Take tech out of the equation and the US is pretty much on par with EU, and China and India are just burning the coal for everyone else.
Not at all obvious to me. Is there any particular measurable thing you're referring to, or is this just your personal feeling?
Look all around you and tech is everywhere, from apps to hail cabs to get groceries. Our lives are now so fully immersed and our decisions dictated by tech companies its fucking insane. That is a lot of power.
I don't really understand what you mean. While their reach is global, it's largely American companies that are creating the tech value, no?
China was wise to this trick already, which is why they've shielded themselves from the very beginning. Most countries haven't learned the lesson yet, but slowly the EU is waking up as well and pushing back.
The point was that exporting low-margin high-labor goods and importing high-margin low-labor goods with addictive properties and possibly even negative value is a bad deal for your economy. Especially if the latter could be trivially provided domestically, but isn't due to existing network effects, or shouldn't exist at all (in the case of addictive substances).
You're arguing against the import of very low margin labor-intensive physical goods. How did you get there? I have no idea.
No. I am arguing against the import of low margin labor-intensive physical using forced labor and resulting in actual harms
1. Actually harmful products being let in ([1, 2])
2. Decimation of local labor through unfair practices [3]
3. Actual slavery (forced labor) [4]
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/temu-children-clothes-contai...
[2] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/08/14/s...
[3] https://itif.org/publications/2022/11/21/how-to-mitigate-the...
[4] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicat...
But, uusshh, don't disturb the free market. That is until you start making high tech and quality vehicles and then we need to invent new words for such a free market.
Besides, you think India is doing great? China - now boasting an economy more than twice that of India's - absolutely lapped them despite India having a head-start in the 1950s. So if I was to respond to your bad-faith argument, that response would be that India should've adopted the Chinese model, not go back to "being a cluster of low-tech poor third-world villages". But all this is only weakly related to the point I was making with many other factors at play, so I don't even want to put that forward as a rebuke. We're completely off the rails here.
India has more ethnic, cultural and societal diversity within itself than the entirety of Europe, full with as much sectionalism and conflicts as one can imagine. It has only managed to remain a single nation with a lot, a LOT of compromises. Study deeper into the dynamics and you'll find the notion of "why don't they just emulate China?" to be as ridiculous as it gets.
P.S. I'm sorry for that unnecessary last sentence in my previous comment that (understandably) gave you the image that I'm being bad-faith or abrasive.
The companies it empowers or Microsoft's (global at the end of the day) shareholders?
The actual effect of this is far less than you think. While it's true there's some amount of "exporting" of emissions from rich countries to china/india, the effect is small. Consumption based emissions (ie. accounting for imports) for US is only 11% higher than territorial emissions. Meanwhile the difference for China is also 11% (in the opposite direction, of course).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...
For all the workers are living paycheck to paycheck, they are sitting on a gigantic monetizable pile of money.
Consider this: the most popular languages in YouTube videos are English and Spanish. And did you ever notice how most videos, when they talk about units, talk about Dollars, Miles, Inches, Pounds and Degrees Fahrenheit? That is why...
To be a wealthy YouTuber seems to mean catering to people in North America (the US specifically).
Part of the causality is the other way around: The largest language communities attract the most monetization. Europe being compartmented into 24+ languages is one reason that it’s harder to monetize.
Most of the English speaking world runs partly or fully on Metric.
...and there are many Australian YouTubers who talk about prices in US Dollars.
Once you notice this, it is hard to ignore the per capita disposable income argument. The disparity is wild when you run the numbers.
As for the currency unit, everyone knows what a USD is worth, much less than AUD or CAD or GBP or whatever. The reasons to use USD are the same as for language choice.
I am amenable to your second talking point. I still think my perspective is a useful model to consider. Not "right" in any absolute sense.
You can have 10000 dollars of monthly disposable income and be well above the global average. You can have 9999 dollar rent with only a single dollar left. A single basic peanut butter and jelly sandwich could cost 100 dollars. Your disposable income is still massively above the average. Your discretionary income would be very low, though.
If someone has the exact quote, I'd welcome it...
Anyway, the idea stuck with me. Anyone who wants to reject the point will have an easy time as it's such a broad claim, but I think it's worthy of reflecting on, and perilous to ignore.
There's a lot of ink splattered about technology these days, of course, but it's still rare enough that the larger picture of what's going on historically in terms of power structures is seriously reflected on.
Google should be reclassified under the equivalent of Dewey Decimal system publishers and magazine printers.
Netflix is a movie producer.
Adobe is an art supplies producer
Few companies today: apple, microsoft, etc qualify as tech.
There’s no natural law that says technical innovation must occur in NA, but due to contingent historical conditions, it is occurring here. Thus, the gains are being realized in the US stock market b/c it’s the one capitalizing the winners.
this is contradictory. profits are added value. if value is added globally, there are extra profits (likely as cost savings by other industries adopting tech)
Of course there are many successful tech co’s outside the US but (and I haven’t looked) I imagine the US tech stocks must overshadow every other countries tech sector.
US businesses more likely to work with US suppliers, US customers more likely to buy from US businesses, then those dominant domestic positions can be used to expand globally far easier than say a Spanish firm can expand into the US.
Staying out of whether or not the concentration is a problem at the national/international level, is there any realistic alternative short of massive protectionism a la China to force home-grown tech companies in other parts of the world?
America is NOT the largest market the EU is MUCH BIGGER. And it is not "America" that commercialises technology, but a small portion of California called The Valley.
https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-econ...
This argument could be made for many industries. E.g. Boeing and Airbus together control almost 100% of the global passenger jet market. "Passenger jet value creation is being experienced everywhere, but being monetized in the US and EU stock market."
US GDP is misleading in the sense that it increasingly includes a large portion of economic activity that isn't actually producing tangible wealth.
An analogy would be that if you remove employment activity from my household finances then our economic picture is bleak.
What's the USA's comparative advantage? Nukes and dollars. Demand for dollars and rent seeking via the post WWII global financial system. But G7 is no longer the only game in town. They have become the consumers while the rest of the world has become the producers.
Moreover, the leadership in China is fully aware of the macroeconomic situation and USA leadership doesn’t even appear to know how tariffs work.
The US is the global engine of the world because it has accepted to be very negative on NIIP. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_p...) China or the BRICS or Russia do not offer an alternative and not because of lack of technical capabilities; they just don't want to do it.
China can replace the US dollar "hegemony" in a few years. They keyword is can because they don't want to do it.
The US exports almost as much as China: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/exports/country...
Disagree. It's not just the nature of the technology itself but the whole ecosystem -- including VC and education -- in Sillicon Valley that develops cutting edge computer tech, plus generally looser business regulation in the US and a culture of greater optimism nationally, especially relative to EU.
Certainly having a unified market (not just in regulation, government, and currency but also linguistically) has helped too especially given the network/winner-take-all effects of tech you mention. Yes the nature of technology is part of it. But it's not everything. It's a whole gestalt.
I mean, consider where we are right now, who set it up, who hangs out there, etc.
Connecticut also lacks a big city with a big airport.
Of course they are also investing in their lithography equipment, but still, it's an insanely complex set of tools and know-how required that's backed by countless patents and well kept secrets.
If China played nice with America.. there's no problem.
India has 19 nuclear reactors it is planning to complete by 2030. 7 under construction now to be completed by 2026.
Most of the rest are in China so the statement I was responding to is doubly meaningless.