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How about this: it’s awful in both places. Just because another country started doing it as well doesn’t excuse anything, it means they’re now both doing something unacceptable.
I lived and worked in both the US and China. My life was infinitely better in China. You don’t even notice the cameras but what you do notice is that I can go to my café, leave my electric scooter unlocked with helmet on, get a table outside, put my laptop on it and then go inside to order coffee without any fear anything will get stolen. In the parks there are public coat racks and people put their jackets, backpacks and other stuff on without any hesitation. You feel safe at night walking down the street by yourself. This feeling I rarely have anywhere else.
Delivery packages are left outside and gathered sometimes outside of the compound on the public walkway without being stolen.
Now whenever I travel to Europe, I have to totally reverse this behavior otherwise all my shit will be gone. That to me is awful.
I would rather live in a crunchy, gritty, unpredictable world thats actually real than the suffocating sterility of an authoritarian surveillance state even if it feels safer to those willing to overlook the deep violation of human dignity by the forced use of mass surveillance in any context. Surveillance may marginally improve safety due to the fact that it discourages bad behavior, but never forget that it serves the powerful much more than it improves public safety. If they really wanted to make us safe, they would provide everyone healthcare, housing, education and a living wage. Crime would plummet if most people were content and had enough money to just breath and enjoy life but instead they give us Flock and Palantir.
I wanted to start a rebuttal but realistically I’ll never change your mind. I just want to say all the things you mentioned like healthcare, housing, education, infrastructure (how is the high speed rail network in the US?) , social security, living wage, and privacy laws like the GDPR are all part of life in China. You make it sound, like most ignorant people who never visit China, like it’s some North Korea here.
At least China is not beholden to its tech companies and lobby groups, who buy and own the current US regime. There is more competition and choice here than I ever had in the US. With the exception of ranch sauce that is.
Lasty the big difference between China and most Asian countries vs western civilization, is the sense of community. In the US most people are selfish and for themselves - maybe because of the lack of the basic services you mentioned - and if your job doesn’t benefit them, no interest. Especially covid this difference in community became very clear.
That would be true if power didn’t exist. This framing - one where power dynamics are completely flattened - is a major pitfall of liberal thought which always falls apart the moment real life context is introduced. Your arguement serves nothing but to support the imperialist world order.
Weird, for a country that’s awful to live in China surrrre beats the shit out of literally any western country when it comes to the approval of the population. Are you sure you’re not just a pig stupid ignorant cracker who’s been lied to?
Silly Billy, it doesn’t matter if the people in a non-Western country like their government, it only matters if we like their government (or to be more specific if our government likes their government; if our government doesn’t like their government and decides to go to war with them, we will also conveniently not like their government and it will be because we came to that position independently, not because we’ll feel we’re supposed to)
I was specifically calling out the hypocrisy of the USA’s excuses to do imperialism. With that said though, it is now clear as day that while China has the ability to do what the USA is doing technologically, they are using that surveillance more sparingly and for better reasons than the USA. It’s not in China that masked thugs are scanning you with their phones hoping to lock you up in some undocumented place and then either keep you there or send you to a random country away from your family.
I’m not a fan of mass surveillance in any case, but it’s just so hilariously ironic that the same people who fearmongered 24/7 in their media about China being this panopticon dystopia, are the same ones now exceeding this in every way imaginable, far surpassing the imagination of fiction like 1984 or Black Mirror.
Kind of like how a lot of the same people who were screaming and going crazy about the Patriot Act 20 years ago are the same ones who want to defend Flock cameras.
It’s hilarious if you believe this, the USA is a surveillance state, sure, but China is clearly not any better. They have cameras everywhere and extremely advanced surveillance tech.
China was doing that kinda thing in Hong Kong not that long ago. Killing protestors, disappearing people, attacking journalists and doctors. They just aren’t right now. They are srill that bad.
How about this: it’s awful in both places. Just because another country started doing it as well doesn’t excuse anything, it means they’re now both doing something unacceptable.
I lived and worked in both the US and China. My life was infinitely better in China. You don’t even notice the cameras but what you do notice is that I can go to my café, leave my electric scooter unlocked with helmet on, get a table outside, put my laptop on it and then go inside to order coffee without any fear anything will get stolen. In the parks there are public coat racks and people put their jackets, backpacks and other stuff on without any hesitation. You feel safe at night walking down the street by yourself. This feeling I rarely have anywhere else. Delivery packages are left outside and gathered sometimes outside of the compound on the public walkway without being stolen.
Now whenever I travel to Europe, I have to totally reverse this behavior otherwise all my shit will be gone. That to me is awful.
I would rather live in a crunchy, gritty, unpredictable world thats actually real than the suffocating sterility of an authoritarian surveillance state even if it feels safer to those willing to overlook the deep violation of human dignity by the forced use of mass surveillance in any context. Surveillance may marginally improve safety due to the fact that it discourages bad behavior, but never forget that it serves the powerful much more than it improves public safety. If they really wanted to make us safe, they would provide everyone healthcare, housing, education and a living wage. Crime would plummet if most people were content and had enough money to just breath and enjoy life but instead they give us Flock and Palantir.
You don’t realize that you just explained why crime is low in China. It’s low because socialism works.
I wanted to start a rebuttal but realistically I’ll never change your mind. I just want to say all the things you mentioned like healthcare, housing, education, infrastructure (how is the high speed rail network in the US?) , social security, living wage, and privacy laws like the GDPR are all part of life in China. You make it sound, like most ignorant people who never visit China, like it’s some North Korea here. At least China is not beholden to its tech companies and lobby groups, who buy and own the current US regime. There is more competition and choice here than I ever had in the US. With the exception of ranch sauce that is. Lasty the big difference between China and most Asian countries vs western civilization, is the sense of community. In the US most people are selfish and for themselves - maybe because of the lack of the basic services you mentioned - and if your job doesn’t benefit them, no interest. Especially covid this difference in community became very clear.
That would be true if power didn’t exist. This framing - one where power dynamics are completely flattened - is a major pitfall of liberal thought which always falls apart the moment real life context is introduced. Your arguement serves nothing but to support the imperialist world order.
Weird, for a country that’s awful to live in China surrrre beats the shit out of literally any western country when it comes to the approval of the population. Are you sure you’re not just a pig stupid ignorant cracker who’s been lied to?
Silly Billy, it doesn’t matter if the people in a non-Western country like their government, it only matters if we like their government (or to be more specific if our government likes their government; if our government doesn’t like their government and decides to go to war with them, we will also conveniently not like their government and it will be because we came to that position independently, not because we’ll feel we’re supposed to)
I was specifically calling out the hypocrisy of the USA’s excuses to do imperialism. With that said though, it is now clear as day that while China has the ability to do what the USA is doing technologically, they are using that surveillance more sparingly and for better reasons than the USA. It’s not in China that masked thugs are scanning you with their phones hoping to lock you up in some undocumented place and then either keep you there or send you to a random country away from your family.
I’m not a fan of mass surveillance in any case, but it’s just so hilariously ironic that the same people who fearmongered 24/7 in their media about China being this panopticon dystopia, are the same ones now exceeding this in every way imaginable, far surpassing the imagination of fiction like 1984 or Black Mirror.
Kind of like how a lot of the same people who were screaming and going crazy about the Patriot Act 20 years ago are the same ones who want to defend Flock cameras.
It’s hilarious if you believe this, the USA is a surveillance state, sure, but China is clearly not any better. They have cameras everywhere and extremely advanced surveillance tech.
And yet China is a much safer country than the US.
The longer you refuse to accept reality, the worse your situation will keep getting
Yeah, China does it without masking themselves.
Source?
China was doing that kinda thing in Hong Kong not that long ago. Killing protestors, disappearing people, attacking journalists and doctors. They just aren’t right now. They are srill that bad.
Nah