> They know full well that once a country monopolizes manufacturing, they could quickly pivot into dominating a market, especially if they justify the wholesale

> They know full well that once a country monopolizes manufacturing, they could quickly pivot into dominating a market, especially if they justify the wholesale theft of intellectual property through nationalism (“the West exploited us in the 19th century, so our companies stealing their intellectual property is just fair play). Well, much of that so called intellectual property progressed out of tax funded research. The so called west use to mass produce RND which made a rather epic combo. It was the neoliberal agenda that didn't care about slow long term progress that killed it just like local manufacturing. > the West exploited us in the 19th century "the west" should probably not be the title of the entity but damn, China was completely and utterly obliterated. This of course much like Asian leaders from the region did to other countries and among their own long long before. One cant make an omelet that size without breaking many many eggs. Walking alone in a forest behavior is very different than having a companion, replace the companion and it is again very different. Now if you add more and more people it increasingly matters less who they are but as the numbers go up the weirdness grows until you get things no single human would ever do. Groups of people are not a person. Free form self organization will quickly look very sensible but without people at the top entitled to say NO to stuff it may also turn into utter chaos over night. All ever so slightly refined qualities people might have are lost in the chaos theory and you get uniform instinctive behavior. I want pepper, the next guy wants rice in the giant omelet. Some are lactose intolerant so the end result wont even have cheese in it. Imagine that! No cheese!