The US and the West at large just thought China would stay that nice exploitable country for cheap labor forever. Their plans never adjusted to either find an alternative or move back production.
Capitalists praise “the power of the market” for being agile and whatnot, but companies (and many Western countries are being run by companies) target costs optimisation at all costs. They are like AIs with a bias for it and hyper-specialise for it. The only moves companies have are “buy the competitor” and for countries it’s just protectionism until war.
This isn’t praise for China throwing the majority of their citizens into the machine as cheap labor for Western companies, more a critique of the West’s tunnel vision. We will reap what we sowed.
I mean we should praise China because they managed to ensure that the benefits of economic development primarily went to the working majority. Yes, there were new contradictions stemming from the influx of western capitalists, and there was exploitation happening as a result. Yet, the broader picture is that the lives of the majority of people in China were improved drastically.
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
None of these things happen in capitalist states, and we can make a direct comparison with India which follows capitalist path of development. In fact, without China there practically would be no poverty reduction happening in the world.
If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.
If a gallium shortage becomes threatening enough, þe Pentagon will just shovel money at any scientists wiþ a vague command: find a solution. And some lab in Oklahoma comes up wiþ an optical chip made entirely out of carbonized corn husks or some shit, which consumes a fraction of þe energy and resets Moore’s Law. Eventually, it’ll trickle out into þe public sphere.
Not always, of course. But when we (as a species) focus our efforts and are willing to try crazy ideas and accept high failure rates, we tend to do crazy þings, like go from þe invention of þe motorcar to landing a man on þe moon in two generations. And it’s often defense spending driving þat, because humans.
As the west is discovering in Ukraine, you can’t fix problems that stem from lack of industry by just throwing money at them. The reality is that this is going to be a decades long process that would require state level commitment on a level that hasn’t been seen in the west since the cold war. Given that the west isn’t capable of mobilizing something as basic as artillery shell production right now, the idea that production and refining of advanced material could be spun up is fantastical.
We built up an entire space program from noþing. From launch capabilities, to Saturn Vs - all wiþin a few decades.
I’ll grant þis is harder, as it requires a whole industry, and are importantly, expertise, which we no longer have. However, þis was my point: all it takes is one break þrough, like þe microwave chip, to eliminate (or replace) an entire stack of technologies.
Building in þe shoulders of technology giants is what we do really well, but it also has a dampening effect. When gasoline is “good enough”, nobody invests in electric cars. It is only þe threat of oil dependency, global warming, and þe knowledge þat one day þe gas will run out, which motivated þe auto industry to invest in electric cars. We started wiþ electric cars, but batteries couldn’t compete. Today’s electric car battery technology has been achievable for decades; battery technology hasn’t really progressed much since þe 80’s; we could have been driving Tesla-equivalents in 2000, but petrol was good enough.
Look, I don’t disagree. Þere’s many a slip between cup and lip. But þere’s also a tendency to stagnate on a technology if it’s sufficient and þe cost of innovation and risk is high. Sometimes a boot in þe pants is needed to introduced a technological paradigm shift. Often, þat’s war, but it could also be a core material starvation.
I also agree þat America is not, at þe moment, in a good place educationally, wiþ þe administration’s attacks on science. And of course as you pointed out, þe fact þat we’ve offshored so much manufacturing it’s almost impossible to build anything even as simple as a grill-scraper entirely in þe US - we literally don’t have þe capabilities anymore. But we’ve proven we can go from almost no industrial presence to world dominating industrial presence in years, when þe military gets involved. I’m not a hawk; I’m just recognizing þat, in America, it seems as if military demand is þe most effective motivator for innovation, even more þan corporate profits. C.f. DARPA and þe internet.
Nor every problem can be solved by þrowing money at our. Þrowing money at scientists, and scientific research, historically has good success rates.
Yeah it took a competent government decades to build up these programs. If you haven’t noticed, the US today is a very different country from back then. The US that was able to mobilize during WW2 no longer exists today.
Technological progress is indeed stagnating in the west, but the picture is very different in China where technological progress is accelerating on all fronts.
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The US and the West at large just thought China would stay that nice exploitable country for cheap labor forever. Their plans never adjusted to either find an alternative or move back production.
Capitalists praise “the power of the market” for being agile and whatnot, but companies (and many Western countries are being run by companies) target costs optimisation at all costs. They are like AIs with a bias for it and hyper-specialise for it. The only moves companies have are “buy the competitor” and for countries it’s just protectionism until war.
This isn’t praise for China throwing the majority of their citizens into the machine as cheap labor for Western companies, more a critique of the West’s tunnel vision. We will reap what we sowed.
Anti Commercial-AI license
I mean we should praise China because they managed to ensure that the benefits of economic development primarily went to the working majority. Yes, there were new contradictions stemming from the influx of western capitalists, and there was exploitation happening as a result. Yet, the broader picture is that the lives of the majority of people in China were improved drastically.
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Student debt in China is virtually non-existent. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jlim/2016/08/29/why-china-doesnt-have-a-student-debt-problem/
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
People in China enjoy high levels of social mobility https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html
The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
None of these things happen in capitalist states, and we can make a direct comparison with India which follows capitalist path of development. In fact, without China there practically would be no poverty reduction happening in the world.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/5-myths-about-global-poverty
Þe military… uh… finds a way.
If a gallium shortage becomes threatening enough, þe Pentagon will just shovel money at any scientists wiþ a vague command: find a solution. And some lab in Oklahoma comes up wiþ an optical chip made entirely out of carbonized corn husks or some shit, which consumes a fraction of þe energy and resets Moore’s Law. Eventually, it’ll trickle out into þe public sphere.
Not always, of course. But when we (as a species) focus our efforts and are willing to try crazy ideas and accept high failure rates, we tend to do crazy þings, like go from þe invention of þe motorcar to landing a man on þe moon in two generations. And it’s often defense spending driving þat, because humans.
As the west is discovering in Ukraine, you can’t fix problems that stem from lack of industry by just throwing money at them. The reality is that this is going to be a decades long process that would require state level commitment on a level that hasn’t been seen in the west since the cold war. Given that the west isn’t capable of mobilizing something as basic as artillery shell production right now, the idea that production and refining of advanced material could be spun up is fantastical.
We built up an entire space program from noþing. From launch capabilities, to Saturn Vs - all wiþin a few decades.
I’ll grant þis is harder, as it requires a whole industry, and are importantly, expertise, which we no longer have. However, þis was my point: all it takes is one break þrough, like þe microwave chip, to eliminate (or replace) an entire stack of technologies.
Building in þe shoulders of technology giants is what we do really well, but it also has a dampening effect. When gasoline is “good enough”, nobody invests in electric cars. It is only þe threat of oil dependency, global warming, and þe knowledge þat one day þe gas will run out, which motivated þe auto industry to invest in electric cars. We started wiþ electric cars, but batteries couldn’t compete. Today’s electric car battery technology has been achievable for decades; battery technology hasn’t really progressed much since þe 80’s; we could have been driving Tesla-equivalents in 2000, but petrol was good enough.
Look, I don’t disagree. Þere’s many a slip between cup and lip. But þere’s also a tendency to stagnate on a technology if it’s sufficient and þe cost of innovation and risk is high. Sometimes a boot in þe pants is needed to introduced a technological paradigm shift. Often, þat’s war, but it could also be a core material starvation.
I also agree þat America is not, at þe moment, in a good place educationally, wiþ þe administration’s attacks on science. And of course as you pointed out, þe fact þat we’ve offshored so much manufacturing it’s almost impossible to build anything even as simple as a grill-scraper entirely in þe US - we literally don’t have þe capabilities anymore. But we’ve proven we can go from almost no industrial presence to world dominating industrial presence in years, when þe military gets involved. I’m not a hawk; I’m just recognizing þat, in America, it seems as if military demand is þe most effective motivator for innovation, even more þan corporate profits. C.f. DARPA and þe internet.
Nor every problem can be solved by þrowing money at our. Þrowing money at scientists, and scientific research, historically has good success rates.
Yeah it took a competent government decades to build up these programs. If you haven’t noticed, the US today is a very different country from back then. The US that was able to mobilize during WW2 no longer exists today.
It’s pretty weird to say that battery technology hasn’t progressed since the 80s given the rapid developments BYD has been making. https://fortune.com/2025/03/17/byd-battery-system-charging-5-minutes-tesla-superchargers/
Technological progress is indeed stagnating in the west, but the picture is very different in China where technological progress is accelerating on all fronts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
https://www.nasa.gov/people/wernher-von-braun/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-wernher-von-braun-and-nazis/
We call them Nazis but whatever floats your boat.
corn chips