U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State

Re:U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State by crispyambulance on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @09:00AM (#19441566)

    > concentrated power will always eventually crumble under its own fragility.

That's plausible, but how long is "eventually"? I mean, the Roman empire "eventually" crumbled after ~1000 years.

How long have we been waiting for North Korea to collapse? The Soviet Union already collapsed, but what do we have now in Russia? China appears to be ascendant and simultaneously accelerating towards a nightmarish Orwellian dystopia with no signs of ever slowing down.

We can't afford to just wait for these things to run their course like a case of the flu. It requires will-power and a bit of courage.

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Re:U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State by weberc2 on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @10:01AM (#19442243)

Minor correction: the Roman empire crumbled after only a few hundred years.

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Re:U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State by darkpuma on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @10:44AM (#19442716)

Rome split. The Eastern Roman Empire, e.g. Byzantium, lasted much longer than the Western Roman Empire. Although towards the end it was quite pathetic. It's decline was long and thorough.

Incidentally some people count the Roman Republic when talking about how long the Roman Empire lasted, which is technically incorrect, but in a sense maybe it's not. Most of the expansionism was during the Republic period, and the demotion of the Roman Senate is an example of how collapse of centralized power isn't so immediately inevitable, don't you think?

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Re:U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State by vonmoltke on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @10:52AM (#19442784)

> Rome split. The Eastern Roman Empire, e.g. Byzantium, lasted much longer than the Western Roman Empire. Although towards the end it was quite pathetic. [Its] decline was long and thorough.

In that case it crumbled after ~1500 years.

> Incidentally some people count the Roman Republic when talking about how long the Roman Empire lasted, which is technically incorrect, but in a sense maybe it's not. Most of the expansionism was during the Republic period, and the demotion of the Roman Senate is an example of how collapse of centralized power isn't so immediately inevitable, don't you think?

Now we're at 1700, 1800 years.

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Re:U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State by darkpuma on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @11:02AM (#19442883)

Well crispyambulance said ~1000 years. That squiggly line means approximately, you can nitpick with him how approximate you want to be and which start and crumble dates you want to pick. Although he might point out that from the start of the Roman Republic to the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire gets you quite close to 1000 years (the overthrow of the 7th legendary king in 509BC; and Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of Western Rome, up until 476 AD.)

Honestly this is a silly thing to nitpick, particularly when we all seem to agree that power structures can be virtually immortal on human timescales.

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Re:U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State by checkyoursudo on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @04:04PM (#19446269)

Not saying this is true of the previous commenter, but I also think that some people confuse the couple of hundred years of Pax Romana as being the entirety of the Roman Empire instead of a relatively small part.

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