Comment

Comment by hayst4ck

> It's simultaneously amazing to see and a depressing reminder of how badly western societies are crippled by rules of their own making.

It all comes down to corruption. In the west we are accustomed to thinking we are much less corrupt, but that is proving not to be less and less true every day.

Corruption is loyalty to a man over a mission. All systems that have good outcomes are when the man that people are loyal to (because he can punish dissent and reward loyalty, such as with wages) chooses a mission over their own self interest and enforce subordination to a mission over themselves.

China is a country that is capable of punishing their richest citizens, while the US and most of the west are not. China executed the executives that poisoned infant formula. Here in the US, our "law" let the Sackler Family promote addiction and then gave them a slap on the wrist while letting them use the "law" to reduce/avoid consequences.

China has more Rule of Law than the US right now.

Rule of law was thought to be a system where all citizens, including the rich, are protected from the government by due process, but rule of law is when the rich and powerful have limits on their arbitrary executions of power. Law exists to protect the weak from the powerful, law exists to bind power. In the west the rich have co-opted law as their tool.

> crippled by rules of their own making.

No, not our own making. The making of our richest. The rules in the west exist to solidify and cement the power of our richest and they use their money to pay for power consolidation giving them increasingly more power to compromise our laws for their interest.

China can do things because their power is working on behalf of their people, while in the west our power is working on behalf of the powerful.

> lack of bureaucracy

Who do you think is doing these things? Literally their bureaucracy. It requires people to organize and do those things. Bridges and tunnels don't get built without planning, funding, and execution, which is exactly what bureaucracies do.

The rich people in the west have been so effective at compromising institutions of power that "bureaucracy" is synonymous with "inefficiency." Their bureaucrats are trusted with the power to make things happen, while our elected officials bind their behavior and set them up for failure in order to justify privatizing their functions.

parent hayst4ck 1 year ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton