In fact, Reuters just reported that "Taiwan warns Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone"
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-ni...
“On Wednesday (February 23), two Chinese military jets flew into Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ), marking the 12th intrusion this month.”
https://www.wionews.com/world/two-chinese-fighter-jets-enter...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JADIZ_and_CADIZ_and_...
(ADIZs are also unilateral and not something set up in international law; they're basically a request)
But it is incorrect to say they are happening because the ADIZ extends over Chinese territory. The repeated incursions are out over the ocean, most commonly over the SW corner of the ADIZ which is not over mainland China. China is doing it intentionally, and is both testing and prodding Taiwan.
When we do it, it's a "freedom of navigation" exercise. Yes, it's testing air defenses, but it frustrates me when officials breathlessly act like it's a big deal.
Again, Taiwan's ADIZ extends over China.
When we fly close to Russia, they send fighters up to escort. We do the same when they fly planes near Alaska.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/26/politics/russian-fighter-jets...
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-fighter-jets-intercept-ru...
> The Russian aircraft were in the ADIZ north of Alaska for about 4 hours, according to North American Aerospace Defense Command, which said the planes came as close as 50 nautical miles to the Alaskan coast but did not enter U.S. or Canadian airspace. The ADIZ extends 200 miles from the U.S. and Canadian coasts, but territorial airspace only extends 12 miles from the coast.
In fact, the US explicitly says "nuh uh!" to other countries' ADIZs... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Defense_Identification_Zon...
> Moreover, the U.S. Navy's Commander's Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations states the ADIZ applies only to commercial aircraft intending to enter U.S. sovereign airspace, with a basis in international law of "the right of a nation to establish reasonable conditions of entry into its territory". The manual specifically instructs U.S. military aircraft to ignore the ADIZ of other states when operating in coastal areas...
Here's a US RC-135 surveillance aircraft violating the Chinese ADIZ to get about 20 miles from the mainland. https://twitter.com/SCS_PI/status/1373886128177041410
International law has to be enforced, one way or the other.
(/s)
An excellent and accurate elaboration of the modern economic theory that led us, nevertheless, to our current precarious position.
These are all anti-consumer and bad public policy.
In a pedantic sense, major US cruise ships don't need to touch a foreign port in their journey. The catch being there is only one major US cruise ship - The Pride of America, which generally does Hawaiian cruises: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_of_America
The other major cruise ships you see operating in the US are actually foreign-flagged so they can avoid US environmental, gambling and employment regulations, etc. These are the ships that must touch a foreign port during their journeys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920
That's why there's basically no ocean shipping from American ports to American ports.
That's not the right question to ask. The right question to ask is 'Who is this bad for?'
The Jones act, for instance, is good for US shipworkers, and for enforcement of US shipping laws, but moderately bad for Hawai'i, and really, really bad for Puerto Rico.
Who do you care more about? Preserving the comfort of the continental American middle class employed in maritime transportation, or a bunch of people in Puerto Rico? The answer to that question determines how you see the Jones act.
Alas, the Jones Act isn't actually good for US shipworkers in general. The Jones Act makes it so that there are nearly no US shipworkers in the first place.
(However, the few US shipworkers that do exist are to a certain extent protected by the Jones act.)
There's plenty of approximately unchecked sectors of the economy. Eg software or computer hardware.
There's plenty of companies in these sectors.
And even if only consumers matter, what you're saying only hold in theory, given a 'perfect market'. In practice, consumers have imperfect (read: atrociously bad) information, and big corporations hold many unfair advantages.
I absolutely never said consumers are the only thing that matter. I don't know where you read that between my lines. I said that in a market that is propped up by subsidies, the consumer is the one that gets hurt the most.
Russia has a tiny and impoverished economy.
China is still rather poor. (And only started to grow richer when they reformed in the direction of economic freedom starting in 1978-ish.)
And "direction" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your statement about China. They were, and still are, very protectionist of their internal market, using official and unofficial means.
Not to imply western countries are exempt - they also made (and make) use of protectionism in growing their industries. Only after industries matured, would the market be opened, and economic propaganda launched how unrestricted trade was the only way to prosperity (and, by pure chance, this would give the now globally-competitive industries new export markets). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism#In_the_United_St...:
Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, was of the view, as articulated most famously in his "Report on Manufactures", that developing an industrialized economy was impossible without protectionism because import duties are necessary to shelter domestic "infant industries" until they could achieve economies of scale. The industrial takeoff of the United States occurred under protectionist policies 1816–1848 and under moderate protectionism 1846–1861, and continued under strict protectionist policies 1861–1945.
In other words, protectionism has a proven track record of developing economies, while unrestricted free trade is only theoretically able to accomplish this. Of course economists are immune to empirical proof - from that same wikipedia article:
There is a broad consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare, while free trade and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth.
Yes, western countries have often shot themselves in the foot with protectionism. They aren't perfect.
On the news a while ago, the news was going on about how the UK is banning dual use goods, so this tells us some Govt dept has audited potentially every business and its goods and compiled a list of devices which can be considered multi use. You see this alot with chemicals, Glycerine, used as a cosmetic can also be used for bombmaking. I only found this out when I purchased a litre and then some internet forum started going on about how it can be used for bomb making.
Its why we dont get taught everything, not even in the news. Anyway oil prices have gone up which will push more people towards electric vehicles, and yet Russia has the largest oil reserves in the world, so no doubt they will benefit, because if another internet forum is to be believed, the Saudia's have all but exhausted their oil reserves which is one of the reasons for them IPO'ing their national oil producer.
Kind of explains why I also wasnt allowed an export licence for an app but also highlights who was behind it!
It's the chief component in dynamite.
>Kind of explains why I also wasnt allowed an export licence for an app but also highlights who was behind it!
When do you need an export license for an app?
Dont have the source code anymore or anything and its not ever going to happen now.
When I say it was uncrackable, it was based loosely on code books which were used in ww2, which is something I subsequently read about later on in the news.
No, you didn't.
> When I say it was uncrackable, it was based loosely on code books which were used in ww2, which is something I subsequently read about later on in the news.
Could you please elaborate? Code books only work when both parties have a copy. Obviously for an app, you need to assume that the attackers have access to the app.
Lets just say it not only resource burned me because this wasnt just a simple string of data encrypted with an encryption algo, but it would have resource burned anyone else who decided to have a go at decrypting it because of some of the methods I employed. I set out to defeat any automated brute force cracking with Amazon cloud/Bluffdale level of resource at their disposal. This could also apply to quantum computing, because in a way there are probably enough computing devices connected to the net to emulate a quantum computer in near realtime.
I turned their weakness into my advantage, but you would have had to have thought out of the box.
I cant go into any more details, its as simple as that, so you can say what you like, but I'm not here to convince you, but I will say current internationally recognised encryption methods are just lazy imo.
Edit. The difference with the resource burn though is I would get paid anyone else would be needing more tax dollars, so over time it could have been possible to see who was spooking on the reports because of their actions.
Alas, frankly, you sound like a crank.
It's exceptionally easy for a person to devise an encryption system they can't crack. It's exceptionally hard to devise an encryption system others can't crack.
That's why generally cryptosystems are only seen as trustworthy when they have been out in the open and been attacked---without success---by many smart people with a track record of breaking cryptosystems.
Eg do you know how differential cryptanalysis works? Or linear cryptanalysis?
Or assuming you know about RSA, would you be able to figure out which classes of keys are deemed weak without looking it up? (Ie can you repeat this attack?)
Do you know which existing cryptographic systems are vulnerable to quantum computers? And which are not? And why?
It's also a great optimization criteria to use to position yourself for checkmate.
Monopolies, countries...
Anti-price gouging regulation makes it harder for companies to benefit from disaster preparedness.
What we didn’t do enough is take the geopolitical landscape into this equation (or a potential pandemic, for that matter), which I hope changes after recent developments.
I blame the governments mostly for this, I completely understand the businesses needing to do what’s best for business.
How do you blame government for businesses running around with planning models that miss wars and pandemics, the two most common causes of ruin and disruption for the entire duration of human history?
Businesses/corps come and go ... the Nation of $nation only tends to do so on the next timescale up. When their actually looking out for systemic blindspots no one else is, and not pandering to the elite.
Personally I think the solution is for governments to have a contingency plan, and opposed to forcing any individual business to do anything, but if we did want businesses to change their behavior, it's definitely a government issue.
Unless somehow "buy my product , it's more expensive because our business hedges against war and pandemics" works in advertising (eco-friendly seems to get some traction, so maybe?)
Governments often assume (wrongly) that businesses have incentives to handle long-term risks, since they want to exist for a long time and remain profitable. The reality though is most are more focused on their share price and dividend than handling strategic risks.
do physicists assume frictionless surfaces and perfectly elastic collisions? yes when they're explaining the basics of Newton's Laws, but they also develop theories and models for friction, etc.
Same with economists, they study economies and do their best to come up with complete models. Are they perfect? no. Do they know more about economies than anybody else? yes.
What makes you think economics makes that assumption? The economics literature is full of papers investigating various kinds of market imperfections. (Mostly because all the papers involving perfect markets have already been written. It's publish or perish in academia after all.)
People have far too simplistic models of how things work, this is the consequence of a lack of understanding and shortsightedness
As an example: Bangladesh has been on a multi-decade long streak of excellent economic growth. Mostly thanks to the textile industry. Regular people are better off.
> In last decade, poverty dropped by around one third with significant improvement in human development index, literacy, life expectancy and per capita food consumption. With economy growing close to 6% per year, more than 15 million people have moved out of poverty since 1992.[64]
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Bangladesh#Modern_B...
Though it wouldn't call it a wealth transfer. It's wealth creation in both Bangladesh and their customers and investors.
Some argue that industrialization under these conditions is not good for the countries and people being exploited for their labor
Life is better in Bangladesh now than it used to be. By a lot.
There are many communities whose opinions and perspectives we just seem to ignore and we trust the "western" institutions who make publications on such matters
I'm not talking about how "wealthy" a community is in terms of material gains or technological improvements.
Communities see changes in their fundamental way of life due to industrialization which impacts their relationships with each other and their natural environments which, on average, seem to be worse than what they were doing before.
All of this industrialization comes from people wanting more profit, and we see working conditions and level of pay that would be unacceptable in the US but people write it off as being "okay" because "they're a developing nation" or "its a third world country" when the real reason is greed and a desire to skirt local regulations.
At least it does not seem to involve any conventional use of the word business.
> Business are still run by people. Nobody was forced to see someone else doing something shitty and then say "well I just need to be a bigger asshole than that guy! Must be okay 'cause it's not illegal"
I think that would be a good start
The blame here lies solely on society and the politicians it elects. There is no other solution where individual business owners can be expected to take on societal problems.
So then, the MBA just has to hate the factory. After all, that was where everybody used to get their wage.
Believe it or not, that's often the real reason we shut down, people just blame it on cost savings for pride.
This technology isn't easy. Notice how far China is behind despite massive investments. Sometimes we just don't have the tech. But it's okay, TSMC and friends will bring it here.
> You saved some sprints but invalidated the purpose of the project. Very agile.
You could try to become totally autarkic, but then you have to support a national semiconductor industry along with every industry it relies upon indefinitely, while foreign semiconductor companies won't be encumbered by restrictions to purchase every component for their process from within your country; they, at least, will have the option to go with the cheapest or the best options. And so, if you want your national semiconductor industry's chips to actually be used, you have to provide incentives for that, too, and/or require domestic electronics companies to use their chips. Then, since you're making domestic electronics companies uncompetitive, you have to incent consumers to purchase those electronics, ban or heavily tax foreign electronics...
In a modern, globalised economy, it seems to me the only way to have a semiconductor industry that isn't vulnerable to these sorts of problems is full top-down control of a substantial chunk of the economy.
The components necessary to manufacture them? Much more difficult. And remember, any encumbrance you put on Intel provides a competitive advantage for TSMC.
The other issue is if you require 10% of semiconductors to be made in the US, and 10% of their components likewise, that only leaves you with 1% of the semiconductor capacity you need if you really need to become autarkic. And that's only considering first order dependencies; what about the components needed for the components you need?
Now, even ignoring that, consider if Intel has to make 10% of its chips using machines and components made in America. Say ASML makes the best photolithography machines in the world. Some other foreign company makes the best of another machine in the world. And so on. So Intel has to manufacture 10% of its chips using subpar equipment. Who's going to buy those chips? If electronics need better chips, can you replace them with these in a pinch?
You either need to fully commit, or else it's pointless to begin with.
> call him an idiot!
And you were and still are right to do that!
You'll note that in his debates, Biden took some lines almost directly out of Trump's playbook regarding those subjects (made to sound more polite of course), and in fact many of Trump's policies and executive orders, Biden has kept in place. Because they're having a positive effect. We just needed someone with balls like Trump to finally enact them.
Big Tech, China, offshoring, and globalism can shove it. The tides are finally turning. If there's one good thing to come out of Trump's presidency, it's this!
It took Trump yelling about it from the rooftops for over 5 years, and getting over half the population as passionate about it as he was, and then Trump actually doing things about it while in office, for things to actually happen and be set in motion.
You also don't account for the fact that there may have been a negative change in trajectory of that particular metric if not for Trump's policies and executive actions.
But, again, he absolutely did do things about it, these are all well documented. (As is the change in trajectory of public opinion towards offshoring thanks to Trump promoting them heavily.)
Steel is important but it’s not similar at all to something like Taiwan’s unique situation
https://www.photonicsonline.com/doc/how-one-light-source-man...
https://www.gigaphoton.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017_E...
I expect that neon price spikes this time are going to impact laser users less than they initially did back in 2015 since lasers now require less fresh neon.
But despots don't act for the sake of the people's will, so it's not easy to account for that.
But anyways most markets are emergent, not planned strategically .
The problem is WW1 wasn't one big "let's go to war" like Hitler and WW2, WW1 was the effects of hundreds of little consequences, edge cases, and constraints upon individuals and nations that interacted in a way no one could see. I believe the same thing will happen again, and it will probably come as a result of a Pakistani-Indian conflict or something from Iran. It isn't something anyone can see right now, but its coming, just like no one would've guessed the assassination of an Archduke would lead to 10 million dead across Europe, in the same way it will be something we can't determine right now that will push upon the constraints, agreements and edge cases to push us towards another global war.
There could be 100s of companies selling NEON gas, but only a handful is producing NEON gas purified to the degree required by semiconductor industry.
In this case, it seems only one is supplying semiconductors
Also, China's posturing is not just defensive but has an offensive side as well, as seen by the naval bases it has been trying to build across the world, even in Africa.
As of today, Beijing has just one overseas military base in Djibouti – a country which also hosts American, French, Italian and Japanese military bases, some of which also host British, German and Spanish troops. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/08/31/chinas-overseas-milita...
Rings a bell, Russians were doing it on Baltic sea for over a decade, and president of Estonia was called paranoiac
100 years of industrialization and worker movements gutted, abandoned, and disassembled with the help of our two-faced neo-liberal[0] government.
And for what? 40 years of profit for the 1%? And then encountering the fact that we have outsourced ourselves into a profound strategic weakness in the international markets.
0: As in: Both sides, globalization. Not as in Dem vs Republican.
And Xi moving on Taiwan at the start of increased activities in Ukraine was the thing feared the most. What a shitshow it would be if China invaded Taiwan. The pandemic shortages would pale in comparison.
Not disagreeing with you, but I think people generally incorrectly assume that a dictator with absolute power thinks and acts rationally.
Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Absolute power has no direct causal bearing on human intelligence. It does not make you more irrational or more rational.
There are plenty of examples of good kings, bad kings, good emperors and bad emperors throughout history both for ancient china and plenty of other civilizations. Modern China, despite all the negative press, has done plenty of rational things in order to get toe to toe with the US as both a military and economic rival.
I think the negative connotation associated with the word dictator paints anyone labeled with it in a biased light. Not saying anything bad or good about pooh bear in general. Whatever that man is, him being a dictator is not a causal origin of his current character.
People, including leaders, are influenced by those around them.
A sane leader has advisors, which they trust to provide rational arguments, which sometimes may differ from their own.
A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions. So, there is no one to provide a counter argument to the dictator's own viewpoints and makes them believe in their supreme power. This is what makes them dangerous and act irrationally.
Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
You say this asa if it's axiomatically true. It's not. This can happen. But it can also not happen.
>Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
In another thread, I have cited multiple historical and modern examples of where what you described did not happen. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281
a single person does not have the mental nor technological capacity to run everything. they must delegate. the way dictarships work is the dictator's subordinates, friends, whatever, must live in constant fear of each other, so they are incentivized to lie (or at least omit truths) to the dictator. a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship.
decisions based on falsehoods may look irrational from the outside.
of course, putin may very well be getting plain crazy. certainly no shortage of normal civilian russians admit it off the record.
Singapore is the first one that comes to mind.
See: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benevolent_dictatorship
Additionally monarchies are essentially old forms of dictatorship with slightly different customs and titles. It's one and the same and plenty of good kingdoms exist. I have PLENTY of examples:
The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt;
The Byzantine Emperors;
The Habsburg Monarchy in its various incarnations;
The Capetian Kings of France;
The Tsars;
The Tang, Ming and Qing - my three favorite Chinese dynasties;
The Incas.
Tibet it also an example. A little iffy this one, it's actually not benevolent but the West has definitely painted them as such to use as propaganda against China. Chinas actions against Tibet were quite horrific and wrong but even still... Tibet was not an example of a benevolent dictatorship... more of an example how a dictatorship can be PERCIEVED as benevolent and how your perceptions can be easily influenced. Tibet and China is an example of evil acting on evil to simplify the situation, but again I want to emphasize that the actual reality is not so black and white.
You may also want to look into the term enlightened absolutism.
Also China is an example of a benevolent dictatorship despite all the bad things they've done (TBH China is more of a mixed bag, and by mixed bag I mean both benevolent and self interested at the same time... but then again so is the US).
You cannot deny that the rise of China has been unprecedented. The amount of people lifted out of poverty at such a velocity has never been seen before in the history of human civilization. That is benevolence. While of course what is happening in Xinjiang is not benevolence; blinding yourself to the good because of the bad is irrational. You must acknowledge both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps can't be bothered to look for atrocities they've committed before 2010...
US has its share of bad stuff, too, but I never said they're benevolent. They're a democracy, which means the winner of a beauty contest is in power instead of somebody who took forcefully or has been gifted it. No good options here, but at least in the contest somebody actually wins.
Lifting an entire population out of poverty and into a 1st world status is benevolence at an unprecedented scale. It cannot be ignored.
Or perhaps you've bought on to the Chinese propaganda to justify Tibet's invasion, subsequent occupation and genocide of Tibetans by China.
And, China benevolent, oh please...
Just copying what I wrote earlier. This is benevolence on a scale huge scale.
You cannot pick and choose to define bullies and human rights' abusers as benevolent just because they benefited their preferred section of society.
Right just like how the US enslaved black people and put the Japanese in internment camps, slaughtered millions of civilians with nuclear bombs in world war 2, displaced entire societies of pacific islanders because of the same testing of nuclear bombs, killed thousands of Chinese Americans building railroad tracks...
The US has it's fair share of atrocities. Many of them on par with China if not Worse. Do these atrocities define a nation? No. No they do not. However they remain a part of the nations identity permanently.
It is the same with China. The atrocities do not define a nation that is far more complex then the black and white characterization you seem so adamant about maintaining. The benevolence of lifting an entire civilization out of poverty into first world status isn't just a "preferred section" of society. China is the most populous country in the world with 18.47% of all humans living in that country. It is a major achievement and more people would be suffering in the world right now if China didn't exist.
What's the preferred section of society in the US? White people? Come on man. You may not want to call China Benevolent but looking at the US and other countries, China is no more and no less benevolent then the other places.
The main point here is that "dictatorship" doesn't necessarily automatically mean a horrible regime of hitler level evil. Just like how it's hard to call the US purely good or purely evil it is the same with China.
Lack of constructive feedback paired with that all your thoughts including irrational ones are amplified through the echo chamber.
It's easy to get caught up with weird ideas (and the more power you have the weirder it might get because you have to solve more complex problems and have much more vast capabilities). If you don't have external feedback you need to be much more resilient to irrationality than under normal circumstances.
In fact there are multitudes of successful "dictatorships" throughout history. I cite many in another reply in this thread:
I'm not offended
I do like to argue. A better way to put it, is I like to talk to people and convince people on a viewpoint I truly believe in while at the same time I'm open to learning as well.
Whether someone agrees with me or not doesn't correlate with whether I'm right. That is the point. And I am right and you are wrong.
You view international politics from the microcosm of US news. The entire population of Asia which outnumbers the US population by a huge number has a more nuanced and complicated view of the situation.
Dismissing China as evil or putin as crazy is an oversimplification.
Think bigger.
I think you're wrong, I think you're angry, I think you're arguing in bad faith, and I believe multiple people/instances have been provided and you have yet to prove anything other than insolence when it comes to being "right".
Honestly, I don't even think you know what you're arguing anymore because you're all over the place. I never called China evil or Putin crazy so why are you putting words in my mouth that I never claimed? The original question is what makes dictators more irrational. If you can't understand the many answers you recieved, that is your problem, not mine. I'm going to bid you a farewell, have a wonderful day.
I didn't delete any comment. This is a lie. If you want to engage in conversation with me do it on good faith. Do not LIE.
>The fact that you asked such a silly question about dictators and than refuse to learn from any of the multiple answers shows that you are not open to honest or intellectual debate
Your post was flagged. And died. This happens when multiple people disagree and are offended by your post. I still chose to engage with you even though your post had offensive intent.
Additionally the amount of karma on my original post is 5. So 5+ more people agree with me. I'm assuming everyone who disagrees with me down voted.
If anything you're the one no one is siding with.
>I never called China evil or Putin crazy so why are you putting words in my mouth that I never claimed?
You never made the claim but your attitude made it seem like this was what you think. If I'm wrong then I take it back. Logically speaking though, you believe dictators are irrational. Which is equivalent to crazy. So essentially you think Russia and China are crazy because both countries are basically dictatorships. That is a logical deduction from what you implied.
So my statement still stands. China and Russia are examples of dictatorships that are much more complicated then the singular label of irrational. That's all.
> I'm going to bid you a farewell, have a wonderful day.
Why. You obviously don't like me. What's the purpose of wishing me a wonderful day after such accusations? Also what's the purpose of disengaging in the conversation? You said something with offensive intent, I'm still here. What's making you leave? Are you emotional?
We should only be worried about an attack if the the effects on commerce and military retaliation becomes negligible. That's when China will strike.
The CCP understands (or at least was predicting back with Jiang and Hu) that eventually China will democratize. Taiwan is a democracy right now. Democratic countries almost never re-unite into a single country. I can only name one instance of this happening in the last 70 years, and in some ways East Germany wasn't really a democracy yet.
The CCP knows that Taiwanese reunification will never really happen peacefully. Leaders will talk about it, they'll negotiate a bit, but then it won't happen because the status-quo is always more attractive. They know that their only chance at national reunification is now or in the next 10 years or so.
It's now or never. It has to happen by force or it will never happen. If China swallows Taiwan and then democratizes, that can be managed - a restive province can be placated and bought-off. But if China democratizes before reunification, then Taiwan is separate forever.
I do agree that to China, Taiwan isn't about TSMC. TSMC is the reason why the US cares about Taiwan but not the reason why China cares about it. If it was the main reasoning why doesn't China go after the Dutch? The dutch have ASML, which manufactures the more critical components involved with EUV lithography. But China never made a single move against ASML.
There is deep history between Taiwan and China, and it is this history that is the main reason why China eyes Taiwan. Think of it like if California rebelled and became a separate country from the US 50 years ago. How would the rest of the US think about California?
I agree completely. But if you're in the CCP, and a Chinese patriot, you understand that that makes peaceful Taiwanese reunification even less likely. Also, as long as Taiwan is defacto-independent, there's a terrible risk that they will declare themselves officially-independent. That would be a humiliating loss of face for the CCP and at the very least would probably precipitate a power struggle within the party.
There is deep history between Taiwan and China, and it is this history that is the main reason why China eyes Taiwan. Think of it like if California rebelled and became a separate country from the US 50 years ago. How would the rest of the US think about California?
Again, I completely agree.
Jokes aside, if that were to happen, the rest of the US wouldn't think "they belong with us whether they like it or not." It would take a significant government propaganda campaign to get Americans to be okay with forcibly reuniting a state like that.
They're fine burning the rest of the world's supply chain down as long as it leaves them a monopoly.
If I was Taiwan, or in other words a shareholder or OWNER of TSMC, I wouldn't want something I own being destroyed. I would rather fold into the new regime and keep my original ownership.
Makes sense.
Also violations of the air defense zone, though not meaningless, are not super important. The air defense zone covers a part of mainland China larger than Taiwan, as well as waters that might at least be considered international waters. News articles about that are pretty pointless.
Because the economics literature is quite clear that international trade is beneficial to all involved. It's what we insist that developing countries focus on exports when loaning them money. For many years, Taiwan has been the poster child that we point to when trying to change the ways of Cuba or Venezuela.
Are these principles so weak that we would allow a dictator who doesn't even have the support of his own people to shake them?
If you narrowly focus on economics, yes. But what are other consequences, outside of economics? By outsourcing everything, you lose control. You allow uncontrollable external factors to affect you. You open yourself to be blackmailed.
So in a way yes, those principles are weak because they are incomplete. They do not take into account the full range of possibilities that can happen in the real world.
Some supply chain instability is the result of allowing healthy economic activity especially when the modern goods we're talking about are immensely complex and require incredible specialization to reasonably manufacture.
Because if they don't, and the system collapses, then what?
In practice the principles don't matter too much. The reality is that industry has optimized for cost and converged on a small set of suppliers. The single points of failure introduced as a side-effect of this could certainly be exploited by a bad actor.
But what kind of trade? Not unrestricted - Taiwan itself used protectionism to grow its industries when they were not yet able to compete on the global market:
James K. Galbraith has stated that [..] " ... none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticis...
Maybe the literature is wrong?
lmao
Operation Iraqi Liberation. OIL.
What fits CHIP?