The whole world: We need cheap EVs for the regular people.
China: I got you fam.
The world: Tarifs.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. You don’t want total reliance from one country (especially one as questionable as China) over a whole big ass sector of your economic. And China being super cheap will cause a monopoly of their EVs. That’s bad.
A monopoly is not inherently bad. A monopoly removes the incentive for pricing pressure, yes, but that requires consolidation in a single company, not a single country. China’s only been able to sell EVs so cheap because every company that couldn’t drive prices this low got blown the fuck out of the market. That’s competition, not a monopoly. By extension, if EV prices go back up, those competitors can pretty easily restart given the billions of venture funding swimming around in China.
A monopoly isn’t inherently bad, but a monopoly by a state is pretty bad. It means they can exert political pressure over you using that sector’s influence.
Heck, look at Russia and gas. It impacted tons of people all over the world, and if the world hadn’t collectively said “fuck you Russia we’ll handle ourselves without you” - then countries like Germany wouldn’t have a choice but keep buying Russian Gas.
That’s a political power you really don’t wanna give to anyone, especially not China.
Yes, competition could restart, but that’d take time. And you don’t always have that time. Again, see Russia and gas as a nice example for that.
Good luck with that. Have you ever met humans?
And yet, we managed to mostly abolish slavery and child labour in most countries.
It’s not going to be easy, but it can be done.
Optimism is the enemy of progress. It just feels like delusional thinking at some point, and breeds complacency
Not to be defeatist, but…
We didn’t abolish slavery… we just replaced it with wage slavery. Sure, the workers are free to leave - and try to survive with no other job opportunities and no money. In fact, for the employers, this is actually preferable to real slavery, because there are lower upfront costs for your slaves, they don’t try to run away or rebel, you don’t have to pay for their healthcare or long term care, and in many places government tax dollars will subsidize their living expenses. Employers have it WAY better with wage slaves than real slaves.
Child labour is still alive and well in many countries, and even there the ball is rolling on rolling THAT back in the US at least.
I admire your positivity, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
If you really think that wage slavery is comparable to being owned by a human, then you’re delusional.
Yes, slavery and child labour still exists. But if you think living in the US or China or India in 2024 is just as bad as 1850, then you are also delusional.
Some countries like Afghanistan or North Korea might be objectively worse, but those are a minority.
I agree, all the evils of yesteryear are still there and active, just either well-hidden or people simply don’t care/pretend not to know (cfr football world championships in Qatar, …).
We’ve made enormous progress technologically, but humans are still the exact same as 2000 or 5000 years ago. We’ve changed exceedingly little in that time, and the few things that have changed could be reverted very quickly if shove comes to push concerning climate collapse etc.
Don’t forget prison labor slavery, especially in the south. It was specifically added for that very reason.
Humans are wonderful. Not always good, not always reasonable, but wonderful.
We are rich, nuanced, vibrant beings. A small portion of us are defectors but by and large we are community focused and willing to give when we feel we are not being taken advantage of.
Unless you think all your friends, yourself, and your family are garbage it is inconsistent to assume a random sampling of humans would not display the same prosocial traits you find in them.
The one thing we are incapable of doing though is handling power.
All these claims are simply taking a look at a different angle.
It’s like saying “cars pollute” and you reply with “but have you seen the beautiful colours they come in and how much faster than mules they are”
You are not wrong but neither are the people claiming humans are, as a herd, fairly dumb and incredibly selfish
neither are the people claiming humans are, as a herd, fairly dumb and incredibly selfish
wtf? by what standard?
Humans frequently band together during disaster, humans care for their young and old, humans don’t typically engage in cannibalism of the weak, humans rarely fight to the death or even serious injury, we live in cities of millions with astonishingly low rates of violence etc etc
where is this terrible selfish stupid behaviour? what standard are you comparing the species to? we’re more violent than orangutans but they’ve never set up water sanitation so I think we can call ourselves smart and we’re less violent than chimps or gorillas… are you comparing us to fictitious ideal beings or what?
Headline is a good demonstration of why it’s so difficult to set up a keyword filter to get rid of the childishly vapid American politics from your feed lol
Let’s see:
✅ Climate issues
✅ World News
✅ Human Rights
What’s exclusively American about this…?
The solution requires a new ideological paradigm, but transitioning into the right paradigm would be extremely difficult and it would likely take a very long time.
I think the US is already in the process of transitioning to a new paradigm, away from neoliberalism, which was the dominant paradigm over the past half century or so, to something else. However, I’m not sure we are transitioning into the “right” paradigm. I think the paradigm we are transitioning into is more protectionist than neoliberalism. We are moving away from globalization and towards something more like the cold war era, where the world was divided along ideological lines into a “first world” and a “second world.” I expect the new paradigm we are shifting into to be more antagonistic toward “unfriendly” nations. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were to lead to some kind of major conflict.
Of course we’re to that: the US is doing very little to slow climate change at all, is anything it is accelerating it. The natural result of this will not be food insecurity in the USA: it will be famine in South and Central America. Climate migration will see tens of millions of immigrants at our borders.
And the government has 0 intention of helping them. It military will directly cause a mass casualty event at the border before the turn of the century.
“trump” in this context has lost all of its former meaning.
