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It's impossible to say for certain where the next financial crisis will come from, and when, but I bet there is a decent chance that a global meltdown originate
by seibelj 8y ago
It's impossible to say for certain where the next financial crisis will come from, and when, but I bet there is a decent chance that a global meltdown originates in China.
Autocratic, opaque, statistics no one believes, infrastructure spending for cities and rails no one needs dictated by political hacks, entrenched corruption, rising national debt... a few wrong moves and the house of cards falls. The fact that the second largest economy is so radically different from western capitalist countries makes it difficult to predict how it will evolve. Democratic revolution could still happen.
- herogreen 8y agoI am pretty sure China cities do need electric buses. But that could be anecdotal.
- ethbro 8y agoThe problem with communism was a large country's economic system was too complex to manage. Centralized control simply wasn't possible. China skirted that by pivoting to a market economy under political direction. On the plus side, this affords them the power to directly deflate asset bubbles in a way democracies can't. On the minus side, the lack of transparency and accountability increases inefficiency and hides issues. It remains to be seen which of these will triumph. If the increased power offsets the inefficiencies, everything might stay fine. But if they fail to notice or act on a major issue... it's a pretty fragile system.
- polskibus 8y agoYou forgot that China has big data tools to help them achieve centralisation. That are using it on a very wide scale. No other authoritarian government had such resources available before.
- ethbro 8y agoI'm aware. I'm just suspicious of the human operation of such systems. The world is complex. You can compress that complexity with tooling. But at some point, you're increasing technical complexity in exchange for decreased management complexity. That isn't a guaranteed path to success.
- polskibus 8y agoYou can't compress the complexity, but they still try and the people are the ones paying the price. This is not that different to policy planning done by democratic countries, but more wholesome, on more levels. There are many countries (ex-communist) that serve as a proof how it can go wrong without big data.
- ethbro 8y agoI think it's arguable you can compress the complexity. Certainly something like Project Cybersyn [1] would have a much better chance of success now than in the 70s. (Although admittedly, the CIA backed regime change stopped it then) And when I say compress complexity, I'm using it in an interchangeable sense with "increase efficiency of those humans who do make decisions." There are a huge number of actions that need to be taken -- but many require little or no thought. Automating those formulaic actions and only surfacing critical decisions with relevant data qualifies as compressing complexity, imho. Sadly, in China, this is being done in a politically paranoid police state. One wonders what could happen if you had a computer-planned economy, some kind of basic income, and individual freedom to spend the rest of ones labor. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
- gowld 8y agoNot to mention the rest of the world exporting its labor needs, debt, waste, and pollution to China, with no plan for what to do if the Chinese government stops dumping these on its citizens.
- c2k18 8y ago+1 our states are even worse! If you’ve ever been to China to see how people live (if you can call that a life) you see the hypocrisy in that.