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Science and technology lifted them from poverty, not capitalism. The state in those countries played a huge role

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Science and technology has progresses thanks to cash injections from capitalists, not just from governments of broke countries. The Taiwanese government paid to buy technology transfers on semiconductor manufacturing tech from the US in the sixties and seventies, but for that to happen, RCA in the US had to spend "hella' stacks" in R&D to invent that tech in the first place and iterate on it at scale until it got cheaper for mass production and affordable for other less wealthy countries to buy it too.
- galactus 3y ago
  The semiconductor industry is an interesting example because even if the transistor was invented by Bell labs, it all comes from wartime technology, obviously very heavily publicly subsidized. And actually, it was only profitable for the first 10 years becuse they had military applications so they had the gouvernment as client…
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Fine, then let's pick other industries not related to the defense industry. Like industrial automation robots, those came way after WW2, by the desire of capitalists to speed up production and reduce costs of products to the point capitalist economies had much more successful exports, like steel, due to superior technology and automation despite the ultra low costs and wages in communist economies but which were behind on tech and mostly just produced low quality stuff for the local markets as they were uncompetitive abroad. Or farming technology. Communist countries often struggled to feed their people, but that wasn't really an issue in the capitalist economies where the west had an abundant amount of calories thanks to the free market supply and demand pushing production and innovation in farming automation. So despite the communist system being focused on the working class (on paper) and the capitalist system on greed and enriching the shareholders, ultimately the workers under capitalism had it better.

Science and technology has progresses thanks to cash injections from capitalists, not just from governments of broke countries. The Taiwanese government paid to buy technology transfers on semiconductor manufacturing tech from the US in the sixties and seventies, but for that to happen, RCA in the US had to spend "hella' stacks" in R&D to invent that tech in the first place and iterate on it at scale until it got cheaper for mass production and affordable for other less wealthy countries to buy it too.

galactus 3y ago
The semiconductor industry is an interesting example because even if the transistor was invented by Bell labs, it all comes from wartime technology, obviously very heavily publicly subsidized. And actually, it was only profitable for the first 10 years becuse they had military applications so they had the gouvernment as client…
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Fine, then let's pick other industries not related to the defense industry. Like industrial automation robots, those came way after WW2, by the desire of capitalists to speed up production and reduce costs of products to the point capitalist economies had much more successful exports, like steel, due to superior technology and automation despite the ultra low costs and wages in communist economies but which were behind on tech and mostly just produced low quality stuff for the local markets as they were uncompetitive abroad. Or farming technology. Communist countries often struggled to feed their people, but that wasn't really an issue in the capitalist economies where the west had an abundant amount of calories thanks to the free market supply and demand pushing production and innovation in farming automation. So despite the communist system being focused on the working class (on paper) and the capitalist system on greed and enriching the shareholders, ultimately the workers under capitalism had it better.