I know a guy who found a way to monetize his GPU, just really slowly. He did it until he was able to buy 2 more, then 4 more, and so on. He has like 90 now. I’m sure he could if he wanted to.

I don’t believe you can oppress something forever. The oppressed learn your weaknesses and they have all the time in the world to move the battle onto territory which exploits those weaknesses. Even if it means moving a single grain of sand, walking it a thousand miles to the destination and back, for each grain on a beach. Time is on their side.

The alternative is genocide. Yet even then, you’ll have just martyred their civilization. The issue moves but was not “dealt with.”

We would be a lot wiser to actually help these countries develop into longstanding allies, perhaps with economic dependence on us (the liberal way). Our current approach is just barbaric, and we’re surly sowing the wind.

You’re right and I’ve a interesting thought experiment I’ve played out here before…

Try and imagine up some groundbreaking new technology. For example, a device that can carbon copy the entire universe and embed you within it as a temporary sandbox environment. It’s literally the entire universe, copied and playing out as a slightly alternate reality, and you get to go in there to do whatever you want.

We currently live in a world that would put profit before important ethical questions like: do the simulated people have rights? Are their experiences as real to them as ours are to us? How can we ever be sure we are any different from them, more “real,” and how would we like it if a god figure popped into our universe just because it could?

We currently live in a world that would soon market this as a technology that lets you live your wildest adventures with no consequences. People would engage in murder, rape, … over and over again. People would defend it, “they aren’t real…”

I like to think a different kind of world is possible… one where the speed of innovation isn’t at odds with the stability of governance. One where a new technology doesn’t risk an arms race because of fear and game theory mechanics. One where you can still get ahead, but your fellow man also helps you from falling behind. One where technology actually serves the majority, like it was first touted to do.

But then I remember we have like 10 years to figure this shit out before the Earth turns into an oven / freezer for the next century.

Thanks for the thorough reply! I think it shifted a bit from answering how China coordinates industrial development into defending why China has its current political-economic system. This is appreciated context, but I’m not sure it helps me understand the answer to my question wholly.

My question is narrower: which mechanisms behind China’s manufacturing and innovation (state-owned banks, industrial policy, procurement, local government competition, subsidies, etc.) are actually necessary, and which of those could realistically exist within a liberal democratic system?

The west is a dying imperialist power, where super profits of exploiting the global south are declining. The west is also largely de-industrialized.

When I say west, I really mean democratic governance with capitalistic economics — would that be modern liberalism? I don’t believe liberalism is dying, but I do think the western stranglehold on global economics (I.e., imperialistic capitalism) is failing in its later stages. I also think something like democratic socialism could come as a natural result, having come from a democratic capitalist society.

My thing is, though, China saved itself using tactics that I’m not really sure are compatible with modern liberal ideology. Probably not even compatible with democratic socialism. What do you think?

I’d also wonder to what degree is their success palatable in western nations? Doesn’t China use a command economy to foster a more potently competitive market in whichever programs are being state sponsored? If that’s a big part of how they achieved so much manufacturing elasticity and technological innovation, what would a western version look like? Western politics aren’t fond of command economies.