> I was alive before we handed all our manufacturing capacity over to China and we got along just fine. I was alive while it was happening, too, and I remember it being sold to the public as the first step toward an inevitable transition to liberal democracy in China. All those lies are now completely unmasked.
I don’t think it was lies.
It was before my time, but the kitchen debate between Nixon and Kruschev was very ideological and I think the belief that market reforms would liberalize China, was genuine.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/1959-07-24.pdf
Some of the arguments used by Nixon haven’t stood the test of time:
Khrushchev: We have steel workers and peasants who can afford to spend $14,000 for a house. Your American houses are built to last only 20 years so builders could sell new houses at the end. We build firmly. We build for our children and grandchildren.
Nixon: American houses last for more than 20 years, but, even so, after twenty years, many Americans want a new house or a new kitchen. Their kitchen is obsolete by that time....The American system is designed to take advantage of new inventions and new techniques.
Planned obsolescence of course, introducing a raft of
global problems.
If communism failed (and I believe it unambiguously has), Americans were blind to the limits of a market system:
Nixon: … Diversity, the right to choose, the fact that we have 1,000 builders building 1,000 different houses is the most important thing. We don’t have one decision made at the top by one government official. This is the difference.
It turns out that a central party or dictators can allow a market system, while maintaining an iron grip on powers.