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I think that's a severe misrepresentation of China. They're communist in name, but extremely capitalist in practice. Jack Ma is the man behind Alibaba and now o

I think that's a severe misrepresentation of China. They're communist in name, but extremely capitalist in practice. Jack Ma is the man behind Alibaba and now one of the richest people alive, let alone Chinese alive. Check out his background [1]. In my opinion, the main difference between China and the US is nationalism. And that's also what I think that slogan is indicative of. It also, I think, explains their government actions. Supporting their companies is not about nationalizing them, which implies a motivation of state driven control, but growing and improving Chinese companies on the national scene. I think we have a great analogy in the US today versus the US in the past. Think about our space program in the 60s. We dumped immense amount of money into US companies and managed to, in 7 years, go from having never even put a man into orbit to putting a man on the moon. The primary motivation there was nationalistic - showing how kick ass America, and implicitly capitalism, was. Compare that space program to today where there's no real nationalism. Now a days we're building the Space Shuttle 2.0, known as the SLS. And we've spent 8 years on it so far, obscene amounts of money, and it's still not going anywhere. The thing is now the motivation for the spending is not about America, but about a handful of congressmen using it as a job's program for their election campaigns, and of course shelling out kickbacks everywhere. If we handed out a fraction of the SLS money to a private company like SpaceX we'd have a man on Mars in the 2020s, but again - the goal is no longer about America or space. It's become about the individual, instead of the nation. So essentially I think China's goal here is not state control, but about showing dominance of the Chinese system. If there is any problem with the American system it's that I think we've become somewhat conservative with ideas. Elon Musk's ideas should not be as unique as they are. I mean they aren't - everybody has them, but funding for revolutionary ideas seems (based on the lack of these sort of companies) to be much more difficult to come by. Ostensibly it makes sense. Investors want to invest in things likely to turn a profit, and investing in something that's never been done before is not the easiest EV to predict. But with our technology and wealth today we could be doing so many much more interesting things than we are. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma

jlarocco 9y ago
> In my opinion, the main difference between China and the US is nationalism. And that's also what I think that slogan is indicative of. It also, I think, explains their government actions. Supporting their companies is not about nationalizing them, which implies a motivation of state driven control, but growing and improving Chinese companies on the national scene. I've noticed that a few times recently when comparing American and Chinese policies. In the United States we've made a cargo cult religion around individual freedom, to the point where we often don't do what's best for the country and society as a whole. The Chinese government seems much more concerned about making their country and society better as a whole.
- jquery 9y ago
  > cargo cult religion Unfairly dismissive of the deep philosophy involved in the founding of this country. There are many solid underpinnings of American individualism, whether you agree the principles or not.
  - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
    I think the gulf between individualism and collectivism is more similar to what has become of left versus right, which is to say it's completely insufficient by itself. With left versus right it's now also critical to consider libertarian versus authoritarian. So too with individualism and collectivism, I think you need to also factor in nationalism versus globalism. The US was certainly driven by nationalism, but the individualism vs collectivism component is not clearly individualistic either. For instance in our founding, states were viewed as entities in and of themselves. Institutions like the senate and the electoral college are very clear reminders that the state was seen as more relevant than the individual. In either case today we've gone more individualistic and globalistic. This diminishes the strength of the state. And I think many see that as a positive today without considering that things we consider rights and privileges we take for granted are not inalienable, but a product of our nation which creates that inalienability. The reason you can burn a flag as a protest without being rounded up and summarily 'removed from society' one way or the other, as would happen in many parts of this world, is because of what that very flag represents. If we created a nation that was an aggregate of this world, it'd still be quite an awful place. This is in part why, though I'd hardly consider myself nationalistic, I think that keep our nations strong and independent is so crucial. I also find it trite that the push for extremes of globalism is largely coming from corporations and other power non-state entities. Guess who rules a society where the nation or state is secondary? Many would like to think it's the individual, but it's not. Globalism is analogous to union busting on the international scale. Many people were led to believe that unions were not in their best interest. That worked out well...
justicezyx 9y ago
Why down vote this? Everything here afaik is having fact basis.
wwweston 9y ago
> They're communist in name, but extremely capitalist in practice. Which is orthogonal to individualist. State power serves individuals largely to the extent that influence is well-distributed over a population (and that population cares enough to be attentive and thoughtful). Markets serve individuals largely to the extent that purchasing power and a reasonable level of information symmetry are well-distributed over a population (and mostly for areas in which incentives are well-aligned).

jlarocco 9y ago

> In my opinion, the main difference between China and the US is nationalism. And that's also what I think that slogan is indicative of. It also, I think, explains their government actions. Supporting their companies is not about nationalizing them, which implies a motivation of state driven control, but growing and improving Chinese companies on the national scene. I've noticed that a few times recently when comparing American and Chinese policies. In the United States we've made a cargo cult religion around individual freedom, to the point where we often don't do what's best for the country and society as a whole. The Chinese government seems much more concerned about making their country and society better as a whole.

jquery 9y ago
> cargo cult religion Unfairly dismissive of the deep philosophy involved in the founding of this country. There are many solid underpinnings of American individualism, whether you agree the principles or not.
- TangoTrotFox 9y ago
  I think the gulf between individualism and collectivism is more similar to what has become of left versus right, which is to say it's completely insufficient by itself. With left versus right it's now also critical to consider libertarian versus authoritarian. So too with individualism and collectivism, I think you need to also factor in nationalism versus globalism. The US was certainly driven by nationalism, but the individualism vs collectivism component is not clearly individualistic either. For instance in our founding, states were viewed as entities in and of themselves. Institutions like the senate and the electoral college are very clear reminders that the state was seen as more relevant than the individual. In either case today we've gone more individualistic and globalistic. This diminishes the strength of the state. And I think many see that as a positive today without considering that things we consider rights and privileges we take for granted are not inalienable, but a product of our nation which creates that inalienability. The reason you can burn a flag as a protest without being rounded up and summarily 'removed from society' one way or the other, as would happen in many parts of this world, is because of what that very flag represents. If we created a nation that was an aggregate of this world, it'd still be quite an awful place. This is in part why, though I'd hardly consider myself nationalistic, I think that keep our nations strong and independent is so crucial. I also find it trite that the push for extremes of globalism is largely coming from corporations and other power non-state entities. Guess who rules a society where the nation or state is secondary? Many would like to think it's the individual, but it's not. Globalism is analogous to union busting on the international scale. Many people were led to believe that unions were not in their best interest. That worked out well...

justicezyx 9y ago

Why down vote this? Everything here afaik is having fact basis.

wwweston 9y ago

> They're communist in name, but extremely capitalist in practice. Which is orthogonal to individualist. State power serves individuals largely to the extent that influence is well-distributed over a population (and that population cares enough to be attentive and thoughtful). Markets serve individuals largely to the extent that purchasing power and a reasonable level of information symmetry are well-distributed over a population (and mostly for areas in which incentives are well-aligned).