11 ms·

I think both Citizen's United and the allowance of asymmetric trade with China (e.g. China's currency manipulation, IP theft, restrictions on companies operatin

by rp1 5y ago

I think both Citizen's United and the allowance of asymmetric trade with China (e.g. China's currency manipulation, IP theft, restrictions on companies operating in China, etc.) are both symptoms of a much larger problem. The U.S. is being dismantled by the capitalist / owner class for personal profit. Very few decisions are made in the government that promote the long-term health of the system. This trend spans the administrations of both parties all the way back to Nixon.

lumost 5y ago
The underlying question is why? Surely this activity could have started in 1950,1920, 1890 or any other year. What change occurred that seemingly has removed any long term/societal concerns from the minds of leaders?
- lazyeye 5y ago
  Its quite simple. With the advent of globalisation the self-interest of the elites is no longer in alignment with the national interest. They can make money far more easily by employing Chinese workers, growing Chinese industry, than they do local. And of course, anyone that pushes back against this is (conveniently) a "xenophobic, racist, white supremacist, Trump-voting blah blah blah...".
  - asplake 5y ago
    That last part was both unnecessary and wrong. Globalisation has plenty of opponents on the left too.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      I think it's too narrow to talk about it as simply "globalization". Globalization has done some really great things, like lifting millions of people out of poverty. But the US has also failed to keep itself competitive with China, and China has (unfairly, IMO, but I'm of course biased) taken advantage of the US's IP and talent (among other things) in order to increase their global influence and gain leverage over the countries that used to be economically "superior" to China. I think ideology plays a part in why this is "bad", as well. As an American, I wouldn't mind so much if the next growing superpower believed in democratic principles. As much as I'm happy I was born in and grew up in the US, I wouldn't see a problem with a "better US" growing beyond the US in terms of economic and political power. But I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of an authoritarian country in that position; China already constantly uses its political clout to censor US citizens and businesses, for example. I expect China's power over citizens of other countries, people who will never even set foot in China, to increase over time, and that worries me quite a bit. It often feels like our only hope is that China makes some huge strategic mistakes, or succumbs to unfixable/unknown structural issues.
      - onethought 5y ago
        Did China ever agree to respect “intellectual property”? I ask honestly, it isn’t an obvious concept that you Would expect to exist in all cultures.
        lumost 5y ago
        This fault lies with the US. Trade and relations normalization was a Cold War strategy to capitalize on the Dino-soviet split and weaken the communist block. Effectively the us threw open the gates on the hypothesis that it would be a Cold War win and that China would eventually liberalize. This problem was well understood by the 90s but the war on terror ultimately blocked any US policy shifts.
  - Aunche 5y ago
    I wouldn't go so far as to call it racism, but I do find it somewhat xenophobic to suggest that it is wrong to outsource you work to other countries. Why is a Chinese worker any less worthy of a job than an American one? $1 in in a developing country goes further than $10 in a developed one. Globalization has granted billions of people access to things we take for granted like electricity and heating.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      We call ourselves “Developed”. It’s already implicitly throwing in the towel - there is nothing more to be done. We’ve already developed. This entire thinking and it’s psyche in our society feels like straight up propaganda. It used to be first-world and third-world. Chinese labor force isn’t going to help defend Taiwan by making tank gadgets for them. Investing in Chinese labor has so many issues. If we didn’t have a rust belt (that led to Trumpism), we would have left a better nation to lead the world and maybe we can think about leveraging world wide labor - but this time with fair conditions and well paid workers. It’s not just US, it is the same in EU and many other G20 nations. Your thinking is appealing to emotional and not rational understanding of the globalism. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
      - fumer 5y ago
        > We call ourselves “Developed”. It’s already implicitly throwing in the towel - there is nothing more to be done. We’ve already developed. I don't agree with this take. The terms "developed" and "developing" is just a politically correct term to classify countries based on their industrial base. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country It's use has less to do with developed countries and everything to do with the need to frame the issue as countries working to get where others already are at the moment. > This entire thinking and it’s psyche in our society feels like straight up propaganda. It used to be first-world and third-world. I also don't feel you're right here as well. "Third-world" does not refer to a ranking. It was a classification based on where a nation was with regards to the Cold War. Either they're a NATO and NATO-aligned country, a Warsaw pact and USSR country, or you kept yourself out of the cold war and thus were a part of the third world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World Development and industrialization and economic output had nothing to do with it.
- cronix 5y ago
  Getting off the gold standard and going to a fiat currency, and going into exponential debt ever since. It stagnated the middle class due to inflation and wages not keeping up (which would have caused more inflation). We needed cheap labor to make goods cheaper and more affordable for the stagnating middle class, so we made favorable trade deals that wiped out manufacturing, which exacerbated the problem. It's just a bunch of added negative feedback loops. Hold on.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    Do you think China's currency follows the gold standard?
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  You could argue that Nixon improved relations with China to counter-balance USSR influence during the Cold War. It was obviously foolish to help China become an economic power since the CCP has been at war with the US since the end of WW2 (2 Taiwan Straits wars, 2 Korean wars, Vietnam war), largely driven by Maoist ideology. (The USSR was involved in stopping the Straits wars to prevent wider conflicts.) (The USSR dealt with an aggressive CCP by obliterating their forces during a border conflict using overkill. The CCP doesn't understand anything less. The USSR also planned to use nuclear weapons on Beijing around 1969, but the US intervened.) I followed outsourcing to China in the business press from about 1972 to 2000. I shook my head at the end of each article. But here we are. What's important to realize is that both the CCP and Russia make public statements and: 1) they're either obviously hyperbolic or 2) they accurately represent their actual plans. #2 is not well-understood by our politicians for some reason. Pompeo is one of the few people to get it, hence the US' very effective strategy for the CCP during the Trump administration. Note that China has structural weaknesses that will diminish its power: they import 50% of their energy and food, and have a demographic problem that could cut their population in half. They also have serious flooding issues, with 100,000 questionable dams built since 1945. And the US can currently only make one F-35 per week, while in WW2 the P-51 was literally stamped out.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    > Note that China has structural weaknesses that will diminish its power: they import 50% of their energy and food, and have a demographic problem that could cut their population in half. They also have serious flooding issues, with 100,000 questionable dams built since 1945. This is the only thing that gives me hope, honestly. The West is too busy trying to play nice for whatever reason[0]. I think the only thing that will save us is China making catastrophic mistakes during their continuing rise to power, or the structural problems you mention that they may not be able to do anything about at this point. [0] Any thoughts there? You seem to be pretty knowledgeable on this topic. My general assumption is that business interests like where China is going (a richer China means more and more access to a huge market), but don't care about the long-term effects to the US economy. But that sounds too simplistic to be the whole story.
- VictorPath 5y ago
  > Surely this activity could have started in 1950,1920, 1890 It did start in 1890. Read about the Populist Party, Cross of Gold speech, Pullman strike, Haymarket affair, US occupation of the Philippines. All of this started before the 19th century. In any old industrial city, check the date when the old national guard armories were built. Why did large, fortified national guard armories start popping up all over the industrialized parts of the country just before the turn of the 20th century?
- kelnos 5y ago
  In the vein of VectorPath's sibling comment, I highly recommend The People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. But I think the reason we are seeing this more front-and-center now is because the effects are starting to become noticeable, and because globalization has made it easier for the rich to not really care as much about their home country's economic success; they'll profit regardless, as long as they've made the right investments in the right places.
systemvoltage 5y ago
It is still continuing. I’ll get flak but damn it Apple is leading outsourcing of manf. They have so much cash they don’t have any ideas. Instead of cars and moving the headphone jack from one place to another, they should be investing in new forms of automation for manf.
jessaustin 5y ago
I feel like the turning point was earlier than that. When they replaced Wallace with Truman, they got someone they could lead around by the nose. That was very different from the administrations of FDR and even Hoover. JFK threatened to become an exception, but not for long...
spamizbad 5y ago
Not a view I share but I think the general attitude of this so-called "owner" class roughly this: The average American isn't deserving enough of America's bounty, so why should they be entitled to any of it? If you want something you should work for it; you aren't entitled to it by place of birth.
- rp1 5y ago
  Why, in your opinion, do countries exist at all then?
  - spamizbad 5y ago
    It’s really not an argument against countries it’s more like an extreme form of “meritocracy” mixed in with various problematic views on resource allocation.
- vincnetas 5y ago
  but somehow you are entitled by inheritance. why should it be so? you should work for it.
  - spamizbad 5y ago
    I think the argument here is that you're free to do what you want with your wealth, so if its "leave it all to my kids" then that's totally fine and fairness is irrelevant.

by rp1 5y ago

lumost 5y ago

The underlying question is why? Surely this activity could have started in 1950,1920, 1890 or any other year. What change occurred that seemingly has removed any long term/societal concerns from the minds of leaders?

lazyeye 5y ago
Its quite simple. With the advent of globalisation the self-interest of the elites is no longer in alignment with the national interest. They can make money far more easily by employing Chinese workers, growing Chinese industry, than they do local. And of course, anyone that pushes back against this is (conveniently) a "xenophobic, racist, white supremacist, Trump-voting blah blah blah...".
- asplake 5y ago
  That last part was both unnecessary and wrong. Globalisation has plenty of opponents on the left too.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I think it's too narrow to talk about it as simply "globalization". Globalization has done some really great things, like lifting millions of people out of poverty. But the US has also failed to keep itself competitive with China, and China has (unfairly, IMO, but I'm of course biased) taken advantage of the US's IP and talent (among other things) in order to increase their global influence and gain leverage over the countries that used to be economically "superior" to China. I think ideology plays a part in why this is "bad", as well. As an American, I wouldn't mind so much if the next growing superpower believed in democratic principles. As much as I'm happy I was born in and grew up in the US, I wouldn't see a problem with a "better US" growing beyond the US in terms of economic and political power. But I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of an authoritarian country in that position; China already constantly uses its political clout to censor US citizens and businesses, for example. I expect China's power over citizens of other countries, people who will never even set foot in China, to increase over time, and that worries me quite a bit. It often feels like our only hope is that China makes some huge strategic mistakes, or succumbs to unfixable/unknown structural issues.
    - onethought 5y ago
      Did China ever agree to respect “intellectual property”? I ask honestly, it isn’t an obvious concept that you Would expect to exist in all cultures.
      - lumost 5y ago
        This fault lies with the US. Trade and relations normalization was a Cold War strategy to capitalize on the Dino-soviet split and weaken the communist block. Effectively the us threw open the gates on the hypothesis that it would be a Cold War win and that China would eventually liberalize. This problem was well understood by the 90s but the war on terror ultimately blocked any US policy shifts.
- Aunche 5y ago
  I wouldn't go so far as to call it racism, but I do find it somewhat xenophobic to suggest that it is wrong to outsource you work to other countries. Why is a Chinese worker any less worthy of a job than an American one? $1 in in a developing country goes further than $10 in a developed one. Globalization has granted billions of people access to things we take for granted like electricity and heating.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    We call ourselves “Developed”. It’s already implicitly throwing in the towel - there is nothing more to be done. We’ve already developed. This entire thinking and it’s psyche in our society feels like straight up propaganda. It used to be first-world and third-world. Chinese labor force isn’t going to help defend Taiwan by making tank gadgets for them. Investing in Chinese labor has so many issues. If we didn’t have a rust belt (that led to Trumpism), we would have left a better nation to lead the world and maybe we can think about leveraging world wide labor - but this time with fair conditions and well paid workers. It’s not just US, it is the same in EU and many other G20 nations. Your thinking is appealing to emotional and not rational understanding of the globalism. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
    - fumer 5y ago
      > We call ourselves “Developed”. It’s already implicitly throwing in the towel - there is nothing more to be done. We’ve already developed. I don't agree with this take. The terms "developed" and "developing" is just a politically correct term to classify countries based on their industrial base. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country It's use has less to do with developed countries and everything to do with the need to frame the issue as countries working to get where others already are at the moment. > This entire thinking and it’s psyche in our society feels like straight up propaganda. It used to be first-world and third-world. I also don't feel you're right here as well. "Third-world" does not refer to a ranking. It was a classification based on where a nation was with regards to the Cold War. Either they're a NATO and NATO-aligned country, a Warsaw pact and USSR country, or you kept yourself out of the cold war and thus were a part of the third world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World Development and industrialization and economic output had nothing to do with it.
cronix 5y ago
Getting off the gold standard and going to a fiat currency, and going into exponential debt ever since. It stagnated the middle class due to inflation and wages not keeping up (which would have caused more inflation). We needed cheap labor to make goods cheaper and more affordable for the stagnating middle class, so we made favorable trade deals that wiped out manufacturing, which exacerbated the problem. It's just a bunch of added negative feedback loops. Hold on.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Do you think China's currency follows the gold standard?
redis_mlc 5y ago
You could argue that Nixon improved relations with China to counter-balance USSR influence during the Cold War. It was obviously foolish to help China become an economic power since the CCP has been at war with the US since the end of WW2 (2 Taiwan Straits wars, 2 Korean wars, Vietnam war), largely driven by Maoist ideology. (The USSR was involved in stopping the Straits wars to prevent wider conflicts.) (The USSR dealt with an aggressive CCP by obliterating their forces during a border conflict using overkill. The CCP doesn't understand anything less. The USSR also planned to use nuclear weapons on Beijing around 1969, but the US intervened.) I followed outsourcing to China in the business press from about 1972 to 2000. I shook my head at the end of each article. But here we are. What's important to realize is that both the CCP and Russia make public statements and: 1) they're either obviously hyperbolic or 2) they accurately represent their actual plans. #2 is not well-understood by our politicians for some reason. Pompeo is one of the few people to get it, hence the US' very effective strategy for the CCP during the Trump administration. Note that China has structural weaknesses that will diminish its power: they import 50% of their energy and food, and have a demographic problem that could cut their population in half. They also have serious flooding issues, with 100,000 questionable dams built since 1945. And the US can currently only make one F-35 per week, while in WW2 the P-51 was literally stamped out.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > Note that China has structural weaknesses that will diminish its power: they import 50% of their energy and food, and have a demographic problem that could cut their population in half. They also have serious flooding issues, with 100,000 questionable dams built since 1945. This is the only thing that gives me hope, honestly. The West is too busy trying to play nice for whatever reason[0]. I think the only thing that will save us is China making catastrophic mistakes during their continuing rise to power, or the structural problems you mention that they may not be able to do anything about at this point. [0] Any thoughts there? You seem to be pretty knowledgeable on this topic. My general assumption is that business interests like where China is going (a richer China means more and more access to a huge market), but don't care about the long-term effects to the US economy. But that sounds too simplistic to be the whole story.
VictorPath 5y ago
> Surely this activity could have started in 1950,1920, 1890 It did start in 1890. Read about the Populist Party, Cross of Gold speech, Pullman strike, Haymarket affair, US occupation of the Philippines. All of this started before the 19th century. In any old industrial city, check the date when the old national guard armories were built. Why did large, fortified national guard armories start popping up all over the industrialized parts of the country just before the turn of the 20th century?
kelnos 5y ago
In the vein of VectorPath's sibling comment, I highly recommend The People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. But I think the reason we are seeing this more front-and-center now is because the effects are starting to become noticeable, and because globalization has made it easier for the rich to not really care as much about their home country's economic success; they'll profit regardless, as long as they've made the right investments in the right places.

systemvoltage 5y ago

It is still continuing. I’ll get flak but damn it Apple is leading outsourcing of manf. They have so much cash they don’t have any ideas. Instead of cars and moving the headphone jack from one place to another, they should be investing in new forms of automation for manf.

jessaustin 5y ago

I feel like the turning point was earlier than that. When they replaced Wallace with Truman, they got someone they could lead around by the nose. That was very different from the administrations of FDR and even Hoover. JFK threatened to become an exception, but not for long...

spamizbad 5y ago

Not a view I share but I think the general attitude of this so-called "owner" class roughly this: The average American isn't deserving enough of America's bounty, so why should they be entitled to any of it? If you want something you should work for it; you aren't entitled to it by place of birth.

rp1 5y ago
Why, in your opinion, do countries exist at all then?
- spamizbad 5y ago
  It’s really not an argument against countries it’s more like an extreme form of “meritocracy” mixed in with various problematic views on resource allocation.
vincnetas 5y ago
but somehow you are entitled by inheritance. why should it be so? you should work for it.
- spamizbad 5y ago
  I think the argument here is that you're free to do what you want with your wealth, so if its "leave it all to my kids" then that's totally fine and fairness is irrelevant.