You're greatly missing the point in favor of your own argumentation. As one of the most prosperous places on earth, we expect SF to do better. China is a mess, yet in Shenzhen they've been averaging a new metro station every month for the last ten years and that is only one Chinese city. You say we shouldn't excuse Chinas faults because of its state, yet you are ready to "counter" any critique of the US with something that is worse in China.
Not at all. I am conceding points where China is ahead. Yes, their transportation infrastructure is improving at a pace far greater than the United States. I won't take that away from China.
You and the parent are missing _my_ point. The author _specifically_ mentioned the social issues, like homelessness. And I _countered_ this _specific_ issue by pointing out that there may be different, and worse, reasons why the city seems to have less of a homelessness problem.
At this point, the parent of our conversation insisted on comparing apples to oranges (yeah okay China has some bad social problems, but what about police militarization? what about incareration?) These are points that I did not bring up, because I was focusing on the points the author made. I decided to rebuke those points with some counter examples.
Everyone wants to compare $WorstThingAmericaDoes with $BestThingChinaDoes and I am comparing $UnitedStatesHomelessness with $ChineseHomlessness
Finally, I do not excuse the faults of the US, there are many of them. And they are as inexcusable as the faults in China.
I understand your point it's just not very interesting. This is why people don't want to go to the US, because it's an ecochamber of generic opinions that doesn't listen to anyone else.
The US used to be a place where people would arrive with only the money in their wallet and fight their way to the the top. Today your asked to pay 4k a month to live in a suburban hellhole and suck up to investors.
I know its an age old internet adage to not feed the trolls..
How am I not listening to his opinion? Or yours, if I were so kind as to categorize as such. I conceded that China has many strengths, many of which the US can learn from. How is that an echo chamber?
And I do so deeply apologize if you find my opinion "uninteresting" as if one of the prime forces for an opinion is how spicy it is. I will continue to expound my "uninteresting" opinions which are backed by "boring" facts and "generic" lived experiences. Meanwhile, you can place value on how exciting an opinion is. Agreed?
Your opinions aren't uninteresting because they aren't spicy, but because they offer no value. You're in the company of people who spent years in Asia and other parts of the world running businesses, conferences and making deals. Yet, you focus on the lowest level of discussion. It's the "me, me, me" attitude so common in places like SV.
You assume no one else know what you know because you read some Wikipedia article. Everything you talk about like social problems, privilege or censorship is completely apparent to anyone who ever set foot in China. People are there despite these problems not because they are unaware.
People don't bring up US flaws because this is some country competition were you should keep score, but so you can understand that you value certain things and ignore others. Just like anyone else, including Chinese people. The world is mostly the same.
I brought up the homelessness and potential reasons for the lack of homelessness in my original comment because the author posited those as proof that SFO is broken. I was _responding directly to his thesis_
I brought up militarization and police state/incarceration issues because those were set out as straw men, away from the original point which was purely about how each country treats their mentally ill and homeless.
I should not have gotten taken in by the straw men that were laid out. My main point still remains. China avoids the mentally ill/homelessness issues that SV faces due to the fact that they arrest, detain, force labor and other such actions to counter homelessness. I am making a value judgement that the liberty of the homeless is more valuable to society as a whole than clean streets. You may be free to make a different value judgement, and I will freely disagree with you (isn't liberty great?).
Your main point is the straw man. No one has said that social problems are better in China. The reason he was shocked over social problems in SF is because he is from Sweden and he idolized SV.
> As a Swede coming to the States, I was disillusioned. I had, as I think many young entrepreneurs have, idolized Silicon Valley as a utopian vision of an idealistic but well-meaning band of technocrats building the foundations for a just and democratic society, but in its place I found vanity, pettiness and greed. Not only did the emperor have no clothes, but the naked corpus revealed was unappetizing to my Swedish quasi-socialist ideals. Ultimately, I felt alone in Silicon Valley... I left.
The reason he's staying in Beijing isn't because it doesn't have social problems, but because he finds it more rewarding.
> "[...] I founded a tech startup in Beijing and chances are I'll stay there. Why? Because in many ways, Beijing has been a better breeding ground for my startup and for my own personal growth than I think Silicon Valley could be today.
> Before you object, I am by no means saying that China is a more just society than the States, or more technologically advanced - it was just clearly moving faster - and you immediately got the impression that Beijing was a city concerned with statecraft and the future of its people, rather than the latest hot gadget. For all its warts (and there are many), Beijing is a city with its eye on the future and a place that you can help shape.
>Everyone wants to compare $WorstThingAmericaDoes with $BestThingChinaDoes
this is so true. not only for china but for technologists who find success anywhere except the US. either it is a self-assuaging tactic or it's creating noise to convince people on the fence to move to what is _perceived_ as a worse place to live(beijing in this case)
