Look at SNs items- nearly all are about derivatives of the tertiary sectors financialisation - AI and finance.
There is almost zero talk of the production of actual goods, unless they are serving financialisation like a Bitcoin wallet! And that Bitcojn wallets actual hardware was probably produced in China.
China now has a fucking massive lead in engineering.
In the skills of Chinese technicians who have gained the ability to design and build everything from a toothbrush to a aircraft carrier.
Meanwhile the west has lost its ability to build almost everything from toothbrushes to aircraft carriers.
There seems to be a pervasive blindness to this massive shift in the capability of the west to produce things and the dire strategic consequences that have resulted.
China now has the west over a barrel in the supply of almost all manufactured goods and particularly in some important strategic materials like rare earths, robotics, PVs and EVs in fact the entire range of high tech materials and products needed to be competitive in the modern era.
The only area where the west retains a marginal advantage is in the legacy financial system where it still dominates global institutions and protocols like the IMF. World Bank, BIS, SWIFT etc.
But China is now positioned to also challenge the wests legacy institutional and protocol hegemony and is building alternative platforms, institutions and protocols. Increasingly trade with China is settled outside of the USD/SWIFT hegemony- instead enabled via Chinas new alternative protocols like mBridge and CIPS.
Raising this topic has resulted in attacks on me calling me a CCP bot and other untrue and diversionary evasions of the facts and issues raised.
I have come to believe that people in the west are truly afraid and in denial of the trends and do not want to confront them - that may work ok for a while until it doesn't.
How is raising these issues a thing that a Chinese propagandist would do? it is not- it is because I am born and bred in the west and far more comfortable with its cultural biases and advantages than China- but I also recognise the west has nothing like a clean record in its gaining of and maintenance of global hegemony and that in the case of China the west imposed its will and forced itself on China during the Opium Wars in a manner that most westerners seem either ignorant of or desperate to dismiss.
I suggest it is important that we understand China and its history as it is now in a position where it is seeking and may achieve what the west has historically achieved and enjoyed- global hegemony and dominance over all other cultures.
To ignore this threat is exactly what a CCP bot would might westerners to do.
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7 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3h
Yet you attack western efforts to re-shore manufacturing? Maybe that's why people think you are pro CCP
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi OP 2h
Have I attacked western efforts to reshore manufacturing?
Or is that assertion just another bullshit coated and blatantly dishonest out of context misrepresentation of what I have said seeking to discredit me, the messenger, because you cannot credibly refute what I have actually and in truth said?
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 1h
You literally have nothing to say except how dominant China is in manufacturing.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi OP 1h
That, again, is misrepresentation on your part posturing as what? It is meaningless absurd and totally obstructive - it seeks to shut down the conversation/narrative before it can be progressed anywhere useful.
It is very difficult to progress the narrative as long as most respondents are incapable of even acknowledging that China has won the trade war- meaning China now dominates global commodity markets and the supply chains of manufactured goods...including strategically important ones like rare earths, PVs, EVs and robotics.
I am simply waiting for respondents to acknowledge this very basic and increasingly self evident starting point of the topic- there are many interesting subsequent logical developments and consequences which I have many times already raised but which are somewhat moot as long as the community is in general denial of the fundamentals.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 1h
I don't know why you're so agitated all the time.
Most people here would agree that US economic hegemony was built primarily through military power and the petrodollar. I'd venture to guess that most of us, including myself, agree that China is dominating in materials and manufacturing production. We agree that the West is sclerotic and weighed down by cronyism, among other ills.
You just seem mad that not everyone is worshipping at the feet of China or denouncing the US as the great satan.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi OP 51m
Again you tragically misread and misrepresent what I am saying.
Yes, it is true, I do get agitated when most respondents effectively deny, as you put it -
' that US economic hegemony was built primarily through military power and the petrodollar. I'd venture to guess that most of us, including myself, agree that China is dominating in materials and manufacturing production. We agree that the West is sclerotic and weighed down by cronyism, among other ills.'
by denying that China is now dominant in commodities and manufacturing and thus has 'won the trade war'.
And by asserting that free markets are all that determines wealth of nations....utter naive Libertarian poppycock yet many times asserted in response to these issues on this platform.
I agree that the content of your above statement is very difficult to deny and is the core content of what I have been proposing for several months on here. Yet most respondents have been desperate to deny it and avoid where that narrative leads to. This can be evidenced by reading through the many times I have raised and the responses that has brought.
I am not however 'mad that not everyone is worshipping at the feet of China or denouncing the US as the great satan.' and have never stated anything even remotely capable of being misinterpreted in such a sinister an misleading manner.
You are being dishonest in making that assertion and you cannot back it with any credible evidence.
In asserting such falsehoods you again default to blatantly misrepresenting the character and literal content of what I have written to avoid the actual content of what I have written. Dishonest coward.
You literally ignore what I have written many times and demonstrate a woeful dishonesty by asserting that is characteristic of what I have said.
This approach you take is not new- many before you have tried it- it is just another dishonest attempt to avoid any serious consideration and discussion of the facts and issues I Have raised.
You are seemingly determined to obstruct any serious sequential logical and constructive consideration and development of this narrative...just as a CCP Bot might be expected to.
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7 sats \ 1 reply \ @CliffBadger 3h
I found your problem. It's your British heritage. You get your love of statism from them.
There is no "production" unless you have a stable financial system (a free market) running calculations for it. The alternative is statism, which means the economy is fundamentally unproductive, because the productive classes are constantly having to pay off the statists (who contribute nothing back to society). That's why statism fails in every country that tries it.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi OP 1h
You correctly identify my British/Irish heritage and DNA.
And yes as I grew up the products of British manufacturing were still respected although in decline as US and Japanese competition overwhelmed them.
New Zealand was in the process of shifting from being a colony of the British Empire to being a tribute state to the emerging US empire.
I will always prefer Triumphs and BSAs ro Harleys!
However I would strenuously challenge the implied assertion that US hegemony and wealth was built any less on military might and power projection that the British Empire was.
It wasn't.
USA first gained hegemony over the Americas and thenwent global after WW2 and the fall of the Berlin wall.
Post WW2 Britain grudgingly handed over the keys to the empire to Uncle Sam.
The murder of the democratically elected President of Iran, Mossadegh was one of the early stages in the handover.
USA has exercised its global military bases and threat of use of force as well as frequent actual uses of force to gain economic advantage.
Perhaps even more than the British did.
Certainly one fuck of a lot more than China has done to date.
To assert that wealth and prosperity are solely derivatives of free and open markets is absurd and history shows it is.
Now that China dominates global trade in commodities and manufactured goods it must be able to defend its global assets and investments just as previous empires have had to.
The Chinese are building from a base of mercantile- engineering- and have already beaten western capitalism at its own game of producing manufactured goods in the most cost competitive manner.
Western factories simply cannot compete thus Trump rolls out the protectionist tariffs.
USA is a bastion of crony capitalism and always has been.
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