A typical response I see on HN (and on other forums) in response to failings in other countries (e.g. acts of terrorism, corruption, failure of government support, etc) is to find some sarcastic analogy to compare it to in the US. The Chinese government has gotten on the bandwagon with its own publication of the US's human rights violations (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_1316113...). I found this humorous.
It would be naïve to think that the USA (I'm picking on the USA because I am an American citizen) is the perfect country. I haven't lived in other countries long enough to be able to compare, but I /can/ compare the experience between China and the US and it makes me grateful to be a US citizen.
The truth is, there is no real comparison between China and the US: I get questions about corruption in the US all the time and I always answer that there /is/ corruption in the US but not in the endemic/pervasive way that we see it in China. The media is more open than in China, the government process is more transparent.
My business partner and I are in the middle of doing a training/internship (simple LAMP application development) for students at a local university. This isn't a top tier university: it's a third-tier university in the capital of one of the poorest regions in the country. There's a lot of potential here but when we asked people if they had any aspirations to entrepreneurship, we mostly get a 'no'. The lack of mobility for the common person is evident here.
No matter what the US's failures are what it has that the Chinese system (note that I didn't say government, because some of the issues here are cultural) doesn't have is "opportunity". There's a lot of unrealistic optimism here amongst college-age students (i.e. "I can do it if I try.") but there is a dark understanding that this is severely limited by what is available to them after they graduate. It's actually really sad: people here are in love with pieces of paper that 'qualify' you for a job. But with an overabundance of college graduates (in a system where cheating is normal), the value of a college degree is lessened. So you have a huge population of mid-20's that paid large sums of money for degrees that are largely worthless (i.e. the degrees didn't fulfill the better life that they promised).
China has aspirations to be the world's best, but it won't be until it can find a way to empower its own people.
Entrepreneurial attitudes in Europe compared to the US and Asia //
Chinese people have the strongest preference for self-employment (71%), Japanese people the weakest (39%). Similarly, Chinese think it is quite possible to become one’s own boss (49%). In Japan only 12% consider this career option possible. //
A higher ratio of Chinese (40%) than Americans (38%) declare that they have first-hand experiences in starting a business. In Europe and Japan these figures are rather low (22% and 20%), even lower than in South Korea (31%).
In the US, entrepreneurs enjoy a good reputation. 73% of US citizens questioned in this survey said that they have a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In Europe, at least about half of the population (49%) has a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In China the ratio is only 40%, in Japan (32%) and Korea (30%) even lower.
The richest person in China did get sent to prison: 14 years for stock market manipulation (cant imagine how many hedge fund PMs will be there if people enforce this in every country. personally I think the punishment is severe). Nothing to brag about, but he went there himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Guangyu
The "body double"-stuff is rare and can likely happen in those poor undeveloped regions in China, where money can buy you anything. In better developed regions, the officers won't risk it, unless you are exceptionally "connected" I guess. Medias and Internet are quite good at revealing such scandals in China nowadays, which is why the Chinese government is so afraid of them.
Kinda off topic, but if you are from USA, you are a United States citizen, american is anybody who is born on the continental america (north, central and south).
In the USA they just buy the way out of the system - I mean look at all the people in prison for the default swaps and banking scandals. Oh wait, there aren't any.
There are various tiers in the intelligence of criminals.
Tier 1: Get caught. Go to jail.
Tier 2: Get caught. "Fix" the legal progress in your favor. Don't go to jail.
Tier 3: Bribe the people doing the enforcement. Don't get caught, because there is no one to catch you.
Tier 4: Bribe the people doing the law writing. Don't get caught, because you aren't doing anything "wrong" (technically speaking).
Tier 5: Buy out the mass media, so that no one thinks there is anything wrong about what you are doing any more. The clueless voter who lives from the juices of the media mogul is the tier 5 criminal's best friend.
IMO, most of the global financial system is somewhere between tier 4 and 5, with a bit of 3 (recruiting away the SEC regulators to big iBanks). Thankfully we still have a relatively free press in the US, so even if there is some lockdown there is a lot of ability to get alternative information.
I saw this story on Reddit yesterday. Really disappointed to see it here today, and even more disappointed to see such a cynical, shallow comment at the top of the page here, just as on Reddit.
That's a pretty loaded statement. Your implication is that the credit default swap industry is rife with fraud but it'd be helpful to be more specific about what that fraud is, who committed it, and why they're not receiving an appropriate punishment.
My favorite of all-times bad-guy is Mr. Kenneth Lay, founder of Enron, supposedly RIP. Supposedly because the story of his death is crazier than most A. Christie's books.
That is because prison is not the punishment for most of those offenses. Before you say shit about the U.S. judicial system, you should learn something about it.
SEC and FTC violations are civil offenses. The punishment for civil offenses are fines. Plenty of firms and higher-ups have paid fines.
Jail time only applies in cases where deliberate fraud is proven to have occurred. We all know that the finance guys were too reckless in their pursuit of profits. But recklessness is not a crime (and indeed, the only crime in the U.S. system for which "recklessness" is relevant is manslaughter/murder).
Do you have a list of "candidates" that are willing to go to jail for a certain price?
Or would you get a client first, then try to find someone who looks like them, and then offer the person some amount of money to go to jail?
Both seems tricky, the 2nd one if the body double is not reliable they can go to the cops and everything falls apart.
The thing is, in China being rich and powerful usually means being connected to the upper echelons of the government and military. It's not as risky if you can tell the second guy "...either way, keep your mouth shut or all your organs will be in different people by the end of the week."
So, where is this special country where the rich do no use their wealth to manipulate justice, what ever justice actually is? The rich always have done, do so now, and always will. China is nothing special.
I'm a Chinese and I'm sure that such things are very much possible in China. It's even worst in smaller cities since the media there is even more "unopened". Thanks to the fast growing of Internet usage in China(the only trustworthy media in China), things are getting a little better in the past ten years or so.
Yeah, but there it was justified as a way to raise funds for ruinously expensive wars at a time where most alternative methods of fundraising like issuing debt or debasing currency (Continentals, greenbacks) had already been tapped to the hilt. And buying your way out was expensive - IIRC, the Civil War fee was like $300, and I don't even know what that'd be equivalent to today ($30,000?).
Because the people demand a win in the court against the rich and powerful.
Once the verdict is out, the people are happy.
Give a few months to a year give or take, the people will forget what happen (temper goes down), the rich is out but not necessary in plain sight everyday (semi-hiding), and the body double is in the prison.
sad. i have a theory that this happens for entrance examinations and things like SATs. i sometimes see these morons getting into good schools like harvard from china. take for instance bo xi lai's son.
[+] [-] kaptain|13 years ago|reply
It would be naïve to think that the USA (I'm picking on the USA because I am an American citizen) is the perfect country. I haven't lived in other countries long enough to be able to compare, but I /can/ compare the experience between China and the US and it makes me grateful to be a US citizen.
The truth is, there is no real comparison between China and the US: I get questions about corruption in the US all the time and I always answer that there /is/ corruption in the US but not in the endemic/pervasive way that we see it in China. The media is more open than in China, the government process is more transparent.
My business partner and I are in the middle of doing a training/internship (simple LAMP application development) for students at a local university. This isn't a top tier university: it's a third-tier university in the capital of one of the poorest regions in the country. There's a lot of potential here but when we asked people if they had any aspirations to entrepreneurship, we mostly get a 'no'. The lack of mobility for the common person is evident here.
No matter what the US's failures are what it has that the Chinese system (note that I didn't say government, because some of the issues here are cultural) doesn't have is "opportunity". There's a lot of unrealistic optimism here amongst college-age students (i.e. "I can do it if I try.") but there is a dark understanding that this is severely limited by what is available to them after they graduate. It's actually really sad: people here are in love with pieces of paper that 'qualify' you for a job. But with an overabundance of college graduates (in a system where cheating is normal), the value of a college degree is lessened. So you have a huge population of mid-20's that paid large sums of money for degrees that are largely worthless (i.e. the degrees didn't fulfill the better life that they promised).
China has aspirations to be the world's best, but it won't be until it can find a way to empower its own people.
[+] [-] cheshirecat|13 years ago|reply
Besides, http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-an...
Entrepreneurial attitudes in Europe compared to the US and Asia // Chinese people have the strongest preference for self-employment (71%), Japanese people the weakest (39%). Similarly, Chinese think it is quite possible to become one’s own boss (49%). In Japan only 12% consider this career option possible. // A higher ratio of Chinese (40%) than Americans (38%) declare that they have first-hand experiences in starting a business. In Europe and Japan these figures are rather low (22% and 20%), even lower than in South Korea (31%). In the US, entrepreneurs enjoy a good reputation. 73% of US citizens questioned in this survey said that they have a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In Europe, at least about half of the population (49%) has a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In China the ratio is only 40%, in Japan (32%) and Korea (30%) even lower.
The richest person in China did get sent to prison: 14 years for stock market manipulation (cant imagine how many hedge fund PMs will be there if people enforce this in every country. personally I think the punishment is severe). Nothing to brag about, but he went there himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Guangyu The "body double"-stuff is rare and can likely happen in those poor undeveloped regions in China, where money can buy you anything. In better developed regions, the officers won't risk it, unless you are exceptionally "connected" I guess. Medias and Internet are quite good at revealing such scandals in China nowadays, which is why the Chinese government is so afraid of them.
[+] [-] Pinckney|13 years ago|reply
I'm reminded of the Soviet counterpart to this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)
[+] [-] huoju|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kwanbis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jd|13 years ago|reply
Tier 1: Get caught. Go to jail.
Tier 2: Get caught. "Fix" the legal progress in your favor. Don't go to jail.
Tier 3: Bribe the people doing the enforcement. Don't get caught, because there is no one to catch you.
Tier 4: Bribe the people doing the law writing. Don't get caught, because you aren't doing anything "wrong" (technically speaking).
Tier 5: Buy out the mass media, so that no one thinks there is anything wrong about what you are doing any more. The clueless voter who lives from the juices of the media mogul is the tier 5 criminal's best friend.
IMO, most of the global financial system is somewhere between tier 4 and 5, with a bit of 3 (recruiting away the SEC regulators to big iBanks). Thankfully we still have a relatively free press in the US, so even if there is some lockdown there is a lot of ability to get alternative information.
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sam_Odio|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhuckestein|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joering2|13 years ago|reply
You can read more here:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/did_ken_...
[+] [-] rprasad|13 years ago|reply
SEC and FTC violations are civil offenses. The punishment for civil offenses are fines. Plenty of firms and higher-ups have paid fines.
Jail time only applies in cases where deliberate fraud is proven to have occurred. We all know that the finance guys were too reckless in their pursuit of profits. But recklessness is not a crime (and indeed, the only crime in the U.S. system for which "recklessness" is relevant is manslaughter/murder).
[+] [-] kooshball|13 years ago|reply
Do you have a list of "candidates" that are willing to go to jail for a certain price? Or would you get a client first, then try to find someone who looks like them, and then offer the person some amount of money to go to jail?
Both seems tricky, the 2nd one if the body double is not reliable they can go to the cops and everything falls apart.
[+] [-] tsotha|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BHSPitMonkey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alan_cx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edwinyzh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toddh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwern|13 years ago|reply
These body doubles have no such justifications.
[+] [-] ramblerman|13 years ago|reply
Simply put, In the case of a car accident, The family of the victim can demand a fee, which would void any prosecution against the perp.
It's not ideal, but seems better than the chinese system. At least the victim's family gets something out of it.
[+] [-] mulation|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edwinnathaniel|13 years ago|reply
Once the verdict is out, the people are happy.
Give a few months to a year give or take, the people will forget what happen (temper goes down), the rich is out but not necessary in plain sight everyday (semi-hiding), and the body double is in the prison.
[+] [-] epynonymous|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0skit0|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crafter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spindritf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sodelate|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thdn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhbanes|13 years ago|reply