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>When capital owners are driven by competition they must work increasingly more for little or no marginal gain despite falling prices for consumers so price fix

>When capital owners are driven by competition they must work increasingly more for little or no marginal gain despite falling prices for consumers so price fixing or 'price leadership' becomes impossible. A lot of the people in the comments here seem to miss that this explicitly isn't about workers or feeling overworked and if anything should make the average consumer better off.

matheusmoreira 25d ago
What's the point of serving this average consumer if we won't end up better off though?
- kjshsh123 25d ago
  We are all consumers.
yorwba 25d ago
The next sentence is "On a personal level, neijuan reflects a life of being overworked, stressed, anxious and feeling trapped, a lifestyle where many face the negative effects of living a very competitive life for nothing."
- kjshsh123 25d ago
  Yes, for capital owners.
handle584 25d ago
Overworked Chinese workers have been making western consumers better off for more than two decades now. Chinese domestic consumption is very low even among developing countries, negligible compared to its gigantic export. Upon joining WTO one prerequisite is 5 days-8 hours work week, while presently in China you often find 996 schedule instead, with factory workers even worse with 12 hour shifts and 2 days off a month. It is simply sweatshop in the 21st century again, a hallmark of Neijuan.
- kjshsh123 25d ago
  I'm not saying workers aren't necessarily overworked etc. I'm just saying that's not what this word and concept is about. This concept is about capital owners.
  - yorwba 25d ago
    It would hardly have become a popular slang term on the Chinese internet if it were only about the worries of a small minority of capital owners. Any kind of excessive competition dynamics may be described as neijuan. I would like to give you some social media usage examples, but Weibo is censoring the #内卷# hashtag. In any case, the Wikipedia article has examples involving students competing in exams and graduates competing on the job market, among others.
    - kjshsh123 25d ago
      Like other comments on OP have pointed out, the term at this point is vague and used for various reasons. But given the term's emergence in a country with a communist government, and the origin described by wikipedia, I think what I'm saying is more aligned with the term's origin. Whatever the term means on Chinese internet sounds like standard (I'm sure partially valid) doomerism. I can accept they use it to describe that.
cloudbonsai 24d ago
No, sociologists use the term involution to describe Asian rice farmers. These farmers poured an increasing amount of labor into their tiny patches of land to extract the last bit of productivity, yet despite their hard work, they remained poor. The younger Chinese generation views their economic situation much in the same way: forced to overwork, with surprisingly little personal gain. They are typically not capital owners at all. Note: the term is sometimes translated to “内旋” (“inward spiral”) in Japanese, which I believe conveys the nuance better.
RandyOrion 24d ago
No. The 996 working culture in this page is actually *996.ICU*. "Work by '996', sick in ICU", an ironic saying among Chinese developers, which means that by following the "996" work schedule (9 am to 9 pm, six days a week), you are risking yourself getting into the ICU (Intensive Care Unit). [1] Take a step further, do you want to overwork to death if you have other choices? One of the reasons behind 277k stars in 996.icu repo is that 996 working culture literally takes over every single corporations in China. With the downturn of China economy and the selective execution of Chinese labor law, in recent years, 996 becomes even harsher to labor force in China because there are more than overwork now, e.g. low salary and low human rights. When you say 'make the average consumer better off', you conveniently ignore the tears, sweets, and blood behind the facade of neijuan. [1] https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU

matheusmoreira 25d ago

What's the point of serving this average consumer if we won't end up better off though?

kjshsh123 25d ago
We are all consumers.

yorwba 25d ago

The next sentence is "On a personal level, neijuan reflects a life of being overworked, stressed, anxious and feeling trapped, a lifestyle where many face the negative effects of living a very competitive life for nothing."

kjshsh123 25d ago
Yes, for capital owners.

handle584 25d ago

Overworked Chinese workers have been making western consumers better off for more than two decades now. Chinese domestic consumption is very low even among developing countries, negligible compared to its gigantic export. Upon joining WTO one prerequisite is 5 days-8 hours work week, while presently in China you often find 996 schedule instead, with factory workers even worse with 12 hour shifts and 2 days off a month. It is simply sweatshop in the 21st century again, a hallmark of Neijuan.

kjshsh123 25d ago
I'm not saying workers aren't necessarily overworked etc. I'm just saying that's not what this word and concept is about. This concept is about capital owners.
- yorwba 25d ago
  It would hardly have become a popular slang term on the Chinese internet if it were only about the worries of a small minority of capital owners. Any kind of excessive competition dynamics may be described as neijuan. I would like to give you some social media usage examples, but Weibo is censoring the #内卷# hashtag. In any case, the Wikipedia article has examples involving students competing in exams and graduates competing on the job market, among others.
  - kjshsh123 25d ago
    Like other comments on OP have pointed out, the term at this point is vague and used for various reasons. But given the term's emergence in a country with a communist government, and the origin described by wikipedia, I think what I'm saying is more aligned with the term's origin. Whatever the term means on Chinese internet sounds like standard (I'm sure partially valid) doomerism. I can accept they use it to describe that.

cloudbonsai 24d ago

No, sociologists use the term involution to describe Asian rice farmers. These farmers poured an increasing amount of labor into their tiny patches of land to extract the last bit of productivity, yet despite their hard work, they remained poor. The younger Chinese generation views their economic situation much in the same way: forced to overwork, with surprisingly little personal gain. They are typically not capital owners at all. Note: the term is sometimes translated to “内旋” (“inward spiral”) in Japanese, which I believe conveys the nuance better.

RandyOrion 24d ago

No. The 996 working culture in this page is actually *996.ICU*. "Work by '996', sick in ICU", an ironic saying among Chinese developers, which means that by following the "996" work schedule (9 am to 9 pm, six days a week), you are risking yourself getting into the ICU (Intensive Care Unit). [1] Take a step further, do you want to overwork to death if you have other choices? One of the reasons behind 277k stars in 996.icu repo is that 996 working culture literally takes over every single corporations in China. With the downturn of China economy and the selective execution of Chinese labor law, in recent years, 996 becomes even harsher to labor force in China because there are more than overwork now, e.g. low salary and low human rights. When you say 'make the average consumer better off', you conveniently ignore the tears, sweets, and blood behind the facade of neijuan. [1] https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU