Why is China smashing its tech industry? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#51

Post by bennysomething » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #22

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

Or even more succinctly: financial value != value to society. Sometimes there's alignment, but very frequently there is not.

Who's "value to society" people's values vary that's why we have markets so people can decide what they value by deciding to buy it.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#52

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #3

rektide wrote: post #2

> Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. [1] Because cyberspace is ascendant over the old powers. Alas, sure, it's a pretty sad capitalist shell of what cyberspace could be, but it's still striding past the encumbered old giants. [1] https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independ…

I miss being that optimistic. What happened?

What happened was that the silly people who wrote that twaddle managed to forget (somehow) that the millions of miles of fiber optics and copper cabling, the millions of processors that go into servers and backbone routers, the thousands of satellites and microwave links, and so forth are all possible only because of the "Industrial World" and all the uncounted thousands of acres of land on which that infrastructure rests and the businesses that run them are under the jurisdiction of "Governments".

There never was and can never be a cyberspace independent of the physical world. All there was was a brief moment of being ignored until the powers that be realized "Oh, hmm, looks like that Internet thingamajig is kind of important now; better start ruling it."

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#53

Post by Mizza » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

Hijacking this comment a bit, but I haven't watched real TV in a very long time but have been tuning in again because of the Olympics and Jeopardy.

I'm seeing an incredible amount of ads for companies that let you gamble real money on your phone. Sometimes it's back to back to back to back commercials for online app casinos. This seems really dangerous and a sign of a tragically unhealthy and predatory economy - I can't think of anything more negative-value-add than gambling. Has there been a regulatory change that allows this, or has this been going on for some time?

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#54

Post by deltasixeight » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

cainxinth wrote: post #38

deltasixeight wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is more than your classic "the CCP is just making moves to solidify it's own power." The article claims the actions taken by China also represent real philosophies about what constitutes economic health. They don't want their greatest minds optimizing ad tech or finding tax loop holes.

There’s some truth to that, but call me cynical, when asked to guess whether a nation’s actions are primarily motivated by power seeking or philosophical principles, I usually assume power was the dominant factor.

Power is an important factor, but to assume it's the only factor is irrational.

Think about it like this, China built the biggest high speed rail network in the world and doing such a thing wasn't just about "power" it was done because the regime cares about it's people. Centralized governments aren't automatically evil. Like all people in general, more likely a central power has complicated motivations that span across many dimensions. Power solidification is just one dimension.

Sort of a tangent but California can't even ring the shitty bart around the bay. Likely because not enough of the key people in critical places care.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#55

Post by pierre » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #7

spiritplumber wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss being that optimistic. What happened?

> I miss being that optimistic. What happened? The optimism turned out to be naive? I mean, regardless of whatever "cyberspace" was originally imagined to be, in actuality it turned out to be bunch of Facebooks. And more often than not it's allowed low-quality garbage to be spread with unprecedented effectiveness. Or to summarize in 1996 terminology: cyberspace turned out to be land of timecubes.

I still believe the pendulum will swing back to something else... internet 2021 is not the final state of the cyberspace, and things will evolve as connectivity, cost of hosting and ubiquity of computer systems increase.

What will be the web once we move to a new 3D / AR media or a metaverse platform? What id the internet become distributed again (I see some seed in blockchain / DAO), or if connectivity become ubiquitous (think smart dust).

We are just at the beginning of this journey, and the GAFAM of today are the IBM of tomorrow.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#56

Post by yarky » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

mjol wrote: post #28

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

If you really believe that entertainment doesn't improve the human experience, I feel sorry for you.

The OP is probably talking about the psychological impact of washing Netflix restlessly during long periods of time. That generates GDP, but the net impact on society might not be positive. Same thing with the psychological issues associated with social media addiction.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#57

Post by usaar333 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

caeril wrote: post #11

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add acti…

Alibaba and Tencent are hardly purely "get people addicted" companies.

Together, they power nearly the entire retail transaction market in China. Alibaba heavily drives commercial transactions and Tencent powers the vast amount of personal communication (WeChat).

They are quite profitable as effective monopolies, but are very valuable to society.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#58

Post by techbio » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #39

tablespoon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even more succinctly: financial value != value to society. Sometimes there's alignment, but very frequently there is not.

Yeah, the day I realized that the economic notion of value was weighted according to the wealth of those creating the demand, while the colloquial definition generally isn't, a lot of mismatched puzzle pieces fell into place. It was probably the single most successful update to my worldview (measured in terms of predictive power) that I have ever made.

Can you expand on this insight about weighting value and its predictive power or share a source?

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#59

Post by infogulch » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

rvn1045 wrote: post #25

ru552 wrote: post #6

I think it's because they want their best and brightest working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs, etc., instead of ad tech.

The scale that these companies operate on requires huge innovations in software engineering and computer science. Think about all the distributed systems that have come out of places like Facebook and Google over the last 2 decades.

Which they promptly keep to themselves and utilize to maximally exploit their users time and attention. Technology is a tool, not a generic force for good. Tools are agnostic to human value. If technology is being used exploitatively then it's a problem.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#60

Post by dilap » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

rvn1045 wrote: post #25

ru552 wrote: post #6

I think it's because they want their best and brightest working on physics, materials, technological breakthroughs, etc., instead of ad tech.

The scale that these companies operate on requires huge innovations in software engineering and computer science. Think about all the distributed systems that have come out of places like Facebook and Google over the last 2 decades.

I think that's overstating. To be sure some real tech challenges in distributing work horizontally, but I don't think it's created anywhere near the amount of value that's come out of e.g. space race research.