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.

Targeted tariffs and protectionism can help a situation like this, combined with subsidies like the ones Trump cancelled, to give legacy manufacturers a temporary respite to retool and innovate. However backtracking on your transition, reverting to the tried and true short term profits is just hiding your head in the sand. GM will find itself increasingly marginalized and more years behind. You can’t hide behind trumps skirt forever

So do a lot of other governments, to be fair. It's one of those industries that employs a lot of people, and it's always bad press to close it when a bit of money could have kept it. Certainly cheaper than putting thousands of people on benefits.

Plus there's subsidies for domestic sales as well. The UK at least had a grant for plug in cars that they ended a few years ago, presumably just to get the infrastructure up and running.

But then the new vehicle price is neither here nor there in the long term, since most people drive used vehicles anyway. What matters is how many vehicles trickle down to the masses, and whether wear on the battery is a concern. Some of the early smaller models didn't have great batteries to start with, but as a daily driver to the shops and work it'd probably be fine. For some reason the conversation always drifts over to "but what about that one time you drove across the state" or "remember that time you transported a fridge", as if that's something people can't work around for the once a year they do it.

How does it compare to tesla in terms of privacy, ownership (DRM) and stuff?

Plus people usually bring it up in a stupid way. Yes they did. Yes we do that too (for all the “we” on the internet). Some amount of that is entirely normal on the global market.

The real problem is US conservatives who understand car manufacturing is a strategic industry but do not want to give that guidance to aid the transition to new technology, US politicians who can’t cooperate on a coherent long term industrial policy, US politicians who can’t look beyond short term profits for their corporate owners, or outrage headlines for their constituents. There’s nothing magical about Chinese companies taking over the industry, nothing hidden, just politicians establishing a strategy and sticking with it long enough to benefit

American car companies are focusing on their highest profit center, massive trucks. Milking that market for the short term.

….. regardless of their long term survival. It seems extremely short sighted.