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The Future, Made in China

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Re: The Future, Made in China

#101

Post by wookmaster »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #78
dyauspitr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese model is 100% not exportable. It is in essence a benevolent dictatorship that actually seems to be functioning. It’s exactly like having a good monarch and if you look at history, good monarchs, were not all that frequent.

A benevolent dictatorship that actually seems to be functioning... at the moment. If you look at the last 30 years, it looks like it works. But if you look at the last 70...

Well yeah, it's not likely the next person holds this up. It doesnt take much for this type of power to go to someones head and they start making really bad decisions.

Re: The Future, Made in China

#102

Post by recursivedoubts »

derriz wrote: post #94
recursivedoubts wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

economic capacity is effectively infinite at this point, demand and raw inputs are the constraining factors (suggested reading: social credit (canadian not chinese) Not making cheap plastic toys means you don't have the supply chain and expertise around plastics molding, which means you eventually lose the ability to produce housing for electronics, which means you eventually lose the ability to produce electronic co…

> economic capacity is effectively infinite at this point This is a bizarre claim? The total ability of an economy to produce goods and services is most certainly finite. For it to be infinite, we'd need infinite workers, infinite factories, infinite raw materials, infinite land, infinite infrastructure, infinite energy, etc.

What I mean is that the ability of the domestic economy to produce, with automation, is constrained mainly by demand and raw materials. Producing plastic toys would not make a dent in the productive capacity of the US and in fact would increase it by bringing the supply chain and expertise back to the US. This is obvious to anyone who hasn't had the misfortune of studying economics or listening to people who have. (I studied economics briefly in college.)

But of course, as I'm sure you recognize, that isn't the main point. The main point is that now we aren't even able to dominate high value manufacturing like microchips, despite being told we were only giving away the low end.

Re: The Future, Made in China

#103

Post by godwinson__4-8 »

scottLobster wrote: post #99
godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China does not treat us as a partner any more than we do them. I don't think this is accurate. What do you mean by this? What about the extent of trade between the two countries? It has dipped from peaks, but the story of Chinese growth and American wealth are intertwined. In what sense is this not a partnership? Because they stole some IP along the way? Or the access to their market comes with other costs? On bala…

> I don't think this is accurate. What do you mean by this? China has never abided by WTO rules and has engaged in rampant dumping for decades, among IP theft and other unfair practices. I don't blame them for doing so, I blame our leadership for allowing it, literally selling them large pieces of our industrial plant at times. China was wise to not allow American companies to fairly compete domestically. We should h…

> We don't commit precisely because we are so dominant there is no need.

> Just look at public opinion at the start of Afghanistan. It's a shame Bush and Obama bungled it so badly.

This seems contradictory. The first seems like wishful thinking/unclear rationalization. The second implies a contradiction. Why are the polls relevant unless you mean to suggest this war involved more commitment? Yet it also ended in failure?

What was the last war America won against an adversary like today's China? Who is signing up for such a war today? If all these other wars have been a "war of choice" why would war with China be any different? Are you under the impression a Chinese move on say Taiwan will be preceded by an attack on the US homeland?

Anyway we'll have to agree to disagree on most of the rest. I don't know what metric your using to define "MAGA" but I don't think I share it. 80 million people roughly voted for the Jan 6th guy. His coalition is (or at least was) pretty wide. He will probably lose the midterms like most presidents. It's not clear he really cares or that it will really matter.

Anyway, I hope you are right and I appreciate the back and forth. Thanks!

Re: The Future, Made in China

#104

Post by scottLobster »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #103
scottLobster wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this is accurate. What do you mean by this? China has never abided by WTO rules and has engaged in rampant dumping for decades, among IP theft and other unfair practices. I don't blame them for doing so, I blame our leadership for allowing it, literally selling them large pieces of our industrial plant at times. China was wise to not allow American companies to fairly compete domestically. We should h…

> We don't commit precisely because we are so dominant there is no need. > Just look at public opinion at the start of Afghanistan. It's a shame Bush and Obama bungled it so badly. This seems contradictory. The first seems like wishful thinking/unclear rationalization. The second implies a contradiction. Why are the polls relevant unless you mean to suggest this war involved more commitment? Yet it also ended in fail…

> This seems contradictory. The first seems like wishful thinking/unclear rationalization. The second implies a contradiction. Why are the polls relevant unless you mean to suggest this war involved more commitment? Yet it also ended in failure?

I'm saying that America was not really all that motivated for Afghanistan (aside from the start), Iraq, Vietnam, or any major conflict since Korea. We can lose and life goes on. The stock market stays up, businesses keep doing business, the government stays in power, the conflict isn't existential in even the most minor sense except for that tiny minority that's directly involved. And those conflicts were largely insurgencies and attempts at nation-building.

A kinetic war at sea with a nation state like China is what America was built to fight, although perhaps less so now that the Trump admin has wasted most of our advanced munitions on Iran. They have a navy for us to sink and fighters and bombers to shoot down, and if we do that well enough we win! There's no caves to hide in, no religious insurgencies to plant IEDs, no land to occupy, no nation-building.

I'm not saying we wouldn't have casualties, but I think in a conventional war we'd do better against China than Iran.

> Anyway we'll have to agree to disagree on most of the rest. I don't know what metric your using to define "MAGA" but I don't think I share it. 80 million people roughly voted for the Jan 6th guy. His coalition is (or at least was) pretty wide. He will probably lose the midterms like most presidents. It's not clear he really cares or that it will really matter.

Most of those 80 million were not hardcore MAGA, just uninformed and pissed at Biden for whatever reason. Plenty of them have fallen off the train in the last year and a half. Between DOGE, ICE, Epstein, Iran and stepping the corruption into overdrive, there's at least one major thing that will keep many of them from voting for him again. Even the MAGA base started to turn on him after the MOU with Iran came out, he had to backtrack on that quickly

But yeah, good talk!

Re: The Future, Made in China

#105

Post by derriz »

dagenleg wrote: post #97
derriz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> economic capacity is effectively infinite at this point This is a bizarre claim? The total ability of an economy to produce goods and services is most certainly finite. For it to be infinite, we'd need infinite workers, infinite factories, infinite raw materials, infinite land, infinite infrastructure, infinite energy, etc.

I think the parent is referring to heavy financialisation of the economy in the West. As we've recently seen, such economy can grow quite unconstrained by the material concerns such as factories, energy or workers.

I’m not sure I understand? Financial services and insurance make up about 8% of US economy and 5% of that in Europe. I’ve seen no signs that these sectors or the economies they’re part of are growing in an unconstrained way?

Re: The Future, Made in China

#106

Post by derriz »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #102
derriz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> economic capacity is effectively infinite at this point This is a bizarre claim? The total ability of an economy to produce goods and services is most certainly finite. For it to be infinite, we'd need infinite workers, infinite factories, infinite raw materials, infinite land, infinite infrastructure, infinite energy, etc.

What I mean is that the ability of the domestic economy to produce, with automation, is constrained mainly by demand and raw materials. Producing plastic toys would not make a dent in the productive capacity of the US and in fact would increase it by bringing the supply chain and expertise back to the US. This is obvious to anyone who hasn't had the misfortune of studying economics or listening to people who have. (I…

> But of course, as I'm sure you recognize..

I do not. When you say, “what I mean is economic capacity is constrained by demand and raw materials” - that’s a significant deviation from your claim that economic capacity is infinite which is why I asked you about it. I’m not a mind reader.

But even this claim makes no sense with your toy factory example. Building such a factory consumes no land, no construction workers or engineers’ time, requires no energy to construct or operate, requires no human effort at all to operate and all this can be done for zero cost?

Can you point to any example of such a factory anywhere in the world? I mean if this were possible, why would places like sub-Saharan not be full of such factories?

Re: The Future, Made in China

#107

Post by kamaal »

andriy_koval wrote: post #55
daliusd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still you will not be able to give any existing example that lasted longer than 100 years. There are examples like Sayfawa dynasty which is counter-example to your claim about technology being multiplier

many autocracies in terms of social management systems lasted for many hundreds years. Leaders of specific autocracies change, right (e.g. king got killed, but now we have new king), but governing structure persisted.

If you treat politics as a religion then you argue merits.

Most common people care for abundance and affluence. Any system that helps them arrive there is ok.

Re: The Future, Made in China

#108

Post by TFYS »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #80
polotics wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more precise maybe?

The problem always was that the central planners never knew enough to plan the economy right. Well, with enough technology, enough reporting into the central database, they theoretically could know enough. And that might actually work, if that were the only problem. But it's not. The deeper problem is that people work better when they get to share in the proceeds. People didn't work very well in the "worker's paradis…

It's the promise of a reward that makes people work better. I don't think it necessarily needs to be a share of the proceeds. Athletes push themselves hard for recognition and some monetary reward. A planned economy could have something like that to motivate people.

Re: The Future, Made in China

#109

Post by Sabinus »

dagenleg wrote: post #96
grunder_advice wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your framing somewhat historically inaccurate. China did not make an "autocratic bargain" with its people. Democracy and Liberalism are offshoots of Christian culture that originated in Europe and spread to the former European colonies (including to Venezuela and Argentina) and post-WWII to the allies. Although China flirted briefly with liberalism and democracy those remained foreign concepts and did not perm…

Taiwan is liberal democratic china. It's doing quite okay.

Security concerns aside, it's a big part of why the Chinese don't like it so much. Same with the Russians and Ukraine. It's embarrassing for nationalist narratives if there's a group of your people that prosper under the Other system.

Re: The Future, Made in China

#110

Post by thrance »

grunder_advice wrote: post #57
Hasz wrote: post #23

> Common sense says countries rise and fall in cycles Oh common sense. If you believe all countries are autocracies, maybe. But to examine the trajectory of the US on a "Chinese timescale", the US rejected autocratic rule, built a system that decentralizes power, uses ambition to check ambition, and provides for frequent, peaceful transfer of power. To an autocratic Chinese bureaucrat, this is all wasteful shortsight…

I find your framing somewhat historically inaccurate. China did not make an "autocratic bargain" with its people. Democracy and Liberalism are offshoots of Christian culture that originated in Europe and spread to the former European colonies (including to Venezuela and Argentina) and post-WWII to the allies. Although China flirted briefly with liberalism and democracy those remained foreign concepts and did not perm…

> Democracy and Liberalism are offshoots of Christian culture

This is completely wrong. "Christian culture" was perfectly content with feudalism and the absolute monarchy for over a millenia. The French Revolution was explicitly secular and anti-clerical, because the King had total support from the Church.

Similarly, "Christian culture" was used to justify slavery. So when it comes to Liberalism, can we correctly attribute it to the Enlightenment thinkers instead of the obscurantist Church?

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