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Why is China smashing its tech industry?

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#81

Post by 74d-fe6-2c6 »

triceratops wrote: post #64
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…

Facebook, sure. Why Netflix? TV and movies have always been around. The US owes its status as a cultural superpower to Hollywood. Too much TV and movie-watching isn't good for a nation, sure, but you could make that argument about any pastime.

Communication has also been always around. The problem is the abundance - same with fat and sugar and cocaine. A little is fine, a lot is bad.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#82

Post by rvn1045 »

dilap wrote: post #60
rvn1045 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don’t think map reduce, tensorflow and the countless other systems that have been open sourced haven’t had huge impact outside of their original use cases at these companies?

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#83

Post by paxys »

jeswin wrote: post #45

Asia is headed towards war - it almost seems inevitable. Xi has publicly committed to not leaving Taiwan invasion to the next generation. China is focused on building an industrial base that complements its military power while generating cash, and internet software startups aren't going to help. For the rest of Asia, they'd do well to militarize; for Japan and Australia to consider getting nuclear weapons or hosting…

This is stupid. China is the last country in the world to want war, considering its 100% export-driven economy.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#85

Post by mc32 »

triceratops wrote: post #64
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…

Facebook, sure. Why Netflix? TV and movies have always been around. The US owes its status as a cultural superpower to Hollywood. Too much TV and movie-watching isn't good for a nation, sure, but you could make that argument about any pastime.

Netflix provides on-demand all you can view content. It doesn’t require any “cooling period” before the next episode. You don’t have to engage with family, friends or work. You can stream all day and live in fantasyland.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#86

Post by throwaway4good »

simiones wrote: post #65
throwaway4good wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We don’t actually know why anyone in power does anything." This is a not true. Dictators do long speeches. Often quite explicitly stating why they do what they do. Funnily sometimes in democracies there is a bigger space betweeen what is done and what is communicated.

Those speeches usually contain about as much actual information as a corporate PR statement: they, at best, tell you why the dictator wants others to think they are doing something. The only logical way to interpret the intentions of political leaders is to look at their effects. Anything else, even personal diaries, are likely full of interested reasoning and outright lies.

If we are talking about the stuff here (regulation of internet companies) there plenty of speeches, 5-year plans, writings in party newspapers that explains the thinking behind the actions.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#87

Post by bennysomething »

tablespoon wrote: post #78
bennysomething wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. That's a difficult question to answer generally, however it's also clearly not one that markets "solve." That's easy to see with the example of addictive drugs (which the market shows can be very profitable), unless you're willing to argue there's social value in destroying many peopl…

The point I'm trying to make is people often use the term "value to society" like it's an answered question. We know it's not answered as that people's values vary. Centrally deciding what is useful has proven to be disastrous (see the Soviet Union and every other centrally planned economy). Free markets allow us to express our values at an individual level rather than having an authority deciding what to value.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#88

Post by dotcommand »

jeswin wrote: post #45

Asia is headed towards war - it almost seems inevitable. Xi has publicly committed to not leaving Taiwan invasion to the next generation. China is focused on building an industrial base that complements its military power while generating cash, and internet software startups aren't going to help. For the rest of Asia, they'd do well to militarize; for Japan and Australia to consider getting nuclear weapons or hosting…

> For the rest of Asia, they'd do well to militarize; for Japan and Australia to consider getting nuclear weapons or hosting them,

The idea that we'd ever let Japan have a nuke is ludicrous. Do you really think we'd let a country we nuked twice have such weapons? There is a reason why we are still occupying Japan 75+ years after ww2. And no, it isn't to "protect" japan.

> and for India to rapidly increase stockpiles.

I don't think china would mind one bit. After all, it wasn't china that sanctioned india when they developed nukes...

http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9805/13/india.us/

If there is a war in asia, it will be a war for liberation - not from china, but from the west. It's so funny how we truly deluded ourselves into thinking we are the good guys in asia and not the murderous colonial powers that we truly are. We really need to start seeing the world as it is rather than the disneyfied nonsense you read on "news". Or we are in for a rude awakening.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#90

Post by andy_ppp »

throwaway4good wrote: post #86
simiones wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those speeches usually contain about as much actual information as a corporate PR statement: they, at best, tell you why the dictator wants others to think they are doing something. The only logical way to interpret the intentions of political leaders is to look at their effects. Anything else, even personal diaries, are likely full of interested reasoning and outright lies.

If we are talking about the stuff here (regulation of internet companies) there plenty of speeches, 5-year plans, writings in party newspapers that explains the thinking behind the actions.

Okay so is the article right? It’s not about smashing innovation but saying popularity is the wrong metric and (CCP) power should be the driving force behind technology development? Do the powerful really always state there objectives obviously like some dastardly Bond villain?
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