Well, we can see how well the Japanese are doing with their "scientific research" whale killing, which is really bad as they are using it as a excuse to continue the practice. Similar loopholes will be found here, for example: if i capture a rhino and send it to a farm for 1 week, is it now a animal that we can do "research" on? What about 1 month?
> Well, we can see how well the Japanese are doing with their "scientific research" whale killing, which is really bad as they are using it as a excuse to continue the practice.
The whales they research aren't endangered. Also, other nations and people hunt whales.
> Similar loopholes will be found here, for example: if i capture a rhino and send it to a farm for 1 week, is it now a animal that we can do "research" on? What about 1 month?
That's a possibility. But more likely, it'll create more tiger/rhino "farms". Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable just like trophy hunting.
Also, the threat to tigers and rhinos aren't poachers. It's loss of habitat due to human population growth. Where humans live in numbers, it's hard to have tigers and rhinos around because they can easily kill humans. It's why most tigers and rhinos in the world today are in zoos or wildlife enclosures.
A grand total of ...two. And not at the scale of the Japanese. Iceland even exports whale meat to the Japanese because they don't eat enough of it. To top it off, Japan has to subsidize the "industry" (quotes used because Japan claims it's for research) because it's unprofitable.
Yeah, it really matters if the whales that Japan is hunting are endangered. One is an ecological catastrophe, the other is safe harvesting of wildlife.
Is the problem with whaling that whales are endangered, or that they're "too intelligent"? If the latter, is there a similar issue with hunting non-human primates?
The problem with whaling it's that whales are an important component of the ocean ecosystem, and killing most of the whales will have dire consequences. Cows and chickens are not part of the natural world and killing then to eat them has no effect other than ending an animal's life.
It's not about endangerment, it's about recognizing that the earth is a fragile system that we're pushing closer to the edge with every extinction. We have a responsibility to our descendants to take care of their planet for them until they can arrive.
>It's not about endangerment, it's about recognizing that the earth is a fragile system that we're pushing closer to the edge with every extinction. We have a responsibility to our descendants to take care of their planet for them until they can arrive.
Except this literally doesn't apply to Japan. The whales Japan is hunting are not endangered, and there is no proposed mechanism whereby Japan's whale hunting causes ecological harm. The IWC's own scientists recommended the whale hunting moratorium be removed around 1994.
If people think whales shouldn't be killed for moral/aesthetic/religious/whatever reasons, and can convince everyone else to agree (presumably at the level of nation states), that's fine even if they're not all endangered or critical to the ecosystem. I just want people to be honest about why they don't want it.
We've got a president trying to actively dismantle the EPA and remove the protections on endangered species. We were the primary pressure being applied to China - why would they stop now?
I would imagine some in the upper echelons of their government know that it's all completely bogus, but if it keeps the people happy, I doubt they care.
Your suspicion seems grounded in fact. Traditional Chinese medicine was pushed by Mao because there weren’t enough real doctors. He didn’t even believe in it, and I imagine the current leaders don’t either.
Your comment confused me a little bit as it sounded like it was done without her knowing but I would think you would notice that. "Cupping", for those like me who had never heard of it, involves putting devices on your body (There are different sizes, shapes, and materials) that "suck" up some of your skin into the vessel. It's supposed to be good for you but stinks to high heaven of BS (and the lack of any evidence to prove it helps confirms that).
>BS (and the lack of any evidence to prove it helps confirms that)
back in USSR it was practiced as a home remedy in case of flu and i had it several times as child. You do feel warmed up similar like if you had a strong massage done upon your back and you nicely drift asleep after that. It is in general direction of supportive actions during flu. It isn't a cure - and there is no cure for [viral] flu - yet it helps getting through it. The same way like a bit of vodka with really hot tea following a really heavy sauna session - the way i been managing flu since high school - there is no medical evidence that it medically helps too, yet it does help you to get through :)
The concept that in NYC a licensed physical therapist working out of a medical office can peddle this shit as a medical procedure and bill it under health insurance is ridiculous.
Chinese Panda conservation is a kind of 'soft power'. Being a place with Tigers and Rhinos is large bragging rights that I think they would be Keen to hold. Chinese Medicine can be changed to exclude endangered animals if Chinese Govt are able to handpick religious leaders.
I have very mixed feelings about this. Let me explain:
This move from China is definitely going to bring more incentive for illegal poaching. It's just simple economics: by officially bringing a market back, profits to be made are much greater, and people will find any way to get in on the action.
If, however, if we provide more _legal_ means for people to benefit from the tiger and rhino markets, we could provide enough economic incentive for people to be invested in their survival. The big deal here would be the opportunity for private ownership (rhino and tiger 'farms' basically). People will viciously protect what's theirs from poachers and ensure it's continued existence, especially if there is money to be made by doing so.
If people are allowed to privately own, breed, and sell their tigers and rhinos, I think China's move could actually _facilitate recovery_ for both species.
But is that what China's planning to do? I doubt it given their track record and political philosophies, which means this is going to only make the extinction of tigers and rhino's a bigger problem.
I don't really know how to address questions when it comes to the answer of "that's just basic history". Maybe history is wrong but I'm always wary of being expected to make the case that it isn't...
What I meant was maybe you can help me by pointing out something in history that was very prosperous before Cultural Revolution but died right after (if I understand "run over" correctly).
"pointing out something in history that was very prosperous before Cultural Revolution but died right after" I don't understand what you're trying to say there.
You can google up all sorts of things if you like. I've found it's not worth my time to post basic history, particularly with regards to China on hacker news. Too many accounts that amount to "nuh, uh prove it!" and have nothing else to say.
I'm not defending Cultural Revolution here (no body can). However, Googling "lost tradition Cultural Revolution" didn't give me much, I found one NY Times article [0] but it doesn't talk much on the traditions that got lost in this period.
The wikipedia page on Cultural Revolution in both English and Chinese didn't mention any tradition being lost either.
> Too many accounts that amount to "nuh, uh prove it!" and have nothing else to say.
The burden of proving what you said is true should not be on me. You said something bizarre and got challenged.
China recently re-banned Ivory after too much backlash. Makes sense they would open up a new market to placate the population that believes in this crap. Looks like Yao Ming has to come out of retirement again.
If you look at global warming, the global rise of fascism, and little things like this it's kind of difficult to avoid thinking someone is trying to orchestrate something very bad for the majority of human kind.
"the State Council said powdered forms of rhino horn and bones from dead tigers could be used in "qualified hospitals by qualified doctors"."
Conspiracy aside, this is impossible, since most of TCM is a nonsensical superstition and anyone using tiger or rhino parts as therapy is de facto unqualified as a doctor (or decent human). At least people will die or suffer for harming these animals, since this "treatment" won't impact the course of their diseases at all.
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy.
> strong regimentation of society and of the economy
This is exactly what China is in the process of implementing via their social/sesame credit system. Semantics aside, it's not good.
oh thanks, i never thought to look at the actual definition. except how useful is that definition really, and how is it different than say any other dictatorship? yes, ultranationalism, but is PRC ultranationalistic? sure, one china, but there's also loads of flags in america.
you can argue PRC is more totalitarianism than just authoritarianism. but IMO, fascism is too vague to be useful without hindsight. for example, how is fascism meaningfully different than social nationalism? so please, don't just condescendingly throw out a cherry picked definition
Just because fascism and "communism" (as in, communism as implemented in China or the USSR) were at odds in the mid-20th century, doesn't mean they're incompatible.
I think that after a point communism and fascism are only different in name. Taken to extremes the outcome is the same; consolidation of power and wealth, suppression of opposition, and as near to absolute control as possible.
To be fair, they can start with different ideologies, but they end up very much the same: crushing individuals for the benefit of the all-powerful State. Does not matter if it's right or left, at the end of the day you get the following:
- Abolition of private property
- Abolition of civil liberties
- Abolition of political liberties
- Abolition of Free Press
- Systematic repression, the reign of fear
- Glorification of the Nation
- Quasi-Nationalization of Means of Production (whether private enterprise still exist is irrelevant, as they have to prone allegiance to the State)
- Mass murdering of political opposition and minorities
Same thing happened in France during the French Revolution, and nobody called it Fascism or Communism at the time but the idea of oppressing individuals for an utopian State was already there.
There are semantic differences, sure. The outcomes are horrifyingly the same. Lots of people die.
Some 10 million in fascist Germany[0], some 60 million in Soviet Russia, more than 70 million in communist China, etc.[1] Though, I'm not sure how to treat "just let them starve". Is it murder if you have the means to feed them? Is it murder if you don't even try?
It's just a disgusting little ornament on the much larger birthday cake we've got baking in our oven.
To the backdrop of mass die-offs, the rules preventing the extinction of rhinos and tigers are cut by a few power-hungry fools seeking the political support of a few greedy fools who will sell those animals' horns and bones as false cures to a few superstitious fools who believe these worthless tusks and bones have magical powers. It's such dark planetary tragicomedy -- with a focus on "tragic", a kind of satanic genius that even Mikhail Boulgakov couldn't have dreamed up, and it's real.
Encouraging the poaching of keystone species like the tiger is bad for the ecosystem and by consequence any advantages humanity gains from the ecosystem are lost.
The idea that we can exploit and destroy a species for our own supposed and unproven benefit is very short sighted and shows we are not a species capable of living holistically with our world.
Stunning, beautiful creatures. Humanity as a while has decided you're more valuable as soup, or ground up into nostrums and magic potions than you are alive, prowling the wild. You're not the first and you won't be the last.
It's shocking that this is still going on in the modern world.
China is the number one threat to the US and to the future of the planet. We ignore it and trade with them out of pure greed. It’s immoral and there should be more sense of public shame. Doing business with China makes you an enemy of freedom and the environment. Doing business with them is no different than going out and poaching the endangered rhinos yourself.
And because of this government, tons of those people lost their jobs and had to go back to the rural farms, where they will go into extreme poverty again. The same government that made these people suffer through 40 years of pain, 70 years ago.
It was American capital and knowledge that lifted these people out of extreme poverty.
Some seem to think the goal of all humanity should be to “lift everyone out of poverty.” Even if it destroys the planet and leads to massive humanitarian crises and ever greater suffering, putting dollars in wallets, that’s the point of it all. Homo economicus.
"poverty" in this case is not "below the US poverty line". "poverty", when used in this context, means failure to satisfy the physiological layer of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: starvation, lack of decent shelter, disease, etc. The suffering from "poverty" in this sense is unimaginable to me. The fact that it's more or less hidden and not a big-ticket media item doesn't make it less of a humanitarian crisis or reduce the suffering involved.
Or put another way, we're not talking about putting dollars in wallets. We're talking about putting food in children's mouths, clothes on their backs, roofs over their heads. Maybe even some education in those heads. Yes, I just used a "think of the children" argument, sorry.
Seriously, every single one of us being on HN is the product of being stupidly lucky to be born where we were and be typing on whatever we are.
Millions of potential Einsteins have lived and died as subsistence farmers or worse throughout human history. If any of us were born fifty thousand years ago we would not be savant geniuses bringing about the agricultural era - if we even lived to adulthood (highly unlikely) we would have spent our days chasing gazelle to exhaustion to survive just like the rest of mankind.
This is the kind of problem that individual action cannot solve. It's well modeled by tragedy of the commons. Similarly I'd vote for banning slaughter of animals for meat, but in the meantime am not a full-time vegetarian any longer.
If you continue to troll threads by tossing in flamebait, we're going to end up having to ban you. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
> You got him bro!! If you don't like that mass industrialization and overpopulation costs us our planet and potentially our grandchildren's livelihoods, instead of using the most effective means to communicate your cause, go to Africa and live in the jungle!!!! epic
Do you not see the hypocrisy in replying to someone like this while saying "Keep the dialogue civil"?
When did lifting millions out of poverty lead to “massive humanitarian crises and ever greater suffering”? How callous and sheltered do you have to be to say something like that?
Surely the absurdity of someone like you telling the world’s poor that they ought to stay poor doesn’t escape you?
>How callous and sheltered do you have to be to say something like that?
Keep the dialogue civil.
It turns out that industrializing a society creates a lot of pollution. That pollution, as we've recently found out, is responsible for "the massive humanitarian crises and greater suffering" we are going to experience as impoverished nations continue to industrialize (ie. get lifted out of poverty).
The solution to pollution is more economic development, not less. This becomes even more true once demographic transition effects (like declining birth rates) start to kick in.
EKC works with pollutants that have short term, acute consequences. Think sulfates, nitrates, carbon monoxide, etc.
EKC has not been proven true with pollutants whose effects are less concentrated and whose effects take longer to realize (CH4, CO2, etc). The catastrophes I'm referring to have little to do with the paper you cited.
According to https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2011/0..., it seems that there is a positive correlation between GDP per capita and carbon emissions per capita at first, but the correlation stops after that and becomes neutral. In the UK and US, for example, carbon emissions per capita remained roughly constant over a 50 year period even as GDP per capita increased significantly.
Your argument boils down to "nobody is perfect, so nobody has any room to criticise." The fact is that everyone makes decisions which contribute to these problems, but everyone is also responsible for trying to be better. China certainly has the right to criticise the US for our foreign policy and for our backsliding on climate change. However we have the right to criticise China for their killing of critically endangered species for medicine that doesn't work.
Everyone's got to work harder in the west so we can get back to dominating the earth such that we can impose our scientific value system on the superstitious heathen. /s
All you guys going around saying Chinese traditional medicine is worthless are like all the diplomats flying in to Israel saying that the conflict with the Palestinians is just a land dispute and has nothing to do with religion. You don't believe in anyone's values but your own.
Yeah, I like Rhinos and Tigers and if I had a button that said make sure I can keep seeing rhinos and tigers when I go to the zoo once a year, I'd push it, but if they disappeared my world and the world of most people would be largely unaffected except for watching t.v documentaries about it happening in countries I will never travel to. That's what majorly weirds me out about some animal rights issues. None of this stuff will ever have an impact on your day to day life ever, yet people care so intensely about it. How did we come to intensely value Tigers and Rhinos even though our only interaction with them throughout our life is a couple of minutes during occasional visits to the zoo?
It may be a way to express discontent and distrust upon our civilization, to preserve whatever is "Wild and Beautiful", or to save ourselves (as in The Roots of Heaven).
There's a lot of interests in the plants and fungi, or even some animal extracts, used in traditional Chinese medicine because they often do contain active chemicals that may be used.
It's like traditional remedies in the West: The plants used usually really do have medicinal properties.
(I'm not saying that a rhino horn has any useful properties, though...)
Once a plant, fungus or animal extract is proven to work (or a compound isolated from it, and that proven to work) it is no longer "traditional medicine". It is simply "medicine".
There is no evidence of any use for tiger penis or rhino horn.
Why should we put the pitchforks away? The stuff that works isn't traditional medicine, and at best traditional medicine harms people by keeping them away from actual treatment. Its role in driving tigers and rhinos closer to extinction is merely a more obvious, albeit less serious, example of the problems it causes.
> All you guys going around saying Chinese traditional medicine is worthless are like
Sorry this is nonsense. Medicine either works or doesn't. TCM is woo writ large. This isn't about value systems, it's about evidence, it's about scams and fraud preying on ignorance.
> if they disappeared my world and the world of most people would be largely unaffected
And as the number of species of wild animal on the planet ticks down to zero, this is the sort of complacency that will say "well it's been fine so far, I still have my Brawndo"
>And as the number of species of wild animal on the planet ticks down to zero, this is the sort of complacency that will say "well it's been fine so far, I still have my Brawndo"
Rhino and Tigers could be raised as livestock for their valuable whatever, but people seem to be even more opposed to that than letting wild animals go extinct. That's the spiritual part of it. The value of wild animal life for its own sake is taken as an absolute value.
