More and more it looks like the Western world's embrace of neoliberalism was a catastrophic mistake. Its guiding principle is that capital and the markets are always right, and governments/the people should have no say in what they do. After decades of this, manufacturing and industry have fled to where capital & the markets can get the cheapest labor, leaving most Western countries hollowed out and deindustrialized.
COVID exposed a fresh weakness in this model of organizing economies, but now there's yet another disadvantage coming to light. By making China the world's manufacturing HQ, it is handing it the crown of the planet's No 1 in technology.
By rapidly becoming the world's leading car maker, China is in gear to become the world's leading robotics nation. Add to that, it's also arguably already the world's leading AI nation.
Some people in Western countries see this in terms of wars and arms races, but maybe the solution is to look within at home and dump neoliberalism?
China's lead in EVs may be giving it the lead in robotics, which means it may be time for western countries to take a radical look at how they promote and develop manufacturing at home.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
25 Comments
You know what would be great for manufacturing at home? Slapping raw material tariffs on our closest trading partners! I am sure that will help us get the leg-up we need.
The idea was to promote peace— that, sure, trade will make poorer countries rich while being a mixed blessing for rich countries, but that it will prevent conflict and might even build friendship. The thing that discredits neoliberal globalization, to me, is not China’s becoming technologically advanced but its remaining hostile. I share your conclusion though— failed idea that may have cost my country try its freedom forever. If only we could go back and warn them.
In case you didn’t notice, western countries are rapidly drifting apart.
The thing about AI and robotics is that it inevitably will lead to death of economy as we know it. Manufacturing costs will plumet because robots don’t need to be paid so eventually every country will be just making it’s own robots.
Time to play catch up! <America dismantles Dept. of Ed.> Dammit!
China is doing better than Western countries because it actually can follow through on long term planning instead of constant instability during governmental change. There’s pros and cons to that but in terms of manufacturing policy it’s a definite advantage
Diversifying the supply chain has been top priority since Covid, and the capitalists would quite literally do anything except bring manufacturing back to their home countries. So I guess what you are suggesting is we need to go full communism and put all the ceo in prison, nationalize all the companies so they will bring manufacturing back.
So as far as I know, chinese cars are mainly sold on the chinese market, so to their own populace, and in SEA in general. Europe and the US see only few of those (afaik at least). While this still makes them the biggest car manufacturer worldwide, how would not embracing neoliberalism have changed that in the slightest? I also kinda miss the point where China became world’s leading robotic and specifically AI no. 1. Not even sure they’re No. 2 in those regards, but I might just be uninformed on that.
Your premise about neoliberalism begs the question of it being a “catastrophic mistake” from what viewpoint? From how dominant a nation is in comparison to others when it comes to manufacturing industries? From how well the people are doing? From a idealistic standpoint of “how should we treat humans and societies in general in the long term to achieve what’s best for everyone”?
Because I’d say properly done, with a strong government, neoliberalism is absolutely what’s best for the people. They should have freedom to pursue whatever craft they prefer, be able to own property and build a future for them and their families/children. At some point, this will become more difficult to sustain because of space limitations and thus prices rising, but with proper socialist regulation, you’ll very likely be able to prevent some people having literally nothing but the clothes on their body while others own whole islands.
“May you live in interesting times” – Chinese guys cursed us ;_;
The Chinese are able to pull in one direction and take temporary losses for longterm gains because of government control of the economy intermingled with capitalist elements that reward innovation and entrepreneurship.
The US is at a disadvantage because the economy functions like a rudderless boat pushed by the winds and tide of a minimally guided, largely unregulated market.
Biden’s CHIPS Act is the kind of guided economic vision and incentivizing that the US needs more of.
One thing is for sure: Elon Musk and Tesla are not the answer.
China is basically running laps around the US right now. It’s sad and pathetic since we used to be a global leader and now all we care about is corporate profit
I’m sure glad we focused on social issues and shareholder returns before the future of our nation!
You due realize their EV are crap. Just because they make a lot does not mean people are buying them or driving them They have tens of thousands of EV in junk yards just wasting away. It not like EV is new tech. They were making electrical vehicles Even late 19th century. EV’s have a limited market unless the government forces you to buy them. Since they still are more expensive per mile driven.
China has entered a debt crisis that could set back the whole country. They went speculative on real estate, and the whole thing has gone tits up. It’s a mess that can’t easily be brushed aside.
No no you’re too early, we’re going to say their robots are trash for the next year or two until they literally have robots at even level in their society. And they’ve had time to learn and refine for the next gen robots.
THEN we’ll try to “catch up” by giving someone like musk or Altman billions in tax dollars just to produce an unaffordable and inferior product.
But that’s ok when that time comes we’ll just tariff them so not really an issue at all😚
Yes, China companies are selling EVs in large numbers. But all is not rosy, as revelations such as [**BYD’s hidden debt**](https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/byds-supply-chain-financing-masks-ballooning-debt-gmt-says) shows. The debt is a problem, not an uncommon one. But the lack of transparency is not reassuring.
Fairly sure the answer isn’t that we came full circle, let’s establish dictatorships again, to ensure well being of citizen… 🙂 but a funny theory.
If western countries all do manufacturing at home, everyone comsumes what they produce, then the logical outcome is that their income or living standard will be the same as China’s. Or probably lower bacause Chinese work harder. Do people actually want to take this move?
|Metric |China (2023)|United States (2023)|
|:-|:-|:-|
|**Total Installations**|276,288 units|37,587 units|
|**Rank (Installation)**|1st |3rd|
|**Robot Density**|470/10k workers|295/10k workers|
|**Rank (Density)**|3rd|10th|
|**Growth (2019–2023)**|Density doubled|15% increase|
Let them flood the US market as well. Break the tesla dominance and lite a fire under major American brands on their ass.
I mean anyone could have seen it coming more than a decade ago that if you centralize almost all the manufactoring of everything in one area, eventually they were going to reverse engineer it all and start making their own stuff.
You mean “stop exporting manufacturing jobs overseas”.
> manufacturing and industry have fled…leaving most Western countries hollowed out and deindustrialized.
[That’s not true.](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-value-added-to-gdp?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~Sub-Saharan+Africa~South+Asia~East+Asia+and+Pacific~Latin+America+and+Caribbean~Europe+and+Central+Asia~European+Union~Middle+East+and+North+Africa~USA~CHN~OWID_EU27)
In particular, the EU still has seen a very marginal decline in manufacturing as a share of GDP (17.6% to 14.8%) since the late 90s, in line with the declining share of the world as a whole (19.0% to 15.2%).
The USA has seen a larger decline (from 16.1% to 10.5%), but that’s not due to a decline in US manufacturing output, as [output has been stable over that period](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS). Speculation, but it’s likely due to the rapid increase in the share of tech in the US GDP over the last 25 years.
You’re not wrong that the West is playing catchup in some critical manufacturing domains, but it’s not due to the West no longer having manufacturing, it’s due to China investing heavily and leaping ahead.
Es curioso ver las maromas que se avientan algunos para defender a sus estados unidos, diciendo que china hace trampa o que no es valido porque su gobierno absorbe costos y perdidas. Niños ese es un gobierno que se preocupa por su economia no como el suyo que solo se preocupa en wall street
Quite obvious from recent meeting.
Xi himself meet ceo of deepseek,CATL,huawei,byd,unitree….
I mean they have all the ingredients for next industrial revolution to take place.