Fascist dichotomy: the "others" are both strong and weak at the same time.
Just like immigrants are both "lazy" and "taking all the jobs" at the same time.
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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Highly skilled North Korean hackers / a population of starving and downtrodden farmers who eat dirt for dinner.
Is this a contradiction? 99% of people are starving farmers who eat dirt for dinner and 1% are chosen from birth to be taught nothing other than how to hack the West
Edit: i forgot to add /s
Source
Yea, no. The DPRK is poor, but most areas are surprisingly "normal." The period of mass famines was decades ago, it's closer to how Cuba looks than it is to, say, Chad.
> shunned from international space collaboration
> makes their own space program
> nobody notices
Kinda wild how the west dissociates from China's space program basically in a modern day space race against everyone else. Imagine how much farther along humanity would be without the paranoid sinophobia. Some For All Mankind type of shit. Instead we're getting the Mirror Universe Terran Empire.
It has always been
For what it's worth, both can be true. An economy can be both strong and precarious, such as many world markets in the 1920's right before the great depression caused the economic collapse of the west.
The tariffs thing though is a joke. Not to the people who will be hurt by it, of course, but the idea that it will accomplish anything meaningful. It's just a scapegoat tactic to blame foreign powers for a weakening dollar.
I get your point, Western propaganda can't make up its mind about if they're strong or weak.
But it's not really a funny joke because economic instability isn't mutually exclusive with outcompeting, so the Schrodinger doesn't really apply.
Hilarious how tarriffs are a few against imports and we as a people pay those. The exporting country sees nothing and the importing companies have to pass on the cost. So weird how a giant set of Americans don't realize that it will raise the cost of almost everything.
I mean, the idea is, that the tarriffed stuff becomes less attractive compared to the non-tarriffed stuff due to the higher price, so less people will buy it and instead the nationally produced alternatives thus strengthening the national economy and and weakening the tarriffed ones.
Of course that can only work with stuff that has nationally produced (or at least non-tarriffed) alternatives.
Almost always, the US companies given monopoly/cartel protection by tariffs, boost prices more than production. The emperor could make a deal next week, so long term investments are sketchy.
If Aliens showed up to earth to trade cheap stuff and energy from their star trek replicators, I'm pretty sure the US oligarchs would ensure a rulership that goes to war with, or at least install prohibitive tariffs on, the Aliens instead, to protect their profits. China offers a similar role.
We could have full employment if we just get rid of wires and pipes that go to homes. Hire people to go get you firewood and water from the river, and throw your waste into the street. This does result in a subsaharan economy, and cannibalism, but everyone is structurally guaranteed work.
If instead you import from China/Aliens, you are rich in stuff. Still plenty of work available in construction and selling stuff, and UBI is a path to keep the "country" rich, primarily in being a desirable place to live in freedom.
Even in the unlikely event of US reindustrializing to become an uncompetitive economic island to rest of the world, it would result in a relatively declining standard of living, and no exports, compared to those trading with the Aliens.
*its economy
Last when I was into this topic, no expert on the China economy ever said that China was going to collapse. Rather their prognosis is that the economy is near its peak and likely will stagnate from now on, maybe shrink a bit (maybe) . But not collapse
Rags like The Economist have been predicting its collapse for years and years and years. It’s a meme at this point.
They shouldn't stop now. They're about to be right. Any time. Aaaaanyyyy. Time. Not yet? Aaaaanyyyy. Tiiiiiime.
The latest predictions are based on aging population. Not only does China have a much higher birth rate than US, they are ahead in robotics for manufacturing production (lower physical labour need), and US is about to deport 10m relatively young people.
The left it's should be an its, no apostrophe