sohois
2d ago
I can't speak for the US, but in the UK the Chinese manufacturers appear to be treating the market as very much a cash cow and not at all going for price competition. Their models are like 2-3x the Chinese price for the same cars.
They are putting out sub £10k garbage for £30k prices
sohois
2d ago
You've already got like a hundred responses, but none point out the obvious:
the problem is that Indians are poor, and there are more than a billion of them. When poor immigrants come to western countries, there is like a 1 in 2 chance that they will be Indian.
There's nothing particularly unique to India that makes them unpleasant that other immigrant nations lack. They are just the most populous by far.
sohois
6d ago
But none of the positive economic indicators apply to European countries? No shit Scotts article on the US doesn't apply! They haven't had years of strong GDP growth or wage growth
sohois
13d ago
I notice I am confused by your premise.
First of all I think it's a simplification.
there's a lot of people who are savagely agitating for a UBI on one side, saying we'll be post work. The other side of course says no that's not how it works
Are these the two sides? I wouldn't agree. I think you're bunching together a lot of disparate groups. I think the main group you are trying to describe are those who believe a high level of structural, technologically driven unemployment is coming and propose UBI as a way to prevent huge numbers from falling into poverty or rioting.
But when you see arguments in favour of UBI, plenty are more prosaic, liking it from a Friedmanite perspective as the most effective method of welfare.
Between the technological UBI and libertarian UBI enthusiasts lies the most populous group: the midwits. The standard reddit proponent, they are aware of some of the technological arguments, and some of the efficiency arguments, and are smart enough to know that communism is a dead end. Thus they attach to UBI as a way to sound smart while still pushing the type of left wing welfare they favour.
When you talk about left vs right, I think you are mostly seeing arguments from the latter group, and are ending up with a bunch of weakmen. Hence why you are arguing against "affordability", because you're seeing people whose proposals begin and end at confiscating all the money from billionaires worldwide. The reality is that there are costed UBI proposals, both for current welfare or post-AGI welfare.
but let's ignore all that. My second point of confusion is how you imagine this post-AGI economy at all. I'm assuming that we're putting ASI to the side, whether through slow-takeoff or because you believe it impossible, so AI that hits human level but no higher. Is this AI purely limited to the realms of current LLMs? Are you assuming no equivalent leaps in robotic technology? How long do you expect this period to last? What's the actual level of unemployment you are expecting?
I'm trying to imagine something like self-driving cars, level 5 with no requirement for human supervision. So you reduce the work week to a 30/20/10 hour max or whatever. Does it matter if no one ever needs a human driver again?
Is the assumption that AGI largely acts a super performance enhancer but generically, so that every current job can still be done by humans?
I'm not saying that this is an impossible scenario or we couldn't at least theorycraft some way that it works, but it seems like it needs a very specific set of future developments to make sense.
And this for me is the biggest reason why few people talk about work weeks and instead focus on UBI: it's simple.
Whether you have AGI LLMs, or robotics, or ASI; whether you have 25% unemployment, or 50%, or 100%, or even if it's all a big luddite fallacy and there are loads more jobs created, UBI still works as a method of welfare. You don't have to know the future path of the economy or technology to put forward a solution.
sohois
20d ago
Either that or they offer Korean BBQ and didn't bother taking the option off the delivery menu
sohois
23d ago
Enjoy is somewhat of a different experience than "the prequels are overall good". I enjoyed the prequels as a child and I expect I could rewatch them with my own children without complaint. They are certainly more interesting films than most of Disney's output. But good films? Nah
sohois
23d ago
Sorry but I can't take anyone seriously who believes this. There's a group of star wars fans who obviously like any Star wars content and have been suckered by memes and cartoons, but I doubt you'll find many who think the prequels are good movies. People can enjoy many terrible movies
sohois
24d ago
Secondly, Star Wars wasn't Rian Johnson's to destroy. On December 15, 2017, Star Wars meant something. On December 16, 2017, Star Wars was a joke
Does this post simply pretend that the prequels didn't exist?
By the time of TLJ, the past 5 movies in the Star Wars canon had veered from just about ok to downright garbage (technically there was that cartoon movie as well but I don't think anyone counts that). The series was batting 2 for 7
sohois
28d ago
Self-study? It's the same as any other language these days, grab your preferred app and go through all the lessons. Duolingo is shit for Chinese and I haven't really used many of the options myself, but I understand that DuChinese and HelloChinese would be good to get started with.
And the other thing about ubiquitous smartphones is that there really is no reason to learn hand writing anymore, because everything can be done with pinyin and copied if you have to write something.
That there are some exceptions does not disprove the point that China places heavy restrictions on foreign businesses operating there.
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