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China has by this point large advantages in industrial ecosystems and modest cost labor, and that the state is willing to make large long-term bets on technolog
by jabl 1y ago
China has by this point large advantages in industrial ecosystems and modest cost labor, and that the state is willing to make large long-term bets on technologies it sees as important in the future.
It's not insurmountable for 'the West' to claw back some of that manufacturing, including high-tech items like batteries. It will take a large, long-time and very expensive effort, however. But talk is cheap, and largely 'the West' has drunken the neoliberalism kool-aid and is staring at quarterly shareholder value so little gets done.
Heck, some Western government are even in bed with the fossil fuel industry, desperately trying to hold back progress in order to claw a bit more profit out of the industry before the full force of the electric revolution hits.
- formerly_proven 1y ago> But talk is cheap, and largely 'the West' has drunken the neoliberalism kool-aid and is staring at quarterly shareholder value so little gets done. The west is mostly drunk on populism, nativism and boomer welfare. If it were the neoliberal hellscape you imagine, it'd at least be competitive.
- energy123 1y agoAnd workers rights, minimum wage and immigration restrictions. This trifecta of anti-neoliberal policies destroyed manufacturing competitiveness. But the term "neoliberal" has become a slur which is defined as "subset of the status quo that I don't like", and it will endlessly shapeshift so that it can be blamed for whatever is being discussed.
- mschuster91 1y ago> And workers rights, minimum wage and immigration restrictions. This trifecta of anti-neoliberal policies destroyed manufacturing competitiveness. The thing is, 996 works in China because China is a dictatorship where workers have no rights and for a lot of them 996 is better than the utter poverty they came from. But we? We cannot compete with 996, not if we don't devolve to outright slavery, to conditions of the 1800s.
- energy123 1y agoSure, we don't have to be competitive with China on manufacturing, but that is hardly the fault of neoliberalism, which was the subject of discussion. It's quite squarely the "fault" of anti-neoliberal policies like immigration restrictions and minimum wage. We could have had Chinese workers on Chinese wages on Western soil making widgets for Western firms, basically a neoliberal wet dream, but that was prevented by anti-neoliberal policies.
- maxglute 1y agoI think it's pretty peak neoliberalism to discover and double down on collecting rents and trading make believe financial instruments in air conditioned offices than do dirty work making commodity widgets. Peak neolibralism seems like optmizing for spreadsheet competitiveness longterm and we're rapidly finding out that is not the right kind of competitiveness.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- dyauspitr 1y agoPopulism and anti immigrant sentiment will kill all progress in the west.