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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

> the US has “abdicated its longstanding role as a leader in global health and humanitarian response.”

It’s interesting to note that in the end, there was no one else coming: we were it. A large amount of disease containment and control was just fronted by the United States. As the US declines, it’s not that a new leader will come in. It’s not that the Chinese century will have their massive industrial engine put to the tasks that America put hers to. It’s just that things won’t get done.

Sobering, really, that despite all the ascendance of new powers (who do not yet share the norms) and the noble aims of the old (who are too weak), one year after the US left no one has filled the gap.

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I think you are reading the situation incorrectly. The US was previously the center of international collaboration for science and technology, and that took decades to establish.

The organization has been burnt down in 12 months, but the expertise still exists. There are signs that the international community will finally start working on climate change now that the US has pulled out of the treaties. The Chinese are a decade ahead of the west when it comes to building cars.

The WHO admits they screwed this outbreak handling up badly, but, by my understanding, they screwed up less than the US did in Wuhan in 2019, and they’re exhibiting the will to improve instead of shifting blame (remember all the “investigations” of the Chinese biological weapons research programs that were co-funded and co-operated by the US with federal funds?)

I think we’re going to see some more dark years before a one-two punch that improves things dramatically:

1) international organizations step up to fill the vacuum the US left

2) After the 2026-2028 new Dust Bowl / Great Depression the US is heading into, voters (state and federal) in the US are going to demand progressive and populist candidates that will actually attempt to put the US back on competitive economic footing.

  > The Chinese are a decade ahead of the west when it comes to building cars.

Is this true? From years of watching Top Gear any Chinese car that was tested was laughably bad.

For EVs, yes, absolutely

Yip, outside the US BYD cars are absolutely everywhere, pretty awesome cars, and crazy cheap - like < $15k. Apparently < $10k within China itself.

The price is not the important part, it basically doesn't matter. On top of subsidies and government policy aiming to undermine manufacturing in EU and elsewhere, domestic consumption in PRC is laughably low and government policies act to transfer wealth from households to manufacturing. Locals won't buy the supply, PRC literally has to get these cars somewhere or trash them.

Now if those cars are actually good, price independent, then that would be worth mentioning.

Do you have any references for your statements?

The majority of car sales in China are EVs (which is more than the UK, the EU and the US) so locals are buying the supply right now.

Reference: https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales

Sure.

China domestic consumption is laughably low: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household... (lower than Kosovo, Sri Lanka, lower than world average) https://bst-europe.eu/economy-security-trade/more-and-more-w...

Locals won't buy EV supply: https://asia.nikkei.com/business/automobiles/china-s-domesti... https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/

The articles you provided were relatively light on relevant facts, but did cite two important values - 60% of all vehicles purchased in China are now EVs, and domestic sales of such are about 1.4 million per month. The data they conspicuously left out is, well how many EVs are sold elsewhere per month? In the US, ostensibly the largest consumer market in the world, the figure is 0.082 million per month. [1]

Even if we scale US sales to adjust for population differences, the Chinese are picking up electric vehicles at a dramatically higher rate - and the single highest in the world. And this is almost certainly due to companies like BYD and others providing quality electric vehicles at prices below even cheap ICE vehicles.

[1] - https://www.anl.gov/esia/light-duty-electric-drive-vehicles-...

How is it relevant how many EVs are sold in the US? The country obviously prefers internal combustion engines.

I am saying that PRC is a command economy, EV production is strongly subsidized, no labor protection, falling domestic sales and crazy low domestic consumption in general, a lot of excess of EVs to the extent that they are trashed instead of resold, and so comparing EVs by price to European EVs is silly. Nothing you say contradicts me.

Yes Chinese buy lots of EV so what? And if you mistake this for choice or how great Chinese EVs are, I have news for you. https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/bogof666/shanghai-car-licens... https://www.cpopartners.com/chinas-green-push-shanghai-2025-...

Your entire premise was that domestic consumption of EVs in China is low, "laughably low" as you put it. That is an absurd statement when they have, by a very wide margin, the highest consumption rate in the world not only as a whole, but even per capita - at least relative to major economies. If you want to argue that global EV consumption rates are low then that's an entirely different topic.

Did you see my link that shows per capita household consumption in PRC lower than world average and places like Kosovo or Sri Lanka?

Here's a relevant article https://www.ft.com/content/f294be55-98c4-48f0-abce-9041ed236...

> If you want to argue that global EV consumption rates are low

No. Do you read my comments? I argue China subsidizes production of more and more EVs and buys less and less domestically, so they will be sold at unfair prices and comparing them by price to European EVs is pointless.

Chinese nominal consumption rates are low because prices remain low in China, far lower than PPP accounts for. Being able to buy a new EV for < $10k there is not some outlier, but a component of their overall economy where a single dollar goes way further than pretty much anywhere in the world. They're the largest economy in the world now and have a cost of living less than half the global median. They are very much like the US was in the 50s-60s, in a variety of different ways.

Beyond this, you have to keep in mind that overly simplified explanations for their successes fail to a very simple sniff test. If you could achieve what China is achieving with e.g. subsidization then every single country in the world would be doing exactly that, not the least of which being the US. Most Western economies are drowning in debt with GDPs being increasingly farcically propped up by government spending, yet we have, relative to China, less than nothing to show for it. We get all the negative consequences, but none of the benefits, at least not for the common man.

> Chinese nominal consumption rates are low because prices remain low in China

Personally been to countries with higher consumption than China and lower prices, so nope.

> If you could achieve what China is achieving

If you mean "heading towards an economic catastrophe" then sure. Suppressing domestic consumption is catching up with them.

Are you seriously pointing at western country government spending while talking about PRC? That's funny.

China's GDP to debt ratio is lower than the US' while continuing to have a rapidly growing economy, whereas US growth is not only significantly less but trending downward. About 17% of Chinese GDP is accounted for by government spending, in the US it's now up to 36%. And bond yields for China are dramatically lower than in the US, meaning all of their debt also comes way cheaper.

Claiming they're headed for economic catastrophe is rather the same sort of claim as you were making above - okay, they're headed for economic catastrophe but have some of the best economic metrics relative to other major economic powers, in much the same way that they have "laughably low" consumption of EVs yet purchase more EVs than anywhere else in the world.

This is not the best metrics for many reasons, and the actual spending is more than 30% (with higher share going to manufacturing vs. households compared to western countries), and government deficit relative to GDP is higher than in the US, but we go way off topic. I am glad you agree that comparing Chinese EVs by price to European ones is pointless though.

These are not numbers solely from China, they are measured by third parties. They're certainly at least as reliable as the numbers I'm citing for the US.

And the entire point here is that comparing Chinese to European EVs by price is completely reasonable. There's a reason that Chinese EVs are taking over the world and European EVs are essentially unheard of, and price is definitely a big part of that.

China is, again, very much like the US in the 50s-60s - a complete manufacturing behemoth with a tiny cost of living and tremendous economic opportunity which all adds up to creating an amazing situation for people (and the world at large). They just need to avoid the trap the US fell into some decades later.

> There's a reason that Chinese EVs are taking over the world and European EVs are essentially unheard of, and price is definitely a big part of that

Sorry can't take this seriously anymore. By your logic if I give you a shitty laptop for $1 because I would literally have to trash it otherwise you therefore say it's 1000000% better than a Macbook because it's so cheap. Pretty much says it all.

BYDs aren't just cheap, they're also great cars. Western economies have become extremely dysfunctional, probably in large part due to everything being run by bottom feeder MBAs who can't see beyond the tip of their noses. It's not only possible to have cheap+good, but I think ultimately necessary for a healthy economy.

If you are not comparing by price then what's the point of this? I only replied "don't compare by price" because it seems like the original comment was doing it and it is a very common mistake. If you are correctly comparing a cheap Chinese car with an expensive EU car then you are not making that mistake.

I still don't get what you're trying to argue. Price obviously matters. If two cars offer even remotely comparable value and one is priced at $10k and the other is priced at $50k then the latter is going to play basically no role in the global market, or even domestic if our $10k car isn't banned.

We might look at something like Aston Martin. They make great cars, but they're very expensive and not that much nicer than just a 'regular' car. As a result, the company is now on the verge of bankruptcy. And BYD (and Chinese companies more generally) are essentially doing the same thing to those 'regular' cars that they did to Aston Martin, to say nothing of other EVs. If the West can't relearn how to produce cheap + high quality, then we will have no role in the economy of the future, at least not if China maintains on its current trajectory.

Maybe I'm dating myself, but I remember when the same was said of Japanese cars.

First we laughed at them, then we fought them, then they won, then we solved the problem with protectionist tariffs.

Trump is the populist candidate elected to put the US back on competitive economic footing.

His economic policy has way more overlap with Bernie's than people tend to understand. Both believe immigration lowers wages, and both believe tariffs are imperative (you have to dig back to pre-2017 talk from Bernie, he changed his website/talking points after Trump won).

Edit: People struggle so hard with politics because everyone is totally blinded by there side. Here are populist things Trump has done/trying to do

- remove taxes on tips

- implement tariffs on foreign goods

- implement strict immigration policy (note sanders wanted a pathway to citizenship, he did not want an open border, and he never addressed how he would handle millions showing up at the border)

- block corporate landlords from single family home ownership

- create a government funded college level education program to get free bachelor degrees.

- take government ownership stake in large American companies (us steel, intel)

- cap interest rates on credit cards

- lower central bank interest rates

- de-criminalizing drugs, reschedule marijuana

- pro crypto

- pro prediction markets

Guys, you can hate Trump, you can accurately access he isn't intelligent or competent, criticize his brutish approach, but if you cannot recognize he is a populist, you are objectively lost-in-the-sauce.

I sorta doubt Bernie would've been causing the insane tariff chaos that Trump is constantly doing. How it's done matters immensely.

You are right, but competent populist or incompetent populist is still populist.

You're finding somethere where nothing exists on the basis of semantics. Donald Trump is not a populist and he stated economic policy is simply "stated". Society just has become so trusting that someone can go about bald-faced lying about their beliefs and actions, while doing the opposite, without consequence.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are on polar opposite ends of ideologies.

Bernie Sanders has a lifetime record of integrity, working to fairly distribute wealth, and good and transparent governance.

Donald Trump has a lifetime record of bankruptcies, fraud convictions, lying about his policies for the working while governing for the richest people, using government to enrich himself, and using government to hide his misdeeds and shield himself and his business partners from accountability. Donald Trump says he is many things he is not, and simply believing the words that come out of his mouth is being gullible.

I am not even a Bernie Sanders supporter.

Do you know what populism is, or do you think you know what populism is because you're inferring it from random social media posts?

Since you asked, I do.

There's a matter of debate as to what populism is. And on both ends of that debate are Trump and Sanders.

Sanders is the archetype of an ideological populist, related to socialism, and he believes in governing for the popular good, it is why he is an independent. He's a throwback to early 20th century social programs. It is relatively noble and good. He wants fair redistribution of wealth. He wants to remove wealth's influence from the democratic process. He has a lifetime of track record and governance as proof.

Trump is the archetype of the "thin center" populist. He has no real driving philosophy of governance, and demagogues under the banner of populism. He panders to the religious right even though he can't name a book of the Bible. He panders to the nationalists and bigots. He panders to patriots. And he sets up his opposition, regardless of truth, as the opposite of those things.

Trump is a populist in the way the Goebbels set Hitler up as a populist (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/making-a-l..., https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/1934-nazi-pa..., and https://museums.nuernberg.de/documentation-center/topics/nat...). That is to say, he is not one at all, he just lies about it to exploit division.

edit: we're just talking past each other. Bernie Sanders is a left wing populist. Ron Paul is a right wing populist. Massie is a right wing populist. My point is that Trump is simply a fake populist. He says populist things and doesn't believe or act on them for the most part. He's simply a kleptocrat with autocratic tendencies.

No, there isn't really much debate, but definitely a lot of debate between left wing and right wing populism, which seems to be what you are stuck on.

It seems like I'm trying to tell you he is a populist, and you are trying to tell me his a bad person/bad leader. Which is true, but orthogonal to populism.

But if it helps, in my original comment I laid out many of Trump's populist policies. Ironically many of these are shared with Bernie, or if they had originated with Bernie, would have been celebrated.

Remember many Bernie bros went to trump in 2016, because Hilary's list of policies looks nothing like the one I laid out above.

I think you're right. People have been fooled into thinking he's a populist. He uses some populist trappings but look, for example, what he's done about Epstein: he's running interference for billionaires, contradicting what he promised to do. His bombing of Iran is not populist, either.

Since when was Thomas Massie a populist?

And yet the economy outside the great AI bubble is continuing to slow down. The rest of the world doesn't want our stuff. We make uncompetitive products.

My own megacorp is continuing to build mass manufacturing capacity in Europe, specifically because tariffs are causing hassles for US import and export, and our EU buyers are demanding EU made after the bull decided to destroy all diplomatic relations built the last few decades.

Support for anything Trump in this context is completely detached from reality. Unhinged.

I don't think parent was praising Trump, neither directly nor indirectly by praising populism.

Whether you believe in immigration reform or that we need tariffs to protect domestic industries or not, Trump executed both in the absolute worst way possible. And destroying USAID, threatening to take Greenland by force, constantly threatening to pull out of NATO, abducting the leader of another country, and invading Iran with almost no preparation or planning were not things Bernie would have done.

Just specific to tariffs, if you are a US company that wants to setup domestic manufacturing you have no idea what the situation will be next week much less several years from now. The chaos isn’t good for anyone but Trump. The rule of law is as much about stability as it is freedom.

>Trump is the populist candidate elected to put the US back on competitive economic footing

The US is (and was when he was elected) something of an economic miracle, so if that was the reason, it was certainly misguided. The one economic issue that you could have pointed to was the US national debt, which Trump increased significantly in his first term and is now just exploding his second, so if that was the reason, it was certainly a bad idea.

The US is an economic miracle for white collar workers.

For blue collar it's been nothing but off-shoring, downsizing, and shutting down for 50 years now. Those are the people who elected Trump.

That's why he goes so hard on tariffs (protect industry prices) and immigration (protect worker pay leverage). Both of which are very populist

> The WHO admits they screwed this outbreak handling up badly

Uhhh no? How did they screw up? They were notified late, and then they did what they were supposed to do.

Yet it isn't fair to people that rely on such assistance to drop it without a plan to substitute the assistance provider. It was all done overnight. One day you had outposts serving people in need, the other they had their doors closed.

So don't act like the world should be thankful for all the US has done when it pulls the plug in such a way that is maybe more devastating than having done nothing, because at least nothing would have left the spot for someone else to have risen to the occasion. Maybe this time though without using people's basic needs to create a political tool to be used opportunitistically.

The world has never been thankful for the positive things the US has done. The only thing it ever garnered were the briefest of superficial nods. China gets drastically more respect with their approach than the US ever has, while doing a tiny fraction of the good.

The US saved tens of millions of Russians from starvation a century ago. Culturally they have absolutely no clue about that, they're entirely oblivious in terms of their own history. The good deeds never garnered the US any positive credit. Only the bad deeds garner the US bad credit aplenty.

You do good things because they are good, not to be thanked. It's so bizarre to frame saving lives as something that requires reciprocation.

I want my country to pay for these programs because they save lives and my country is rich enough to afford it. The way people talk about this stuff so amorally is incredibly off-putting.

The idea that people did not thank the US is laughable.

I have literally met Japanese people who have been thankful to the US for dropping nukes on them while pissing themselves about North Korea having missiles. The difference is that they perceived the US as an enlightened hegemony, and this is in part because of the relative pennies spent on Africa.

Incidentally, There is an animated series called Gasaraki with an endearingly simplistic and worshipful view of the US that aligns with how they viewed the US, especially at the end.

Good luck with AI hunter killers replacing good will.

When you constantly get villainized for being involved, that makes it a lot harder to justify to the populace that these things are worth doing. People actually do listen, but not always in the way one intended. At this point, is it any wonder that much of the populace is now convinced that non-involvement is the moral choice? (And I say this as someone who fears this state of affairs)

>When you constantly get villainized for being involved

The vagueness of "being involved" is doing a lot of work in your comment. How often is the US vilified for these humanitarian programs and why should we pay attention to anyone who vilifies something that is obviously doing good in the world?

It is doing a lot of work. People who vilify the US rarely bother to make the distinction, to acknowledge the good (and the ones who do get crowded out). Human nature is not that forgiving.

You have underestimated the soft power that US has by being the leader of the world. Now with more isolationism, things will change and that soft power will deteriorize over time. Who knows what will come next but definitely the US cannot project its soft power like before.

> Sobering, really, that despite all the ascendance of new powers (who do not yet share the norms) and the noble aims of the old (who are too weak), one year after the US left no one has filled the gap.

One year isn't a lot of time to fill a gap that was previously filled by decades of hard work.

Maybe if the US had had a transition plan, other competent and capable countries could have better filled the gap.

I can't get my roof replaced in less than a year. These things take time .

You are discounting the notion that other powers have something to gain by letting the US own this fuckup a bit more before reacting

And you are discounting the notion that most of those other powers existed before the US. China did. Europe did. Ottoman empire/islam did. They didn't help. Where are the signs they've changed?

> As the US declines, it’s not that a new leader will come in.

What's about EU? EU is bigger than the USA in total population and it has comparable if not larger total GDP. Why did not they step in where USA failed?

The US has about a 50% higher gdp, while having 30% less population. Not only this, but the EU can barely fund it's military obligations, let alone others. You frame it as the US failing, but I think it's more the US winning since they didn't really lose anything. I would argue they gained, since now the EU and it's competitors are having to spend money to solve things like this, and the EU and Asia are far closer to Ebola outbreaks and spreading due to population movements than the US is.

Why should the US fund some people in Africa who can't control the outbreak of a very easily contained disease, instead of it's own people.

> the EU can barely fund it's military obligations

The EU funds it's military just fine. You're upset because of the EU's obligations, which are non-binding and demanded by the US (who isn't in the EU).

> Why should the US fund some people in Africa

Because it's cheap, and the knock-on effects save American lives? It worked during the last Ebola outbreak, why do you think it would stop working now?

The US was a force for good in the world. There may be a million counterpoints but contemporary American was and still barely is a massive win for the world.

China is there when there is money to make or resources to grab, but in the last decades never helped any one else than themselves.

Lol.

The old system recognized that you need an alive world to exploit, financially and through debt. The new system is hoping to rule through raw power because it’s being ran by shortsighted idiots who do not recognize they are standing on the shoulders of more tactical rulers.

Neither of them noble.

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