"We will not return to the neoliberal model. We will not return to the regime of privileges and corruption... We say: For the good of all, first the poor."

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[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Imagine your employer can decide to nuke your house at any moment. That might incentivize you to accept a 50% bottle cap salary.

Cheap labor is how China has paid off the West and made itself indispensable to the market. It's unequal exchange.

[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Imagine your employer can decide to nuke your house at any moment. That might incentivize you to accept a 50% bottle cap salary.

lol this is why the West was genuinely afraid of Mao but not anymore since China has opened up.

Mao used to casually taunt the US to drop their atomic bombs on China and see who lasts longer. He would constantly talk about China engaging in a “10,000 years” long war (lol!) with the Western imperialists even until the end of the world.

These days the US just crosses red lines after red lines because they know that their opponents have no appetite to truly fight back and risk a nuclear war.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago

You aren't wrong, but on the other hand we haven't had a nuclear war either. That counts for something.

Although now we're zooming to a climate catastrophe that will make Earth just as uninhabitable so lol

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

The thing is they can keep crossing whatever red lines they want, it doesn't change the equation that it is the U.S. is fundamentally in a reactionary position to China's economy. While the financial and government elements think they have the tiger by the tail, whatever shenanigans they pull ultimately hurt the U.S. domestically far more.

When we, in American industry, lose access to Chinese inputs, we are the ones who are scrambling to fill those inputs, with suppliers that fundamentally don't exist (a.k.a. are three to four years out in manufacturing at volume, which is an eternity in business), but we still have to compete internationally with companies that do have access to Chinese inputs. Some people are conning a free lunch from China, but most people in this country are not. If anything they are in a tighter spot because China is the one paying for their lunch and if they do not, then they will starve, and everyone in manufacturing that knows anything knows that.

If the U.S. wants to compete with China at all, it will have to fundamentally change it's domestic industrial policies, and actually organize production to combat these inevitable shortages, something that it ideologically will not, and honestly at this point does not have the ability to do. Perhaps China does not want to press the 'socialism' button, but honestly, if I were them, I would wait for the U.S. to drive itself into a wall attempting to compete with something it fundamentally cannot. Let them be the ones to pull the trigger.