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> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come mor

by caeril 5y ago

> China may simply see things differently. It’s possible that the Chinese government has decided that the profits of companies like Alibaba and Tencent come more from rents than from actual value added Excellent observation, and I hope, for China's sake, that this is the reason. The United States is likely in for a long-term rude awakening when it finally realizes that an economy predicated on negative-value-add activities like clicking heart icons on photos, repackaging financial securities into products with impossible-to-detangle risk profiles, advertisement and addiction optimization, and political outrage, will not remain any definition of "global superpower" for long. Facebook and Netflix are excellent examples of companies that contribute greatly to our GDP whilst simultaneously draining our reserves of actual capital and mental health.

anotherman554 5y ago
I'm surprised you put Netflix in there with Facebook. Do they not have television in China?
- nceqs3 5y ago
  Yeah I agree with the FB part but Netflix? The chinese audience consumes huge amounts of video content.
  - caeril 5y ago
    Asia/Pacific region consumes, on average, 154 minutes per day of all media, compared to North America's 293. I'm old enough to remember the general optimism we in technology had about the unlocking of human productive potential as automation and globalization freed us from the constraints of scarcity. Marshall Brain, Clay Shirky, and many others write extensively on this zeitgeist. But that's not what ultimately happened. the zombification of our attention that began in the 1950s has accelerated in the last two decades. We're not volunteering our free time to space exploration collectives, life extension self-experimentation in biohacking hackerspaces, or even traditional enterprises like Habitat for Humanity. We're clicking heart icons on posts bemoaning billionaires conducting private space exploration, getting angry at CRISPR researchers on Twitter, and passively consuming "marathons" of Hollywood renditions of dystopian future worlds. This is to say nothing of the fact that we don't even have all that much more free time to begin with. Not because we're all working for SpaceX or in cancer research laboratories, but because the vast majority of the very people CAPABLE of doing so (IQ is in limited supply and not evenly distributed) are actively recruited to make iphone apps more addictive, make pornography engagement higher, and make front-running retail options order flow faster. Apropos of Netflix (or in this specific example, Amazon Prime Video): There are likely 40 million hours passively poured into marathons of The Expanse in North America, by people with an average IQ in excess of 115 (just by virtue of the type of audience). What if half (approximately the NA/Asia split) of those hours were instead poured into activities that actually got us closer to the technologies depicted? Well, the Chinese are doing it. We're not.
    - coryrc 5y ago
      The Expanse (and Star Trek before it, etc) provides the inspiration to make the effort. They aren't the problem. It gnaws at me daily that I'm not working for SpaceX, and only because of science fiction like that. I don't (yet) because of work/life balance first and money second. Maybe I should apply for BO.
    - gamblor956 5y ago
      It seems you're just complaining that more people aren't doing work for free, in their free time away from work? But even there, you're wrong about the activities/technologies you're complaining about. HfH, food banks, shelters, and other non-profits with limited capacity for volunteer work have wait lists several months long in my area. Only billionaires can explore space right now, so why would the rest of us be forming space exploration collections for something that is still a decade or two away? Tons of people self-experiment or participate in bio-hacking; this simply isn't the forum for them to discuss their projects. Well, the Chinese are doing it. We're not. Really? Citation needed that millions of Chinese are working in the free time on any of what you talked about.
    - deepnotderp 5y ago
      “ If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Sci-fi has a long history of inspiring technology, eg Tsiolkovsky
duxup 5y ago
The problem is making those predictions. I'm not sure anyone out there is able to decide 'this business is a net good only do that' and come out ahead without stumbling just as much. That's pretty much a game of predict the future, get it wrong on economy scale and you don't have anyone doing anything not according to plan... you can / will get a disaster even if you get it right here or there. And I'm not sure that's the point anyway. China could simply ban "clicking heart icons on photos" and wipe out domestic demand outright, and as far as risky financial deals ... China seems to have no problem with that.
tablespoon 5y ago
Or even more succinctly: financial value != value to society. Sometimes there's alignment, but very frequently there is not.
- billytetrud 5y ago
  When it's out of alignment, usually it's because of regulatory capture.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    Not always. Tobacco generated enormous profits even when there was no regulatory heat on it.
    - billytetrud 5y ago
      You're correct, usually is not always. But also, that's not what I meant. I meant that when companies can make profits without creating more value to society than the profits they make, its generally because of regulatory capture that allows them to extract rents from their customers or push costs onto the people as externalities. Regulatory capture is where companies "capture" the regulatory framework and use it to their advantage. So regulatory capture is actually the opposite of "regulatory heat".
      - triceratops 5y ago
        I understood what you meant by "regulatory capture". I was implying that capture often happens when there's regulatory heat.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > When it's out of alignment, usually it's because of regulatory capture. No. The GGP's examples are a direct counterexample to that idea. Being a little more general: based on past experience, I interpret general complaints about "regulatory capture" without further clarification as complaints about regulation in general and advocacy for "market solutions" as an alternative. However, a poorly regulated market will almost certainly result in a great many monopolies and businesses that convert some negative externality into private profit, which are the apotheosis of the idea that financial value != value to society.
itmayno 5y ago
The native citizens will come to HN and offer some rationalization. The non citizens will offer others. The reason is very simple. The dictator is paranoid about losing control and getting killed. Simple as that. Long version: when you are facing internal party conflicts, alliance between US-UK-Japan-Australia-India-Taiwan-South Korea-EU which accounts for 90% of worlds wealth and war power 10x the magnitude and is against you, floods that gets worse every year, extreme heatwave that will eventually make Shanghai unlivable, delta Covid lockdowns, capital flight, demographic crisis, supply chain moving out, internal resistance from Hong Kong and tibet and xinjiang, and young generation lying flat. You are paranoid as hell and afraid to lose control so as to not get killed.
- desert_boi 5y ago
  Not quite the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance.
- dash2 5y ago
  This is the basic story that Acemoglu and Robinson tell: ultimately, inclusive political institutions (their rather fluffy term for liberal democracy) will win because they allow for creative destruction and renewal in the economy. Dictatorship never creates lasting economic growth, because the dictator is supported by the status quo elites, who eventually become dinosaurs. I'm not sure I believe it, but it's a bold prediction and worth thinking about.
- lasagnaphil 5y ago
  And the alliance countries you've listed are also suffering from those exact same problems (climate change, Covid lockdowns, capital flight, demographic crisis, deindustrialization, widespread unrest, a hopeless young generation). And debatably, some of them have much worse on some fronts than China. I do think that every country in this world, whether it be the US, China, or my country, are experiencing the same effects from the current configuration of global capitalism (environmental destruction, extreme inequality, housing crisis, cutthroat job competition, long working hours, alienation, depression), and the only thing it's different is how state governments are responding to the crisis. Out of all the governments in the world, China seems ahead of some Western countries in a few aspects (as a one-party state being able to control and crack down on a lot of things and enable strict policies against over-financialization and deindustrialization). However, I still do think that China's strong state measures are only a stopgap measure for the more fundamental political and philosophical problems that the entire world has right now.
mc32 5y ago
It would be quite interesting to see a cleaving between us in the “West” and those who follow China’s model. I can see the disadvantage of the saccharine part of our economy and the advantages of focusing on nuts and bolts. It’s the difference between letting people decide what’s right for them and having a more planned society. Obviously planned societies have been a recurring theme in history, most notably socialism and its chronological counterpart national socialism. Neither made good faith efforts and both resulted in millions of deaths. But we also experienced unnecessary deaths from unregulated parts of the economy, though not as many deaths and at least it involved more free will.
- vikiomega9 5y ago
  One idea that seems to make sense to me is that social mobility is the equivalent of starvation in a socialist setup. What we see today with the poorer sections of society especially African Americans is a strong indicator that all systems of power should be viewed critically and with compassion. The vast majority of the poor in America for example are obese and that's one cost I can think of that we pay for the current system. Btw, I'm not saying poverty is the cause, just that the system is setup to maximize free market outcomes that are not good but we put up with them, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-true-connection-between-class-and-obesity-isnt-what-you-probably-think/2018/07/19/8d3a61e4-8ac8-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-true-conne...
  - mc32 5y ago
    It doesn’t help that in much of the media and mainstream culture we admire slackers and dumbing things down. Get high, get drunk, watch dumb shows and have fun doing dumb things. It’s less so in Asia. On the other hand we keep on shipping jobs overseas so people on the bottom keep on getting sold out for even lower prices. People used to be able to get by as a janitor or landscapers. Janitors and landscapers have been replaced by low cost labor. We can have foreign workers and have economic viability for people who don’t go beyond high school. We still have mechanics, but not sure how long that will be an option with electrification of autos where there are diff requirements.
mjol 5y ago
If you really believe that entertainment doesn't improve the human experience, I feel sorry for you.
- bordercases 5y ago
  If you really believe that mass culture doesn't denigrate the human experience, I feel sorry for you.
- yarky 5y ago
  The OP is probably talking about the psychological impact of washing Netflix restlessly during long periods of time. That generates GDP, but the net impact on society might not be positive. Same thing with the psychological issues associated with social media addiction.
  - ub99 5y ago
    People watched TV for many hours daily for decades now. I agree that it’s not healthy, but it’s not purely a new technology’s fault.
    - freebuju 5y ago
      The TV always has been a stationary device. But now you can carry it with you everywhere you go in the form of a Netflix-capable device ala smartphone/laptop.
- nathias 5y ago
  the US entertainment doesn't improve the human experience
- goodpoint 5y ago
  There is the occasional bit of entertainment and there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism#Escapist_societies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism#Escapist_societies One thing is watching some dumb action movie once a week, another thing is filling one's free time with entertainment every day.
Rapzid 5y ago
> economy predicated on negative-value-add activities like clicking heart icons on photos I think you have this backwards. These social networks are predicated on the businesses that are generating enough revenues to spend on ads with them. EDIT: To add some more context USA GDP in 2019 was 21.4t . Facebook's revenue is 0.004 of that number.
billytetrud 5y ago
You have a rosy view of the oppressive actions of an authoritarian government. It should be noted that the author does not think that is the reason China is doing what it's doing. Netflix is not draining capitol and not sapping mental health. It was a massive innovation that saved people lots of time (wasted watching TV ads) and money ($10/mo rather than $100/mo for TV). It worked so well every other major media company has copied it's model. Facebook is often shit on, but it was useful in it's time. It's a tool people can decide to use oe not use, and how to use it if they do. We're learning as a society how to do this. But it's very clear the solution is not for a government to smash those companies. That is very clearly an evil action.
epivosism 5y ago
Is there a name for the question of distinguishing useful economic activity from rent-seeking? It seems tied up in lots of other system/corruption/control related questions - cancer, budget spending, regulation etc. It feels like there can never be a trustable implementation of a "value or rentseeking?" oracle, since the system implementing it would also be under selection and pressure from the virtual gains to be had from corruption.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  I don't think there is such a name. But you're on the right track about it being difficult to distinguish between value and rent-seeking. One thing to note is that governments themselves are, by definition, rent-seekers. This is inherent to how a government - a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within an area - works. Once you are sovereign within a territory you can extract rents in the form of taxes, and if you don't extract enough you will be deposed by someone who does. Most governments also tend to encourage their own industries to rent-seek as well. If your country needs heavy industry or scientific research or cultural behemoths, it's far easier and politically defensible to construct new narrow property regimes (e.g. copyright, patents, PDOs, etc) for those companies to exploit rather than just paying them subsidies. These regimes can be selectively weakened when you need to build your industry domestically (what the US did to the UK, or what China did to the US) and then strengthened later when you need to protect it internationally (what the US forced into WIPO). Very little of capitalism is actually adding value, in the sense that you have a business that hires people, buys materials, and turns them into goods and services at a prevailing market rate. At the lowest rungs of the chain, sure - you might have, say, petite-borgeouis crustaceans hiring workers to cook food and sell it to people who need it. But that's not where most of the actual profit is. Compare that to, say, a fast-food franchise; which doesn't usually run any restaurants or sell any food. They instead sell trademark rights and supplier relationships. In particularly egregious systems like McDonalds, they even rent their franchisees the land that the restaurant must be housed in. Left-wing critiques of capitalism are typically extra-cynical about this, and would consider even the small profit Mr. Krabs makes on burgers to be rent, not value. This is usually in the context of the employee-business relationship, however; not the business-customer one. Small businesses generally don't extract a premium on the goods or services they sell just because they're the only company that happens to own a stove or know some secret recipe. But in the context of employees, they are getting paid less for their labor, albeit in exchange for not having to bear up-front capital costs or deal with inconsistent revenue. Whether or not this constitutes rent or value is most likely a political opinion, not something that you could actually devise some economic criteria for.
Mizza 5y ago
Hijacking this comment a bit, but I haven't watched real TV in a very long time but have been tuning in again because of the Olympics and Jeopardy. I'm seeing an incredible amount of ads for companies that let you gamble real money on your phone. Sometimes it's back to back to back to back commercials for online app casinos. This seems really dangerous and a sign of a tragically unhealthy and predatory economy - I can't think of anything more negative-value-add than gambling. Has there been a regulatory change that allows this, or has this been going on for some time?
- jurmous 5y ago
  In the Netherlands gambling is either done by the state owned company with all profit going to state treasury or heavily regulated when done online. All to prevent gambling addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Casino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Casino It seems harmful to let gambling be unregulated... Even loot boxes in games are illegal https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/10/30/netherlands-rules-loot-boxes-are-form-of-gambling-ea-now-facing-e10-million-fine/ https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/10/30/netherlands-rules-...
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >It seems harmful to let gambling be unregulated... It seems barely any better make a state revenue stream out of it.
    - sydd 5y ago
      It is. If it would be totally banned it would result in an emergence of a black market. We have the same thing on Hungary, there is one state controlled gambling company that's under heavy regulation (18+ only, full with warning signs against gambling, barely any advertisements, has only a few old-school products like scratch cards)
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Sure a black market would be worse, but why not just regulate it. Government shouldn't have an incentive to ensure that gambling exists and remains profitable which they do so long as they're running it. Government shouldn't be directly engaged in the business of any vice for that reason.
usaar333 5y ago
Alibaba and Tencent are hardly purely "get people addicted" companies. Together, they power nearly the entire retail transaction market in China. Alibaba heavily drives commercial transactions and Tencent powers the vast amount of personal communication (WeChat). They are quite profitable as effective monopolies, but are very valuable to society.
will4274 5y ago
> Facebook and Netflix are excellent examples of companies that contribute greatly to our GDP whilst simultaneously draining our reserves of actual capital and mental health. It's not so clear to me that this is true. The fundamental question is - if not this, then what? If you accept that people can only work a certain amount, then a "perfectly" "productive" society involves people working just that amount, and then going home and entertaining themselves the amount that is necessary to recharge, safely, and then repeating. If not Netflix, then what? Alcohol and drunk driving? I'm not saying watching Netflix is what we should aspire to, but compared to the alternatives, it seems reasonably likely to contribute to economic growth. A passive workforce works.
triceratops 5y ago
Facebook, sure. Why Netflix? TV and movies have always been around. The US owes its status as a cultural superpower to Hollywood. Too much TV and movie-watching isn't good for a nation, sure, but you could make that argument about any pastime.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
  Communication has also been always around. The problem is the abundance - same with fat and sugar and cocaine. A little is fine, a lot is bad.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    Entertainment on TV has been abundant for nearly 50 years, ever since the advent of cable.
    - 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
      there is subtle, yet important difference between TV and Netflix ...
- mc32 5y ago
  Netflix provides on-demand all you can view content. It doesn’t require any “cooling period” before the next episode. You don’t have to engage with family, friends or work. You can stream all day and live in fantasyland.
  - 411111111111111 5y ago
    That's been the case with books before Netflix too... To be fair, the quantity and availability of novels/fictions was pretty low before the fifties, so I guess there is some truth to it... Though the timeframe is definitely longer then only Netflix's existence
    - mc32 5y ago
cryptica 5y ago
I was thinking along the same lines so it's interesting to see that others have come to the same conclusion. IMO, large parts of the tech industry are artificial and fueled entirely by monetary policy. If reserve banks in the west stopped expanding the money supply, large parts of the tech industry would be wiped out; they would quickly be revealed as negative-value industries. With limited autonomy over their own global monetary policies, this was the only way China could fix this problem.
danjac 5y ago
I'll bet you could pick up a random op-ed from a 1960s Readers' Digest and someone would be making the argument that Americans spend too much time watching TV and pouring their creative energies into advertising, cosmetics and pop records while the Soviets are conquering outer space and South East Asia.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  And at least back then you could point to statistical trends indicating that American poverty, income inequality, and standard of living were all trending in a desirable trajectory. Also, the moon landing.
  - dash2 5y ago
    Yes, but it was also a time when Paul Samuelson and other economists predicted that the USSR would overtake US GDP by 1984: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01/soviet-growth-american-textbooks.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01/so...
- jszymborski 5y ago
  Yah, there is this incomprehensible gnawing notion that crushing oppression is somehow a great way to innovate, and that liberty and self-expression is no more than dalliance.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Thankfully our competition at the time were agricultural societies LARPing as industrial ones and then a big pile of ruins in Europe. Not so today
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  The big difference here is that US manufacturing didn't over rely on the soviet back then, nor where they massively buying US bonds... What's the equivalent of Shenzen in US?
  - 5y ago
rakmos 5y ago
You missed the giant gaping time sink that is the video game industry. I also think including this in the discussion will, perhaps, emphasize the nuance of what I believe you're indirectly referencing -- the economics of how humans choose to spend their time (sometimes referred to as the "Attention Economy"). I believe literally optimizing for something such as GDP fails to take into account freedom / liberty which is likely something most on this website would agree is incredibly valuable in a society. I think the difficulty is in creating a consensus around what is acceptable relative to the "Attention Economy". It might even be impossible given that this seems almost indistinguishable from culture -- and there will likely never be a single unified culture if and until something as paradigm-shifting as a multi-planetary species is realized.
- thedudeabides5 5y ago
  I dunno man, you ever seen the genZs play fornite? Not sure it's a waste of time so much as training for some weird future in the computer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKd2KpGkFJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKd2KpGkFJ4
  - desert_boi 5y ago
    Never felt quite as old as watching that.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Maybe I'm just an old millennial but I think I'll just stick to my N64, and its 93.75 Mhz processor. :)
- pm90 5y ago
  The video game industry is one of the key factors to the success of the US technology industry. Some of the most innovative software is written by game developers. As we move into a future where AR/VR and digital worlds will become commerce hubs, the US is arguably incredibly well set up to take advantage of it. Video game bashing seems like another moral panic to me. People are spending more time playing video games than slaving away flipping burgers. So what?
dash2 5y ago
Freemarket choices of what to spend money on can certainly have problems. It'd be bold to assume that the dictator's choices will be better for their people, though. The USSR spent its money on tanks: https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/the_soviet_economy_1/ https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/the_soviet_ec.... Will China be different? Or sometimes, are tanks the right choice? Let's hope not.
Taylor_OD 5y ago
I understand the facebook hate but is netflix included here because its... entertainment? I guess we should get rid of the arts as a whole.
dufdudh 5y ago
I don't know how to tell you this but all of the things you listed are fine and wildly common both in China and SEA in general. I'm not sure if you were just attacking social media at large but that too is wildly popular. Facebook can only dream of having the social integration that Weechat enjoys.
mountainb 5y ago
China produces more steel in a month than the US does in an entire year of all types. US steel production is around 7% of Chinese steel production. Could the US ramp up steel production etc. on a crash basis under war conditions? Yes, but the overall picture is not great, given that China could also ramp up its production under the same constraints.
- onepointsixC 5y ago
  China could not ramp up steel production because it imports the raw materials from far away, mostly from Australia. Most of the raw materials, including energy and even food are imported into China. None of those supply chains would be left untouched in a war.
  - adventured 5y ago
    And the first thing the US should do in the case of a large scale war involving China, is hand Australia nuclear weapons for its self-defense. It would guarantee an extraordinary cost if China were to decide to destroy Australia to try to annex their land for resource extraction. In the coming decades China will have the military capability to invade Australia, given China's rapid naval expansion. It's not a sure thing that the US could stop them. If China is cut off from their required resources, they'll invade somewhere as a response. Australia needs a plan for if all else fails, an ultimate deterrence to invasion (which France and Britain possess for similar deterrence reasons).
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      China is never going to attempt to do such a stupid thing as invade Australia thousands of kilometers away for resources. It's much simpler, cheaper and faster to simply import the ores via land from Asia. Which is one of the core reasons for the BRI.
      - adventured 5y ago
        Throughout all of recorded history there has yet to be a superpower or empire that didn't do incredibly stupid things, courtesy of over-estimating its position and power. Modern China will not be an exception. They'll overreach repeatedly just as every other prior great power has. China considers Australia to be within its primary sphere of influence (a rapidly expanding sphere as far as China is concerned, as they push outward militarily). Japan was willing to invade Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Australia during its Empire days. China is a drastically more potent superpower than the Empire of Japan ever was and China's military reach will be far greater. In an Asia war scenario (which is what we're talking about here), Australia is absolutely on the table to be invaded by China. It's a prime candidate if China's foes attempt an inevitable resource blockade (which would see the BRI targeted early on). Invading Australia also disables a critical, reliable ally for the US side. The US & Co. would need vast regional resource supplies to sustain for long at all in a conflict with China in Asia; China would know that, and would understand that Australia is one of the most important resource suppliers both regionally and globally. At a minimum China would seek to cripple Australia functionally, and an invasion is ideal toward that ultimately (otherwise the Australians would just keep rebuilding and repairing damage). European empires would never seek to conquer territory in Asia, it's too far away. Britain would never seek to conquer India, it's too far away. China sends its vast fishing fleets to illegally plunder South American fishing waters. It has blanketed much of Africa for resource extraction purposes. It certainly considers Australia as a resource target within its reach. And it's more than that, China had already fallen into the mindset of considering Australia to be increasingly within its sphere of influence and control, which is why the CCP has gotten so angry at Australia in the recent political-economic conflict between the two. They had plans for Australia and assumed they would be dictating terms going forward.
vikiomega9 5y ago
Indeed, one of the more interesting ideas I've been considering is how does society think about the delayed effects on mental health and attention deficit. For example, one might argue maybe Netflix is easier to moderate at the level of a family or community, like having parental locks on time spent on quality content. But what do you do with Internet Porn? There is enough evidence that novelty stimulation has detrimental effects. For either scenario, the internet has made it easier to consume more and at a faster rate, but we don't have a quick and easy mechanism to talk about these things and develop cultural practices. One of the more interesting ideas for me is finding that balance between liberal individual right to choice and recognizing all systems including human society is a feedback loop and drifts into failure (either expanding freedoms or curbing them).
powerapple 5y ago
Some personal opinion here: top Chinese internet companies makes most their money domestically, the top US companies are real international companies, and Facebook makes $5 billion of ad money from China, can you imagine that? It is other countries are losing money because their users contribute to the success of Facebook, YouTube but they are not making enough tax revenue from it. All these like economy is not good for society, but the situation is different in US than China.
aoleinik 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what _should_ the US be working on? The only two things I can think of that really needs more man hours is space travel and quantum computing, but those fields are generally far from being revenue generating and require mountains of initial investment. I agree that ad tech and social media are net negatives, but what are the alternatives? A dead economy, where most of the money circulates on necessities? Not asking this sarcastically or rhetorically - genuinely want some good insight on what people who say the current direction of the US is poor think the direction should be.
- dnautics 5y ago
  To some degrees with those two things if you do it wrong, "just adding man hours" to those endeavors can slow progress, not accelerate it
- TylerLives 5y ago
  Medicine, robotics, social media that improves people's lives, maybe fix universities (or create an alternative. You can learn a lot on the internet, but social aspect of it can be improved), ...
- axelroze 5y ago
  Reorganization of work so that there are not many bullshit jobs => 15 hour work weeks for any knowledge work. The other time the people can work on something else and/or read about science and philosophy. A truly efficient society does not have people wasting time copy pasting stuff between Excel sheets. Eventually all work will become knowledge work through automation and robotic development brought by the new generation of critical-thinkers. Removal of free (costless) social media. Everyone who uses social media must pay for the employee and hardware costs by the minute. End of ads and end of engagement. End of push notifications. If people gain time by working 15 hours a week but lose the gained time on social media then no good is created. There is some value in Social Media but it must be consumed a little otherwise it is poison. Similar for Netflix and TV. Once people are free of bullshit work and of bullshit free time (facebook and instagram feeds) and all boring physical work is automated, we should look to the stars. The final frontier. That is my hopefully doable utopia. Actually this is John Maynard Keynes year 2000 utopia expanded a bit. Society failed as we are 2021 now and 996 is the norm instead of 15 hour work weeks. Working more is not the solution. Working smart is. Also not everyone needs to have a job.
refurb 5y ago
Facebook is a negligible part of the US GDP. And Netflix is not value ad? Maybe not for you. But regardless, China's downfall will be the fact it tries and picks to "winners and losers". It's a semi-planned economy. Many other countries have tried this and I'm not saying that China will collapse or won't continue to be an economic power, but even the mighty power of the CCP won't make consumers buy their products from you if they aren't what consumers want.
fennecfoxy 5y ago
Lol, you write as if you've never heard of Tencent, who makes incredibly addictive time-wasting games for the Chinese market (and others) very much akin to your "negative value add activities", so much so that they're now using face recognition to prevent addicted children from playing (they don't care, really) and also producing such games as "Clap for Xi Jinping"...like, that has to be a joke, right? Right?
faeriechangling 5y ago
What I notice is that the most productive efforts of big tech are seemingly quick to be abandoned side projects. The real money is in adtech with is 90% zero-sum and 10% happily marrying the right companies with the right customers. I don't really see Netflix as being as much of a problem compared to other "attention" companies because they screwed with the media cartels, have fantastic infrastructure, mostly sell long-form content, and denormalized ad-breaks. Compare to YouTube or TikTok.

by caeril 5y ago

anotherman554 5y ago

I'm surprised you put Netflix in there with Facebook. Do they not have television in China?

nceqs3 5y ago
Yeah I agree with the FB part but Netflix? The chinese audience consumes huge amounts of video content.
- caeril 5y ago
  Asia/Pacific region consumes, on average, 154 minutes per day of all media, compared to North America's 293. I'm old enough to remember the general optimism we in technology had about the unlocking of human productive potential as automation and globalization freed us from the constraints of scarcity. Marshall Brain, Clay Shirky, and many others write extensively on this zeitgeist. But that's not what ultimately happened. the zombification of our attention that began in the 1950s has accelerated in the last two decades. We're not volunteering our free time to space exploration collectives, life extension self-experimentation in biohacking hackerspaces, or even traditional enterprises like Habitat for Humanity. We're clicking heart icons on posts bemoaning billionaires conducting private space exploration, getting angry at CRISPR researchers on Twitter, and passively consuming "marathons" of Hollywood renditions of dystopian future worlds. This is to say nothing of the fact that we don't even have all that much more free time to begin with. Not because we're all working for SpaceX or in cancer research laboratories, but because the vast majority of the very people CAPABLE of doing so (IQ is in limited supply and not evenly distributed) are actively recruited to make iphone apps more addictive, make pornography engagement higher, and make front-running retail options order flow faster. Apropos of Netflix (or in this specific example, Amazon Prime Video): There are likely 40 million hours passively poured into marathons of The Expanse in North America, by people with an average IQ in excess of 115 (just by virtue of the type of audience). What if half (approximately the NA/Asia split) of those hours were instead poured into activities that actually got us closer to the technologies depicted? Well, the Chinese are doing it. We're not.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    The Expanse (and Star Trek before it, etc) provides the inspiration to make the effort. They aren't the problem. It gnaws at me daily that I'm not working for SpaceX, and only because of science fiction like that. I don't (yet) because of work/life balance first and money second. Maybe I should apply for BO.
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    It seems you're just complaining that more people aren't doing work for free, in their free time away from work? But even there, you're wrong about the activities/technologies you're complaining about. HfH, food banks, shelters, and other non-profits with limited capacity for volunteer work have wait lists several months long in my area. Only billionaires can explore space right now, so why would the rest of us be forming space exploration collections for something that is still a decade or two away? Tons of people self-experiment or participate in bio-hacking; this simply isn't the forum for them to discuss their projects. Well, the Chinese are doing it. We're not. Really? Citation needed that millions of Chinese are working in the free time on any of what you talked about.
  - deepnotderp 5y ago
    “ If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Sci-fi has a long history of inspiring technology, eg Tsiolkovsky

duxup 5y ago

The problem is making those predictions. I'm not sure anyone out there is able to decide 'this business is a net good only do that' and come out ahead without stumbling just as much. That's pretty much a game of predict the future, get it wrong on economy scale and you don't have anyone doing anything not according to plan... you can / will get a disaster even if you get it right here or there. And I'm not sure that's the point anyway. China could simply ban "clicking heart icons on photos" and wipe out domestic demand outright, and as far as risky financial deals ... China seems to have no problem with that.

tablespoon 5y ago

Or even more succinctly: financial value != value to society. Sometimes there's alignment, but very frequently there is not.

billytetrud 5y ago
When it's out of alignment, usually it's because of regulatory capture.
- triceratops 5y ago
  Not always. Tobacco generated enormous profits even when there was no regulatory heat on it.
  - billytetrud 5y ago
    You're correct, usually is not always. But also, that's not what I meant. I meant that when companies can make profits without creating more value to society than the profits they make, its generally because of regulatory capture that allows them to extract rents from their customers or push costs onto the people as externalities. Regulatory capture is where companies "capture" the regulatory framework and use it to their advantage. So regulatory capture is actually the opposite of "regulatory heat".
    - triceratops 5y ago
      I understood what you meant by "regulatory capture". I was implying that capture often happens when there's regulatory heat.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > When it's out of alignment, usually it's because of regulatory capture. No. The GGP's examples are a direct counterexample to that idea. Being a little more general: based on past experience, I interpret general complaints about "regulatory capture" without further clarification as complaints about regulation in general and advocacy for "market solutions" as an alternative. However, a poorly regulated market will almost certainly result in a great many monopolies and businesses that convert some negative externality into private profit, which are the apotheosis of the idea that financial value != value to society.

itmayno 5y ago

The native citizens will come to HN and offer some rationalization. The non citizens will offer others. The reason is very simple. The dictator is paranoid about losing control and getting killed. Simple as that. Long version: when you are facing internal party conflicts, alliance between US-UK-Japan-Australia-India-Taiwan-South Korea-EU which accounts for 90% of worlds wealth and war power 10x the magnitude and is against you, floods that gets worse every year, extreme heatwave that will eventually make Shanghai unlivable, delta Covid lockdowns, capital flight, demographic crisis, supply chain moving out, internal resistance from Hong Kong and tibet and xinjiang, and young generation lying flat. You are paranoid as hell and afraid to lose control so as to not get killed.

desert_boi 5y ago
Not quite the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance.
dash2 5y ago
This is the basic story that Acemoglu and Robinson tell: ultimately, inclusive political institutions (their rather fluffy term for liberal democracy) will win because they allow for creative destruction and renewal in the economy. Dictatorship never creates lasting economic growth, because the dictator is supported by the status quo elites, who eventually become dinosaurs. I'm not sure I believe it, but it's a bold prediction and worth thinking about.
lasagnaphil 5y ago
And the alliance countries you've listed are also suffering from those exact same problems (climate change, Covid lockdowns, capital flight, demographic crisis, deindustrialization, widespread unrest, a hopeless young generation). And debatably, some of them have much worse on some fronts than China. I do think that every country in this world, whether it be the US, China, or my country, are experiencing the same effects from the current configuration of global capitalism (environmental destruction, extreme inequality, housing crisis, cutthroat job competition, long working hours, alienation, depression), and the only thing it's different is how state governments are responding to the crisis. Out of all the governments in the world, China seems ahead of some Western countries in a few aspects (as a one-party state being able to control and crack down on a lot of things and enable strict policies against over-financialization and deindustrialization). However, I still do think that China's strong state measures are only a stopgap measure for the more fundamental political and philosophical problems that the entire world has right now.

mc32 5y ago

It would be quite interesting to see a cleaving between us in the “West” and those who follow China’s model. I can see the disadvantage of the saccharine part of our economy and the advantages of focusing on nuts and bolts. It’s the difference between letting people decide what’s right for them and having a more planned society. Obviously planned societies have been a recurring theme in history, most notably socialism and its chronological counterpart national socialism. Neither made good faith efforts and both resulted in millions of deaths. But we also experienced unnecessary deaths from unregulated parts of the economy, though not as many deaths and at least it involved more free will.

vikiomega9 5y ago
One idea that seems to make sense to me is that social mobility is the equivalent of starvation in a socialist setup. What we see today with the poorer sections of society especially African Americans is a strong indicator that all systems of power should be viewed critically and with compassion. The vast majority of the poor in America for example are obese and that's one cost I can think of that we pay for the current system. Btw, I'm not saying poverty is the cause, just that the system is setup to maximize free market outcomes that are not good but we put up with them, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-true-connection-between-class-and-obesity-isnt-what-you-probably-think/2018/07/19/8d3a61e4-8ac8-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-true-conne...
- mc32 5y ago
  It doesn’t help that in much of the media and mainstream culture we admire slackers and dumbing things down. Get high, get drunk, watch dumb shows and have fun doing dumb things. It’s less so in Asia. On the other hand we keep on shipping jobs overseas so people on the bottom keep on getting sold out for even lower prices. People used to be able to get by as a janitor or landscapers. Janitors and landscapers have been replaced by low cost labor. We can have foreign workers and have economic viability for people who don’t go beyond high school. We still have mechanics, but not sure how long that will be an option with electrification of autos where there are diff requirements.

mjol 5y ago

If you really believe that entertainment doesn't improve the human experience, I feel sorry for you.

bordercases 5y ago
If you really believe that mass culture doesn't denigrate the human experience, I feel sorry for you.
yarky 5y ago
The OP is probably talking about the psychological impact of washing Netflix restlessly during long periods of time. That generates GDP, but the net impact on society might not be positive. Same thing with the psychological issues associated with social media addiction.
- ub99 5y ago
  People watched TV for many hours daily for decades now. I agree that it’s not healthy, but it’s not purely a new technology’s fault.
  - freebuju 5y ago
    The TV always has been a stationary device. But now you can carry it with you everywhere you go in the form of a Netflix-capable device ala smartphone/laptop.
nathias 5y ago
the US entertainment doesn't improve the human experience
goodpoint 5y ago
There is the occasional bit of entertainment and there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism#Escapist_societies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism#Escapist_societies One thing is watching some dumb action movie once a week, another thing is filling one's free time with entertainment every day.

Rapzid 5y ago

> economy predicated on negative-value-add activities like clicking heart icons on photos I think you have this backwards. These social networks are predicated on the businesses that are generating enough revenues to spend on ads with them. EDIT: To add some more context USA GDP in 2019 was 21.4t . Facebook's revenue is 0.004 of that number.

billytetrud 5y ago

You have a rosy view of the oppressive actions of an authoritarian government. It should be noted that the author does not think that is the reason China is doing what it's doing. Netflix is not draining capitol and not sapping mental health. It was a massive innovation that saved people lots of time (wasted watching TV ads) and money ($10/mo rather than $100/mo for TV). It worked so well every other major media company has copied it's model. Facebook is often shit on, but it was useful in it's time. It's a tool people can decide to use oe not use, and how to use it if they do. We're learning as a society how to do this. But it's very clear the solution is not for a government to smash those companies. That is very clearly an evil action.

epivosism 5y ago

Is there a name for the question of distinguishing useful economic activity from rent-seeking? It seems tied up in lots of other system/corruption/control related questions - cancer, budget spending, regulation etc. It feels like there can never be a trustable implementation of a "value or rentseeking?" oracle, since the system implementing it would also be under selection and pressure from the virtual gains to be had from corruption.

kmeisthax 5y ago
I don't think there is such a name. But you're on the right track about it being difficult to distinguish between value and rent-seeking. One thing to note is that governments themselves are, by definition, rent-seekers. This is inherent to how a government - a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within an area - works. Once you are sovereign within a territory you can extract rents in the form of taxes, and if you don't extract enough you will be deposed by someone who does. Most governments also tend to encourage their own industries to rent-seek as well. If your country needs heavy industry or scientific research or cultural behemoths, it's far easier and politically defensible to construct new narrow property regimes (e.g. copyright, patents, PDOs, etc) for those companies to exploit rather than just paying them subsidies. These regimes can be selectively weakened when you need to build your industry domestically (what the US did to the UK, or what China did to the US) and then strengthened later when you need to protect it internationally (what the US forced into WIPO). Very little of capitalism is actually adding value, in the sense that you have a business that hires people, buys materials, and turns them into goods and services at a prevailing market rate. At the lowest rungs of the chain, sure - you might have, say, petite-borgeouis crustaceans hiring workers to cook food and sell it to people who need it. But that's not where most of the actual profit is. Compare that to, say, a fast-food franchise; which doesn't usually run any restaurants or sell any food. They instead sell trademark rights and supplier relationships. In particularly egregious systems like McDonalds, they even rent their franchisees the land that the restaurant must be housed in. Left-wing critiques of capitalism are typically extra-cynical about this, and would consider even the small profit Mr. Krabs makes on burgers to be rent, not value. This is usually in the context of the employee-business relationship, however; not the business-customer one. Small businesses generally don't extract a premium on the goods or services they sell just because they're the only company that happens to own a stove or know some secret recipe. But in the context of employees, they are getting paid less for their labor, albeit in exchange for not having to bear up-front capital costs or deal with inconsistent revenue. Whether or not this constitutes rent or value is most likely a political opinion, not something that you could actually devise some economic criteria for.

Mizza 5y ago

Hijacking this comment a bit, but I haven't watched real TV in a very long time but have been tuning in again because of the Olympics and Jeopardy. I'm seeing an incredible amount of ads for companies that let you gamble real money on your phone. Sometimes it's back to back to back to back commercials for online app casinos. This seems really dangerous and a sign of a tragically unhealthy and predatory economy - I can't think of anything more negative-value-add than gambling. Has there been a regulatory change that allows this, or has this been going on for some time?

jurmous 5y ago
In the Netherlands gambling is either done by the state owned company with all profit going to state treasury or heavily regulated when done online. All to prevent gambling addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Casino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Casino It seems harmful to let gambling be unregulated... Even loot boxes in games are illegal https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/10/30/netherlands-rules-loot-boxes-are-form-of-gambling-ea-now-facing-e10-million-fine/ https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/10/30/netherlands-rules-...
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >It seems harmful to let gambling be unregulated... It seems barely any better make a state revenue stream out of it.
  - sydd 5y ago
    It is. If it would be totally banned it would result in an emergence of a black market. We have the same thing on Hungary, there is one state controlled gambling company that's under heavy regulation (18+ only, full with warning signs against gambling, barely any advertisements, has only a few old-school products like scratch cards)
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Sure a black market would be worse, but why not just regulate it. Government shouldn't have an incentive to ensure that gambling exists and remains profitable which they do so long as they're running it. Government shouldn't be directly engaged in the business of any vice for that reason.

usaar333 5y ago

Alibaba and Tencent are hardly purely "get people addicted" companies. Together, they power nearly the entire retail transaction market in China. Alibaba heavily drives commercial transactions and Tencent powers the vast amount of personal communication (WeChat). They are quite profitable as effective monopolies, but are very valuable to society.

will4274 5y ago

> Facebook and Netflix are excellent examples of companies that contribute greatly to our GDP whilst simultaneously draining our reserves of actual capital and mental health. It's not so clear to me that this is true. The fundamental question is - if not this, then what? If you accept that people can only work a certain amount, then a "perfectly" "productive" society involves people working just that amount, and then going home and entertaining themselves the amount that is necessary to recharge, safely, and then repeating. If not Netflix, then what? Alcohol and drunk driving? I'm not saying watching Netflix is what we should aspire to, but compared to the alternatives, it seems reasonably likely to contribute to economic growth. A passive workforce works.

triceratops 5y ago

Facebook, sure. Why Netflix? TV and movies have always been around. The US owes its status as a cultural superpower to Hollywood. Too much TV and movie-watching isn't good for a nation, sure, but you could make that argument about any pastime.

74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
Communication has also been always around. The problem is the abundance - same with fat and sugar and cocaine. A little is fine, a lot is bad.
- triceratops 5y ago
  Entertainment on TV has been abundant for nearly 50 years, ever since the advent of cable.
  - 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
    there is subtle, yet important difference between TV and Netflix ...
mc32 5y ago
Netflix provides on-demand all you can view content. It doesn’t require any “cooling period” before the next episode. You don’t have to engage with family, friends or work. You can stream all day and live in fantasyland.
- 411111111111111 5y ago
  That's been the case with books before Netflix too... To be fair, the quantity and availability of novels/fictions was pretty low before the fifties, so I guess there is some truth to it... Though the timeframe is definitely longer then only Netflix's existence
  - mc32 5y ago

cryptica 5y ago

I was thinking along the same lines so it's interesting to see that others have come to the same conclusion. IMO, large parts of the tech industry are artificial and fueled entirely by monetary policy. If reserve banks in the west stopped expanding the money supply, large parts of the tech industry would be wiped out; they would quickly be revealed as negative-value industries. With limited autonomy over their own global monetary policies, this was the only way China could fix this problem.

danjac 5y ago

I'll bet you could pick up a random op-ed from a 1960s Readers' Digest and someone would be making the argument that Americans spend too much time watching TV and pouring their creative energies into advertising, cosmetics and pop records while the Soviets are conquering outer space and South East Asia.

Apocryphon 5y ago
And at least back then you could point to statistical trends indicating that American poverty, income inequality, and standard of living were all trending in a desirable trajectory. Also, the moon landing.
- dash2 5y ago
  Yes, but it was also a time when Paul Samuelson and other economists predicted that the USSR would overtake US GDP by 1984: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01/soviet-growth-american-textbooks.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01/so...
jszymborski 5y ago
Yah, there is this incomprehensible gnawing notion that crushing oppression is somehow a great way to innovate, and that liberty and self-expression is no more than dalliance.
ethanbond 5y ago
Thankfully our competition at the time were agricultural societies LARPing as industrial ones and then a big pile of ruins in Europe. Not so today
throw_m239339 5y ago
The big difference here is that US manufacturing didn't over rely on the soviet back then, nor where they massively buying US bonds... What's the equivalent of Shenzen in US?
- 5y ago

rakmos 5y ago

You missed the giant gaping time sink that is the video game industry. I also think including this in the discussion will, perhaps, emphasize the nuance of what I believe you're indirectly referencing -- the economics of how humans choose to spend their time (sometimes referred to as the "Attention Economy"). I believe literally optimizing for something such as GDP fails to take into account freedom / liberty which is likely something most on this website would agree is incredibly valuable in a society. I think the difficulty is in creating a consensus around what is acceptable relative to the "Attention Economy". It might even be impossible given that this seems almost indistinguishable from culture -- and there will likely never be a single unified culture if and until something as paradigm-shifting as a multi-planetary species is realized.

thedudeabides5 5y ago
I dunno man, you ever seen the genZs play fornite? Not sure it's a waste of time so much as training for some weird future in the computer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKd2KpGkFJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKd2KpGkFJ4
- desert_boi 5y ago
  Never felt quite as old as watching that.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Maybe I'm just an old millennial but I think I'll just stick to my N64, and its 93.75 Mhz processor. :)
pm90 5y ago
The video game industry is one of the key factors to the success of the US technology industry. Some of the most innovative software is written by game developers. As we move into a future where AR/VR and digital worlds will become commerce hubs, the US is arguably incredibly well set up to take advantage of it. Video game bashing seems like another moral panic to me. People are spending more time playing video games than slaving away flipping burgers. So what?

dash2 5y ago

Freemarket choices of what to spend money on can certainly have problems. It'd be bold to assume that the dictator's choices will be better for their people, though. The USSR spent its money on tanks: https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/the_soviet_economy_1/ https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/the_soviet_ec.... Will China be different? Or sometimes, are tanks the right choice? Let's hope not.

Taylor_OD 5y ago

I understand the facebook hate but is netflix included here because its... entertainment? I guess we should get rid of the arts as a whole.

dufdudh 5y ago

I don't know how to tell you this but all of the things you listed are fine and wildly common both in China and SEA in general. I'm not sure if you were just attacking social media at large but that too is wildly popular. Facebook can only dream of having the social integration that Weechat enjoys.

mountainb 5y ago

China produces more steel in a month than the US does in an entire year of all types. US steel production is around 7% of Chinese steel production. Could the US ramp up steel production etc. on a crash basis under war conditions? Yes, but the overall picture is not great, given that China could also ramp up its production under the same constraints.

onepointsixC 5y ago
China could not ramp up steel production because it imports the raw materials from far away, mostly from Australia. Most of the raw materials, including energy and even food are imported into China. None of those supply chains would be left untouched in a war.
- adventured 5y ago
  And the first thing the US should do in the case of a large scale war involving China, is hand Australia nuclear weapons for its self-defense. It would guarantee an extraordinary cost if China were to decide to destroy Australia to try to annex their land for resource extraction. In the coming decades China will have the military capability to invade Australia, given China's rapid naval expansion. It's not a sure thing that the US could stop them. If China is cut off from their required resources, they'll invade somewhere as a response. Australia needs a plan for if all else fails, an ultimate deterrence to invasion (which France and Britain possess for similar deterrence reasons).
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    China is never going to attempt to do such a stupid thing as invade Australia thousands of kilometers away for resources. It's much simpler, cheaper and faster to simply import the ores via land from Asia. Which is one of the core reasons for the BRI.
    - adventured 5y ago
      Throughout all of recorded history there has yet to be a superpower or empire that didn't do incredibly stupid things, courtesy of over-estimating its position and power. Modern China will not be an exception. They'll overreach repeatedly just as every other prior great power has. China considers Australia to be within its primary sphere of influence (a rapidly expanding sphere as far as China is concerned, as they push outward militarily). Japan was willing to invade Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Australia during its Empire days. China is a drastically more potent superpower than the Empire of Japan ever was and China's military reach will be far greater. In an Asia war scenario (which is what we're talking about here), Australia is absolutely on the table to be invaded by China. It's a prime candidate if China's foes attempt an inevitable resource blockade (which would see the BRI targeted early on). Invading Australia also disables a critical, reliable ally for the US side. The US & Co. would need vast regional resource supplies to sustain for long at all in a conflict with China in Asia; China would know that, and would understand that Australia is one of the most important resource suppliers both regionally and globally. At a minimum China would seek to cripple Australia functionally, and an invasion is ideal toward that ultimately (otherwise the Australians would just keep rebuilding and repairing damage). European empires would never seek to conquer territory in Asia, it's too far away. Britain would never seek to conquer India, it's too far away. China sends its vast fishing fleets to illegally plunder South American fishing waters. It has blanketed much of Africa for resource extraction purposes. It certainly considers Australia as a resource target within its reach. And it's more than that, China had already fallen into the mindset of considering Australia to be increasingly within its sphere of influence and control, which is why the CCP has gotten so angry at Australia in the recent political-economic conflict between the two. They had plans for Australia and assumed they would be dictating terms going forward.

vikiomega9 5y ago

Indeed, one of the more interesting ideas I've been considering is how does society think about the delayed effects on mental health and attention deficit. For example, one might argue maybe Netflix is easier to moderate at the level of a family or community, like having parental locks on time spent on quality content. But what do you do with Internet Porn? There is enough evidence that novelty stimulation has detrimental effects. For either scenario, the internet has made it easier to consume more and at a faster rate, but we don't have a quick and easy mechanism to talk about these things and develop cultural practices. One of the more interesting ideas for me is finding that balance between liberal individual right to choice and recognizing all systems including human society is a feedback loop and drifts into failure (either expanding freedoms or curbing them).

powerapple 5y ago

Some personal opinion here: top Chinese internet companies makes most their money domestically, the top US companies are real international companies, and Facebook makes $5 billion of ad money from China, can you imagine that? It is other countries are losing money because their users contribute to the success of Facebook, YouTube but they are not making enough tax revenue from it. All these like economy is not good for society, but the situation is different in US than China.

aoleinik 5y ago

Out of curiosity, what _should_ the US be working on? The only two things I can think of that really needs more man hours is space travel and quantum computing, but those fields are generally far from being revenue generating and require mountains of initial investment. I agree that ad tech and social media are net negatives, but what are the alternatives? A dead economy, where most of the money circulates on necessities? Not asking this sarcastically or rhetorically - genuinely want some good insight on what people who say the current direction of the US is poor think the direction should be.

dnautics 5y ago
To some degrees with those two things if you do it wrong, "just adding man hours" to those endeavors can slow progress, not accelerate it
TylerLives 5y ago
Medicine, robotics, social media that improves people's lives, maybe fix universities (or create an alternative. You can learn a lot on the internet, but social aspect of it can be improved), ...
axelroze 5y ago
Reorganization of work so that there are not many bullshit jobs => 15 hour work weeks for any knowledge work. The other time the people can work on something else and/or read about science and philosophy. A truly efficient society does not have people wasting time copy pasting stuff between Excel sheets. Eventually all work will become knowledge work through automation and robotic development brought by the new generation of critical-thinkers. Removal of free (costless) social media. Everyone who uses social media must pay for the employee and hardware costs by the minute. End of ads and end of engagement. End of push notifications. If people gain time by working 15 hours a week but lose the gained time on social media then no good is created. There is some value in Social Media but it must be consumed a little otherwise it is poison. Similar for Netflix and TV. Once people are free of bullshit work and of bullshit free time (facebook and instagram feeds) and all boring physical work is automated, we should look to the stars. The final frontier. That is my hopefully doable utopia. Actually this is John Maynard Keynes year 2000 utopia expanded a bit. Society failed as we are 2021 now and 996 is the norm instead of 15 hour work weeks. Working more is not the solution. Working smart is. Also not everyone needs to have a job.

refurb 5y ago

Facebook is a negligible part of the US GDP. And Netflix is not value ad? Maybe not for you. But regardless, China's downfall will be the fact it tries and picks to "winners and losers". It's a semi-planned economy. Many other countries have tried this and I'm not saying that China will collapse or won't continue to be an economic power, but even the mighty power of the CCP won't make consumers buy their products from you if they aren't what consumers want.

fennecfoxy 5y ago

Lol, you write as if you've never heard of Tencent, who makes incredibly addictive time-wasting games for the Chinese market (and others) very much akin to your "negative value add activities", so much so that they're now using face recognition to prevent addicted children from playing (they don't care, really) and also producing such games as "Clap for Xi Jinping"...like, that has to be a joke, right? Right?

faeriechangling 5y ago

What I notice is that the most productive efforts of big tech are seemingly quick to be abandoned side projects. The real money is in adtech with is 90% zero-sum and 10% happily marrying the right companies with the right customers. I don't really see Netflix as being as much of a problem compared to other "attention" companies because they screwed with the media cartels, have fantastic infrastructure, mostly sell long-form content, and denormalized ad-breaks. Compare to YouTube or TikTok.