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America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

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Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#321

Post by chii »

dzonga wrote: post #318
kranke155 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So China introduced market competition at the political level and at the economic level. And they did it while remaining authoritarian. Incredible.

highly meritocratic system all the way from bottom to top. incredible indeed. in china you start as a low level official managing a village, if you succeed - you're promoted to town etc. they keep detailed records of your performance in school from kindergarten and a comprehensive dossier is compiled to evaluated by party officials. that means you will never have a nincompoop in charge at any level. maybe chinese nat…

> they keep detailed records of your performance in school from kindergarten and a comprehensive dossier

this also means you want your record pristine. And it is also why officials cover up problems rather than report it up.

But their current success to out-maneuver the US in terms of trade, as well as capacity, is testament to perhaps the success of such a system. I do recall there was a massive purge on corruption over the past decade(s), which is probably helped a lot. This did not happen in soviet russia.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#322

Post by immibis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #167
QuantumGood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics and propaganda tend to dominate national "learning", and those forces tend to escalate to prevent awareness. So not a lot of learning happens, historically ("history tends to repeat itself"; "history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes", etc)

If facts don’t work, intelligent, rational discourse and compromise don’t work, and economic pain don’t work, well, you’re out of options (at least options that can be discussed here).

By denying all other avenues of learning, the USA has chosen to revert to the oldest, which can't be disabled: natural selection.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#323

Post by torginus »

rtp4me wrote: post #130
sieabahlpark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, thanks for plainly stating why we need manufacturing back to the states.

Yes, and I think this is the core motivation behind the Trump messaging - bring it back to the US if possible. In fact, he wants to bring back commercial and maritime ship building back[1]. Pretty cool! Hopefully this will employ lots of people. [1] https://news.usni.org/2025/03/05/trumps-make-shipbuilding-gr...

And is the effort to deport as many Mexican skilled tradesmen and manual laborers as possible the part of this grand plan?

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#324

Post by _zamorano_ »

chii wrote: post #270
Animats wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. China's five year plans are translated into English and are quite readable. Here's the 14th Five Year Plan, 2021-2025.[1] Wikipedia has a summary.[2] This is China's business plan. The top level is expanded into more detailed plans at lower levels. For example, here's the plan for Fujian province.[3] Further down, here's the transition plan for IPv6.[4] You can go back and read previous five-year plans. The succ…

What makes these plans go so successfully, when the soviets have historically not been able to make such plans successful (despite being richer and more powerful at the time)? This video about Argentina's economic failures mentions why free market capitalism failed in argentina, and why a "similar" opening up in china didnt fail (but not so much detail that another country could follow it and replicate the success).…

It's about the execution. The plan is just the first step.

Basically, China is centralized politically and decentraliced economically. The soviet centralized everything... even meat prices, a recipe for disaster.

They plan the outcome, but let the governing to the different provinces and the implementation to the (mostly) private sector. These actors are forced to compete, among other things, via export discipline that cannot be faked.

And somehow, despite facing the same corruption and cronyism problems we do in the west, they seem to get better results.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#325

Post by roenxi »

intended wrote: post #293
roenxi wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China tends to think and plan longer term... Pull the other one, we saw how they went in the 20th century. Large centralised governments have never managed to systemically outplan democracies. The issue is US culture has been giving priority to anti-industrialists. As a result they aren't the leader of the industrial world. This has been planned for a long time and a bunch of people were celebrating it the entire w…

> The issue is US culture has been giving priority to anti-industrialists > Huge chunks of what China did are illegal. Running a successful industrial economy seems to violate a host of western employment & environmental laws as well as many regulations. Come on. For the west to combat the “anti-industrialists”, you would have to suppress the choices and decisions of normal people, who don’t want to see others die fo…

> Just outright say that democracy doesn’t work, and that Chinese style autocracy does.

There is no evidence of that to date. Western liberal democracies are much nicer places to live than China and at some point the Chinese autocrats will probably collapse internally - they're gambling on the CCP being competent which isn't a winning strategy long term. The problems are a bit more subtle - things like security implications and rates of progress.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#326

Post by bryanlarsen »

tcfunk wrote: post #265
bryanlarsen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords have pricing power because people have to live close to their jobs. If UBI lets people move freely, landlords lose their pricing power.

I always disagree with this moving freely argument. Certainly some live where they do specifically for work, but some are also there to be close to family. They will not be interested in relocating to save a buck.

In other words, the real estate market is sticky. There are large costs to moving, so consumers put up with price increases more readily than they do in other markets.

But there's a big gulf between "sticky" and "laws of supply and demand don't apply".

People on UBI will be much more price sensitive than those supplementing with wage income since the UBI dependent will be time rich and money poor. Landlords will have less power over them. They'll still have some power because of the stickiness.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#327

Post by pfdietz »

xethos wrote: post #302
pfdietz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this what Trump is trying to rectify now?

Trump is discussing annexation of my country. Maybe you're thinking of Imperialism 1.0?

I was thinking of talk of pulling out of NATO.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#328

Post by jajko »

chii wrote: post #321
dzonga wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

highly meritocratic system all the way from bottom to top. incredible indeed. in china you start as a low level official managing a village, if you succeed - you're promoted to town etc. they keep detailed records of your performance in school from kindergarten and a comprehensive dossier is compiled to evaluated by party officials. that means you will never have a nincompoop in charge at any level. maybe chinese nat…

> they keep detailed records of your performance in school from kindergarten and a comprehensive dossier this also means you want your record pristine. And it is also why officials cover up problems rather than report it up. But their current success to out-maneuver the US in terms of trade, as well as capacity, is testament to perhaps the success of such a system. I do recall there was a massive purge on corruption…

Rooting out corruption in russia is simply not possible when biggest thief is at the top of the pyramid (absolute minimum stolen from russian nation is on the order of 100 billions $$ stashed all over the world, but its hard to count when its spread across many 'representatives').

He also actively promotes corruption of his underlings, but the important point is - within hard limits of their position. Get greedy and overstep that and either modern gulag or window for you. Good luck saying to the rest of population 'don't steal!'.

Xi is not flaunting his billion dollar mansions with golden toilets or megayachts while his kids grow up in Switzerland, is he.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#329

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

I believe a lot of this is where China's current deflationary pressure is coming from. China has driven the cost to produce energy and goods right down to the floor through tremendous scale and efficiency. There doesn't seem to be any sign prices have reached the bottom yet. A lot of parallels to "The Great Deflation" [1] of the late 1800s.

Quoting Wikipedia,

"The prices of most basic commodities and mass-produced goods fell almost continuously; however, nominal wages remained steady, resulting in a pronounced and prolonged rise in real wages, disposable income and savings – essentially giving birth to the middle class. Goods produced by craftsmen, as opposed to in factories, did not decrease in price"

China's system really prioritizes worker and middle class prosperity. Over here in the west we're too busy sliding into a rent seeking oligarchy that we haven't noticed yet.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Deflation

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#330

Post by t-3 »

ActorNightly wrote: post #295
chii wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simply providing easy immigration for qualified tech workers. I dont believe those tech workers would wish to move, unless the political system in china changes to one that is more amenable to democracy; not to mention that having high salaries in the US, it will be impossible to achieve similar levels in china after migration (even if the PPP remains the same!).

I mean, you are going to see an exodus of tech workers regardless as US economy withers up and other countries (probably in EU) pick up the slack. China won't even have to have high salaries, all they would need to do is basically set up immigrant neighborhoods that have all the familiar things that US people like, and through the nature of just being around people of similar status, whatever the salary everyone gets…

China isn't interested in immigration. In a relatively liberal and democratic country like the US, immigration is a boon because we don't care all that much about political or economic stability and are used to not having it. In an authoritarian oligarchy like China it's poison because an unstable environment will see the government in trouble quickly when people lose confidence in the party and leadership.
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