Maybe we shouldn't have moved the entire supply chain to asia.
"we"
"we"
- We'll only move cheap plastic toys to asia
- We'll only move low-value clothing to asia
- We'll only move inexpensive electronics to asia
- We'll only move TVs to asia
- We'll only move computer assembly to asia
- We'll only move low-value semi-conductors to asia
- We'll only move CPU production to asia
Only thing really left is IP and frankly I expect asia to outperform the west in that soon enough (my understanding is that they already are in some areas, I am not an expert)
And if you’re worried that the US is about to be out competed by China in the IP sphere, surely the US would be in a much weaker position if say 50% of its economy was focused on the production of cheap generic goods?
the us has papered over it w/credit (no coincidence that the credit card came out right when productive capacity was being shifted to asia) but eventually every country sits down to a banquet of consequences
same story as ever (florence under the medici, england under the whigs, etc) first productivity then usury
Could you be more specific about the knock on effects of not making cheap plastic toys, etc. domestically? The US is still the clear global leader in technical innovation in nearly all sectors (and I'm not an American).
Not making cheap plastic toys means you don't have the supply chain and expertise around plastics molding, which means you eventually lose the ability to produce housing for electronics, which means you eventually lose the ability to produce electronic components, etc. And as we see, this is exactly what has happened, just like we saw happen in Florence, England, etc. before when the elites became more interested in financialization/usury than in production.
I'm american and I don't think america is the clear global leader in technical innovation, particularly looking at electrification. We are pretty good at R&D but have lost a large part of our ability to manufacture due to the supply chain shift.
R&D is fine and all, but we've got (or had) a middle class to feed, and for the last fourty years we've been faking that with credit.
This is a bizarre claim?
The total ability of an economy to produce goods and services is most certainly finite. For it to be infinite, we'd need infinite workers, infinite factories, infinite raw materials, infinite land, infinite infrastructure, infinite energy, etc.
But of course, as I'm sure you recognize, that isn't the main point. The main point is that now we aren't even able to dominate high value manufacturing like microchips, despite being told we were only giving away the low end.
I do not. When you say, “what I mean is economic capacity is constrained by demand and raw materials” - that’s a significant deviation from your claim that economic capacity is infinite which is why I asked you about it. I’m not a mind reader.
But even this claim makes no sense with your toy factory example. Building such a factory consumes no land, no construction workers or engineers’ time, requires no energy to construct or operate, requires no human effort at all to operate and all this can be done for zero cost?
Can you point to any example of such a factory anywhere in the world? I mean if this were possible, why would places like sub-Saharan not be full of such factories?
Give them an extra 5% profit and theyll sell out the entire country and reduce its industrial base to ashes.
So what if they're technologically superior? What we can't steal, we can buy.
When the time comes to geld the Yankees an' hitch them to the plough, we'll cut
off their balls with a knife they competed to sell us
I think this has left its mark. A lot of people do not seem to be able understand that this is not true. Even if they accept it intellectually its such a fundamental assumption that its still influential.
I think there was, and is, an element of racism. It still persists in that a lot of westerners cannot comprehend that they can be overtaken technologically or threatened by non-western societies. This includes people who think they are not racist, or are anti-racist.
Totally agree on the racism. I do hope the West doesn’t learn that lesson the hard way.
China was only shooting itself in the foot, it was argued, by not opening its markets fully and following export oriented industrialization.
profit margins dictated economist opinions though. This is why EOI was treated as quaint while TOCA was treated as gospel truth even though one was nonsense.
All this talk about evil corporations selling out the west reminds me of the leftists "50 companies do all the pollution" bullshit. Who buys products from those companies? Who rewards lowering price at all costs?
china gets massive advantage from western ideas that even benigh thing like 'lets not depend on china' is automatically considered hate speech and racism.