How I hate articles like this, painting everything as "existential" threat. Feeding the paranoia that has grubbed the US. Everything is viewed as a threat.
The US has squandered its advanced manufacturing capabilities, warning bells have been sounding for decades, and yes, those chickens will eventually come home to roost. Not yet but soon.
Or China will come around one way or another. It is not like US did all the hard work.
Let me put it another way, even if China is a democracy, it will still compete with US in world economy. So many people there need work, the price will be low to produce things there.
Blame US's manufacturing woe fully on China isn't logical, Japan/South Korea are of the same breed, just lesser on China's scale.
Another arguably more important factor is the over regulation and bloated governance here, to a degree of being comical, just look at the California government.
Is this drawn out, lengthy democratic process really for anything of substance or just performative virtual signaling that essentially benefits no one in the name of benefiting everyone?
Anti manufacturing is a choice, made the government, thus by the populace themselves. And please, do not bring Trump, California has been in a Dem super majority since 2012.
When there's no social safety net and you live in a society which insists on "he who does not work, does not eat", anything which sidelines labor is not "perceived as" an existential threat, it is an existential threat. And recognizing it as such is not paranoia, but straightforward realism.
If you don't want the paranoia, then fix the system which causes people to (correctly) see automation as pure downside.
Once upon a time, a US president said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". His unconventional administration brought USA from deep economic depression into a golden age.
Meanwhile, the current ruling elite smears him as one of the worst presidents of all time, and has spent decades undoing that legacy and racing towards a repeat of 1929.
he also ran for reelection four times and made private ownership of gold illegal, and vastly expanded the power of the executive branch.
Reminds me a lot of the current guy and his obsession with another term, and whether or not the gold (that FDR largely stole from the people in the first place) is in Ft Knox.
I guess the biggest difference is DOGE but it's all too much centralized power for me
The difference between DOGE and FDR banning gold hoarding over $100 ($2K+ today) is that the latter targets the wealthy, while the former is focused on looting public goods to enrich the privately wealthy.
It could be seen as naked class warfare either way, but they are opposites. Increasing wealth inequality is fantastic path to social unrest and weakened institutions.
FDR was the leader of a republic, Musk is a classic robber baron.
IMO his expansion of the government was a best case scenario. The US was quickly barreling towards a socialist revolution. Any other president, particularly a greedy ultra-capitalist, would’ve stoked that flame.
The American people were angry about their exploitation at a level that hasn’t been seen since the creation of the US. He successfully bread crumbed the poor away from taking heads, literally. We so often forget that the most powerful people in this nation is Us, the People. We vote and we revolt. A nation-wide catastrophe is the perfect opportunity for mass organization.
Make no mistake, FDR was a staunch free market capitalist. He just wasn’t stupid.
Paranoia is the USA's way of life, when life always seems to be teetering on the edge of a cliff: losing your job at a moment's time, losing your life savings for a healthcare emergency, losing your kid to a school shooting, losing your stuff to burglars. Any of these have a very low chance of happening but they can be so life-changing that Americans seem to always be in some state of paranoia, a low-trust society with few safety nets and a highly-competitive mindset is primed for that.
American media just capitalises on the sentiment, it's a vicious cycle of abusing paranoia. The government does it too, just look at the red-scare from the Cold War that feeds into American public discourse to this day, anything remotely socially progressive is "communist".
I've observed this as well, I do wonder though if that doesn't strongly encourage competitivity(is this word right? autocorrect highlights it, huh) and make people work... well, more. More effective, more time, more angry. It's certainly one possible explanation for why they dominate in many areas. But it does sound like such an exhausting thing.
I don't think it makes us work more, but I think it makes us less satisfied with our lives. Which ultimately fuels the consumerism and pleasure-seeking.
The production side of things comes from exploitation - the US is the strongest imperialist force in the world. We don’t just exploit the periphery, we also exploit our own citizens to the maximum they can bear.
Well if it's worked so well thus far, why change it up? I suspect that if a country is not at least a little paranoid about the competition that it doesn't stay #1 for long.
To me it's a problem of causality, does it actually made the USA be "#1" for long? Is it helping society to be this paranoid about everything and everyone?
I'm no sociologist to answer that but I question if it's a causal link or if it's more a case of "despite the", what if the USA could be doing better without the paranoia, maybe it's a drag and not a push... It surely seems to be dragging society down into a dark path.
The sub-title of the article is completely unhinged:
> China's Dominance Playbook, General Purpose Robotics Is The Holy Grail, Robotic Systems Breakdown, Supply Chain Hardships, The West Is Positioned Backward And Covering Their Eyes, China's Clear Path to Full Scale Automation, Call For Action
I closed the page quickly despite the subject matter is something I am interested in. Also the AI generated images that have no raison d'etre of being there.