Technology

34799 readers

215 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.

Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.

Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

270

Americans Are Open To Cheap Chinese Cars. That’s 'Scary' For The Rest Of The Auto Industry (insideevs.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

147 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15089465

Americans Are Open To Cheap Chinese Cars. That’s 'Scary' For The Rest Of The Auto Industry

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Now look at how much the executives are being paid in the US compared to the cost of the vehicles...

It ain't the welders and wrench turners who are adding the most to the cost of vehicles.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As opposed to China where there totally isn't a massive wealth gap between factory workers and their executives! Not like the CEO of Xpeng is worth 1.4 billion or anything...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It’s true, China Has Billionaires.

Income inequality rhetoric ignores that a class can reap the benefits of work via public investment (e.g. a bullet train), even if bosses make more as individuals. Working Chinese people are seeing the fruits of their labour despite billionaires and inequality. To recriminate them for not demanding more is recriminating the virtue of patience.

In fact, much of what passes for “socialist” idealism in the West turns out to be a mirror image of bog-standard liberal-capitalist entrepreneurship propaganda: “I will be my own boss! I will run my own business!” This idealism appears unaware that the necessity of management is foisted upon us by logistics, not capitalism. Denial of this reality results in fantasies of perfect synchrony between perfectly autonomous anarchists.

The “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” dream, embraced more by pundits with cushy lives than working people, also reveals a dark truth: western “socialists” have some awareness that a more equal world will mean losing first-world privileges. They cannot conceive of things getting better steadily and slowly, with hard work. And so they are forced to denigrate the Chinese road of self-sacrifice in favour of leisure-driven utopianism. The reality is that the victory of the working class over the capitalist class will usher in an era of hard but rewarding work, as opposed to hard work without reward.

United Nations, 2019: Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Sure man, I guess the nets on the sides of the factory buildings are there to catch workers who are jumping with joy because their work is so rewarding.

I don't deny that China's economic ascendancy has been remarkable and a big win against poverty, but now that people have gotten past the starvation phase, I don't think you can use the "high tide raises all boats" analogy. It sounds a lot like tricke-down economics to me, with some hand-waving that things are different in China because the wealthy elites are actually generous patricians.