• forgotmylastusername
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    3 hours ago

    > shunned from international space collaboration
    > makes their own space program
    > nobody notices

    Kinda wild how the west dissociates from China’s space program basically in a modern day space race against everyone else. Imagine how much farther along humanity would be without the paranoid sinophobia. Some For All Mankind type of shit. Instead we’re getting the Mirror Universe Terran Empire.

  • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
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    14 hours ago

    Fascist dichotomy: the “others” are both strong and weak at the same time.

    Just like immigrants are both “lazy” and “taking all the jobs” at the same time.

    • zante@slrpnk.net
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      12 hours ago

      Highly skilled North Korean hackers / a population of starving and downtrodden farmers who eat dirt for dinner.

      • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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        21 minutes ago

        Is this a contradiction? 99% of people are starving farmers who eat dirt for dinner and 1% are chosen from birth to be taught nothing other than how to hack the West

        Edit: i forgot to add /s

  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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    12 hours ago

    I get your point, Western propaganda can’t make up its mind about if they’re strong or weak.
    But it’s not really a funny joke because economic instability isn’t mutually exclusive with outcompeting, so the Schrodinger doesn’t really apply.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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      4 hours ago

      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.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        3 hours ago

        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.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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          2 hours ago

          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.

  • Nunar@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Hilarious how tarriffs are a few against imports and we as a people pay those. The exporting country sees nothing and the importing companies have to pass on the cost. So weird how a giant set of Americans don’t realize that it will raise the cost of almost everything.

    • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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      45 minutes ago

      If Aliens showed up to earth to trade cheap stuff and energy from their star trek replicators, I’m pretty sure the US oligarchs would ensure a rulership that goes to war with, or at least install prohibitive tariffs on, the Aliens instead, to protect their profits. China offers a similar role.

      We could have full employment if we just get rid of wires and pipes that go to homes. Hire people to go get you firewood and water from the river, and throw your waste into the street. This does result in a subsaharan economy, and cannibalism, but everyone is structurally guaranteed work.

      If instead you import from China/Aliens, you are rich in stuff. Still plenty of work available in construction and selling stuff, and UBI is a path to keep the “country” rich, primarily in being a desirable place to live in freedom.

      Even in the unlikely event of US reindustrializing to become an uncompetitive economic island to rest of the world, it would result in a relatively declining standard of living, and no exports, compared to those trading with the Aliens.

    • accideath@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I mean, the idea is, that the tarriffed stuff becomes less attractive compared to the non-tarriffed stuff due to the higher price, so less people will buy it and instead the nationally produced alternatives thus strengthening the national economy and and weakening the tarriffed ones.

      Of course that can only work with stuff that has nationally produced (or at least non-tarriffed) alternatives.

      • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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        33 minutes ago

        Almost always, the US companies given monopoly/cartel protection by tariffs, boost prices more than production. The emperor could make a deal next week, so long term investments are sketchy.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        4 hours ago

        Exactly, the whole point of tariffs is to protect domestic industry. However, if that industry doesn’t exist then what’s being protected?

  • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    For what it’s worth, both can be true. An economy can be both strong and precarious, such as many world markets in the 1920’s right before the great depression caused the economic collapse of the west.

    The tariffs thing though is a joke. Not to the people who will be hurt by it, of course, but the idea that it will accomplish anything meaningful. It’s just a scapegoat tactic to blame foreign powers for a weakening dollar.

  • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Last when I was into this topic, no expert on the China economy ever said that China was going to collapse. Rather their prognosis is that the economy is near its peak and likely will stagnate from now on, maybe shrink a bit (maybe) . But not collapse

  • megopie@beehaw.org
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    16 hours ago

    The trick is that china is a very large country and some part of it is always collapsing while some other part is advancing.