[grecy]

>This is a takeover attempt through the backdoor.

In case it wasn't already immensely obvious, the third world war has been underway for some time. This one isn't a war fought with guns and bombs, it's a war fought with information, deals and economies.

See China's massive economy and ownership of the US, the massive drop in oil price and what that's done to the world economy etc.

The citizens of the world wouldn't tolerate full-scale war - they'd vote out their leaders, so this is what we get when countries still want to dominate each other.

[ppod]

>this is what we get when countries still want to dominate each other.

The most peaceful, prosperous, and healthy period known in human history?

[mvanvoorden]

You're repeating propaganda.

May be there's less violence, but the amount of suffering has skyrocketed over the years. A more than significant amount of people are dependent on tranquilizers and anti-depressants to make their life bearable, because for them it has become mundane and meaningless without.

Statistiscs may tell a story of less violence, and people getting older and having more material possessions, but these do not reflect the actual well-being of people, and also these numbers don't show how much exploitation and environmental damage our alleged 'prosperity' causes in other parts of the world.

[untog]

What you're saying is "statistics might tell one story, but let me tell you, without citing sources or evidence, those statistics are wrong".

[wfo]

No, what he's saying is "your metrics are measuring the wrong things and so it does not matter what numbers pop out of them; they are completely meaningless when it comes to answering the question which is actually important".

[davnn]

But nobody can answer the important question except for themselves.

[onetimePete]

You can measure the amount of ability to choose and answer your own questions though. Also, this all very idealistic nonsense- until 300 years ago, we lived basically in tribal community, and people yearn for that, no matter how futuristic they dress up.

[simonb]

For one, suicide rates in the developed world are on the rise: http://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

[MichaelGG]

But this might be caused by all sorts of things. More people rejecting (or being more "moderate" in) religion, for instance. Or more people being able to get a more accurate view of the world. Or social acceptability changing.

Doesn't seem fair to look at overall statistics for peace and prosperity, then say "well that doesn't really count".

[f1hybrid]

If there is a rise in the curve of suicides caused by more people having an accurate view of the world, a realisation that causes them to take their own lives, I'm sure the solution is not to try to get people to believe in something that is false.

[simonb]

Of course, but all these are manifestations of the same ideological system (that also brought "peace and prosperity").

[yawgmoth]

You can have a quantifiable increase in quality of life without it being a meaningful increase in quality of life.

[termain]

That seems incompleat. Could you continue?

[scalio]

Most quality of life reports include ratings that are some variation on "average monthly income", meaning this nowadays pretty arbitrary measure of wealth aka money that you have no control over is factored into how happy you're supposed to be. Money is not the primary condition for happiness for many people, and markets are a complex thing, meaning having more money does not automatically entail having a better life.

(just my understanding of parent's comment)

[StanislavPetrov]

No, what he is saying is that you can make any argument appear valid if you cherry pick statistics.

There's less violence according to who? There are more people in prison today then any time in history. I'd argue that imprisoning someone is an act of violence. Violent coercion is also violence. Every time the government violates your rights, at the point of the gun, that's violence. That occurs hundreds of millions of times per day due to the actions of our police state.

Delusional people who talk about the rosy benefits of overpopulation always fail to mention that overpopulation is a direct cause of the 6th mass extinction, the saturation of the environment with chemical pollutants, the overfishing of the oceans, the destruction of tillable fields with nitrogen injection (which also leads to massive dead zones in waterways from runoff), and the list goes on.

Talking about how wonderful overpopulation is and how great we are getting along is like talking about how warm and comforting the fire on the life boat is while you burn your oars. It seems like a great idea until the oars are gone and not only are you cold, but you can no longer row.

[cookiecaper]

"Never trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself".

[dragontamer]

Yeah, because the Opium Wars of 1800s never happened or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War

Your ignorance of history is outstanding and on display. Whatever the TTIP is, it is most certainly not a secret agreement to allow Opium into the Chinese economy to wreak the common people.

We are better and more civilized people today than we were back then. Period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

Afghanistan was always an awful place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Afghan_War

And there are certainly fewer outright rebellions like the Boxer Rebellion going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion

Of course, Imperialism doesn't actually happen anymore. We don't go to war on 100% false pretenses (yeah, WMDs were bad, but "Remember the Maine to Hell with Spain" was significantly worse)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War

The reasoning of the 1900s was that "War is good. Social Darwinism at its finest". Survival of the fittest, lets fight. World War 1 was fought not out of necessity, but out of curiosity. We had new weapons, and we wanted to use them on each other. It was finally time for the great Powers of the World to compete in the glory of War.

We are a hell of a lot more peaceful today. No country actually has the appetite for the amount of warrant-less killing that Imperialism creates. We actually are connected to every other country in the world and care about the citizens of other countries.

In the late 1800s, we didn't even give a damn about the natives of our own country, or Black people, or even Women. (See Jim Crow laws).

[wavefunction]

>>No country actually has the appetite for the amount of warrant-less killing that Imperialism creates

The US drone war has been killing hundreds and thousands of innocent people so I wonder if perhaps we do have an appetite for that sort of murder.

[dragontamer]

Right. You just keep ignoring the good parts of history.

You do realize that America opened up Concentration Camps inside of the Philippine-American War?

Americans retaliated against the Philippinos by creating such lovely orders like "Kill everyone over the age of 10".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_H._Smith#Samar_campaign

> "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States," General Jacob H. Smith said.

America, F-yeah! And of course, the definition of "capable of bearing arms" is:

> "Persons of ten years and older are those designated as being capable of bearing arms"

------

But yeah, continue to pretend that modern war is worse than the past or something. Hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians? F-ing hell, we did 25,000 to 50,000 for s--- and giggles back then. In a single campaign, by a single general who was never punished.

[wavefunction]

I am responding to a post that claims that countries no longer engage in the sorts of atrocities found in history to claim that things are not that different. I think we actually spend more effort these days "justifying" the carnage whereas in the past it passed with less comment.

You seem to be tilting at windmills that you erected yourself.

[PavlovsCat]

The baseline isn't even worse stuff, the baseline is decency.

[witty_username]

> May be there's less violence, but the amount of suffering has skyrocketed over the years. A more than significant amount of people are dependent on tranquilizers and anti-depressants to make their life bearable, because for them it has become mundane and meaningless without.

Citation? I haven't heard of anyone who is dependent on tranquilizers or anti-depressants (well, apart from the Internet from people with clinical depression), so it can't be that common.

[legulere]

The first thing I found on duckduckgo: http://www.webmd.com/depression/news/20111019/use-of-antidep...

"About 11% of Americans aged 12 or older take antidepressants" (2011)

"the rate of antidepressant use in the U.S. has increased nearly 400% since 1988."

Many people that are on anti-depressants won't tell you about it.

edit: Really? Downvote me just because I provided a source to the claim that more people are on antidepressants today?

[JoeAltmaier]

I'm sure its high. I'm also sure we use more vaccines, bone marrow transplants and leukemia cures than before. Its not always a bad thing that folks aren't suffering as they used to historically.

[witty_username]

Probably due to higher diagnosis and superior antidepressants (so patients are more likely to be prescribed).

Rate of antidepressant use isn't a good proxy for mental illnesses.

[mjevans]

While the criticisms in parallel may be founded, I think a better comparison would be the relative trajectory over time and the comparable rates of prescription in other nations.

It could be that the US is still under diagnosed compared to nations that have national healthcare systems as part of their tax structure.

It could also be that even with the above the US receives more diagnosis for anti-depressants due to quality of life and interactions between the individual and the culture of a given area.

It is my hypothesis (but I've no idea what terms to use for the search) that the culture in the US is less supportive and less about inclusion and empowerment than it has been in the past or possibly than other cultures. However researching that is much more something that those in social sciences should be performing as part of their education and society's investment in to scientific experiments for the public good.

[marknutter]

That doesn't necessarily people are more depressed now than they were in the past. It could also mean that people who would have been depressed either way are now finally getting treatment for it. Sounds pretty good to me.

[cookiecaper]

It's very common in the US. Present to a medical professional with a bit of lethargy and doubt or confusion over the general direction of your life and these medications seem to be prescribed almost immediately. It's almost like they don't want people to analyze their lives and address their issues such that their life is bearable without the aid of pharmaceuticals.

[Grishnakh]

Or maybe they'd prefer to make this option readily available to you so that you'll use these pharmaceuticals which have relatively minor side-effects, rather than you "self medicating" with alcohol or illegal narcotics as people generally did in the past (and still do today).

You tell me, which is better for someone under a lot of stress in life: should they take a Xanax one or two times a day, or should they drink themselves into a stupor every evening? Because the latter is the standard way of treating anxiety and depression, and has been for centuries.

[kps]

The US has a very strong puritan streak that says suffering is generally the result of personal moral failure, good for people, and it's wrong to make it ‘too easy’ to alleviate.

[cookiecaper]

What about neither? There are people who value sobriety.

[woodpanel]

Having "more posessions", posessions at all, "getting older" and the least amount of violence (probably) since ever - constitutes what I'd call the most awesome time for humanity thus far.

What you call WW3, just shows how much capitalism has tamed even the biggest powers and helped make this world a more resilient civilization.

[blue_dinner]

"May be there's less violence, but the amount of suffering has skyrocketed over the years. A more than significant amount of people are dependent on tranquilizers and anti-depressants to make their life bearable, because for them it has become mundane and meaningless without."

I don't think this is very accurate. People get hooked on painkillers usually because they had some sort of accident and need them for pain...and since opiates are extremely addictive, continue to take them after they no longer need them.

"also these numbers don't show how much exploitation and environmental damage our alleged 'prosperity' causes in other parts of the world."

You can't blame us for countries that decide to have no rules and ruin their environment. When you compare the environment of the US to pretty much anywhere in the world, it's one of the cleanest (if not the cleanest).

..and 'exploitation'? We built the middle class of China. Before we started going overseas to build factories, the majority of people in China were in complete and utter poverty.

Hardly what I call exploitation.

[dragontamer]

In contrast, Chinese people got hooked on Opium because the British was making so much money off of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

The Treaty of Nanking was basically crafted so that British Merchants can continue to get China hopped up on Opium. Because it was so profitable.

And people think today's trade deals are bad...

[tamana]

Nice. "You can't blame us for buying things from people who use slave labor and slaughter their slaves by the millions if they don't cooperate."

[tamana]

People weren't less depressed before Prozac, except if they were too busy starving or laboring.

[Nimitz14]

Is this HN or /r/conspiracy lol.

[eternalban]

You set a pretty low bar. We have had 200+ years of exponential growth in knowledge and technology. By all rights, we should be (all n billion of us) living in an earthly paradise, today.

But you are right, in context of the past n thousands years, we're doing OK.

[egeozcan]

"The best we have got" doesn't really mean so much if one considers how bad the preceding periods had been. I'm not saying the quality of life had been constantly improved through the history but, thanks to the improvements in a lot of areas (technology and human rights being some important ones), it is a generally upwards trend.

In summary, you can't tie quality of life so easily to a single criterion.

[PavlovsCat]

> > this is what we get when countries still want to dominate each other.

> The most peaceful, prosperous, and healthy period known in human history?

We don't have that because of war profiteers and other exploiters and murderers, but despite them. And there's no telling how much better it would be without all the ballast and poison.

[dosgonlogs]

Healthy, peaceful and prosperous for who? Is this supposed to be a joke? I guess if it doesn't happen in the west, it doesn't count. Simply disgusting that someone could actually believe this.

[NetStrikeForce]

For those who dominate.

[kevando]

In case I didn't misunderstand your comment, no, the ongoing WW3 is not obvious.

[mtmail]

The third world war part isn't obvious at all.

[mac01021]

> China's massive economy

How is having a massive economy an act of aggression?

[eternalban]

> The citizens of the world wouldn't tolerate full-scale war

We've never really been given a choice in the matter.

Try this for size: "the citizens of the world [can't yet] tolerate" the reality of a One World government and thus require generational guidance. "News" at ten.

[maxerickson]

How much of the US does China own?

[shimon_e]

1.2 trillion

Edit: I am answering a simple question. I am not offering any interpretation or comments. So I don't know why commentators are trying to drag me into a debate.

[jgroszko]

That's... not how US debt works. Countries use the dollar as a reserve currency through buying up treasury bonds. It's simply a safe place to park their money. The US 'owes' China 1.2 trillion in the same way your bank 'owes' you the balance of your checking account.

[mod]

I own bank of america.

[maxerickson]

I don't see that as an answer to the question I asked. I did not ask how much US government debt was held by China.

If that is all OP meant, I would ask them why they think China owning US bonds is particularly meaningful for the US.

[oblio]

Probably as much as the Saudis do :)