Comment on Western Executives Shaken After Visiting China

tangeli@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• ToastedRavioli@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  That ship sailed when the US locked China out of being a customer for our chipsets and other advanced technology. We could have held that over them and made money selling to them, but instead we forced them to bolster their own technological development. And now they beat us in most every aspect of new technology time and again. We just pretend that they dont by not letting Americans be consumers of their products.

  Cheap and decent quality electric vehicles? They beat us. Advances in manufacturing? They beat us. Developments in nuclear fusion? Theyre beating us.

  And realistically, the rising tide is lifting a bunch of other boats but ours. People in other countries are happy to buy BYD cars and use Huawei cellphone technology. It makes perfect sense considering that manufacturing is hardly a relevant industry in most countries anymore, the US included. Less than 10% of American jobs are manufacturing jobs. We arent going to be catching up anytime soon, nor anytime at all. But half of American voters are obsessed with trying to revive a dead era of manufacturing despite it making no economic sense. So all we have are overpriced domestic productions, few real manufacturing jobs, and a cratering economy.

  Trying to compete with the people we crowned as the world’s manufacturing power is quite plainly a losing affair

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  • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The funniest historical parallel is that USA’s own power was collected by being to Europe what China is now. That overseas area of cheap hands.

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    • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Theres an argument to be made that we also dominated by creating manufacturing standards before there were international standards, so by the time the world was establishing international standards we were able to push for our standards to become ISO standards. Like screw threads being 45°, that kind of thing.

      But the world standards especially became our standards because we were the cheap production hub as you said, and because we were farther removed from conflict during WWII. Another aspect is that we had established a ton of military bases to move things around the world, which was a huge benefit as well. But overall, we certainly used to occupy that same spot that China occupies today

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      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Well, various kinds of internal (to one country or to one supply chain) standards would emerge just because you need some standard. Farther removed from conflict is good, but USA became half the world GDP before WWI. In the time which is perceived like something between now and the cinematographic wild west.

        Bases - yes, and in the late XIX century US was already playing the colonial game, which certainly helped its economy.

        Standards - not sure really about your example, sizes - maybe (but a lot of ISO things are from British and French local standards), but 45deg is, as you might notice, not a random angle. Some things are naturally optimal.

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