Fourth downside: there are exceptions but most of the US educated foreign students who go back home tend to have a good opinion of the US and also tend to make a good career at home. This is a very powerful form of soft power.
There are other notable exceptions. Pol Pot was educated in Paris. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese elites being educated in the US did have a big role in the conversion of China to capitalism for example.
I’m not quite sure how you can call China “capitalist”. And even if you did, Nixon opened China up before people had any real ability to study in the US (at least compared to the last few decades).
This is a flaw in HN, he made legitimate and witty comment and has been punished for that. Now, I can't prevent people from downvoting, but it really prevents lively discussion.
Maybe limit number of downvotes people can cast. I feel that this behavior is restricting normal discussion.
It's better thought of as a trade-off than a flaw, because a different type of discourse can form. There are alternative venues if you want threads of witty comments.
No one is opposed to wit, but this comment didn't explain anything about the context. I needed to Google to know what the point was. It still seems more like a snarky comment than a serious argument.
I could have just responded with some lazy remark saying "Want short witty comments? Twitter this way." but I'd be a jerk for that.
And that's not say that sarcasm etc can't actually be viewed favorably on HN, but it needs to -support the discourse-. A single counter example to something that was not itself taking an absolutist position is not meaningfully enhancing the discourse; it's just snark.
