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by seanmcdirmid
3066 days ago
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The US didn’t make special economic areas, they just arose organically. There are big differences between a command and control economy (China) and a more liberal one where things just happen (or don’t). China is still way behind on infrastructure if you divide it by the number of people to serve, they are still catching up. We are reminded of that in whenever it rains all he roads flood or freezing my butt off in southern china in winter because indoor heating is too luxurious. |
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True enough. I just don't think Shenzhen is special enough as an economic zone to make a difference in the US. Somewhere like Nevada is probably ahead of Shenzhen in terms of economic freedom. There is an even more special zone in Shenzhen called the Futian Free Trade Zone which might be special even in relation to the US. But I am not sure that it has much impact overall.
> There are big differences between a command and control economy (China) and a more liberal one where things just happen (or don’t).
Right. That is partly why I don't think Shenzhen, while certainly interesting in itself, offers that many lessons for the west. Unless you are happy with "wait until the rust belt is desperate, then expand Seattle by 10x with government backed capital, make workers live in dorms".
I guess one way to look at it is that Shenzhen is the rust belt. The big coastal cities in the US is more trade centers, like Hong Kong. Before the information age people had to be close to the factories. When manufacturing moved to China the rich became free to move to the coastal trade centers instead. Predictably those trade centers aren't developing much, because the workers aren't part of that migration.
> We are reminded of that in whenever it rains all he roads flood or freezing my butt off in southern china in winter because indoor heating is too luxurious.
That is true of Europe too though. Up north there is district heating and double glazed windows with argon in between, while down south they run the pipes on the outside of the buildings in some places. Paris flooded a few days ago. Granted that is an old city.
I do think there is something to be said about the standard of living in the US. As much as public infrastructure might be "not as good as the good parts of e.g. China", private infrastructure is certainly of a high economic standard. It might very well be that people in the US have to change the way they live, which seems to have been developed for good times, to be competitive.