[tnt128]

A lot of people here focus on the political side of this topic, so I want to share an engineering perspective instead. At the core, solving any problem really follows the same pattern: first you figure out what the problem is, then you set up a way to measure it, come up with a possible solution, and test it against your measurement. If it works, keep going. If it doesn’t, try something else. The key is just running this loop quickly enough. This process applies no matter what kind of problem you’re tackling—engineering, politics, or social issues.

The U.S. has this loop at the company level. China has this loop at the local government level.

In China, the central government decides what the goals are and how they are measured, and then the local governments carry out the implementation. Local officials who perform well against those measures get promoted; those who don’t are demoted.

If the U.S. really wants to build this kind of feedback loop at the government level, voters need to judge election candidates based on their track record, not just campaign rhetoric. And for that to happen, the country needs a well-educated population with strong critical thinking skills.

I should also add that China has been operating this way for thousands of years. It’s not without problems, though—like the old saying goes: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

For example, GDP used to be the main measure of success. That pushed local governments to chase higher GDP numbers at all costs—regardless of whether the projects were actually practical or useful. This led to overbuilding, unnecessary construction, and even ghost towns.

[seanmcdirmid]

> In China, the central government decides what the goals are and how they are measured, and then the local governments carry out the implementation. Local officials who perform well against those measures get promoted; those who don’t are demoted.

China is very decentralized though, Beijing has the ultimate say but their attention span limited. So they maybe set targets, or step in when a huge scandal happens, but most localities are fairly far away from Beijing’s attention. While China doesn’t have America’s federalism, it basically has it by default to deal with its huge size. Every city has different rules, taxes, they have their own local champions, imagine if every big city in the USA had their own auto producer, for example. Hukou means china’s illegal immigration is mostly internal. If you become homeless in Beijing or Shanghai, they will just deport you to whatever village your hukou is in (well, free train/bus ticket at least, but you probably came to the big city because you couldn’t make it in your village in the first place).

[Spivak]

> And for that to happen, the country needs a well-educated population with strong critical thinking skills.

I think we have this already. Sure, if you go looking for it you can find any brand of stupidity you want—and if you want to sell a narrative when you find it you put a camera in front of them. But on the whole we have this. The problem is that the two dominant political parties have fundamentally incompatible visions for the country's future. And, at the national level, that's what we end up voting for. One of these visions has to win and both candidates need to share it before voters can evaluate the individuals. Even in primaries the metric for success isn't the best candidate but who has the best chance of winning in the general.

Pulling back the curtain winning the vision for the new US Right is likely to be a long drawn out fight because for many issues the opposition is a kind of person, e.g. the gays, women, who won't ever "move on" or accept defeat and so will require ongoing active suppression. It's why I'm sad to see Moderate Republicans pushed into obscurity because it seemed for a while there they were within spitting distance of a unified vision.

[maxglute]

>When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Well that's ultimately central to the technocrat thesis, PRC's systemic benefit is is they can change the measure to get ahead / reset good hards / campbells law. Their moving metric is "live". The problem with democracies is votes are the immutable metric and it's very hard to reform voting, well gerrymandering... etc but that's still generational efforts.

[orwin]

> I should also add that China has been operating this way for thousands of years. It’s not without problems, though—like the old saying goes: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Chinese "democracy" is not one from our viewpoint, but from their, an oligarchy this large (10% of the population vote) is the perfect balance between democracy and their old imperial system.

When they coined "Communism with Chinese characteristics", in the west most people focused on "Communism", on all side of the political spectrum, but what's really important was "with Chinese characteristics".

[prewett]

Having lived in China, the whole control part that's part of Communism (and Chinese dynasties) drove me nuts. The market economy part, though, that was great. In the late Hu years China seemed like a place where you could get anything you wanted (special order? no problem), and every Chinese person seemed optimistic. I gather that feeling has changed (by increased government control, it seems), which is sad, because it was a great time.

I share the article's interviewee's opinion that Americans and Chinese are similar, I came to the same conclusion. I think China has so much to offer the world, and Americans could easily think of it sort of how we see the UK. The reactions I get from Americans when I mention I lived in China makes me think that Americans want to love China. Kind of the way that the "otherness" between men and women acts to attract. (And also to make relating difficult.) Unfortunately, the Communist engineering the human soul is completely at odds both with flourishing humanity and American's rampantly individualistic culture.