It seems like everyone is saying that the root cause is economic scarcity, but the Cultural Revolution's destruction of pluralistic status hierarchies deserves a large part of the blame.
Before the rev, your social standing in China could be judged by dimensionS (plural emphasized): lineage, academics, religion, business reputation, regional identity...
The Cultural Revolution tore each of those dimensions down, by design, for teh purpose of creating a new single dimension (politically sanctified identity).
The main issue with doing this to a Chinese culture, specifically, is that now the concept of face - already extremely important culturally - becomes basically everything. Every social interaction becomes zero-sum because there's only one thing to compete over.
In a pluralistic status culture, you can lose face in one domain and maintain it in another.
The Cultural Revolution removed that defensive buffer.
IN the past couple decades, China has added a second dimension, wealth. But it's hardly a real axis due to wealth being easily achievable through party alignment. In other words, the two dimensions are entangled. I doubt a principle component analysis would find them to be separate domains.
In any case, the younger Chinese generation who has access to global online subcultures, international credentials, professional specialization, etc., is recovering the pluralistic status axes. So... well, I could write my predictions, but that wasn't the point of my comment, so I'll end it here.
An immigrant visa is a privilege a country grants and can withdraw. It's not like two parties signed a contract, and the contract was broken. Applicants bet on a slow, arbitrary system, and now the odds are moving.
I am one such "gambler" in this process, and it's happening to me too. I don't like the turn of events, but I also do not feel robbed.
The site is far from strong evidence for what most people in this thread believe. It is also AI-generated, if you cannot tell.
"Canada is taxing you back" frames a Canadian tariff as a charge on Americans when it's really charge on Canadian importers.
The site reached the front page of HN because it confirms the mainstream opinion here, which is "go team go," anti-Trump admin US.
I'm not pro-Trump admin btw; But I am anti political team sports on HN and will continue saying so until HN reverts to its previous culture of objectivity that we had before this culture of blindly signal-boosting anything that portrays the current boogieman as bad.
It matters what the reality is. The trade war between the US and Canada is bad. It is entirely the fault of the administration that is currently in charge in the US. That is the reality.
I share your disdain for political team sportism. But not everything is indecipherable without requiring that lens, and that is unusually often the case with this particular administration.
Dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs are a tax on Canadian buyers of US goods.
The Federal Reserve studies on tariffs have shown basically no net tangible benefits to tariffs: any import protection industries gain from tariffs is cancelled out by the cost of the tariff on consumers.
And of course, the two governments' accounts of the collapse of the talking are in direct contrast: within hours, both placed the failure to make a deal on the other party.
It appears to me that any discussion in support or against tariffs here now isn't data-based but just political teamsports.
The old HN would just note the studies on tariffs and move on. But not today's HN!
So here we have a really long thread on HN saying "go team go."
I don't have a dog in this fight (I live in Japan), but I'm a bit disappointed to see the responses here refusing to engage with the assertion.
reply1: "The alternative is bad, and Trump is evil"
reply2: "Uhhh, source for that? /reddit"
reply2a: "I bet he subscribes to the wrong politics"
reply3: "Americans are idiots"
reply4: "I bet you have a personality disorder"
reply5: "You're dumb but I'm not going to expound"
reply6: "WTF dude" (proceeds to uphold a murderer as an example)
Can no one explain why the ideas the OP fears will not come to fruition? Can anyone explain the safeguards of the UHC system? Or do discussions about policy now all fall under the teamsport known as modern politics?
Is this what hackernews has become? It wasn't like this a decade ago.
I do like this comment, but I've gotten reprimanded for posting similar comments. It might have been dang that told me that for the purpose of keeping discussions serious, we should refrain from sarcastic posts. I've been posting and reading in that spirit ever since, and so when I first read your comment I assumed you were serious.
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