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Sorry to see you downvoted, it is extremely irksome to me that China is so often characterized as "copying others homework" -- if we could do what China does, w

Sorry to see you downvoted, it is extremely irksome to me that China is so often characterized as "copying others homework" -- if we could do what China does, why do we go to China every time we need something done? It is not westerners exploiting cheap labor, tho it may have started that way. It is really the scale of their talent pool, the number of engineers that graduate every year is nearly 10x what the US gets around to, and they idea that they just sit around waiting for an American company to design something for them is farcical.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> if we could do what China does, why do we go to China every time we need something done? Ricardian comparative advantage, which doesn't require the party you go to to be better at the thing you are going to them to do than you are, only that you are enough better at something else that doing the thing you are outsourcing would require giving up more of the other thing. It's about opportunity cost, not absolute proficiency.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  While I've taken an intro to economics class, I've also taken Chinese bullet trains across the country, something I sadly cannot say for America. There are few metrics where they are somehow behind us in proficiency.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I've also taken Chinese bullet trains across the country, something I sadly cannot say for America But exercising centralized control while eliminating internal dissent through propaganda or ignoring it because dissenters are effectively disenfranchised, as much as it's a thing many people in the US would love to do, isn't one of the things we outsource to China (neither, viewing the same claim through a different lens, is physical Infrastructure in the US.) So, to the extent that that story reflects something they genuinely have absolute advantage in, it's not really relevant to the “why do we go to them for the things we go to them” for. Heck, a lot of the things we have gone to them for, like low-cost manufacturing of a variety of goods, are moving out from China to other places as they develop just as they moved out of more developed places to China, because with more development comes higher proficiency in areas that less developed states can't substitute for at all, so comparative advantage leads to them getting more of the things they can do, even if they aren't great at them on an absolute scale.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      I have a very different opinion on China's totalitarianism (which I am very unimpressed by); I only meant to argue that China possesses expertise that we do not, yes, because of our own Ricardian motivations, but that leaves us in a position where we cannot build our own bridges, trains, nor even computer chips even if we wanted to. You can say we are no longer burdened with manufacturing our own goods, and have moved onto more productive, intellectual pastures, but I'm not so sure. It seems like we spent our capital building up off-shore talent and have enjoyed the largess of lower cost of living, leaving a lot of infrastructure unmaintained. I could go on with my cynicism, but it's not especially productive ;)
  - simplestats 5y ago
    Not a great example. The Japanese will tell you that train technology was copied and/or stolen from them.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    The bullet train story isn't all light and luster and progress, even though the system is really good for photo-ops and interesting for railway fans (which I do not deny to be one). The West tends to take interests of people whose real property (including homes) blocks the right of way into account. While it does encourage NIMBYs from blocking everything, I find it better than the "here be the state railway, now pack your things and begone" approach. Also, dissenters and politically unreliable people are forbidden from using such trains in China [0]. [0] https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-china-xi-jinping-technology-9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8 https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-ch...
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
> Sorry to see you downvoted, it is extremely irksome to me that China is so often characterized as "copying others homework" A product I designed and make was ripped off in China. I’m pretty sure it isn’t all handwringing and negative emotions.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> if we could do what China does, why do we go to China every time we need something done? Ricardian comparative advantage, which doesn't require the party you go to to be better at the thing you are going to them to do than you are, only that you are enough better at something else that doing the thing you are outsourcing would require giving up more of the other thing. It's about opportunity cost, not absolute proficiency.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
While I've taken an intro to economics class, I've also taken Chinese bullet trains across the country, something I sadly cannot say for America. There are few metrics where they are somehow behind us in proficiency.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I've also taken Chinese bullet trains across the country, something I sadly cannot say for America But exercising centralized control while eliminating internal dissent through propaganda or ignoring it because dissenters are effectively disenfranchised, as much as it's a thing many people in the US would love to do, isn't one of the things we outsource to China (neither, viewing the same claim through a different lens, is physical Infrastructure in the US.) So, to the extent that that story reflects something they genuinely have absolute advantage in, it's not really relevant to the “why do we go to them for the things we go to them” for. Heck, a lot of the things we have gone to them for, like low-cost manufacturing of a variety of goods, are moving out from China to other places as they develop just as they moved out of more developed places to China, because with more development comes higher proficiency in areas that less developed states can't substitute for at all, so comparative advantage leads to them getting more of the things they can do, even if they aren't great at them on an absolute scale.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    I have a very different opinion on China's totalitarianism (which I am very unimpressed by); I only meant to argue that China possesses expertise that we do not, yes, because of our own Ricardian motivations, but that leaves us in a position where we cannot build our own bridges, trains, nor even computer chips even if we wanted to. You can say we are no longer burdened with manufacturing our own goods, and have moved onto more productive, intellectual pastures, but I'm not so sure. It seems like we spent our capital building up off-shore talent and have enjoyed the largess of lower cost of living, leaving a lot of infrastructure unmaintained. I could go on with my cynicism, but it's not especially productive ;)
- simplestats 5y ago
  Not a great example. The Japanese will tell you that train technology was copied and/or stolen from them.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  The bullet train story isn't all light and luster and progress, even though the system is really good for photo-ops and interesting for railway fans (which I do not deny to be one). The West tends to take interests of people whose real property (including homes) blocks the right of way into account. While it does encourage NIMBYs from blocking everything, I find it better than the "here be the state railway, now pack your things and begone" approach. Also, dissenters and politically unreliable people are forbidden from using such trains in China [0]. [0] https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-china-xi-jinping-technology-9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8 https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-ch...

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

> Sorry to see you downvoted, it is extremely irksome to me that China is so often characterized as "copying others homework" A product I designed and make was ripped off in China. I’m pretty sure it isn’t all handwringing and negative emotions.