this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 3 points 16 hours ago

Anyone who travels quickly discovers how backwards America is for so many things compared to other modernized cities.

[–] Mrkawfee@feddit.uk 78 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Oh no, who would have thought that short term thinking would cost us in the long term?

It's funny that Trump acknowledges China thinks in decades, but hey, money speaks.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Are you suggesting we should let the line go up more slowly so we can still have a business in a few years? That's heresy!

[–] qarbone@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

Kill his whole family and then build my bunker for the "inevitable" apocalypse that I willfully helped to create!

[–] tangeli@piefed.social 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What happened to "A rising tide lifts all boats"?

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That ship sailed when the US locked China out of being a customer for our chipsets and other advanced technology. We could have held that over them and made money selling to them, but instead we forced them to bolster their own technological development. And now they beat us in most every aspect of new technology time and again. We just pretend that they dont by not letting Americans be consumers of their products.

Cheap and decent quality electric vehicles? They beat us. Advances in manufacturing? They beat us. Developments in nuclear fusion? Theyre beating us. We may still have an edge in AI, but that is only because of our edge in developing data harvesting search & social media spheres. Eventually, if not quite soon, they will whoop us on that too: since we have separate sources of data harvesting. And while they can buy all the data they want from American companies, the opposite is rarely true

And realistically, the rising tide is lifting a bunch of other boats but ours. People in other countries are happy to buy BYD cars and use Huawei cellphone technology. It makes perfect sense considering that manufacturing is hardly a relevant industry in most countries anymore, the US included. Less than 10% of American jobs are manufacturing jobs. We arent going to be catching up anytime soon, nor anytime at all. But half of American voters are obsessed with trying to revive a dead era of manufacturing despite it making no economic sense. So all we have are overpriced domestic productions, few real manufacturing jobs, and a cratering economy.

Trying to compete with the people we crowned as the world’s manufacturing power is quite plainly a losing affair

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The funniest historical parallel is that USA's own power was collected by being to Europe what China is now. That overseas area of cheap hands.

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Theres an argument to be made that we also dominated by creating manufacturing standards before there were international standards, so by the time the world was establishing international standards we were able to push for our standards to become ISO standards. Like screw threads being 45°, that kind of thing.

But the world standards especially became our standards because we were the cheap production hub as you said, and because we were farther removed from conflict during WWII. Another aspect is that we had established a ton of military bases to move things around the world, which was a huge benefit as well. But overall, we certainly used to occupy that same spot that China occupies today

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

Well, various kinds of internal (to one country or to one supply chain) standards would emerge just because you need some standard. Farther removed from conflict is good, but USA became half the world GDP before WWI. In the time which is perceived like something between now and the cinematographic wild west.

Bases - yes, and in the late XIX century US was already playing the colonial game, which certainly helped its economy.

Standards - not sure really about your example, sizes - maybe (but a lot of ISO things are from British and French local standards), but 45deg is, as you might notice, not a random angle. Some things are naturally optimal.