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Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

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Seems like there is a lot of dislike of this comment but not a lot of discussion about. Is it not true that china is dominating here? Or that this is becoming the norm? Isn't the instant negative reaction to this comment the exact problem? Maybe if we decided to get better instead of get mad we would see articles about the west dominating more often.

Comments often follow a u-curve, where immediate downvotes are countered after a few minutes. I suspect the cause is at least in part people directly downvoting from the https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments page

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what was the mistake? it seems like the cards are stacked against anyone trying to build in the USA vs China.

The guidelines ask us to avoid commenting like this:

Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Besides, I can't see many mentions of the word Tesla in this thread. Just seems more of a (false) stereotype than reality.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It’s apparent that the USA is falling deeply behind on all of these things. I look at the rest of my life now as the final days in Babylon and try to still enjoy going down in the sinking ship. I vote to stop it, but my votes haven’t mattered in a long time. It’s important to still do them anyway.

> my votes haven’t mattered in a long time

you vote mattered. It's just that there are more people who didn't vote the way you wanted them. But that's OK, because this is how it is supposed to work.

At least, in theory.

in theory the probability of your vote mattering is about as high as winning the lottery

mattering doesn't mean you get what you wanted/voted for. Mattering means your vote was counted among the hundreds of millions, and the ultimate consensus reached, and the minority voters have accept the result of the majority voters.

I think people have (recently at least) mistakenly believed that democracy means your vote is a demand to be fulfilled, and if it isn't, then democracy is failing.

There isn't a major political party in the USA willing to undergo the reforms needed to compete.

I don't know what voting does, other than produce a false air of approval around the administration. I think that if voter turnout was low enough, it would speak for itself and encourage more radical political strategy.

One party is more open-minded about it, and ready to use their brains.

The USSR was considered by many prominent intellectuals a valid counterpoint to the Western capitalist structure, up until the moment it collapsed, and then it wasn't true socialism. Some humbleness should be in order when considering imperfect knowledge

Perhaps competition in the cold war reinvigorated the USA or expedited the fall of Soviet Union by forcing them into expensive competition?

Imagine a boat has a hole in it, and is sinking. Some of the crew-members make a big deal about it, and run a campaign to plug the hole and bail the water out. In the end, it does not sink and the remaining crewmembers conclude that it was not a big deal and that the campaign was unnecessary. It is a survivor's bias.

Even a small hole, if left unplugged, will eventually sink a ship. Likewise, some types of systematic problems in a country (that are not self-solving or naturally limited) will eventually ruin it if not addressed directly.

> expedited the fall of Soviet Union by forcing them into expensive competition?

Nobody forced the Soviet Union into anything. I think the soviet leaders knew that the system in the West AT THAT TIME was simply better in all ways imaginable and the comunism utterly failed at its mission -- the workers in the West were enjoying a much much better life that those in communism, and having lost that ideological space, they thought they could override common sense on the battle field -- surely, if you win the space race, more olympic gold medals or on the battlefield, then communism actually won?

Cold War involved a lot of imperfect knowledge - until Gorbachev, soviet leaders were utterly convinced that USA plans to attack first. On one hand, it was paranoia, on the other hand, US intelligence actions including gleeful setup of mass scale murder in Indonesia reinvigorated that belief.

> Nobody forced the Soviet Union into anything

What do you think the cold war was exactly?

> Even a small hole, if left unplugged, will eventually sink a ship. Likewise, some types of systematic problems in a country (that are not self-solving or naturally limited) will eventually ruin it if not addressed directly.

Not necessarily. Whether it sinks depends on three things: hole location, rate of flooding, and watertight compartment design.

What’s an example of a systematic (systemic?) problem that will ruin a country if left unsolved?

I think mostly in a budgetary sense: Corruption, tax evasion. You can't just have a flow of wealth into some bureaucracy that goes unchecked, because the power the bureaucracy has to extract even more wealth increases over time. In the USA, the military industrial complex is the biggest example of this, the general self-licking ice cream cone.

I don't think it depends on hole location or rate of flooding. If the rate is greater than zero, and if the second derivative is non-negative (i.e. it isn't self regulating, the rate of loss itself does not decrease over time like a self-healing wound) then eventually it will flood. If the second derivative is zero, and the hole is very small relative to the size of the ship, it will take a while.

Our government is not well compartmentalized. The evolution of the US government has trended towards increasing federal over state power (for some good reasons). Maybe programs like social security are compartmentalized in the sense that if they collapse, they don't bring down other sectors of government.

> The USSR

First, China is nothing like the USSR economically and the West is NOTING like the old capitalist West in any regard. Second, the ideological capitalism of the West during the Cold War is not what actually brought prosperity to the masses, I think it was just the fear of comunism that kept the elites at bay and willing to give some scraps to the unwashed masses.

China is full of Potemkin villages. They strategically invest huge resources into areas the West finds politically advantageous, but somehow only grow exactly the 5% they say is required. It’s had to square the circle when so much is obviously nonsense

China has been largely capitalist since the late 1980s. Economically, it's similar to many Western countries—in fact, its government and welfare spending is lower than the Western average. Where it differs dramatically is in its political structure (one-party state versus democracy).

I would say the primary difference is that the state supersedes capital, rather than the other way around. The Chinese state permits capitalism, but only when it's to the benefit of China's economy and wellbeing.

So, for instance they just banned sports betting outright, as it's not productive or contributing to the economy.

The state runs the "commanding heights" of the economy, the banks, and directs investment, coordinates with industry. Of course it invests in infrastructure development.

This honestly isn't a discussion about governmental systems. The US and 'western nations' have built big things and pushed for big things many times in the past and can do it again. We pump trillions in subsidies and direct funding into 'strategic' resources that are flat out bad policy and the people pushing that know it. This is a question of actual people making obviously bad decisions and not being held responsible for the obviously bad outcomes. I hope that the rise of china gives us the correct motivation. The motivation to do more, to be honest and to start competing instead of just using our weight to put up barriers so we don't have to compete. The first step is making decisions backed by evidence and understanding and not emotion and appeals to fear. Basically, we need to grow up and start putting in the work again.

China does not allow the West to compete in their market. If you want to complain about artificial barriers, ask why Google can’t get a search engine there

> intelligent investment

I would not call highly disposable and cheap heavy duty vehicles an "intelligent investment." It's headline chasing and there's always very little tying their touted efforts to any actual improvements in the environment our economic outcomes.

Why? Heavy duty trucks are often disposable, they wear out quickly. Mining trucks are probably the worst example.

I would not know, here were I live I see most of the heavy duty trucks (owned by small companies at least) with 10-15+ years of service, looking at the license plates.

That depends on how you define "heavy duty". Cement trucks and dump trucks rarely last more than a few years before they need major repairs of transmission and suspension. The frame itself might last more, around 10 years.

I define them as trucks that go and move/carry rocks, dirt, bricks, sand, heavy construction material around, generally to build houses. I'm in Europe, so houses are made of bricks and concrete.

I agree that mining is probably the worst of it, but trucks usually last a decade and a couple million kilometers, after which they’re shipped off to Africa or the Middle East where they’re kept on the road for much longer.

China imports most of its oil. With EVs China needs to import less oil, this works really well for their national security. Even if the environmental benefit was zero (and it isn’t), this would still be the best choice for them and much of the world that doesn’t produce much oil. It isn’t really complicated.

Yup, if Taiwan is attacked and the straits at Indonesia are denied to Chinese merchant vessels, every EV is a net plus for the wartime economy.

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