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China has been methodically preparing for trade war and decoupling for the better part of the decade. US went in full throttle with zero preparation. This is no
by sampton 2y ago
China has been methodically preparing for trade war and decoupling for the better part of the decade. US went in full throttle with zero preparation. This is not going to end well.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIt’s the only way the US will learn.
- QuantumGood 2y agoPolitics and propaganda tend to dominate national "learning", and those forces tend to escalate to prevent awareness. So not a lot of learning happens, historically ("history tends to repeat itself"; "history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes", etc)
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIf facts don’t work, intelligent, rational discourse and compromise don’t work, and economic pain don’t work, well, you’re out of options (at least options that can be discussed here).
- immibis 2y agoBy denying all other avenues of learning, the USA has chosen to revert to the oldest, which can't be disabled: natural selection.
- QuantumGood 2y agoPropaganda works. But it works better if the creator(s) are unethical and strongly committed. Usually the most unethical cooperate somewhat for their own gain, rather than compete.
- yibg 2y agoI wonder if this is a consequence of the political systems of China vs the US. China tends to think and plan longer term, where as the US seems much more transactional; what will win me the next election / midterm etc.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y agoIn other words: the lack of long term planning is US’s well-known strategic weakness.
- roenxi 2y ago> China tends to think and plan longer term... Pull the other one, we saw how they went in the 20th century. Large centralised governments have never managed to systemically outplan democracies. The issue is US culture has been giving priority to anti-industrialists. As a result they aren't the leader of the industrial world. This has been planned for a long time and a bunch of people were celebrating it the entire way along. You try standing up and saying "we should prioritise industry!" anywhere in the west - it is a bruising experience as soon as it gets to the specific policies that are likely to be successful. Huge chunks of what China did are illegal. Running a successful industrial economy seems to violate a host of western employment & environmental laws as well as many regulations. That isn't bad planning, that was an explicit rejection of the outcomes China achieved.
- stuartjohnson12 2y agoI'm most of the way through reading Moral Mazes which covers this part of American culture in-depth as it relates to chemical and textile manufacturing. Specifically, it discusses psychological attitudes to perception of chemical manufacturing as being dirty, and the rationalizations employed by middle managers towards their work. What Moral Mazes lays out is the idea of the tension between the perception of manufacturing ethics as matters of practicality (as seen by manufacturers), and the perception of manufacturing ethics as matters of purity (as seen by activists and lawyers). It is a great book I would recommend to anyone, although being primarily an observation of the psychological processes at play, there are of course no solutions offered.
- dluan 2y ago"Decoupling" was started in the US by the Obama administration.
- r00fus 2y ago> China has been methodically preparing for trade war Mostly because it was prompted by decoupling from the last three administrations before going full-bore in this latest Trump admin.
- Yeul 2y agoIt's not even about China. Asia as a whole has seen massive economic growth in the last 40 years. Countries like Indonesia and Vietnam are self confident enough to no longer kow tow to America.