In retrospect those fears were overblown. When Communism fell, we learned that the Soviet economy was far less advanced than many had believed.
“It was foolish to ever think the Soviets could have ever beaten us just because they beat us.” Why is he like this?
Soviet economy failed to produce a single billionaire, smh…
Neoliberals just need to cope through past counterrevolutionary glory, let them. Their lies-based order is already crumbling, and every sane person is sooner or later going to become disillusioned by the ideology they spent trillions across decades propping up.
Yet, rather than having another Sputnik moment, we are now trapped in a reverse Sputnik moment. Rather than acknowledging that the US is in danger of being permanently overtaken by China’s technological and economic prowess, the Trump administration is slashing support for scientific research and attacking education.
“Reverse Sputnik Moment” is a great term.(How about a Lutnick Moment? It’s when you’re so far up Trump’s ass that you enthusiastically blurt out even dumber shit than Trump.)
Trump is being blamed for this? I think this is the Anger stage of Grief. This is Trump’s SECOND term. WTF did people think was going to happen? A massive Federal push for education and infrastructure? Effectively zero Americans gave a shit about China “overtaking” for the past decade so it’s way too late to try change course now. There’s no point even discussing “catching up”.
US economic fundamentals need fixing first.
I find the focus on Trump particularly funny given that he himself points to 40 years of stagnation.
It’s not a prescriptive approach to the problems though. The author basically is saying the US is so fucked and Trump made it more fucked.
Americans have had this neolib strategy for the past few decades of climbing the value chain leaving manufacturing, privatization, moving into services, allowing tech bros to cook/break stuff etc.
Now he wants to do a backflip and be like China and wondering why it’s hard to catch up. Is he a neolib or what?
If he is focusing on doing everything then that’s actually being unfocused. Tech bros don’t want universities doing the research. They want to own it. The whole point of outsourcing to the 3rd world was to bring cheaper goods in rather than expensively manufacturing it domestically. Privatization was meant to improve services. These are the neolib strategies.
These neolib dumb fucks don’t make sense.
This is like Bessent & Lutnick saying importers will just eat the tariffs. Why would local manufacturing ever take off if the imports are still coming in?
Right, the whole thesis is incoherent because it doesn’t really address the root causes for why things are the way they are. I find this is a typical thing with libs where they just think everything is just a matter of will. They don’t look at systems in terms of contradictions as a Marxist would. I mean you don’t even have to be a Marxist, anybody who understands systems thinking would understand the concept of selection pressures, and how effective behaviors that are rewarded by the system end up dominating.
Your reply here mostly describes my thoughts on the Sachs/Mearscheimer debate vis a vis “spheres of security”. Neither party seemed to me to be engaged in systemic analysis. Sachs’ thesis is normative and idealist and fails to take into account why the u.s.’ belligerence is increasingly unrestrained (decohering economic base). Mearscheimer kind of trots out his standard realist analysis which imo is mechanistic and can’t accommodate factors which don’t fit into the behavior of imperialist powers, i.e. also idealist.
That whole thing was kind of hard to listen to for me. Both of those two are useful in different ways but I thought that discussion simultaneously highlighted their limitations.
For ref https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9465503?scrollToComments=true
Oh yeah I listened to it and was equally frustrated by them failing to address the elephant in the room.
I find this is a typical thing with libs where they just think everything is just a matter of will. They don’t look at systems in terms of contradictions as a Marxist would.
There was another article in Krugman’s substack, “No, Trump Can’t Make Manufacturing Great Again”. (Behind a subscription wall)
Subtitle was"We’re a service economy now — and that’s OK".
A service economy doesn’t need the electricity generation capacity of China - something that, in the original article, he was using to point to China being economically ahead of US. China uses the power for manufacturing and has a greater population. Why does he want to point to that statistic?
There’s no direction to the strategy just dumb and dumber.
It’s honestly hilarious to watch just how dumb these people are. These things should be obvious, and yet here we have a well respected western “intellectual” spewing incoherent nonsense.
They just need a scapegoat in the form of a figurehead to avoid having to attribute any shortcomings to the system their entire ideology is centered around.
I don’t think they have an ideology. Neolibs want to get into renewable energy now according to this author.
When was that ever part of neoliberalism?
It’s only because China is doing it. They never fucking cared about solar panels and wind. Where is this shit coming from? Of course you can’t catch up.
Cost efficient.
Then buy cheap solar panels from China to SAVE money. Biden put a massive tariff on Chinese solar panels BTW.
If the US wants to “catch up” on renewables, don’t take the slow route of building the manufacturing processes from scratch.
There is no bean counting in Krugman’s strategy.
I wholly agree. The fact they’re doing this despite tariffs illustrates the cost of petroenergy, to the working class, despite heavy subsidization. They perceive the debt incurred as an investment.
Nuclear. America has shut down nuclear reactors and doesn’t exactly have a great history with them. All though now I believe they’re considering modular.
I argue that many Americans unfortunately care about China overtaking the U.S., but for all the wrong reasons.
I think when I wrote that, it was in the context of China exceeding America is certain economic metrics that the author has now decided are important for neoliberal economies. First chart he used was comparing the amount of electricity generation. Then he goes off into renewables and then attitudes to education. Most Americans wouldn’t see competing with China in those things as races worth the effort of trying to win.
Americans just think they’re the greatest country and then they get on RedNote or whatever and see some modern Chinese cities and think “WTF? Why does that look nicer?” It’s a vibes comparison.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but the GOP is more dangerous than the Democrats, hence why I will be voting for the PSL or Green Party next election.
Could you please elaborate? I am Brazilian. Living under Trump certainly sucks acutely, but for people like me outside the Empire core, it seems to me he is doing (through incompetence and dementia) a fine job of accelerating the Empire’s collapse.
Maybe, but I’m not sure if he was the accelerationist of the two candidates. The US was set to collapse under its own weight anyway. The democrats have historically been the more warlike party, we would’ve likely collapsed even faster by picking more fights abroad that we can’t win.
I don’t mean to sound like a dick or fight you on this, and I understand your point of view, but I vehemently disagree. As much as I hate both Trump and Kamala, and as much as both need bullets in their heads, Kamala and the democrats are typically much smarter about at least giving the appearance of objectivity, and human-rights related fluff and posturing, and most Amerikkkans would go along with it way more easily, unlike Trump.
I think many people would be more bendable and willing to suck up to the democrats if Kamala was elected, which would greatly prolong the U.S. empire. Trump is almost on the verge of bringing the empire crashing down, like taking a pickaxe to a dike or a dam. Not to say that Trump himself isn’t intelligent or manipulative, but he’s evil and stupid enough to admit the quiet part out loud too many times.
I’m speaking as a Latino Texan.
I am new to communism and may have picked a misleading verb (accelerating the colapse), but I don’t see myself as an accelerationist. I don’t hope the US accelerates its decay into fascism. I want the US to economically collapse ASAP. If it collapses economically before it decays into fascism, the World will be better off. And Trump’s incompetence is doing a fine job at that. Also, I do not think he is overall more inhumane than Kamala. He is probably worse for trans people, but Kamala is just as bad as Trump for many other groups (including Palestinians being genocided), and is even worse for Ukrainians and Russians. Kamala is not democratic, she only has better decorum and acting abilities.
- Trump is visibly evil (like Hitler), and pretty bad at administration (worse than Hitler I suppose). Trump is like a very stupid Hitler.
- Democratas are competent and cunning like Palpatine.
See my other reply: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/7166978
Accelerationism is bad and the Democrats will accelerate the collapse by pissing off their base further.
Accelerationism leads to fascism.
To the third world, American fascism has been around for a while. Ask Palestine.
This is just American imperialism coming back home
Uh, to the Dominican Republic and Turkey, American fascism hasn’t been around for a while so, no, you’re incorrect.
Imperialism is not fascism.
It’s been fascism since the word was a word.
Dominican Republic and Turkey have experienced fascist movements and politicians, but they’ve never been fascist, afaik; they are bourgeois democracies nowadays with ultra-right factions.
Makan, have you checked how the Dominican Republic treats our fellow haitian comrades?
This is just one example:
Domincan Republic have a fascist and neoliberal gov’t and are one great US bootlicker in the region. The Domincans rep are literally following the same playbook as their imperialist dad in the treatment of immigrants.
Edit
To illustrate what I mention above, this is one poster in a hospital showing the protocol to hunt Haitians migrants:
I am new to communism, so take this with a grain of salt.
Here in Brasil, the strongest leftist party is the Workers’ Party. Communist Ian Neves and other communists condemn it as socdem. Yet Ian Neves strongly criticizes Trots who supported Dilma’s unfair impeachment and Lula’s imprisonment. He has also explicitly opposed accelerationism, because it leads to fascism which can make workers’ lives miserable (bad in itself) and effectively crush communist movements. But I do not apply that reasoning to the dispute between the GOP and the “Democrats”.
In Brasil, Lula has grave defects (bourgeois concessions), but he is far better than Bolsonaro or Tarcisio or any other neofascist, and much better even than the old supposedly civilized neoliberals like Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
In the US, would Kamala Harris be considerably better than Trump? She would have far better decorum, of course, but Palestine genocide would probably be just as bad as under Trump (as it was under Biden). She would murder Venezuelans just as mercilessly. She would give even more weapons to Ukraine. She would persecute American dissident students and leftists just as hard. All that with more competence and way more effective theater of pretending to defend democracy and human rights. McCarthyism and imperialism are bipartisan.
The only advantage I see for a Kamala victory would have been less hate and attacks on trans people. A big advantage indeed, but in my opinion that wouldn’t justify defending Kamala. Leftists should vote for a real socialist party, organize, and build mutual aid. I am an ignorant cishet male, so take with grain of salt.
Anyway, you mentioned voting for the PSL (which is praised on Lemmy), so probably we agree on substance, and I only miscommunicated on the previous comment. I don’t see myself as accelerationist.
Okay, we already agree. Also, if Kamala is truly as good as you say, then sure, vote for her if you want. What’s wrong with that? She would’ve disillusioned more liberals like Obama and Biden did. So who cares either way.
Why do you put PSL on a pedestal? I may only vote for them because they’re the lesser evil. There’s nothing praiseworthy about an org with a lot of sex pests and transphobes.
The GOP is too smart; I hope they lose next election.
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oh yeah, fixed
