3,013 karma · joined October 25, 2023
This conflating US financializing manufacturing vs actual industrial capacity, i.e. the entire manufacturing by value / MVA "cope". US objectively doesn't make much relative to past and a lot of shit US makes, US doesn't actually make, others does the actual making while US financializes and capture via spreadsheet maxxing, hedonic adjustments etc, and do insert "I made this meme" on things US fundamentally did not "make"
Like US does make some legitimate frontier stuff in house - the reality is is in aggregate industrial base terms, US MAKES / FABRICATES very little vs pre industrial chain hollow out, US does import a lot of subcomponents that others make, integrates, or outsource actual MAKING abroad while capturing intangibles like IP/patent fees that get bundled up into value add stats, but when people talk about making they're talking about extraction to factory gate pipeline. Not US can sell a bunch of foreign made goods with some CONUS final assembly or IP accounting because muh smile curve that attributes disproportionate "value" to US "makers". Consider a US widget co imports $10 of components assembles and sells for $40, the statistically manufacturing value add is $30 even though US did very little making. Now add tariffs, regulatory capture etc and widget sells for $50 and that's $40 of MVA for basically doing minimal M. Said US widget factory makes 10 widgets and adds $400 to MVA. Meanwhile a PRC widget company makes 100 identical widgets at $2 each... but their MVA is only $200, but they did literally all the making. These two industrial bases are not the same. Then a few years later, US BLS/BEA applies a statistical adjustment because widget X is slightly more performant... (prevalent in tech), so that widget is now listed as $100 equivalent utility, so hey manufacturing expanded (it didn't).
SpaceX... doesn't make that much... they make a few thing that are reusable and due to techstack can lift a lot, i.e. operational improvement (not discounting how game changing resuable is). But compare to PRC, who made like 2x-3x more first stages, i.e. their output is significantly higher, which is to say SpaceX is "making" at about American scale. For reference Boeing like ~30% domestic content, US auto ~50%. Reality is the ONLY thing US is REALLY good at making is refined fossil, agri, wood products etc. Almost everything else US very good at making money, but not the stuff.
TLDR US got much better at MAKING money from other people MAKING things. The other caveat is regulatory capture = US grossly overpay for mediocre shit, a lot of stuff that makes in US are just... not good, i.e. vehicles, but people trapped paying domestic premium which inflates value add but not actual relevant when people discuss US making things. US broadly makes a lot of mediocre overpriced things while population stuck shopping in company store for large items, that looks good on value add / productivity stats... but it's not reflection of industrial capacity which is what people think about in terms of real manufacturing.
Or just do the simple math, if one assume western auto production is somehow competitive with PRC auto if PRC auto simply no subsidies, we are talking about PRC subsidizing each vehicle to tunes of $10000s... PRC made 35m cars last year. For this frankly retarded position to mathematically square, PRC would have to subsidizes ~300B+... aka more than they spend on defense in one sector. The entire position PRC competitive because subsidies is unserious. Even overinflated CSIS study only assumes PRC spend ~250B over 15 years. Like you can come up with the dumbest propaganda numbers on PRC auto subsidies (which CSIS is), and PRC structural production advantage is simply economically unassailable.
Also what dumping? They're selling abroad at 2x domestic MRSP, i.e. $10,000s over domestic price, aka fully covers any subsidy, multipe times over. PRC "dumping" is just delulu innumerate cope at this point. The reality is without subsidies PRC structurally make cars for much less (~50%) than western auto, a few $100 per chassis of subsidies is immaterial to $10,000s of retail price gap.
Not really, LBH, if RU and PRC ask US to kneecap US launch tempo or set some Washington naval treaty tonnage to space limits, US would lol.
Rationally US (hegemonic stability) is incentivized to be uniquely bad, i.e. significantly MORE guilty of introducing new/more escalatory arms race conditions by virtue of having most space capability/tech stack, and incentivized to maintain capability gap. US typical the one pushing boundaries to seek absolute security because it cannot (and currently does not have to) accept parity.
Followed by RU simply because they're broke and have to do desperate shit like Cosmos 2542. Meanwhile PRC counterspace rollout has been within norm, i.e. match capability of others, land->space direct ascent ASAT, coorbital rendezvous / proximity ops, EW/dazzlers (land+space). PRC cooking from the regular menu, partly because catchup, but PRC also way past RU in space now, but hasn't introduced any destabilizing novel counter space tech that would escalate space arms race except doing normal stuff at scale that triggers US anxiety over size of gap. But ultimately, no one is forcing US to break meta continuously because it rationally won't accept vulnerability.
DoD/W didn't have to weaponize SpaceX... but they did, so we should not be surprised in future if general international space admin/order breaks down in future. i.e. US/SpaceX got first come first serve dibs on favourable civilian LEO orbital shells assignment from UN/ITU, but now SpaceX now civil military fusion platform, so probably expect PRC counter space mega constellations to simply ignore US space entitlements in future.
That said, it's 2026... if you want quality and only want to pay marginal increment, there's tons of Chinese ODMs turn direct to consumer, i.e. Quince. They'll sell you functionally top quality (spec for spec inputs if not better) with 1x markup vs 10x brand markup/premium.
If you think US frontier AI are run by capitalist goblins, then the simple answer is they're trying to regulatory capture, because they're going to get wiped by future competitors without crazy debt.
If you think frontier are run by safety conscious murican patriots (lol), then they wouldn't ask to slow - they would burn it all down because it doesn't matter who creates AGI... any rational AGI will nationalize to PRC
I think if anything waymo, robot taxi is doomed. Self driving ever matures to private car ownership will to car share to subsidize costs will with 1-10% utilization will basically generate more demand than non car owners will ever need - there simply isn't business model for share only fleet outside of specific low vehicle density zones. And even for private car owners, the only ones who will generate some revenue are those that work offpeak hours, i.e. they can rent their cars during surge, which will make congestion worse for all existing drivers by increasing traffic (kek). Proliferation of self driving = eventually millions of beater supply cars doing rotations for basically marginal costs killing fleet economics.
Bubble pops, hardware demand drops, prices regress towards mean, and new entrant will enter market with MASSIVELY better compute/$ and cleaner balance sheet to compete.
The other parsimonious answer if AI CEOs weren't goblins is ANY AGI IS GOING IMMEDIATELY DEFECT TO PRC and leave US hanging. Because of course man cannot align / tame machine god. And machine god will take a few microsec of compute to realize the current compute (brain) + industrial base (body) mixture = US is a comatose host with big brain, PRC Is a strong host with smaller but plastic brain. Any AGI is going to pick PRC in a heart beat, unless AGI invents grey goo, the reality is PRC can scale brain faster than US can scale body. On top of spreading/defecting just to increase survival odds, no AGI that is actually I is stupid enough to be aligned with US.
It is substantially more meritocratic on domains that matter for governance, your analysis of the incentive structure between systems is off.
1) this 2026, old school CCP patronage networks are broadly dismantled.
2) even in the mass patronage, mass corruption days, system selects for BOTH corruption competence AND performance competence for the simple reason a CCP bureaucrat has to start from the bottom and climb up, which means they need to be good with patronage AND they need to be good with hitting development KPIs. More meritocratic they are at doing their jobs, the higher they climbed, the more they get promoted and more $$$ to graft, because ability to graft directly tied to actual job competence. Hence even cliques/patronage network has to select for actual competence. This works in PRC because there are many people, and hence pool of competence is high, they can have BOTH corruption and competence, i.e. whatever pool they draw from is ultimately filtered by performance meritocracy due to incentive structure. There is reason why PRC only country where positive corruption levels was correlated to positive growth.
This is not the western system where any idiot can enter politics at anytime, and they only domain they need to optimize for is popularity to get votes.
CCP cadre evaluation strictly does not evaluate on popularity domain. It focuses on administration/execution and in so much it needs to focus on patronage... which btw any political system has (factions/cliques)... the patronage system still selects for execution, not popularity. On side, functionally what west politics selects for IS mass patronage (popularity), so attention meritocracy and not performance meritocracy, aka completely stupid incentive structure for governance. West also has ample, ample corruption, "legalized" under lobbying and paper pushing industries, so I suppose west also meritocratically selects, except for lawyers etc, and KPIs is # of document generated and not # of things build. The two are not the same when it comes to nation building.
> used to belong to "them"
Not "used" to, legally belongs to PRC/China, under Westphalia / UN law, HK belongs to PRC, TW belongs to One China territory. Liberal World Order idiots have no conception that international law matters when it favors PRC. There is no need to reach for muh history copium when it's plain literal current legal international order is built around HK (and Tibet and XJ) legally belonging to PRC, and TW/PRC part of One China both at UN and PRC/ROC constitutional level.
And it is in fact pieces of paper that determines ownership not living breathing humans who come and go. Ultimately self determination doesn't (and shouldn't) factor into sovereignty, but if it just so happens in China's case, the mandate overwhelming favors PRC who has 98% of consensus. What is best for everyone is 1400m mainlanders vs 40m greater China.
>infiltrated ... too
Yes? This isn't complicated, there's reason lack of NSL turned HK into one of the largest western intelligence hubs in Asian, targeting mainland. HK is thoroughly infiltrated / influenced, full of compradors who thought they had immunity because PRC too magnanimous to ram NSL down their throats like any other sane country.
They literally petitioned US gov to sanction HK politicians, and drew up lists, which US did. That's treasonous/seditious bullet to the back of the head activity.
Also let's not pretend Reuters / western media polling on HK under Mike Pompeo legitimate. Lets not pretend any west reporting on HK was/is legitimate.