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

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#361

Post by axelroze » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:32 AM UTC

aoleinik wrote: post #224

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…

Out of curiosity, what _should_ the US be working on? The only two things I can think of that really needs more man hours is space travel and quantum computing, but those fields are generally far from being revenue generating and require mountains of initial investment. I agree that ad tech and social media are net negatives, but what are the alternatives? A dead economy, where most of the money circulates on necessi…

Reorganization of work so that there are not many bullshit jobs => 15 hour work weeks for any knowledge work. The other time the people can work on something else and/or read about science and philosophy. A truly efficient society does not have people wasting time copy pasting stuff between Excel sheets. Eventually all work will become knowledge work through automation and robotic development brought by the new generation of critical-thinkers.

Removal of free (costless) social media. Everyone who uses social media must pay for the employee and hardware costs by the minute. End of ads and end of engagement. End of push notifications. If people gain time by working 15 hours a week but lose the gained time on social media then no good is created. There is some value in Social Media but it must be consumed a little otherwise it is poison. Similar for Netflix and TV.

Once people are free of bullshit work and of bullshit free time (facebook and instagram feeds) and all boring physical work is automated, we should look to the stars. The final frontier.

That is my hopefully doable utopia. Actually this is John Maynard Keynes year 2000 utopia expanded a bit. Society failed as we are 2021 now and 996 is the norm instead of 15 hour work weeks. Working more is not the solution. Working smart is. Also not everyone needs to have a job.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#362

Post by cousin_it » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 9:00 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #320

jjoonathan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. Hyperbolic example: a starving orphan and a king are both looking for dinner. The orphan has no money -- therefore, the economic value of feeding the orphan is zero. The king, of course, is loaded, and pays an enormous premium for tiny asymptotic improvements in perceived quality because he can. The market value of chasing those asymptotic improvements is enormous. Would you say that the value of feeding the or…

I think you're pointing to the wrong problem. In economies where "stocks go up", food and many other goods tend to be very cheap (when measured in hours of unskilled labor). The problem comes from two specific goods, housing and healthcare, which for some reason don't become cheap. We need a correct tested theory of why that difference happens, that's the only way toward solving the problem.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#363

Post by fennecfoxy » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

They're not smashing it, they're taking control of it. Let capitalism and a faux free market/private companies do all the work & IP theft and then when they're successful take them over and apply party politics to them.

Bet it's the same reason they took HK early.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#364

Post by fennecfoxy » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 9:31 AM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #209

majormajor wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.” This hasn't been really put to the test yet, has it? What's the cost of labor delta compared to the places where outsourcing from China would be attractive currently?

In the West the accounting means you can't invest in robots that take years to pay for themselves. It is therefore more profitable to outsource and not have the capital investment on the books. The Germans do it differently and can get a better return investing in themselves. In China they have invested heavily in the robots that make the robots. Sure they are playing catch up in some areas, for instance, chips where…

Sanctions against Huawei were for malware + ties to the CCP, not because the west "couldn't compete".

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#365

Post by fennecfoxy » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 9:34 AM 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…

Lol, you write as if you've never heard of Tencent, who makes incredibly addictive time-wasting games for the Chinese market (and others) very much akin to your "negative value add activities", so much so that they're now using face recognition to prevent addicted children from playing (they don't care, really) and also producing such games as "Clap for Xi Jinping"...like, that has to be a joke, right? Right?

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#366

Post by majgr » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

ativzzz wrote: post #177

pm90 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video game industry is one of the key factors to the success of the US technology industry. Some of the most innovative software is written by game developers. As we move into a future where AR/VR and digital worlds will become commerce hubs, the US is arguably incredibly well set up to take advantage of it. Video game bashing seems like another moral panic to me. People are spending more time playing video games…

The argument I get from the article is that the video game industry will not strengthen the U.S. geopolitically versus China compared to investing into "hard" technology like better semiconductors or more advanced military hardware.

And that is a strange argument for me because almost everything used in games screams: military! Basics like orientation in 3D, physics, collision detection, then computer AI, even shaders and its parallel computing. All gaming 3d hardware feels like consumer sponsored military tech. How hard and resource intensive would it be for defence budget to create modern GPU? Yet they spent $0 on it, and can reap all the benefits now. Half a year of military conflict and USA would have the most amazing weapons systems made by its mobilised game studios.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#367

Post by _nalply » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 10:17 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #345

hintymad wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I learned, it’s not specialty. Congress has a law that certain percentage of military provisioning must be domestic. The military had to meet the quota by buying toilets, and someone set up a factory in the US just to supply the military, so the unit price was through the roof. This became an example of how the US manufacturing has weakened so much.

The example I'm aware of is that the toilet seats needed to be a specific shape to fit in a specific aircraft, and that they only needed 1XX of them. The $20,000 price tag is because they had to pay for molds, testing, various other fixed costs required to operate, etc.

You know some people got a blank check and went on a rampage. And if asked they invent justifications and requirements and generally fire smoke grenades to confuse the public.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#368

Post by andy_ppp » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 11:10 AM UTC

trasz wrote: post #351

andy_ppp wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh right, apologists for the sterilisation of women and the destruction of a culture, nice.

The difference is while what you’ve mentioned is just state propaganda, US killing million people in Iraq alone is an easily verifiable fact.

The actual reports discuss a range that’s unbelievably wide in terms of civilian casualties. Somewhere in the region of 100,000 to 1,000,000 which seems incredibly broad. The US did not deliberately engineer the situation in Iraq of course, and the insurgency, Sunni/Shea civil war that happened as well as Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters made the situation unmanageable.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

I think the testimony of so many Uyghur people about this and the huge “re-education” holiday camps you mentioned I’m not sure the West is fabricating such things. There’s simply too much evidence the other way.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#369

Post by p_l » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 11:14 AM UTC

fennecfoxy wrote: post #364

Theodores wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the West the accounting means you can't invest in robots that take years to pay for themselves. It is therefore more profitable to outsource and not have the capital investment on the books. The Germans do it differently and can get a better return investing in themselves. In China they have invested heavily in the robots that make the robots. Sure they are playing catch up in some areas, for instance, chips where…

Sanctions against Huawei were for malware + ties to the CCP, not because the west "couldn't compete".

If you think the part where they blitzed 5G so hard that a) you could build 5G network using only Huawei b) it was effectively impossible to build 5G network without Huawei, didn't have impact on USA push to sanction Huawei...

I have few bridges in Brooklyn to sell, good price.

Re: Why is China smashing its tech industry?

#370

Post by foerbert » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 11:18 AM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #350

HWR_14 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example I'm aware of is that the toilet seats needed to be a specific shape to fit in a specific aircraft, and that they only needed 1XX of them. The $20,000 price tag is because they had to pay for molds, testing, various other fixed costs required to operate, etc.

This article talking about this sells it as they managed to get the cost down through 3D printing, I'm absolutely willing to bet it cost the Airforce way more than contracting it out. The cost of a commercial 3d printer with security, to autocad it up, training staff, sending people into the field to measure it. To have a trained air force employee designing toilet seats is questionable, is that what the military sho…

After reading this, I think I've actually changed my mind a bit - not that I ever had a super strong opinion. But now I'm thinking that yes - we absolutely want the military occasionally doing things like going out and designing their own toilet seat.

The military is kind of an odd organization. As the world in general increasingly specializes, the military doesn't. Not really. At the end of the day the military is there to "interface" with the rest of the world - and that's basically been how it was and how it's going to continue to be. Them having knowledge of how things - even toilet seats - are manufactured could be legitimately useful in their military function. It's essentially letting them get a first-hand view on how the world - particularly in terms of manufacturing - works. What steps, technology, infrastructure, etc etc are required to build things?

Ideally of course they would, and still should, get subject matter experts in to advise them for strategy and planning and all that. But it's somewhat naive to suggest this is likely to work perfectly all the time. It rarely does, because humans are going to human. If they can get some hands on experience it gives them some trusted internal people who can better communicate with the subject matter experts and ultimately reach better conclusions.