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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 9h \ on: The foolish temptation to feel superior AskSN
USA thought it was inherently superior to China but now USA cannot fight a war of any substance without Chinese supply of Rare Earths.
It's not that the US is superior to China. It's that capitalism is superior to statism. And the PRC didn't prove capitalism wrong.
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Your response and its complete lack of reasoned argument and total reliance upon baseless assertion demonstrates very well the arrogance and sense of superiority that has made the USA vulnerable.
If 'free market' capitalism is always superior then how is it that the Chinese government invested in rare earths supply chains and refining capacity resulting in China holding the USA over a barrel with the USA UNABLE to fight any war of any substance for the next decade at least and the USA now desperately investing Billions of dollars to try to subsidize rare earths supply chains to restore some independent supply of this strategically crucial material?
How does that not provide a very strong example of where state planning and strategic investment can be an extremely power method of gaining economic and military advantage?
In fact now the USA is resorting to precisely direct government investment (market intervention) in rare earths supply chains because the free market failed to provide them and will not provide them without government subsidies.
You are ignoring the reality that 'free market' mechanisms FAILED to build and maintain rare earths supply chains and this has given China, as a result of its mixed economy model a huge advantage over the USA.
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If your goal is to manufacture as many weapons as possible, then yes, maybe you need a state to harness the level of violence necessary to force your "investments" on an unwilling populace.
But the communists still haven't defeated China so your insistence (and the state's) on the usefulness of rare earth minerals is purely speculative.
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Irrational nonsense that does not in any credible way refute what I have said.
It is the USA that has used military force and the threat of it to build and support its exceptional privilege based upon the global dominance of the petrodollar.
Chinas mixed economy today cannot be called Communist in the true sense- it is a mixed economy based upon the combined use of free market competition and state lead strategic development and capital allocation.
So your 'response' is pure garbled unintelligible nonsense that fails to address the facts and issues raised and fails even to understand the nature of the issues raised.
Are you working for the CCP in order to obfuscate and distract from their mercantile plan to gain global hegemony?
'insistence on the usefulness of rare earth minerals is purely speculative.'
Nonsense - any cursory study of the matter will reveal that to be absolute and complete bullshit. Nearly all high tech military applications require rare earths to manufacture .
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It is the USA that has used military force and the threat of it to build and support its exceptional privilege based upon the global dominance of the petrodollar.
This is a cargo cult mentality. You're looking at the external trappings of wealth. The US did not get rich by having a large military. It got rich first, then it bought a large military. And US dollar dominance is a market choice that is unenforceable by military intervention. No one is forced to buy the dollar or US debt. They might be forced to accept it as a payment method, but actively buying and holding it is a personal decision.
it is a mixed economy based upon the combined use of free market competition and state lead strategic development and capital allocation.
There's no such thing as "mixed." Either the state or the market is in control of capital allocation. It's a win-lose competition. They have completely different interests. You just call it mixed to pay lip service to the idea that the market has some kind of input when it doesn't. The state does not care about the market's preferences, or it wouldn't be meddling in economic decisions in the first place.
Nearly all high tech military applications require rare earths to manufacture
It's your subjective preference to count helicopters instead of bitcoins.
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Study the history of the USA- no other nation has in modern times infiltrated, assassinated and other-thrown more governments and killed more people than the USA- all in the name of US wealth, power and hegemony.
There is absolutely such a thing as a mixed economy- study economics and learn.
It is for example where China directs capital to the mining and refining of rare earths which are in turn used by multiple Chinese companies to make all manner of modern high tech products from drones to EVs, PVs, electric motors, generators, rockets, robots and many many more military industrial products all giving China real and significant strategic and economic advantage over the 'free market' west where they do not have an assured supply of rare earths and now cannot fight a war of any size for at least ten years.
China won the trade war using the mixed economy model and now looks like gaining global hegemony because the crony capitalist west forgot the huge importance of strategic investment in supply chains, skills and infrastructure- something a mixed economy can do very well.
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no other nation has in modern times infiltrated, assasinated and other-thrown more governments and killed more people that=n the USA- all in the name of US wealth power and hegemony.
And you think it worked? You think the US got rich by invading Iraq?
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Since Iraq the US empire has been in obvious decline.
Most of the oilfields in Iraq are being developed and operated by Chinese engineers and companies- because China has built a more effective global mercantile and resource development program than the corrupt militaristic US one.
Chinas mixed economy model is beating the west at its own game.