Other industries seem to be fine competing with other countries. Would there be some greater investment in manufacturing in the US if there were no labor (or environmental) constraints? Sure, but the fact that other industries compete just fine makes me believe it's simply not an economically efficient allocation of resources for labor heavy manufacturing to be done in the US.
China is winning because they are intentionally and directly investing in tech regardless of the financial circumstances. They don’t care about the profits, they are focused on the outcomes. They are doing what developed countries should be doing.
Winning is winning. History is written by the victors. Important to know who you’re playing against, and whether you’re playing by the same rules, and if the rules matter. It’s not great, but it is what it is. We must operate in a way based upon how the world is, not the way that we wish it was.
At this point, China is outdoing the West in so many ways, and rapidly catching up in the areas where it still lags. I’m not one to eagerly praise the CCP, but it’s hard to not see how China is progressing while the West lags more and more.
The West plays nice as much as possible. China is playing to win.
>China is outdoing the West in so many ways, and rapidly catching up in the areas where it still lags.
I'm not seeing it. Chinese economic power and tech capacity might exceed US capacity in time, but I give it only p = .25 or so. China's descending into some sort of political chaos seems more likely.
> Our research reveals that China has built the foundations to position itself as the world’s leading science and technology superpower, by establishing a sometimes stunning lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.
> China’s global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial technology fields spanning defence, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced materials and key quantum technology areas. The Critical Technology Tracker shows that, for some technologies, all of the world’s top 10 leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country (most often the US). Notably, the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks highly (and often first or second) across many of the 44 technologies included in the Critical Technology Tracker. We also see China’s efforts being bolstered through talent and knowledge import: one-fifth of its high-impact papers are being authored by researchers with postgraduate training in a Five-Eyes country. China’s lead is the product of deliberate design and long-term policy planning, as repeatedly outlined by Xi Jinping and his predecessors.
> China's descending into some sort of political chaos seems more likely, like it has done over and over thru history.
And the West isn’t? I honestly am not sure whether I prefer Xi Jinping over one of the candidates in the upcoming US elections.
There are still thankfully some checks and balances in place, but if the loudest elements of one of the two major US parties has everything their way, I’d honestly prefer to live in the PRC.
> China is winning because they are intensely, directly investing in tech regardless of the financial circumstances.
Investment can (and often is) different from protectionism. Typically, investment provides time-limited grants or other forms of support. If a company misuses them, a global (or local) competitor will outpace it.
Protectionism ensures that companies are indefinitely protected from global competition, so they don't feel as pressed to improve.
The developed world is unable to compete on a level playing field against other countries when taking into consideration potentially enormous subsidies or developing world labor costs. Protectionism, when implemented strategically, can reduce these counterparty advantages. Investment is also a component, but they both work in concert to arrive at a desired outcome. And I think that’s really where this problem lies, that we’re arguing about protectionism versus investment, when we should be identifying what the desired outcome is and then, based on an inventory of all of the policy and capital allocation tools that we have available to us, implement what is needed to arrive at the desired outcome. We don’t want to sacrifice innovation (which calls for mechanisms to prevent companies from leaning too far towards entrenched interests vs innovators), but we also don’t want to run a race we cannot win because we unnecessarily handicap ourselves in an inherently unfair and unequal global market.
I am not a terribly smart person, and I don’t have all the answers, but I would argue it’s clear what we’ve done so far isn’t working, based on all available evidence.
> The developed world is unable to compete on a level playing field against other countries when taking into consideration potentially enormous subsidies or developing world labor costs.
Cheap labor cost typically is only a fraction of a high-tech product. If anything, China was not the world's biggest factory, but the world's biggest assembler. It's changing right now, and China is producing more of its own high-tech components.
So a small amount of protectionism (like a 10-15% tariff) might be OK, and it will compensate for this labor cost discrepancy. But not tariffs that simply make the local industry complacent.
Music? I don't think anyone listens to American music these days outside of America (and maybe Canada). America used to produce great music, back in the 60s-80s, that people around the world wanted to listen to, but that went away after the 2000s.
American movies, however, are still quite popular abroad. Offhand, I'd say it's one of America's biggest exports. "Microcode" is the other one, if you mean things like CPU design: all the biggest CPU makers are in America: Intel, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. (Many of the CPUs are manufactured elsewhere, usually by TSMC, but all the design work is done in the US.)
According to this article (https://www.billboard.com/business/touring/taylor-swift-eras...), it looks like it's mainly American tourists going to Europe to see Swift's shows because the ticket prices are 1/10 as much as in America. Apparently, it costs about $5000 for a couple to see a Swift show in the US now, so it's actually a lot cheaper to just fly to Europe to see her show.
> $5000 for a couple to see a Swift show in the US now...
That's just not true. As long as you are able to get an original ticket and not a resold one. But ticketmaster and live nation should be regulated because they're a middleman monopoly in all of it.
It is literally false. The original tickets are nowhere close to that expensive and they do a lottery system with more verification now so that more fans get the tickets. I'm not defending Ticketmaster (they are awful and should be regulated), but original tickets just don't cost that much. Have you ever purchased Taylor Swift tickets? I have twice. Both times at original ticket prices.
I'm not talking about original ticket prices, but rather the prices that normal people actually pay. According to the article, it's huge because of scalpers. Maybe that isn't true in your experience, but it seems to be true for enough people that they're writing articles complaining about this.
Which are non critical and can be shed without much harm. Critical industries are, by definition, critical and require sacrificing efficiency to preserve.
If you want to be able to build and retain the capability, you have to protect the machine that does the building: people, institutional knowledge and domain expertise, equipment, etc. Otherwise, you forget how to build, the machine evaporates. And here we are.
