Comment by ToucanLoucan
1 day ago
It will never stop being funny to me that China does the exact same shit American corps have been doing since the 70's but because it's scary China it's suddenly a problem.
American startups flood markets with below-cost loss-leader products explicitly to kill competition and create network effects, and then jack the prices just as high, if not higher, for the service in question after the fact, oftentimes while making it so those providing the service earn even less money than they did before. Commentators: "Free market great"
China does the exact same thing: "Communists wanna kill the West"
If you believe in some kind of competition-free objective set of market morals, then yes, this is a strange contradiction.
If you believe that humans are locked in a productive struggle against each other at the organizational level, and that the knife-edge balance is a feature, not a bug, then it's not so weird to think about.
It is simultaneously true that it is in my best interest for prices to sink (as a consumer), for US companies to succeed (as a US citizen), and for my company to win over competitors regardless of whether those competitors are from US, EU, China, or Antarctica.
Oh I don't think it's either of those things, I think it's good old fashioned Racism/Xenophobia. We did the same shit to Japan and Korea when they were coming up out of their respective post-war periods, and we still do, to a degree. With China's ruling party also being "communist" (in massive, massive air-quotes) it also lets political actors dust off the McCarthyism to boot.
This is, to be clear, not meant as a ringing endorsement of China, China's policies, or to absolve China of it's wrongdoings, of which there are MANY. It's just to say that it's remarkable to watch the pearl clutching of the privateer capitalist class as state-sponsored capitalism levels their own game up against them and starts taking them to the cleaners instead.
A real Godzilla "let them fight" situation as far as I'm concerned.
So, there's no functional competition or great power struggle or corporate race here? Just racism against chinese people for being chinese? That is your claim specifically?
3 replies →
China lost tons of goodwill through its https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacy
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It will never stop being funny to me that China does the exact same shit American corps have been doing since the 70's but because it's glorious China it's suddenly not a problem.
I thought it was evil late-stage capitalism? Suddenly it's a friendly panda bear that just wants to spread love and technology?
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