Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a counterterrorism operation

Re:Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a coun... by sudosysgen on Friday March 26, 2021 @11:27AM (#26593245)

Yes, they are equivalent. The USG is somewhat nicer inside of its borders if you're not poor or exposed to crime, but is directly or closely responsible for over ten million deaths abroad, and nothing China has done in living memory abroad comes close to that amount of death, while domestically it is responsible for a lot of death but still maintained a death rate due to economic matters lower to similar countries. Morally, they are more or less equivalent.

Of course, this doesn't matter, neither of them care about being good guys, they just want to appear that way to accumulate power.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a coun... by gadders on Friday March 26, 2021 @12:23PM (#26593941)

>>The USG is somewhat nicer inside of its borders if you're not poor or exposed to crime, but is directly or closely responsible for over ten million deaths abroad, and nothing China has done in living memory abroad comes close to that amount of death,

LOL. You obviously have never heard of the Cultural Revolution:

"Mao launched more than a dozen campaigns during his rule, which began when he founded Communist China in 1949 and ended with his death in 1976. Some are well known while others, such as a bloody campaign to "purify class ranks" in the late 1960s, which involved army units, have received little publicity.

While most scholars are reluctant to estimate a total number of "unnatural deaths" in China under Mao, evidence shows he was in some way responsible for at least 40 million deaths and perhaps 80 million or more. This includes deaths he was directly responsible for and deaths resulting from disastrous policies he refused to change."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google’s top security teams unilaterally shut down a coun... by sudosysgen on Friday March 26, 2021 @12:46PM (#26594207)

Around 500k to 2 million people died during the Cultural revolution.

As far as the Great Leap Forwards, despite causing a great amount of death and suffering, life expectancy still increased during that period and the death rate in China during any 5 year period of Mao's reign was lower than countries that were comparable when he took power (India, Bangladesh, etc...).

All in all, the amount of death and suffering inside of China's borders during Mao wasn't any higher than it would have been if China had been ruled by a liberal democratic state. The reason for this is that by far the worst killer in those economic conditions is lack of access to healthcare bar none, and despite causing a famine, the improvements to access to basic healthcare as well as infrastructure during the Mao area more than compensated.

But that's if your only metric is death rate - in which case, yes, China did better than its peers. If you have a different metric that also considers freedom and rights and so on as I suspect you did, then one can't come to a conclusion so easily, so I err on the side of pessimism.

That said, if you only consider unnatural deaths and chalk up deaths due to poverty as natural, you will always find a bias against countries with higher state involvement because you'd be able to state that their poverty deaths due to state involvement are unnatural while those in market economies are purely natural, that's why it's important to consider only raw death rates between two cases with similar start points and conditions.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212/

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/share/clip?f=d41d8cd98f00b204e9...

[ Parent | on HN ]