> A future where Chinese companies own the EV market in the US with all of the American user data going back to servers in China- that's just not a future the US govt. wants
I agree, but why do cars need to send data to servers again? I don't grok why Tesla does it and I don't grok why BYD does it either. What's wrong with the alternative where we allow real competition that benefits everyone, and then ban any features (eg sending data to servers) that the government gets nervous about? I don't see how this is any different from the myriad of other requirements on cars (eg mandated safety belts etc etc etc).
I recognize that state-subsidised competition still isn't fair, so I support import tariffs that match those subsidies, but any further and you're just hurting competition and the consumer, right?
Thing is, super cheap EVs and solar panels is exactly what we should want. There's a climate crisis going on and these things are a big part of the solution. With climate goggles on, to put import tariffs on the tech that's gonna save the world sound batshit insane. We should want those tariffs to be as low as possible.
Instead, we want/need to be protectionist of our manufacturing industries so that if we were to go to war, we keep our ability to make more missiles, planes, tanks, etc.
User data is valuable[1], and storage is now so cheap, for a modest sum, one can keep data forever without deleting[2], so keeping car telemetry/videos has virtually no downsides.
1. For self-driving training, or selling to market researchers, or intelligence services. I'm not claiming this is what's being currently being done with the data, but how "value" can be extracted from it
2. Shout out to r/DataHoarder
> Thing is, super cheap EVs and solar panels is exactly what we should want.
It's plain to me how this can come into conflict with National Interest - no country wants cheap solar and EV at the cost of its own manufacturers going bankrupt (and losing the jobs that go with them going down the supply chain).
User data is valuable[1], storage is cheap, so keeping it has no downsides.
1. For self-driving training, or selling to market researchers, or intelligence services. I'm not claiming this is what's being currently being done with the data, but how "value" can be extracted from it
> The textile industry has completely left the western world and no one is complaining(other than the luddites I guess).
This was a very gradual process (over centuries), and they weren't really happy about it either. It wasn't just the Luddites who were upset when Samuel Slater (a.k.a. "Slater the traitor") left England and helped set up a competing textile industry in North America.
For self-preservation purposes, no politician will willingly sacrifice jobs at existing regional or national champions[1], regardless of how noble the goal is: politicians get voted out of office for far less. The best we can hope for, is a slow steady decline of harmful industries (see coal).
1. The US will treat Boeing with kid gloves rather than gift the market to Airbus, even though Boeing has a terrible safety culture and not exactly competing on merit. The same goes for VW in Germany, Arianespace in France, Samsung in Korea, Huawei in China, etc.
How about a future where user data goes to no servers of no country at all? Am I asking too much?
i say china is not at all responsible for the drug, except as a contract manufacturer. If china doesn't do it, somebody else would've. China just does it cheaply.
The drug problems come from the cartels, and from the fact that US's war on drugs makes drugs expensive, and thus profitable. There's no possibility of humans relinquishing drug use - think about the prohibition and the problems that it caused.
I say, just allow drugs to be manufactured, and sold (under license and regulation) in the US. It's gonna be like alcohol. This will take away the profits from the cartels, and they will stop buying from china. It will increase tax revenue, as drug consumption can be taxed (like tobacco today is).
It will also remove the stigma, and reduce drug enforcement costs in police. The only thing society has to give up is the moral high horse of drug use.
Yeah, right. It comes from decadence and nothing else. Like the corruption making your solutions unrealistic.
> think about the prohibition and the problems that it caused.
Pretty sure the prohibition did reduce alcohol consumption and the associated problems a lot, it'd be a good idea to ponder the pros and the cons fairly. Also, people at that time didn't have access to other potent drugs like social media and the Internet, I wouldn't be so sure it'd be a repeat.
> It will also remove the stigma
Which is potentially the only thing that could prevent too much spread. How do you think Japanese society works?
I know I'm wasting my time "arguing" with druggies and beatniks, but it's just sad to see HN constantly swamped by them on any topic related to "free love", veganism, cars, drugs, etc...
it doesn't have to be safe, just legal. If people choose it, and fuck themselves up, they're free to do so. They're doing it today already, but with the added benefit of being illegal and force resources into a drug war against the cartels.
Banning all the paths to growth got the US to where it is now. Everything China did to out-compete the US was illegal in the US - the working conditions wouldn't have passed muster, the environmental damage wouldn't have been acceptable, the investment in cheap energy was off the agenda and the focus on heavy industry was broadly against the policy position which focused on financialisation and growing service industries.
We can argue until the cows come home which policies were the important ones (it is clear that some of what China does is counterproductive) but a key factor was legislative restrictions in the West. That is the opposite of the liberal part of liberal democracy. A key part of liberalism is giving people freedom to better their own lives.
How many independent innovations get snatched (sherlocked?) by big business taking the idea and making their own version, when they see a small player that found a customer segment a large company never bothered investigating?
When large sums of money is what’s needed to execute any novel idea to full completion before your competitors can, that money becomes just a version of ”IP theft” or unfair competition. I think what they are getting is a taste of their own medicine.
EVs were a mature idea a decade+ ago, but big money oil companies hamstrung it and big money ICE manufacturers argued it was not worth their time or effort. The Chinese market and leaders knew the fundamentals were valid and cornered the entire manufacturing market before it could be cornered by western companies.
This [video](https://youtu.be/BQ23sgi_mgw?si=3HOm3WeWKO7VJMzr) called <Is China’s High-Tech ‘Overproduction’ Killing Jobs In The West?> from Channel NewsAsia covers it. Highly recommend you westerners to watch it; there's some really heavy handed defense/reasoning from the chinese side.
> all of the American user data going back to servers in China
There's a long running argument with the EU over all EU user's data going back to the US where there are no privacy laws or protection against surveillance (US constitution only protects US nationals!), so the US government would have more credibility on this if it recognized that.
Absolutely constituents want jobs and cheap energy. I bet they also don't want the wild salmon they eat to go extinct too. On balance they're hearing about the former and not the latter.
In the wise words of Chairman Mao:
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Pens are fairly sharp
If Chinese EVs were to be sold widely in the US, they would be less than half the cost of any Western-made EV and would take over the EV market. A future where Chinese companies own the EV market in the US with all of the American user data going back to servers in China- that's just not a future the US govt. wants- no govt. (outside of China's own) should want that.
Then there's the whole Fentanyl epidemic in the US and elsewhere. That is largely due to Chinese chemical manufacturers who are selling the chemicals to Mexico and then those drugs are smuggled into the US. There are many to blame here but the US has been pushing China to ban the sale of these chemicals outside of China for a long time without agreement. China realizes this is important to the US and it's being used as a key trade issue.
"doubling down on liberal democracy" got us to where we are now wrt China. China doesn't respond to liberal democracy. They only respond to force or trade embargos, or tariffs. That's what was learned as Xi decided to become dictator for life.