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Schrödinger China
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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It kind of is, because the kind of outcompeting that's happening requires decades of planning and development at scale. If you don't have economic stability, like we don't in the west, then it becomes impossible to run large scale projects like this. Hence why the west is being outcomepeted.
Instability in the present doesn't mean instability in the past where preparation could have been done. But setting that aside:
I really think that the way that the USA is being outcompeted (according to these seemingly hypocritical sources) could be competitive spontaneously given the size and resources of china.
It's always things like EVs that these news sources focus on, and China did invest heavily into battery tech during a time of relatively stability in the past, which is paying dividends now, also they're just able to manufacture nice cars for cheaper, plain and simple.
They outcompete for electronics manufacturing due to the lower cost of labour, the scale of manufacturing they can provide, and proximity of materials, and the existing tooling.
Etc.
And even if none of that was true, have you never seen a store that is almost bankrupt, putting on crazy sales to attract new customers? Undercutting competitor could be what causes the instability.
All this is hypothetical, I'm not arguing that's actually what's happening in China, I'm just describing how these things need not be mutually exclusive.
Except that there is zero evidence for any sort of instability in the present. When there are actual tangible instabilities at play, then it's easy to see that. For example, everybody can see social and political tensions across the west today.
The reality is that China is outcompeting the west across the board technologically. This shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. China has a bigger population, better education system, and the state actively guides the industry towards productive purposes.
To sum up, you're just coping here.
Dude, calm down and read what I wrote again.
I explicitly went out of my way to say how none of what I was writing was a reflection of the realities in China, but rather an explanation about why a joke about Schrodinger doesn't apply.
I didn't say that China had an unstable economy, I said that even if it had an unstable economy it could still outcompete the USA. How it's not a mutually exclusive condition, like the cat being both alive and dead.
That wasn't a fair way to characterize me or what I said, and it's pretty upsetting that you made such a judgement about me, seemingly without reading what I wrote 🙁
lol well sorry about mischaractarization there. That said, my original point was that you absolutely do need a stable economy to do large scale development. You might be able to get short term gains with an unstable economy, but doing things like building mass rail infrastructure or developing chips domestically requires stability. What you're saying is that you can have a Potemkin village, but it's clear that it's not the case with China hence the meme makes perfect sense.
look up US versus China steel production then look up the world total
What is it that you think I'm arguing, that those figures would be impactful.
I explicitly said that I'm not calling China's economy unstable, that instead I'm using hypotheticals to discuss the joke itself.