Author Topic: I have the feeling that the whole trade war starts from a pile of nonsense.  (Read 89770 times)

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Offline technixTopic starter

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Now regarding tariffs, in a way I think they are a good idea although not without risks. I don't have any problem at all with China, they are simply producing the goods we ask for and being competitive in price. The problem is that we've become addicted to cheap toys here. Goods are absolutely absurdly cheap, and because everything is so much cheaper people here can't make a living selling or servicing these goods. All this non-essential stuff is so cheap that it makes essential things like land, housing, food and stuff that cannot be outsourced to cheaper places seem much more expensive in comparison. It's not sustainable, we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for stuff and having a lot less of it, the way it was up into the 90s.
Addicted to cheap toys = knees deep in consumerism. Instead of placing the blame on other countries exporting too many things, maybe US should rethink that instead. Well here is the problem: anti-consumerism goes against the benefit of megacorporations, which exerts a lot of control over the US governing system. Breaking US out of consumerism will be an uphill battle.

Right wing mostly refers to nationalists nowadays, not neoliberals.
No it doesn't. Conservatives are still right-wing, and I'm not sure even Tusk can be called neoliberal (and neolibs are right wing too). The right wing populists are usually called far right. Calling EU (and conservatives) leftist is just plain objectively untrue.
The Overton window has shifted a lot to the right thanks to Trumpian Republicans in US, UKIP and Marine le Pen in France. EU is now center-left to the Overton window and Bernie (and Siân Berry) is Overton far left.

Back to trade:  The US needs to get its accounts more balanced.  We can't keep exporting money forever.  And we need to beef up those industries that are important to national defense.  Steel, aluminum, chips and such are all critical.  We don't need to be competitive, tariffs or government contracts will fix that, but we do need to be self-sufficient.  At least in terms of defense materials.  We simply can't be dependent on other countries for our own defense.
If you don't want to export money, you have to export something as an alternative to balance the books, and that something has to be attractive enough so the rest of the world would love to buy, and you should make it wide open available. Japanese steel just have its credibility tanked - they have to recall almost everything that uses steel in any major components, from cars to missiles - yet US allowed that chance to slip. US already make the best chips in the world, but for a lot of them you are not willing to sell or have a lot of odd conditions attached, instead of wide open available. And your immigration policies scares away foreign students, closing the doors on yet another thing you can export: higher education. (Keep in mind most foreign students have to pay for their own education in full, instead of using taxpayer money.) As of agricultural products US tanked its credibility a few years ago with all the GMO debacle, so people isn't really willing to buy.

Speaking of immigration policy, US could have undermined Chinese scientific and research capabilities using a targeted policy. A lot of the smarter brains in China want to leave due to the political oppression and bad labor conditions (see 996.icu,) and US was on top of most of their destination lists. If, for example, US allowed every Chinese student graduating from a Master's program or higher with an average grade no lower than B a green card after continuously staying within US and work any job for a year, you will see a lot of smart people in China take flight and they will likely stay in US. However you just tanked your credibility on that...
« Last Edit: May 25, 2019, 07:17:59 pm by technix »
 

Offline rstofer

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For some reason, Congress is unwilling to require eVerify in other than Federal contracts.
You mean, you are surprised it's not mandatory on every hire in the private sector? Why would you want to be tracked like cattle by the gov?

In terms of employment, we are already tracked due to the requirement to pay into Social Security, Fed and local taxes, and so on.

Today, those deductions are taken from everybody's wages and paid into SOMEBODY'S account.  It just may not actually belong to the employee.  There are processes for detecting fraud in Social Security but it takes a while to catch up.  But all that stuff happens AFTER the employee is hired instead of catching the fraud right out of the gate with eVerify.  It's actually the Republicans that don't want eVerify because it will have an impact on illegal farm workers and farmers have a pretty big lobby.

It is the productivity of the farm workers that make our farm produce competitive.  That and subsidies...
 

Offline soldar

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Now regarding tariffs, in a way I think they are a good idea although not without risks. I don't have any problem at all with China, they are simply producing the goods we ask for and being competitive in price. The problem is that we've become addicted to cheap toys here. Goods are absolutely absurdly cheap, and because everything is so much cheaper people here can't make a living selling or servicing these goods. All this non-essential stuff is so cheap that it makes essential things like land, housing, food and stuff that cannot be outsourced to cheaper places seem much more expensive in comparison. It's not sustainable, we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for stuff and having a lot less of it, the way it was up into the 90s.

I share your low opinion of Trump and I disagree that tariffs are a good idea but, in any case, even if you think tariffs are a good idea, there are ways and there are ways to implement them.

Business needs stability and the ability to make plans and investments for the future. If you want to change the rules it should be done with plenty of warning, giving all parties time to prepare and adapt and not like in this case where it is just chaos and instability. This is just bad for business everywhere. Even American businesses do not know what the Cheeto will tweet tomorrow and that is just a very bad way to run anything, be it a corporation, a country or the world. He thrives on creating chaos and confrontation. The whole world hates this.

Americans who have to do business with foreigners must be embarrassed and apologetic.
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Offline apis

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Right wing mostly refers to nationalists nowadays, not neoliberals.
No it doesn't. Conservatives are still right-wing, and I'm not sure even Tusk can be called neoliberal (and neolibs are right wing too). The right wing populists are usually called far right. Calling EU (and conservatives) leftist is just plain objectively untrue.
The Overton window has shifted a lot to the right thanks to Trumpian Republicans in US, UKIP and Marine le Pen in France. EU is now center-left to the Overton window and Bernie (and Siân Berry) is Overton far left.
Left/right is somewhat objectively defined, the nationalist populist might be right of e.g. CDU but CDU is still right-wing. It's not obvious that the nationalists are further to the right either, although they are sometimes sloppily assumed to be. Often they lean more towards the center so that they can attract xenophobic/anti-establishment voters from across the spectrum.

Saying EU is leftist is like saying the Republicans and Trump are leftist. Saying it doesn't make it true. It's doublespeek.
 

Offline technixTopic starter

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In terms of employment, we are already tracked due to the requirement to pay into Social Security, Fed and local taxes, and so on.

Today, those deductions are taken from everybody's wages and paid into SOMEBODY'S account.  It just may not actually belong to the employee.  There are processes for detecting fraud in Social Security but it takes a while to catch up.  But all that stuff happens AFTER the employee is hired instead of catching the fraud right out of the gate with eVerify.  It's actually the Republicans that don't want eVerify because it will have an impact on illegal farm workers and farmers have a pretty big lobby.

It is the productivity of the farm workers that make our farm produce competitive.  That and subsidies...
Given the geography of US, why don't you automate the thing? You already have some of the best robotics companies in the world who needs orders, electricity is cheap and the land is flat allowing the deployment of huge machineries. Replacing those temporary farm workers with robots means they now have no reason to enter US whatsoever, and since robots are not humans they are not subjected to those laws or even labor laws in general, and the wage of a single engineer plus machine maintenance is way cheaper than the wages to the farm hands too. What do those farms produce anyway?

Even in the hilly part of China there are automated farming going on. What used to be the job of half the village's residents of the week is now one engineer/drone pilot's job of the day.

Left/right is somewhat objectively defined, the nationalist populist might be right of e.g. CDU but CDU is still right-wing. It's not obvious that the nationalists are further to the right either, although they are sometimes sloppily assumed to be. Often they lean more towards the center so that they can attract xenophobic/anti-establishment voters from across the spectrum.
I understand that, hence the use of the phrases Overton left and Overton right indicating the position on the political spectrum related to the Overton window. We have an Overton window somewhere in the center-right to mainstream right wing now.

Business needs stability and the ability to make plans and investments for the future. If you want to change the rules it should be done with plenty of warning, giving all parties time to prepare and adapt and not like in this case where it is just chaos and instability. This is just bad for business everywhere. Even American businesses do not know what the Cheeto will tweet tomorrow and that is just a very bad way to run anything, be it a corporation, a country or the world. He thrives on creating chaos and confrontation. The whole world hates this.
That goes hand in hand with the dishonesty - I would take the lack of stability as a variant of dishonesty really. When a part of the world is in chaos people, companies and capital take flight.

Speaking of, the whole war on Iran is going to earn Trump even more ire from EU. EU is already having trouble to stomach all the refugees from North Africa amid chaos there. For Iranian citizens trying to take flight it is most likely that they will also try to take refuge in EU, further worsening the refugee problem there.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2019, 07:48:05 pm by technix »
 

Offline apis

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Left/right is somewhat objectively defined, the nationalist populist might be right of e.g. CDU but CDU is still right-wing. It's not obvious that the nationalists are further to the right either, although they are sometimes sloppily assumed to be. Often they lean more towards the center so that they can attract xenophobic/anti-establishment voters from across the spectrum.
I understand that, hence the use of the phrases Overton left and Overton right indicating the position on the political spectrum related to the Overton window. We have an Overton window somewhere in the center-right to mainstream right wing now.
Yes, but the Overton window doesn't matter in this case. It's still objectively wrong to say EU is a leftist organisation. It's like saying war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength... it's doublespeak no matter how they want to spin it. Facts are facts.

The Overton window is about making extreme opinions more mainstream, like wanting to build a wall to mexico or that the US should start trade wars with Europe and China.
 

Offline technixTopic starter

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Yes, but the Overton window doesn't matter in this case. It's still objectively wrong to say EU is a leftist organisation. It's like saying war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength... it's doublespeak no matter how they want to spin it. Facts are facts.

The Overton window is about making extreme opinions more mainstream, like wanting to build a wall to mexico or that the US should start trade wars with Europe and China.
I fell into the right wing trap here, sorry. Speaking of...

Facts are facts.
Why do we have so many right-wing Pinocchios mow?
 

Offline apis

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Facts are facts.
Why do we have so many right-wing Pinocchios mow?
That's the big question.  :-\

Given the geography of US, why don't you automate the thing? You already have some of the best robotics companies in the world who needs orders, electricity is cheap and the land is flat allowing the deployment of huge machineries. Replacing those temporary farm workers with robots means they now have no reason to enter US whatsoever, and since robots are not humans they are not subjected to those laws or even labor laws in general, and the wage of a single engineer plus machine maintenance is way cheaper than the wages to the farm hands too. What do those farms produce anyway?

Even in the hilly part of China there are automated farming going on. What used to be the job of half the village's residents of the week is now one engineer/drone pilot's job of the day.
I imagine that creativity and rate of change might be higher in China, but farmers in the US has been adapting robotic farming methods for quite a while:

 

Offline bsfeechannel

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Not going to happen. If the west tries to shape our civilization, there will be nothing but hostility.

What is so Chinese about China?

The economy is capitalist: a Western invention. The political system is communism: a by-product of capitalism. The government is a dictatorship, invented by the ancient Romans as a temporary emergency device, then turned by the emperors into a permanent expedient at the end of the Republic.

Chinese cut their hairs and dress themselves as if they lived in the West.

We don't buy any Chinese products. We buy Western products (i.e. products the West want) made in China. And we pay for them in dollars, a Western currency.

So for someone watching the East from a distance it looks like the West won and there's no viable alternative.
 

Offline soldar

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Wow, that's a pretty skewed and self-centered view. I'm glad it is not common.
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Offline windsmurf

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I actually stopped watching TYT contents - while it is factually sound it is a bit too biased towards the left. While I am a left-winger I want to try understand why right-winger do certain things.
Yeah they sometimes go on a tirade which I dislike, especially Ana. 
One show I watch religiously is Rachel Maddow.  Lots of factual info and usually good interviews.
I do read Reason.com and wsj.com for some balance.

Is she still telling you about Russia? It's good that someone still watches her though. TYT are horribly biased and backtrack anytime they catch any flak(not apologize, don't admit wrong-doing, just backtrack or pretend it never happened). As for Justice Democrats... Saikat Chakrabarti is literally the guy he's supposed to not be.

Lately its been about Barr and his quid pro quo actions with Trump... and the CIA informant inside the Kremlin who will likely be executed when Trump forces information to go public out of the CIA surrounding the origins of the Russia election meddling investigation.   

Saikat is what happens when a genius decides to devote their talents to the benefit of society over personal enrichment.

 

Offline bsfeechannel

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Wow, that's a pretty skewed and self-centered view. I'm glad it is not common.

I have a feeling that what the Chinese need is a warm welcome.

Welcome to the West, have a seat, make yourself at home. Never mind the trade wars, we do that all the time among ourselves. You'll soon get used to it.
 

Offline soldar

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Yeah, that was quite an arrogant and ignorant post.

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"Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old."
- Rudyard Kipling
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Offline windsmurf

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In terms of employment, we are already tracked due to the requirement to pay into Social Security, Fed and local taxes, and so on.

Today, those deductions are taken from everybody's wages and paid into SOMEBODY'S account.  It just may not actually belong to the employee.  There are processes for detecting fraud in Social Security but it takes a while to catch up.  But all that stuff happens AFTER the employee is hired instead of catching the fraud right out of the gate with eVerify.  It's actually the Republicans that don't want eVerify because it will have an impact on illegal farm workers and farmers have a pretty big lobby.

It is the productivity of the farm workers that make our farm produce competitive.  That and subsidies...
Given the geography of US, why don't you automate the thing? You already have some of the best robotics companies in the world who needs orders, electricity is cheap and the land is flat allowing the deployment of huge machineries. Replacing those temporary farm workers with robots means they now have no reason to enter US whatsoever, and since robots are not humans they are not subjected to those laws or even labor laws in general, and the wage of a single engineer plus machine maintenance is way cheaper than the wages to the farm hands too. What do those farms produce anyway?

Even in the hilly part of China there are automated farming going on. What used to be the job of half the village's residents of the week is now one engineer/drone pilot's job of the day.

That's currently being worked on, but its still more cost-efficient for the farmers to just hire illegals.  Particular crops are still challenging for machines to harvest without damage to the products without further robotics/AI development.   

Speaking of robotics, this is a cool video on how cloud servers are manufactured:
https://youtu.be/nzpyG0cSMLg


« Last Edit: May 25, 2019, 10:40:15 pm by windsmurf »
 

Offline windsmurf

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Yes, but the Overton window doesn't matter in this case. It's still objectively wrong to say EU is a leftist organisation. It's like saying war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength... it's doublespeak no matter how they want to spin it. Facts are facts.

The Overton window is about making extreme opinions more mainstream, like wanting to build a wall to mexico or that the US should start trade wars with Europe and China.

I think this left-right linear scale is obsolete. We need a multidimentional scale with new classifications.
 

Offline soldar

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The problem is that we've become addicted to cheap toys here. Goods are absolutely absurdly cheap, and because everything is so much cheaper people here can't make a living selling or servicing these goods. All this non-essential stuff is so cheap that it makes essential things like land, housing, food and stuff that cannot be outsourced to cheaper places seem much more expensive in comparison. It's not sustainable, we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for stuff and having a lot less of it, the way it was up into the 90s.

It is socially unsustainable that a minority waste a lot in the rich world while a majority live in misery in the poorer countries. We can try to prolong it but it will only create more problems. Trying to maintain the status quo creates resentment in the poorer nations and leads to wars. 

The cheap stuff we import has a big environmental impact. We buy toys, clothes, electronics, etc. like they are disposable. We use clothes very few times. Clothes are fashion statements to be used and discarded but the manufacture of those clothes pollutes a lot. Same thing with toys, plastics electronics. So cheap we can replace them much more often than we really need. As an example I can say I have half a dozen mobile phones and an iPad and I have not bought a single one, they were all items being discarded by people getting newer devices.

Food I consider to be pretty cheap.  The reason housing is expensive is not because of the cost of building as much as the natural scarcity. You can get extremely cheap housing in places where nobody would want to live. The cost is determined by location, location, location.
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Offline magic

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There surely is more than left-right but I think one distinction can be made along the lines of "world should be made better" vs "world shouldn't be made worse" which I think a lot of the left-right stuff boils down to.
And the EU is undeniably on the "progress" side of things. They always want to change something: poverty, inequality, racism, hate, gender gap, you name it.
Their goals aren't far from the USSR: establish one huge government for people of many nations and races with democracy and equality for all.
Skeptics say the outcomes will be similar too :P In fact, some erosion of civil liberties can already be observed in localized areas.
 

Offline james_s

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I share your low opinion of Trump and I disagree that tariffs are a good idea but, in any case, even if you think tariffs are a good idea, there are ways and there are ways to implement them.

Well I'm not an economist and frankly most aspects of business and finances make my eyes glaze over so unlike Trump I'm not going to belligerently push to implement things I do not fully understand. It's just that on the surface they sound like a reasonable idea, a way to even out the playing field a bit given much of the reason China is able to be so competitive is that they are allowed to trash their environment and abuse the workers who do not enjoy nearly the standard of living or the protections those of us in many of the places buying these cheap goods have come to expect. Again though this is not my area of expertise so I'm not flat out saying I think they're a good idea, but I do feel the pinch of competing with people overseas who can live for a fraction of what it costs me and I'm frustrated by the race to the bottom with a lot of formerly good quality products being steadily cheapened to compete with low cost garbage.   
 

Offline bsfeechannel

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Free trade and money first ideologies existed long before as soon as currencies were invented. Even before money's era.
And FYI, paper money was invented by the Chinese.

Last time I checked, Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, was Scottish. I'm looking at his book, "The Wealth of Nations", right in front of me, while I write this.

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Modern communism proposed by the German is a challenge to capitalism, but the original concept was way before capitalism.

Yeah. Germany. A Western country.

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What makes the Romans so special?

Nothing. Only that we are using their script and they are at the origin of the Western civilization.

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Should we boycott "colonized science"?
And FYI, short hair was nothing new to China. Qing dynasty was a minority ethnicity, and they had long hairs.
The traditional Han Chinese were not known for having long hairs.

As for the clothes, it's more of a material limitation than design limitation.
If you create a civilization from the middle of nowhere, and give them modern textile technology, they will come up with the same dressing style.
It just naturally converged to this point.

What I mean is that the Chinese, willingly or not, ended up looking like the Western, not the other way around. This speaks volumes about who has been assimilated.

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Western products = products the West want?
"Western" attributes "products", so the phrase should be understood as products belong to the West, or products originate from the West.
You might be able to say something more intelligent with more education.

What products we buy from China that we can identify with an original modern Chinese culture?

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We are NOT trying to reshape Western culture or to replace it. We are trying to create one that runs in parallel.

How? What is in the Chinese culture that represents an alternative to the West, if China does what the West does or did?

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Arrogance seldom go hand in hand with success.

Pointing the finger to a fact is arrogance?

Have you stopped to think that we are talking in English, not Chinese?
 

Offline windsmurf

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I share your low opinion of Trump and I disagree that tariffs are a good idea but, in any case, even if you think tariffs are a good idea, there are ways and there are ways to implement them.

Well I'm not an economist and frankly most aspects of business and finances make my eyes glaze over so unlike Trump I'm not going to belligerently push to implement things I do not fully understand. It's just that on the surface they sound like a reasonable idea, a way to even out the playing field a bit given much of the reason China is able to be so competitive is that they are allowed to trash their environment and abuse the workers who do not enjoy nearly the standard of living or the protections those of us in many of the places buying these cheap goods have come to expect. Again though this is not my area of expertise so I'm not flat out saying I think they're a good idea, but I do feel the pinch of competing with people overseas who can live for a fraction of what it costs me and I'm frustrated by the race to the bottom with a lot of formerly good quality products being steadily cheapened to compete with low cost garbage.

If you're talking truly about competitiveness, tariffs make us less competitive, and slows down innovation.
It also increases cost to persons and business (reduces buying power), lowering our standard of living.
Economists will tell you overall, its a net negative for the U.S. 

So why do this?  It's designed to hopefully change the behavior of a trading partner (China).   

Cheapening of products... well its what the market demands. If folks are willing to pay more for high quality U.S. made products, then industry will be there to fulfill that demand.  Fluke comes to mind... but they're constantly criticized for being too expensive or not a "good value" etc.   
 

Offline technixTopic starter

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Last time I checked, Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, was Scottish. I'm looking at his book, "The Wealth of Nations", right in front of me, while I write this.
Sorry even organized capitalism itself is invented in China back in the 12th century, 5 centuries before Adam Smith was even born. Dictatorship clocks in at no later than 8th century BCE.

Have you stopped to think that we are talking in English, not Chinese?
我固然可以写中文,但是你能看得懂吗?I am posting this in English for YOUR benefit, so YOU can read it without having to learn a, to be honest fairly difficult language first. Should this be a private thread between me and @blueskull more likely than not we will be using Chinese.

By the way, how do you feel about uprooting your life and move to three cities over?

So why do this?  It's designed to hopefully change the behavior of a trading partner (China).
Sadly the West blew its credibility in the eyes of China back in the late 19th to early 20th century. That is why I think it is unlikely that China will change its behavior even in face of this pressure.

The cheap stuff we import has a big environmental impact. We buy toys, clothes, electronics, etc. like they are disposable. We use clothes very few times. Clothes are fashion statements to be used and discarded but the manufacture of those clothes pollutes a lot. Same thing with toys, plastics electronics. So cheap we can replace them much more often than we really need. As an example I can say I have half a dozen mobile phones and an iPad and I have not bought a single one, they were all items being discarded by people getting newer devices.
Welcome to Green New Deal and the uphill battle of anti-consumerism.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2019, 05:24:27 am by technix »
 
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Offline technixTopic starter

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That's currently being worked on, but its still more cost-efficient for the farmers to just hire illegals.  Particular crops are still challenging for machines to harvest without damage to the products without further robotics/AI development.   
How expensive are those equipment? Here in China usually it is usually the farmers union/local government renting the equipment and hiring the engineer for all union members/township/county.

I imagine that creativity and rate of change might be higher in China, but farmers in the US has been adapting robotic farming methods for quite a while:
Why is it that the creativity and rate of change in US is falling back? What is holding t back? Is it a lack of educated people (which should be fixable by producing more of that kind of people through fixing the education system, and importing more through a more attractive immigration and work visa policy) or?
« Last Edit: May 26, 2019, 05:54:41 am by technix »
 

Offline windsmurf

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That's currently being worked on, but its still more cost-efficient for the farmers to just hire illegals.  Particular crops are still challenging for machines to harvest without damage to the products without further robotics/AI development.   
How expensive are those equipment? Here in China usually it is usually the farmers union/local government renting the equipment and hiring the engineer for all union members/township/county.

Some of the machines are too new and unproven, so farmers would rather have a fixed known cost (illegal labor) with smaller risk, than a large investment with unknown risk.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/02/17/feature/inside-the-race-to-replace-farmworkers-with-robots 


 

Offline apis

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I imagine that creativity and rate of change might be higher in China, but farmers in the US has been adapting robotic farming methods for quite a while:
Why is it that the creativity and rate of change in US is falling back? What is holding t back? Is it a lack of educated people (which should be fixable by producing more of that kind of people through fixing the education system, and importing more through a more attractive immigration and work visa policy) or?
Better educated people will benefit all aspects of society I believe, it makes people smarter which means they make better choices on average.

I'm not sure it's the US falling back as much as China that has shifted up a gear or two. Creativity wise It's even worse here in Europe, if you are tinkering in your garage here, unless it's with an old car, people will look at you suspiciously. Lot of people doesn't like change. I don't really know what it's like in China, but China is huge and things are changing quickly. Maybe people there are more open new ideas, or maybe it's just the size (2.8 times as big population as EU), or maybe it's the rapid economic growth?
 

Offline soldar

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Well I'm not an economist and frankly most aspects of business and finances make my eyes glaze over so unlike Trump I'm not going to belligerently push to implement things I do not fully understand. It's just that on the surface they sound like a reasonable idea, a way to even out the playing field a bit given much of the reason China is able to be so competitive is that they are allowed to trash their environment and abuse the workers who do not enjoy nearly the standard of living or the protections those of us in many of the places buying these cheap goods have come to expect. Again though this is not my area of expertise so I'm not flat out saying I think they're a good idea, but I do feel the pinch of competing with people overseas who can live for a fraction of what it costs me and I'm frustrated by the race to the bottom with a lot of formerly good quality products being steadily cheapened to compete with low cost garbage.

On the surface anything can be made to sound like a reasonable idea, that is marketing and it is what politicians do: they tell people what they want to hear. Of course we are justified in invading countristan and taking their oil. You do not want the price of gas to go up at the pump do you? So we make up moral and political reasons why we should invade them and we do not talk about the real reasons.

We look at things our way, the way most convenient for our interests, and we ignore others' points of view. So what if they have to starve? Who cares?

Rich countries polluted their way to riches. Working conditions were terrible, pollution was terrible but people chose to do that rather than remain in misery. But now we get on our high horse and righteously proclaim those who pollute or have harsh working conditions are bad people and we should not buy from them. We do not give them the choice that we gave ourselves between pollution and starvation. No, better they starve than they pollute.

In the meanwhile, back in the great U.S. of A. the president is busy dismantling environmental protection regulations because they hamper American businesses.

So, where is the right balance? Does it have to be for everybody where America says it is?

And let us not forget that one reason poor countries pollute is because they are making stuff for rich countries. In other words, we are exporting to them our polluting industries and then we blame them for polluting.

We subsidize our agriculture and deny them the opportunity to make a living in the sector where they could most easily make a living.

China, as it gets richer, is already implementing pollution laws and will continue to do so as they get richer. Environmental laws are expensive and rich countries can afford them. But lecturing China on this is like lecturing the homeless beggar at the stoplight about showering every day. How is he supposed to do it?

It is ironic the America, the country that uses more gasoline per capita than any country in the world, would lecture countries that are using energy to make a living. Americans want to keep driving their SUVs but would deny China the option of using the same energy to develop.  It all rings very false and very hollow.  It sounds like very bad excuses to support xenophobic policies.

America is no moral position to preach or impose their values. America, like any other country, has some very good things, a lot of meh things and some very bad things. The way to make the world a better place is by cooperation among nations and not by giving the world the middle finger and telling them to phuckoff.  America has become a rogue country and is in no position to preach.

I believe American supremacy is waning fast and America is not adapting well to the new world order. America wants to remain "sole superpower" and can only do so militarily so there is danger of America disrupting things and using force. And all will be supported by very good ostensible reasons. Those with the wealth and the power have always found good support in the Bible or any other source of morality. 
All my posts are made with 100% recycled electrons and bare traces of grey matter.
 
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