying to find discarded plastic bottles, and there was a noticeable improvement on the amount of discarded bottles around the area within months.
The only real problem was people rifling through recycling bins trying to make a buck.
"And personally, I'm willing to pay extra for lab-grown."
I believe this mindset amongst thoughtful consumers like yourself only do harm. Like with other trendy foods that get popularized for health or whatever reason, it incentivizes the producers to raise the prices and when consumers like yourself accept that price, it sends a signal to them. The product then becomes too expensive for regular normal people to afford, so only wealthier families can afford to eat them and get those health benefits. If it is imperative for us to make healthy and sustainable diets more widespread, we must strive to make it as accessible as possible. Same with the beyond burger stuff or any other vegetarian/vegan products.
There are a lot of products that start as a premium offering and move downmarket as they scale. Computers and cellphones are great examples. That early adopters paid a lot for their purchases didn't prevent the emergence of less expensive hardware. It enabled it.
In South Korea, when you order from certain places for certain types of food, they come in actual containers/tupperwares that you just leave outside your door and someone from the restaurant will come pick it up at some point.
I don't see it working in the U.S. though, since people would probably be stealing them and other horrific stuff. Just a very different culture...
> The horrific part, is an imputed risk the dishes in america become stolen, used as weapons, frisbees..
I think the primary schools in east asia, excluding China for obvious reasons, are the birthplace [0] of a form of civic cohesion that the U.S. and Canada (virtually the same culture, despite what people say) lack. We have the rule of law and consequences, and that's a good start, but there's a missing piece.
[0] in addition to the home, I guess, but good luck improving that first.
We have laws to punish bad behavior after it happens, while they have a culture that reinforces good behavior from the start.
Nowadays, it seems like trying to enforce good/proper behavior in the U.S. would be taken as an affront to personal freedom or "forcing one's culture onto others", so perhaps we need a different way to incentivize good behavior in this multicultural society where it's almost a sin to want and expect others to do something for the good of anyone but themselves.
How do we convince other cultures to adapt to the new culture though? Any such efforts would be drowned out by cries of racism and cultural erasure or whatever they're calling it nowadays.
It is reduce, reuse, recycle in that order for a reason. If it is stolen the restaurant will need to buy another set. And reusing is worse than reducing.
>"Why wouldn’t we want to know the citizenship of the people living in the country? "
I think he told us that answer already. His politics benefits from noncitizens being counted in the census, so it would be problematic if such a question were to scare away any illegal immigrants living in the U.S (this is because no permanent legal resident is scared of citizenship questions, since it's usually clarified if something is okay for a legal resident noncitizen or not).
