Lemmy technically doesn’t hide your likes - the interface might not show you, but all your likes are public in the Fediverse. Kbin, when I used it, would show which users upvoted/downvoted a post. That’s important because it means researchers and OSI people can still do fact finding - Twitter doesn’t like the idea of having to be open even if it’s a requirement (albeit to researchers specifically) in the EU now.

Under the (currently dominant) credit theory of money, the implication is that billionaires owe the government a lot of money… and it’s time to pay up.

What do you think is China choosing, A or B?

Do you know? Are you prescient? Don’t pretend you can predict what China would do - especially rich coming from Mr. 90% Articles About China.

You’re still yapping on about the off topic thing I see. Come back when we’re talking about subsidies again please. If you have to steer the conversation away when you’re losing the argument, onto a topic I don’t even necessarily disagree with (forced labour, environmental and social concerns)… I don’t know what to say, you’re just being a weirdo.

Given this lack of transparency, is a trusted cooperation possible? (The answer is: no, it isn’t.)

This is silly and absolutist reasoning. The law exists to encourage companies to push their suppliers for more ethical behaviour, if China won’t allow transparency, then it’s a violation of the supply chain transparency law and they’ll have to choose between A) more transparency, or B) not being on the receiving end of deals. The crucial difference is this only targets the things you pointed out that weren’t even on topic to subsidies to begin with, but instead we’re enacting protectionist policies and complaining about “unfairness” with the amount of subsidies they have.

You are just repeating your statements and ignoring mine it seems.

That’s funny considering you changed the subject. I’m trying to stay on topic with the original article talking about subsidies, you’re moving the goalpost. I don’t have to respond to things that aren’t on topic.

No. Especially in this case, it is also a term for cheap manufacturing processes by ignoring environmental and social norms, including the use of forced labour. […]

Then just target the anti-environmental, social, and forced labour parts? This article is specifically about unfair subsidies, not what you just mentioned. You’re moving the goalpost.

That’s a good idea, but it only works if and when both sides apply […]

Supply chain transparency in the countries that have enacted laws like that, apply internationally:

The [Norwegian Transparency Act] mandates that liable firms be able to account for the human rights and fair labor practices, not only of direct or “Tier 1” suppliers, but of all those indirect vendors and subcontractors who comprise the entirety of the upstream and downstream value chain.

Your anti-western sentiment is somewhat weird if I may say so.

I literally described Norway in a very positive way - my ideal approach. Are they no longer western? Or are you just being a weirdo because I don’t like propaganda in general? I don’t like Chinese propaganda, and I don’t like whatever you’re doing by having a profile consisting of 90% news articles about China. You’re basically doing marketing by constantly pushing articles about China, similar to how adverts are constantly pushed in our faces. A normal person might post a few articles about China here and there, but your history is 90%.

There you go, here’s your response to the article (below). It took me 43 minutes to respond, while it took you a single copy paste to post the article (probably 5 seconds of effort). Maybe now you understand why I don’t feel like responding to every single thing you post with a debunking? The effort it takes to tackle misinformation is much higher than simply copy pasting URLs.

My general/summarized thoughts:

At the end of the day, if we do protectionism and bar China, I can only hope we do enact more subsidies, close if not on par with China, for our own industries so that we accelerate our transition to green energy. I don’t really personally care if we ban Chinese products, I just think this is a bit of cope about someone who’s just… doing better economic policies, that we should also be doing, instead of crying about “unfair market competition” as if free market absolutism is necessarily good (China isn’t doing enough “free market” so they’re “unfair”, even though we’re doing the same to a slightly lesser degree).

My personal preference would be doing what Norway is doing: setting up democratic state run organizations that do green tech so that we socialize the profits we do make from such an industry. That’s Norway’s approach to hydropower, where they own the vast majority of it, and they’re ramping up efforts towards wind energy too. They also have a state oil industry, but obviously I’m not too happy about that in the context of climate change - however, it has been incredibly economically beneficial for the people of Norway, so we should likely copy their strategy for green tech.

Responding to specific paragraphs:

During a trip to China, Yellen said the country’s unfair trade practices — dumping artificially cheap products on global markets — were a threat to US businesses and jobs. Washington is considering imposing higher tariffs and closing trade loopholes if Beijing maintains its existing policy.

“Artificially cheap” is basically a loaded term for “subsidized”. We do the same thing for certain industries here in Europe, there’s really nothing special about it. In fact, we should probably be doing more subsidies.

“Chinese subsidies are pervasive,” Rolf Langhammer, former vice president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW-Kiel), told DW. “They encompass almost all industries and are far larger than any EU or US subsidies.”

Maybe we should increase our own subsidies instead? I really don’t see the argument here - would we transition to a green economy too fast when climate change is a crisis in waiting? Why are cheap products a problem all of a sudden, I thought that was the primary reason we started using China to mass produce stuff on our behalf, i.e. we took advantage of their horrible working conditions that we know led to suicides and anti-jump fences. But now all of a sudden cheap stuff is a problem?

In addition to the huge subsidies, the report’s authors noted, Chinese producers also benefit from preferential access to critical raw materials, forced technological transfers and less domestic red tape than their foreign competitors.

All of these sound like good things we should be doing. In fact, we are doing a little bit more of transparency (which is what “forced tech transfers” are, in less loaded terms - it’s literally just making corporations share knowledge and cooperate) e.g. supply chain transparency in Europe is growing. Less domestic red tape sounds like a good thing? Norway has a similar “problem” of a government being a little bit too efficient. Obviously that’s not a bad thing - maybe we should figure out why we’re comparatively slow?

Langhammer noted that the West also benefits from the Chinese subsidies, as consumers can buy cars at a lower price while companies can access cheaper Chinese parts. Despite the threat from cheaper Chinese EVs, he said, some automakers were skeptical about the EU probe into Beijing’s subsidies as firms such as Germany’s Volkswagen and US EV leader Tesla receive them, too.

As in, Tesla has received Chinese subsidies. It has also received US and (I believe) EU subsidies too. And I’m talking about supply side subsidies, demand side subsidies like governments paying part of the price of EV cars have provided tens of billions in plenty of EU and EEA countries.

Yes, unlike you I don’t post constant articles about China. I’d prefer not to see propaganda, whether that’s Chinese funded propaganda, or your constant posting of anti-Chinese free market biased articles. If the rules of this sub didn’t explicitly carve out an exception for you, maybe you would’ve been banned by now - unfortunately, only “foreign” and “billionaire” misinformation is banned from this sub, domestic/western misinformation is OK.

Also, I will respond to the article, but I’m not a paid state actor who does this as a full time job (unlike maybe you, otherwise your obsession with China is pretty weird), so I don’t have the time to tackle the multiple articles you post about China ever day. I can only do so much as a normal person, and I can only really tackle the articles I have knowledge about (e.g. economics).

Reminder that OP’s account is 90% articles about China and has said they have “Chinese friends so they aren’t xenophobic” in defense of doing so. Bias and misinformation probabilities are high.

It’s sad that it’s taking so long when like 10 years ago we had politicians warning us about Russian oligarchs meddling with elections, or as in the UK, killing people with radioactive poison. We could’ve done something then but chose to wait and now the damage has grown larger. It’s like waiting to get cancer, only to yell about it and do nothing, and only start caring when it’s on the brink of terminal/irreversible before actually doing something, instead of actively doing things that reduce cancer probabilities.

Bidenomics is a mixture of things, but key among them is the recognition that MMT is already reality and doubling down on it to fund productive industries. Basically, government debt is not the same as household debt and strategic yet liberal usage of government debt can be very positive for an economy. MMT economists have made some pretty significant ‘discoveries’ that you can now find in the CORE macroeconomics textbooks in universities all over the world.

when we added socialist elements to capitalism (eg. social security, free healthcare, free education and so on) it didnt stop being capitalism.

This is a very black and white view of things, though. Norway is seen as capitalist, yet 2/3rds of Norway’s GDP is driven by its public sector, the government owns 30% of the domestic stock market, they have a massive government wealth fund that makes returns in hundreds of billions of dollars annually which they could singlehandedly fund UBI with, they apply Georgist taxes to natural resources (oil, hydro, aquafarms) to collectivize profits made off public land, 60% union density, 20% of housing is collectively owned (housing coops)…

Like, at what point do we call a country “socialist”?

(Not to call the US socialist, but Bidenomics might lean like 1% in that direction, and that’s my point - it’s going in a socialist direction if very slowly, and if we can maintain it)

IP is not a universal, objectively good thing. There are plenty of people who disagree with either a) how awful IP law is currently, or b) the mere existence of IP. You don’t even have to be a socialist like China supposedly is (although many would call it state capitalist) to be against IP, plenty of social democrats and libertarians are against it.

Intellectual Property is just a more abstract form of private ownership that wealthy people use to take advantage of us. Remember when they refused to give up COVID vaccine IP? They literally can’t sacrifice profits even during an insane pandemic that’s taking millions of lives. Remember when Canada, Sweden were kind of OK with piracy and then US politicians/lobbyists entered their country to ensure they would be cracking down on piracy? As a European I’m not happy that yet another form of welfare transfers (which piracy de facto is) was taken away just because the US isn’t content with being the wealthiest country on the planet - they need to maintain or even grow their obscene wealth.

Honestly, I could not give a rat’s ass about China “stealing” IP from literally the country that owns 30% of the world’s household wealth. More countries should follow suit so that we can break free from private IP holders delaying human technological and scientific progress.

You’re basically making the “I have black friends so I can’t be racist” argument. Your post history is like 90% articles like these:

• Chinese Communist Party-Backed Businessman in Fiji is a Top Australian Criminal Target
• Calls for sanctions against China after Beijing accused of cyber espionage in US and UK
• China’s Private Property Developers Face Persistent Funding Constraints, Fitch Ratings Says
• UK lawmakers claim ‘harassment, impersonation, and attempted hacking’ from China
• Millions of U.S. citizens’ online accounts have been caught up in a “sinister” Chinese hacking plot that targeted US officials, officials say
• Threats, fear and surveillance: Chinese students in the UK say they are scared to return home and worry for their families in China after being followed and harassed by the regime in Beijing
• Oxford University held training sessions attended by Chinese doctors accused of illegally harvesting organs

Like, this is not a normal amount of articles about China. This feels like an obsession. If I was posting a similar amount of pro-China articles, I’d rightfully be called a shill.

The EU just looked into the potential for dumping. They were not finished with the process and therefore did not punish CRRC at all.

What’s your point here? There are actual quotes in the article claiming the pull-out as a result of the regulation, meaning they didn’t pull out because they wanted to.

Also China is not that poor. GDP per capita is only a third less then that of Romania.

But both are “up-and-coming” as I said alongside “poorer” so I’m not sure why you’re arguing semantics here. China is one of very few exceptions when it comes to actively losing money to richer countries (Net Resource Transfers). This regulation is not about China, it targets any foreign company, and if you understood my post, you’d know that the vast majority of them are being drained and in need of economic help.

Trying to instill FOMO just because the Chinese are coming for it!!!

Take a look at the posts OP makes – they seem obsessed with posting negative articles about China.

The headline sounded odd considering EU countries aren’t exactly averse to subsidies, but the kicker is this:

The inquiry, announced last month, was the first of its kind and marked the maiden use of a foreign subsidies regulation designed to stop state handouts from distorting the EU’s single market.

So it’s protectionism that’ll apply especially to poorer and up-and-coming countries that don’t have established private megacorps (i.e. their companies depend on economic strategies like window guidance to grow).

I’m neutral about protectionism in general, but contextually it can have negative outcomes - e.g. the EU’s agricultural policies have not been good for poorer countries. At a time when poorer countries are bleeding money as we can see by tracking Net Resource Transfers (with China being one of the few exceptions), it’s a little tougher to be happy about policies like these.

I swear the “fuck cars” crew are completely deluded from reality.

I see people say what you’re saying (bus vs car road damage elasticity) in “fuck cars” communities, I don’t really see why you’ve decided to attack them collectively. But it’s a pop-community, they’re going to be wrong every now and then either way, please give them some slack. Their purpose is to make an average person aware of car dependency and that it’s generally a negative thing, so that actual urban planners with technical knowledge have an easier time arguing for and implementing realistic solutions, and they’ll take into account the variables you bring up. Think of “fuck cars” like a form of lobbying except it’s done by common people with good intentions - similar to how Japanese coops lobbied for better food safety standards decades ago - rather than wealthy corporations.

Google drank so much capitalist koolaid they thought the company needed internal competition when the main reason they remain so big is because they have big chunks of monopoly power in several key tech fields

What possible use is that?

I’ve noticed “has this sub gotten more right wing recently?” posts reaching the top post of the day in the last 6 months or so. r/norge and r/unitedkingdom being examples. You can automate bots that change a subreddit’s consensus on certain topics by bot-spamming threads pertaining to those topics, especially in the first hour of a thread going up. I don’t know if that’s happening, or if it has more to do with the Reddit protest that saw mods abdicate their positions last June and new mods being responsible for the change… but it could also be a bit of both.