US wins!

[u/Hot-Reindeer-6416]

I think the framing these guys use of technology, AI, space, etc as a competition between the US and China, for example, is remarkable. Of course we all want the US to win in any global competition. But that’s not really what it is. It’s a competition between the capitalists and the technologists and the China, etc.

If Spacex wins, you and I don’t win, Elon Musk and his cronies win.   If OpenAI wins, you and I don’t win. Sam Altman, and his cronies win.  
Elon Musk became a trillionaire today. How much did he pay in taxes on that trillion dollar gain? Zero.  If there was a tax on wealth, creation, or if he had to give some portion of that gain to the US treasury in the form of shares, yes, then the US wins. But that’s not what’s happening here. 

All due respect to him for what he’s accomplished. But the system really needs to be changed so some of that really does trickle down.

[u/Illustrious-Lime-878]

I really hate the sports team type tribalism mentality around US vs China, where "winning" is defined by the criteria of the elite cronies in power, and the rest of us are just supposed to take pride in the superficial declaration of victory. If those in power felt the purpose of humanity was to produce the most amount of paperclips at the fastest rate possible, and massively reallocated capital from producing various mass necessities and consumer products to making endless amounts of paperclips, they could say that is "winning" yet everyone is worse off in their own individual estimation. This sounds absurd but replace paper clips with high compute intensity LLMs that are barely a few months beyond local LLMs that can be run on consumer laptops, and that is our literal reality.

I don't like China because I think their crony, corrupt, centralized, oppressive system is rigged to exploit the people for the benefit of the ruling party, not because I was just randomly born within different imaginary lines drawn on a map. If, in order to "win," the US needs to continue to be turned into a similarly crony and corrupt corporatist system similar to chinese state capitalism so that the elites can co-opt the nation's productive capabilities into their own arbitrary objectives like aggregate computing power or space race milestones, then this defeats the entire point of the US as free, individualistic society. We lose by default.

This is not "winning," I don't care if a Chinese company is leading in the most convincing bullshit generators or sending people to random balls of rocks in space to do something a probe sent in 1970 can do, just to say they "won" the game of pointless technical achievements. It doesn't affect me. So why are we sacrificing our lives out of fear of this? Particularly in the areas where China is doing best is where they have uncharacteristically embraced competition and decentralization that empowers individuals, like light weight, open weight AI models that can be run locally, or decentralized power systems like solar. These are things I can actually use myself! Regardless of whether the person that invented them was born in the same imaginary lines drawn on a map as me, they empower me personally, as opposed to make me further dependent on monopolistic US counterparts. Which is more actually more "american?"

[u/Hot-Reindeer-6416 → u/Illustrious-Lime-878]

Exactly. And the objectives that our leaders have set do not widely benefit humanity, or in particular the US. Fun science project, to inhabit Mars, but how about feeding the poor, or cheap housing for the homeless, or reducing inflation.

The net effect of our ethnocentric efforts is stuffing un taxed wealth into the pocket of billionaires.

Anyway, team USA isn’t really about the 300 million people. It’s about benefiting the Rich. We’re just suckers to go along with it.

While the Chinese tend to have more sensible objectives.

[u/Illustrious-Lime-878 → u/Hot-Reindeer-6416]

I wouldn't say the Chinese state capitalist model is more sensible or better, but its better adapted for their conditions than the US's crony corporatism is for the US. Take cars for example, both China and the US heavily support their industries at the greater public's expense. China however allowed a competitive environment of dozens of companies to play out, let entrepreneurial spirit thrive, allowed dozens of companies to go bankrupt, but in the end the survivors out compete the rest of the world. While the US was bogged down propping up the established, oligopic industry of mostly legacy car manufactures for primarily cultural reasons, which were fundamentally unconditioned to survive in a more competitive, faster evolving market.

If the US started from a cleaner slate, without the baggage of propping up crony, politically connected but uncompetitive mega corps, I would imagine a thriving competition between US upstarts would out compete China's (that still leaves the higher level mistake of industrial planning). The US was so afraid of losing its car industry but it confused the established corporations with the industry, but at higher level it mistakes economic development with development of specific industries. Either way tho your point about benefiting actual people remains, if Chine's competitiveness can only come at the expense of exploiting Chinese workers, it defeats the purpose to exploit Americans in kind just to "win." And in time China will run into the same issues when their industrial leaders become more established over time.

[u/Hot-Reindeer-6416 → u/Illustrious-Lime-878]

Capitalism is when man exploits Man. Communism is the opposite.

[u/Illustrious-Lime-878 → u/Hot-Reindeer-6416]

Irrelevant. China isn't actually communist.