Yes. They did. That's called competition. It forces companies to improve by destroying them, except they don't want that. And politicians don't want that, cause it makes corruption unstable.

Killed Detroit too, though. But, eh, helped other parts. It's life.

Thus already in the 90s with the TRON OS a different approach was chosen by US regulators - threaten Japan with sanctions if it's allowed to compete with Windows inside Japan .

They can't threaten China, but they can prevent Chinese competitive goods from entering US market and improving its economy again.

Bad economy - poor and stressed people, poor and stressed people - worse political decisions, worse political decisions - good for middlemen which in our age shouldn't exist frankly. We have the technologies for direct democracy, it's not 1920s.

It will. It really does regulate itself, no /s needed.

Except that happens via some businesses going bankrupt and some adjusting.

And either it's free enough for monopolies to crash, or regulated enough for monopolies to be killed, or both.

If it's neither, then you have today's tech industry.

EDIT: And here the fears are that big companies will go down with their shareholders whining and their political cronies suffering and so on. Whether you want free market or literal socialism, the main problem is in separating private narrow interests from the state machine.

If they are too expensive due to cost of labor, they can do, look at other comments, increased automation.

With automation China's advantages over US are mostly in the bureaucratic efficiency area. Both in the government's parts interacting with big companies and in the companies themselves.

US big companies are just too used to preferential treatment and solving market problems with lobbying, which worked when they were the spearhead of progress or something.

It brings up a valid point. Assembly line manufacturing will soon require massive automation lines to remain profitable, and without massive government assistance in not just money, but education and training, these kinds of automation factories will likely never be fully realized here.

China doesn't have a national minimum wage, but minimum wage is delegated to the local level there and definitely exists in every single province. Just echoing what the other user said, literally everything you said here is easily disprovable.
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/minimum-wages-China/

Bailouts are unacceptable period. Trained workers, factories, factory hardware, logistics specialists, engineers, patents and so on - they all remain in the economy. That a company fails and goes bankrupt is not a bad thing. It's just that company. Not the industry as a whole. If there are no additional mechanisms.

Somehow Americans seem to have forgotten that the kind of "capitalism" which gets defended is about this exactly - a company goes bankrupt, too bad. There are other companies which will hire its workers and buy its assets. Possibly new companies created by its former employees. Its shareholders have gambled and lost, well, their problem. That's what an unregulated market is, by the way, and not bailouts to big fish and horse dicks for small fish.

If something works differently - workers don't find a new place to work in, factories go to scrap metal, engineers go flip burgers, patents are collected by trolls, and new companies are not being created, - then something has been broken by an existing policy.

Patents are the worst of it, but also non-compete clauses, legal impediments for creating new businesses, legal expenses making it harder, - these things have to be removed.

I mean, people on Lemmy love to dream of something like what you list, those things are good, but maybe fixing some basic things about what you already have is no less useful. Especially since these fixes do not cost any money to maintain, while, well, pensions and healthcare do.

When the only goal by law is maximize profits, the motivation tends to favor minimizing cost. Change the rules, and enforce a new set of values. Only then will the situation improve.

Japan back then had (and still has) an interesting socioeconomic system, a bit similar to samurai clans went cartels, where workers are supposed to work all their life in one place (or close to that), don't squeal about worker rights and such, but be covered by lots of company-provided social nets and guarantees.

Back then American industries were just complacent due to insufficient competition, and Japan's industrial development was a bit of a miracle (that "living in year 2000 since 1980s" joke).

My boss in the UK got one. In bright red. It looks like he's driving a fucking fire engine.

Oh no! The type of capitalism where we have to compete!

Make it go away, Daddy Trump!

That might be true, but also a certain revolutionary purging of world politics would do a lot to return to something close to that. The golden age happened after the world war and decolonization, when western countries were full of veterans, and laws governing their lives were much simpler.

Internet-assisted direct democracy, open borders, open trade, radical changes in patent laws, simpler laws generally - all this can exist.

We simply have too much legacy everywhere strangling development.

The bad guys are trying to make it appear that the only legacy that can be stripped is that of French revolution ideals, human rights and civilization. That actually we don't have to strip, that is all good. Just them.

It's normal. Sometimes humans need surgeries, and sometimes a part of an old building has to be dismantled - maybe there's a pipe in the wall that leaks, or maybe you need to retrieve a human skeleton found using some new technology, whatever. And you throw out garbage regularly.

So a reform for direct democracy (with ranked choice between variants having, say, 1000+ initial supporters in some incubator to get to the vote itself, because we have computers, storage and connectivity to make everything desirable for such) IMHO would go a long way to fixing half the problems in the world.

We have the technologies for direct democracy

Buyers of any EV not just American EVs.

I was talking about china, their federal govt ended ev subsidies in 2022. I suspect some city and provincial level govts still do various types of subsidies.

We they imprisoned for not wanting to be controlled by a dictatorship?

Bro are you trying to justify slavery in the US? You dont have to do that to criticize China. But you have to have to learn about its actual problems, not just accept any silly stories western media comes up with. Try visiting some time, its incredibley cheap, you can rent out decent sized apartments for 15/night in most cities, theres also sleeper trains, combine transport and 1 nights lodging, and food is often <2usd/meal.

Imagine Trump declaring that every college grad needs to make themselves available to build a border wall.

That's not how that works at all, they simply invest more into educating people into a particular field to ensure there will be enough people with the required skills in a particular area.

How did you even misinterpret my post like that?

One from the list, yes.

Tbf notoriously China subsidizes BYD to net loss so its not exactly capitalism.

As an European living in Asia and can't help but cringe at American cars. They're so far behind. And it's the car country. Japan has better cars and better rail. Embarassing.

My old boss was a huge man who went around in a little yellow convertible. We called him Noddy.

May I suggest calling him Fireman Sam?

They phased out their subsidies in 2022

They still have a trade in program to get ICE vehicles off the road.

All car manufacturers world wide are subsidized.

Just a moment...

(subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org)

Of course China can make cheaper cars, because most car manufacturers get their parts produced in China anyway.