Comment by WarmWash
18 hours ago
The Chinese labs are just arms of the Chinese government. They have no obligation to be profitable or please (private) investors. If they weaken/collapse American models, then that is the ROI to the lab owners.
18 hours ago
The Chinese labs are just arms of the Chinese government. They have no obligation to be profitable or please (private) investors. If they weaken/collapse American models, then that is the ROI to the lab owners.
This is a pretty strange take on an article explicitly pointing out the profitability of chinese models.
Further, even if this is your take (and I won't touch the geopolitics here, maybe you're right, maybe you're not regarding ulterior motives) - go use non chinese open models that are also good.
Laguna, Nemotron, Mistral, Arcee, Llama, etc...
China has sandbox capitalism. In the sandbox it looks and feels like capitalism, but the sandbox itself exists in a communist framework, and the state still controls all the inputs, outputs, and can intervene at any point as they please.
In organic capitalism you need to compel arrays of discrete private entities to invest in your idea. In sandbox capitalism, the money can just appear in any amount at the behest of a single controlling individual.
Hyperbole and trappings aside, that describes all mixed-market economies. And all major states have champion industries.
Now do American Capitalism!
You can see it plainly on the Solar PV market. The likes of Trina, JA, Jinko, etc. all compete aggressively, leading to everyone running at a loss in order to corner the market, and then after a few years the government steps in and orders all of them to raise prices. Happened again at the beginning of this year, raising cost of PV Modules 30-40% for oversees consumers.
Contrast that to US being happy with everyone eating each other alive until all but one company is left standing and can now dictate the prices and enshittify the product to pay back their VC loans.
Isn’t “sandbox capitalism” - real capitalism and what the us is trending towards is the “Wild West” capitalism with monopolies, trusts, and all the other anti competitive things that arise in the free market if there is no external force that tries to keep the market “fair”?
I mean this is not the case for either, but the systems are setup to drift in these directions - a market needs some sort of regulation to keep things sane, otherwise you end up with standard oil and the like.
You want the people with guns controlling things to be at least nominally interested in “the people” and produce more than just “return on investment”.
Not saying that China is like this or that US is bad, but saying that China is bad because it is “controlled capitalism” is kinda missing the point of what it should be in the best case.
I don't think its that hard to shoehorn current US into those sentences too, maybe switch word 'communism' with 'kleptocracy'.
Less intervening and micro management but oh boy say something not nice about government and potus and suddenly you are a new enemy of the state and 3-letter agencies work day and night to bring you down for good. Or in reverse - put a public bribe to potus and his clan and enjoy some favors for few weeks.
2 years ago I would agree more strongly with you, but we are in new era from now on.
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nice