Comment Protectionism carrot (Score 2) 131
The biggest carrot the US and Europe have is the protectionism of their stuff.
If the other country is doing it better, you can sue them and keep them from going after your customers. This leaves your customers with lesser options but at least they're forced to buy your stuff.
China is beginning a big push for patents and intellectual property protection. This will slow them down.
But look at the ugliest case of the absolute failure of a total national economy in 2025.
The Germans are in a panic because Chinese cars are better than German cars. They're more advanced, they're cheaper, they are being built with higher quality components. Overall, Chinese cars offer 5-10 times more value for the money right now depending on your measurement compared to German cars. Workers at BMW are showing up to work driving Chinese cars.
So what's the German answer to this?
You'd think the answer would be to invest heavily into making German car companies competitive with the Chinese. Wouldn't that be logical?
America managed to build Tesla which is a car company who engineered every part of their cars with the goal that they should be able to be fixed and upgraded and assembled and disassembled almost entirely by robot. The company invested in engineers who designed cars that could last 25 or more years as vehicles for the middle class and Tesla would get almost all the money.
Chinese engineered their cars with no legacy parts to copy the Tesla pattern and focuses on vehicles that would be cost competitive in the Chinese market.
Germany did what they always did. They made 10 year cars... which actually became 8 year cars because they don't support their software or offer upgrades. They didn't upgrade their manufacturing because German unions scream murder every time a job is replaced by a robot. They didn't reengineer their systems to have anything to do with robots. They don't even support the software on their cars once the car rolls off the assembly line. They have actually increased the costs of owning their cars over time even while their cars rapidly decrease in value.
And Germany's answer is "Hey let's figure out how we can implement protectionism. Because helping the companies compete sounds like too much work"
If the other country is doing it better, you can sue them and keep them from going after your customers. This leaves your customers with lesser options but at least they're forced to buy your stuff.
China is beginning a big push for patents and intellectual property protection. This will slow them down.
But look at the ugliest case of the absolute failure of a total national economy in 2025.
The Germans are in a panic because Chinese cars are better than German cars. They're more advanced, they're cheaper, they are being built with higher quality components. Overall, Chinese cars offer 5-10 times more value for the money right now depending on your measurement compared to German cars. Workers at BMW are showing up to work driving Chinese cars.
So what's the German answer to this?
You'd think the answer would be to invest heavily into making German car companies competitive with the Chinese. Wouldn't that be logical?
America managed to build Tesla which is a car company who engineered every part of their cars with the goal that they should be able to be fixed and upgraded and assembled and disassembled almost entirely by robot. The company invested in engineers who designed cars that could last 25 or more years as vehicles for the middle class and Tesla would get almost all the money.
Chinese engineered their cars with no legacy parts to copy the Tesla pattern and focuses on vehicles that would be cost competitive in the Chinese market.
Germany did what they always did. They made 10 year cars... which actually became 8 year cars because they don't support their software or offer upgrades. They didn't upgrade their manufacturing because German unions scream murder every time a job is replaced by a robot. They didn't reengineer their systems to have anything to do with robots. They don't even support the software on their cars once the car rolls off the assembly line. They have actually increased the costs of owning their cars over time even while their cars rapidly decrease in value.
And Germany's answer is "Hey let's figure out how we can implement protectionism. Because helping the companies compete sounds like too much work"