☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

  • 11.7K Posts
  • 9.55K Comments
Joined 6 years ago
Cake day: January 18th, 2020
  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPtoCanada@lemmy.ca•Canada increased holdings of U.S. debt by 27% last year
    1·
    1 day ago

    China is a developing country because it started out from a position of utter devastation after the end of second world war, and they’ve been investing in development that’s raising the standard of living for the working majority. The US is the direct opposite of that where the standard of living is now collapsing from the peak seen during the cold war.

    I’m also not confusing BRICS and BRI, although there is overlap between them. The examples I gave you earlier were all from BRICS cooperation. I honestly don’t know why you have such a hard time acknowledging that BRICS is a functioning economic bloc that’s rapidly growing right now.

    You’re right that you don’t strictly need an organization like BRICS, but it obviously helps. For example, BRICS stipulates that members cannot sanction each other, which has become a really important rule of late given American shenanigans.

    Communism in Chinese context does actually mean Marxism. There are other parties in China, but their role is that of consultation. CPC is the party in charge. The system is quite different in nature from a parliamentary one we have under liberalism. I’ve written about it in detail here if you’re interested https://dialecticaldispatches.substack.com/p/rethinking-governance-through-outcomes

    Believe me I’m quite familiar with Chinese culture. I understand the whole saving face thing you’re talking about perfectly well. I’ll also refer you to the above link to see how elections actually work in China. There are plenty of solutions for reducing work while letting people feel like they’re relevant in practice. For example, we have bullshit jobs in the west today where people do work that has absolutely no meaning of social value. There are plenty of better ways to solve the problem.

    The reality is that it’s unlikely that China is going to end up in a place where there’s no need for human labor in the foreseeable future. There will always be some work to do, but the nature of the work will change, and possibly people will be working less overall.

    Meanwhile, the problem of aging population exists pretty much in all developed countries. It’s actually worse in the US than it is in China right now. Automation is largely removing hard manual work, and moving people into better jobs. There is a lot of reskilling happening in China right now. And the government is actively creating programs to help workers transition to new types of roles. Can highly recommend the summary of the two big recent political events focusing on these issues:

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPtoCanada@lemmy.ca•Carney government joined the Conservatives and the Bloc to defeat No More Loopholes Bill that would have stopped Canadian weapons sent to the U.S. from being used in the genocide in Gaza.
    21·
    1 day ago

    It’s breathtaking to watch you confidently dig this hole all the way to the center of the earth. You’re fundamentally confusing the historical profitability of an asset with its current marginal utility which is literal day one freshman economics. Yes a machine that makes money is an asset but the absolute second the market demand for that specific product drops to zero that machine becomes a liability if it costs money to maintain or prevents you from retooling.

    A sunk cost is just a past unrecoverable expense period. It does not magically require the investment to have been a failure from day one for the fallacy to apply. If you refuse to scrap an obsolete machine today simply because you paid a million dollars for it ten years ago you are committing the sunk cost fallacy regardless of how much money it printed in the interim. The fact that you cannot grasp that a formerly profitable asset can transition into a sunk cost trap the moment market conditions change explains perfectly why you think businesses simply evaporate when a single contract ends. Please actually read an economics textbook instead of furiously misinterpreting the first paragraph of a website you hastily googled to win an argument like the lost reddit debate bro that you are. 🤣

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPtoCanada@lemmy.ca•Carney government joined the Conservatives and the Bloc to defeat No More Loopholes Bill that would have stopped Canadian weapons sent to the U.S. from being used in the genocide in Gaza.
    2·
    1 day ago

    It is honestly a marvel how you can type so many words while fundamentally misunderstanding the basic vocabulary you are trying to use. You literally just made up your own personal definition of a sunk cost fallacy to try and save face here. A sunk cost in economics is simply any money that has already been spent and cannot be recovered regardless of whether the investment was profitable yesterday or five years ago. The fallacy is letting the emotional weight of that unrecoverable past expense dictate your future business decisions instead of looking at the current marginal utility of the asset. If a production line stops being profitable but management refuses to scrap it because they are obsessed with the original purchase price they are actively committing the sunk cost fallacy. It does not magically stop being a sunk cost just because the machine successfully printed money for a few years before the market dried up.

    And desperately dragging the concept of equity into this just proves you have entirely lost the plot of your own argument. Equity is the current market value of an asset minus liabilities. You literally just spent three entire comments screaming that these manufacturing machines are entirely task specific and cannot possibly be used for anything else. If a machine can only make a product that nobody wants to buy anymore its current market value is essentially the price of scrap metal. You cannot confidently claim an asset is completely useless for any other purpose and then turn around and cry about its massive retained equity. Either the machine has alternative market value and the company can liquidate it to fund a transition or it is a completely unrecoverable sunk cost that rational management needs to write off immediately. Pick a lane because right now you are just completely embarrassing yourself by arguing both sides of a basic financial contradiction.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPtoCanada@lemmy.ca•Canada increased holdings of U.S. debt by 27% last year
    1·
    1 day ago

    All the deals I listed are done within the framework of BRICS. That’s literally the whole point of BRICS, it brings countries together, and facilitates economic activity. You’re basically making a straw man where you claim that BRICS needs to be something it’s not, and then you argue that it’s a failure because not this thing you declared it to be. And you refuse to engage with the reality of what it is and the actual purpose of the organization.

    Meanwhile, the reality is that China is still a developing country. And it still has hundreds of millions of people who live in poverty. Their approach is to continue developing poor regions which is what’s driving consumption. They don’t need people to replace toasters very year, because they have plenty of legitimate development happening. And because they are working with the rest of the developing world and helping them raise their standard of living, they’re literally creating future markets for their industries right now.

    These are the BRI investments you’re talking about, and it seems like a sound strategy. While countries benefiting from this are starting to take over lower ends, China is simply moving up the value chain here. I don’t think this is some sort of an unintended or unforeseen consequence.

    Finally, if automation does start replacing manual labor at scale, which is possible, I also expect shorter work week and reduction in work hours will be the outcome. This is a net positive for society. It’s literally what having automation should result in, people having more free time to enjoy their lives.

    The whole problem with automation only exists in a capitalist society where it’s deemed that people have to work to live. China doesn’t have this problem because people already own housing, food is cheap, and they have affordable healthcare and education that’s not run for profit. If they end up in a situation where there’s not enough work to go around, they can effectively implement universal basic services where everybody has necessities of life guaranteed as a human right. People who want to work and have skills that are useful will continue to apply themselves. This seems to be the whole goal with achieving basic socialist modernization that China set for 2035. http://english.scio.gov.cn/whitepapers/2021-04/06/content_77380652_8.htm

    It’s important to understand that Chinese system is not just a mirror of western liberal capitalism. The decisions that would be made here in face of mass automation are not the same decisions China will make.

Moderates