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> For some reason That reason would be the constant proclamation of such by business leaders, and these days, especially by AI company executives. Just yesterday Elon Musk was in the news again for making noise about the need for a Universal Basic Income, with the clear implication of massive job market disruption.
It's pretty clear that Elon Musk suffers from sadism; edgelords tend to.
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To be fair, losing your job in America is a lot scarier than in most countries; especially when your whole industry is affected and your skill set has become obsolete. There’s not much of a social safety net to catch you.
> losing your job in America is a lot scarier than in most countries Compared with China?
https://msadvisory.com/china-social-security-system/
For example, if the local minimum wage in Shanghai is RMB 2,590 per month, the unemployment benefit would range between RMB 1,813 and RMB 2,072.
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China is a the forefront of catching up. Don't mistake that for innovation. China isn't building the best chips, that's Taiwan with really Netherlands doing the hard part. China is catching up to European car makers except they've largely caught up to Tesla in the powertrain (I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons). In the AI space obviously China is just running after playing c…
China is the world leader in Drones, Electric vehicles, Batteries, Solar Panels, Electronics, Robotics, High-Speed Rail, Industrial equipment, Nuclear energy, Telecommunications Equipment, Cameras, Shipbuilding, Scientific research, rapid mobile payments. Tied for AI, Smartphones Semiconductors, rockets, and aerospace are probably the only sectors china is behind in. China is the most technologically advanced society…
This is just a side effect of using technology to control the population.
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> I partly blame that on Americans boycotting Tesla for silly political reasons What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social security data, etc are just “silly political reasons”.
> What would be different in Tesla’s output if Americans didn’t start boycotting Tesla less than 2 years ago? Car companies do better if they sell cars. They also find it easier to sell cars if owning said car doesn't make you fearful some crazy person will smash it because of identity politics. > And I’m glad you think killing at least half a million kids in Africa to not even save any money, stealing all our social…
The whole idea that this one company must be protected from any competition and fed money and support is absurd. Add to it the years of lies Musk engaged in and his nazi affiliations ... it is tripple absurd.
> When I was younger I used to think more negatively about jobs, I even called it the jobs problem in my 2019 agentic coding startup template. I have since come around, the point of a society is the flourishing of its inhabitants. That’s the key. The world is a delicate fabric that changes over time. It’s nice (or frustrating) reading opinions. Forecasting the future is tricky. While the world and us humans waste our…
So... What's your point? Sounds like what you identify as key is not relevant to the remainder of your comment.
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Yeah it's a very short-sighted article. Taking a quote like this: > I can’t believe those who seriously try and say America’s value is in consuming. as a case against outsourcing manufacturing really doesn't understand the value that societies create when they are on the forefront of innovation. Maybe, just maybe , at a certain point physical labour is not the best way to use your working population, but instead, you…
China is at the forefront of innovation. America is not, except for financial innovation a.k.a. the best ways to get money out of people without doing actual work.
They desperately do need to do that, though, because manufacturing alone isn’t going to grow their economy any further, as wages in China are already becoming high enough that they’re becoming less attractive to foreign investors.
They’re strategically well positioned to take over the west in the next few decades, but to argue that China is already leaving America et al behind in innovation is silly.
If you think that the US is corrupt when it comes to money, and that that’s the only innovation that the US is currently leading in, I heartily invite you to actually explore China.
(And I say this as someone who lives in South-East Asia)
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Only if you include those countries without welfare. If you look at those with welfare the US are pretty bad. Lots of money but badly distributed
If your judgment of "badly distributed" comes from all the homeless people that you see, those people have fallen through like a dozen safety nets to get to that point and most of them cannot be helped. You could literally hire a full-time dedicated team of 10 social workers and mental health professionals to care for 1 crazy SF hobo and it still wouldn't turn around their lives, they're too far gone. You never see t…
How much of the money is for actual help and how much for the companies who exploit the system to enrich themselves.
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TikTok was a Chinese app that had no qualms against showing Americans what their country does.
> TikTok was a Chinese app that had no qualms against shooting Americans what their country does If one wanted deeply pessimistic takes on America and Americans, there has been a media market for that since at least the advent of cable news. Mistaking TikTok, one expression of a phenomenon, for the general trend is mistaking a tree for a forest.
Pre-sale TikTok was the first time that a mirror was held up to US politics from a global perspective, where the masses could get a less fitered and channeled understanding of how they are seen by the world. (Reddit provided this previously but it has fewer users and less impact.)
As much as I hate TikTok and short videos, it had a big impact. There’s a reason that they forced the sale. Domestic control of mass media consumption is the primary method by which public opinion is shaped within the US.
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Except that America is not, and never has been, capitalist. Much like socialism or communism, capitalism has never been achieved. The closest I know any society to have come is the USA between the late 1860s and 1913. Yet, that still wasn’t a capitalist society. Half of the country was under military occupation, people were forced to segregate by law, and the USA was conquering people militarily and committing genoci…
> There are no free markets Good? Things like crypto and the current usa administration should have thought us that completely free markets are ripe for corruption and insider trading. None of that produces anything, and merely concentrates and ties together power and capital. > As it becomes regulated, the monopolies become entrenched, innovation slows, homogenization is enforced, and products undergo a diminution i…
“Freer” markets (for some definition of free) are certainly possible. Deng liberalized China’s markets, and despite persistent and heavy state influence, it has much freer markets today than under Mao. This has been great for the Chinese economy and raised a billion people out of poverty. One could argue that this wouldn’t have happened without state direction, but you can’t ignore the effect of liberalization.
In the US, we have been gradually restricting the freedom of the productive parts of the economy, often by subsidizing scams that put legitimate competitors out of business, or allowing monopolies or private equity to destroy them despite rules intended to protect fair competition. At the same time, we have let scam industries off the leash, and they are free to basically commit open fraud with no controls. It’s a kind of freedom, I guess.
> When people talk about a "free" market, they mean "free as in fair".
> When billionaires talk about "free" market they actually mean "free as in deregulated".
> You don't get "fair" without regulation.
Correct in theory, but you have another definitional problem here.
When people talk about “regulation”, they mean protecting people and businesses against predatory behavior through fair legislation.
When modern politicians talk about “regulation” they mean handouts to friends, government guaranteed monopolies through regulatory moats, and rules designed to harm perceived opponents.
We have a real problem here and it’s going to take some serious effort to fix it before it becomes an issue of “who and whom.”