19 ms·
Is this how the US falls behind? Missing technological improvements due to blind disagreements with Chinese/etc, combined with inability to update infrastructur
by soared 7mo ago
Is this how the US falls behind? Missing technological improvements due to blind disagreements with Chinese/etc, combined with inability to update infrastructure? (Unclear how/why but datacenters being stood up so quickly seems like an exception to US’s bad construction)
- dyauspitr 7mo agoIt’s a purposeful hamstringing of EV so the GOP’s oil and gas supporters can make 3-5 more years of money.
- skippyboxedhero 7mo agoChina's low level of corruption wins again
- raddan 7mo agoUnfortunately, a corrupt autocracy with a strategy seems more likely to win the capitalist arms race than a wealthy but feckless democracy. It’s only slightly ironic that said autocracy calls itself communist.
- skippyboxedhero 7mo agoFunctioning democracies are inherently authoritarian. The simplistic, textbook definition of dictatorship, which in the West is generally used to define the foreign other, has no basis in reality. This vision holds because it presupposes that the only thing people care about is political freedom, when in reality there can only ever be one political class and political freedom is largely about some other political class trying to take control because the current system doesn't favour them in some way. Western democracies, at their worst, have a largely permanent political class who is elected every year under the pretext of democratic legitimacy. Eastern dictatorshpis, at their best, have a government that is continuously rotated to ensure competent implementation gaining legitimacy from delivery. Both are contextual and the position along the autocracy axis largely depends on implementation. Whether people can actually vote is irrelevant (Europe is generally one of the worst examples of this, elections constantly, most election produce governments that polls under 20% within months...it is very strange that people call this democracy).
- BLKNSLVR 7mo agoData Centre builds are being managed by the tech bro companies aren't they? Don't they follow a much different set of rules than 'public' construction? (for better and worse).
- himata4113 7mo agoI mean if you really think about it china already has or is on the verge of: - energy independence - ASML level microchip production - the SOTA of AI - citizens that accept surveilence and lack of privacy - strong local manufacturing - eastern world support - yuan recognized as a stable world currency But they do suffer from issues as well: - Aging population - Autocracy (or well, one party system) - Brain drain (better funding and security in the US and Europe, US has managed to alienate a lot of very promising figures so it's closer to just Europe, but capital markets in Europe are still hit and miss) It's completely understandable why US is freaking out, china's future still looks a lot more promising than the one US find themselves in.
- est 7mo ago> citizens that accept surveilence and lack of privacy citizens had no choice.
- shaneos 7mo agoCitizens always have a choice. The cost can be terrible, but there’s always a choice
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoWhat is that “choice”? Surely you aren’t like those yokels in the south that think a “militia” running in the woods can take on the the US military or even a decent SWAT force
- collingreen 7mo agoBeing willing to fight for what you think is right even though there is no hope of winning is a choice you can make without being a tacticool yokel that doesn't understand the tech gap between the people and their masters.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
- renewiltord 7mo agoFor the majority of Americans, “the US falling behind” is not something they care about. The principal thing they care about is not whether the whole is ruined but whether they have an appropriate portion. An American would prefer that a field make 1 unit of rice if everyone got 1/n units. This is different from cultures where the preference is that you maximize your wellbeing (older America) so that if someone could figure out how to make the field make 10 units of rice, it’s okay if he makes 8 units and everyone else gets 2/n units. The modern American cultural optimum aims to minimize |x_i - x_j| while growth cultures attempt to maximize x_i. An ironic reversal of roles.
- skippyboxedhero 7mo agoAmerica is also, fundamentally, a divided country where people disagree over basic things (such as the distribution of rice) and there is a massive industry dedicated to amplifying that division. On almost every topic, the discussion will turn to what that other evil part of society is doing to disrupt the good guys. If people are arguing about how to house people or stop crime (both basic issues), you will never move from these topics. Most visible example is public infrastructure, middle-income countries in SE Asia have better infrastructure than the US (and most of Europe)...this makes no sense within the prevailing political/economic/social context in the West, it should just be totally impossible.
- pbronez 7mo agoMaybe. Agree that zero-sum thinking sucks. You gotta grow the pie. But. You also have to share the big pie. In your example, the current crisis can be represented as: A field exists and produces 1 unit. A financial entity buys the field and applies unsustainable methods to increase production 100 units, keep 99.5 of them, distributes 0.5/n. People are pissed that they’re getting half of what they used to despite incredible productivity. The people elect a leader to fix the situation. The leader confronts the financial entity, and returns to the people with 4 units in their pocket and excuses.
- raddan 7mo agoThat’s a rather tall argument given that the US is currently experiencing historic income inequality [1]. [1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/exploding-wealth-inequality-united-states https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/exploding-wealth-inequality-u...
- drstewart 7mo agoIt's how Europe falls behind, you mean. Why do they always get left out of the comparisons? Because they're so far behind anything it would be an insult to include them?
- Markoff 7mo agoyou can buy Chinese phones/cars in EU, so we don't fall behind though in 3.5 months they are gonna ban EU consumers from buying cheap things directly from AliExpress and groom July 1st you will have to pay 3EUR for each ordered item, including that 1EUR screen protector, because it's much better when you can feed some useless middleman than saving money, thanks EU!
- temp8830 7mo ago> you can buy Chinese phones/cars in EU, so we don't fall behind With that logic, every programmer on this site should spend as much time as possible on Facebook. This will make their salary equal to that of a Meta employee! Consuming something is not the same as being able to produce it.
- drstewart 7mo agoDeepSeek is available in the US, so why did anyone imply the US will fall behind in AI tech?
- giwook 7mo agoI think this is probably because Europe is considered part of "the West".
- orwin 7mo agoEurope is third since the 2000s. The pushed the Euro to try to limit it (and from the mouth of someone who was present when they pushed, it was also caused by the black Wednesday of 92, the attacks on currencies increased, and the cost to rebuff them too). And yes, basically, no one should include europe in the comparison until US oil fields are depleted, and even then at best it would be a race for the second place. You can't compete without gas and oil or a huge manufacturing lead, and europe don't have any, and only have specific subset of manufacturing (basically sensors, electronics, avionics, optics, and handmade clothing) that isn't workforce-intensive, nor resource-intensive.
- pjc50 7mo agoData centers are (a) private not public and (b) throwing money at the problem on the assumption of being able to capture a significant chunk of all white collar incomes. And they're running into the public issues already, such as lack of large power transformer availability and noise complaints from trying to generate their own power.
- Mashimo 7mo agoBut gas pumps / electric charging stations are also private.
- bigbadfeline 7mo agoMany things are private but some of them are more private than others, the details can be quite intriguing. Plenty of gas pumps to go around, more of them aren't going to provide anybody private with more of what they crave the most which data centers do provide. That's the reason for the push to abandon EVs and reduce their competing demand for scarce electricity. New electric capacity, paid for by the ratepayers, would benefit those same ratepayers if used for EV charging but big biz isn't in the game for them.
- SirFatty 7mo ago[flagged]
- hshdhdhj4444 7mo agoThe Chinese are selling their EVs all over the world. There are credible American auto enthusiasts that have got these cars and have been using them in the. US. The superiority of Chinese EVs isn’t propaganda. The gas pumps maybe are just a ruse but we know they are operating in China since unlike the US auto industry the Chinese one is incredibly competitive so if BYD was lying about their gas pumps the nearly 100 other competitors would have called them out
- unethical_ban 7mo agoPut political freedom aside. Does China not have massive high speed train networks, the best EVs on the planet, the most renewable energy growth on the planet and a competitive domestic AI industry, and hugely more engineering graduates per year than the US? Their trajectory is incredible, and I don't see what burying ones head in the sand does to help the US or Europe or the democratic societies of the world get/stay ahead.
- 1970-01-01 7mo agoIn a word, yes. In a few words, yes that's the entire situation summary. No long term strategy exists for the entire country.
- markus_zhang 7mo agoThere might be no industrial long term planning, but I think it’s because the US operates in a different mode — financial (late) Capitalism.
- beeflet 7mo agoThat's the problem with late capitalism- we need an economy that makes people want to get up and early.
- markus_zhang 7mo agoI think it's difficult to turn around, unless the mud is cleansed -- but most likely the mud doesn't want to be cleansed so it would rather take the whole pond with it.
- jmyeet 7mo agoChina is what happens when you put scientists and engineers in charge [1][2]. 20 years ago China had a single high speed rail link in Shanghai going to the airport. Now they have more than 30,000 miles of high speed rail where they've bootstrapped all the civil engineering, they make their own trains, etc. The system handles over 4 billion trips annually and they built the entire thing for an estimated $900 billion [3], which is now less than the US spends on the military in a single year. Every $1 you spend on the military is $1 you don't spend on housing, healthcare, education, roads, trains and other infrastructure. Eisenhower warned about this 60+ years ago [4]. [1]: https://en.clickpetroleoegas.com.br/All-of-China%27s-presidents-in-the-last-32-years-are-engineers-who-graduated-from-elite-universities./ https://en.clickpetroleoegas.com.br/All-of-China%27s-preside... [2]: https://www.economist.com/china/2023/03/09/many-of-chinas-top-politicians-were-educated-in-the-west https://www.economist.com/china/2023/03/09/many-of-chinas-to... [3]: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2152581/huge-668bn-high-speed-railway-milestone https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2152581/huge-668bn-high... [4]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoOn a semi related note, military leaders in the US have been warning about the dangers of the American deficit and have a long history of trying to cut waste by getting rid of weapons programs and military bases they don’t need but are constantly blocked by the civilian leadership in Congress because of the job loss.
- seanmcdirmid 7mo agoXi is the first President/leader China has had who literally never worked another job outside of politics and doesn’t speak a foreign language. They gave him a degree in chemical engineering when the universities re-opened after the cultural revolution but he never even had to pretend to use it. Hu, Jiang, and Deng actually worked as engineers and spoke languages besides Chinese (Russian and/or English). Despite all that, Xi has done really well for China. I was totally predicting the opposite given that Xi was clearly a departure from the technocratic leaders that previously ran China (I thought Xi was a Mao throwback).
- nxm 7mo agoNot a single country can excel at everything, and China heavily subsidizes their auto industry to undercut competition. It is not a fair game.
- est 7mo agoChina subsidizes Tesla and European EVs as well.
- testing22321 7mo agoIt’s not even “falling behind”, it’s willfully jamming heads in sand and actively blocking innovation so the legacy US OEMs can fall further behind and become less relevant. The country is doing the same thing on multiple fronts as fast as possible