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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   33460 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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My impression after obsessively monitoring this situation for days (of course) is that neither side will fold, tariffs are here to stay, and everyone will be poor and mad for it. China of course won't fold, the idea that they're at risk is preposterous, they can well weather complete cessation of export to the US.

Broadly I have concluded that the main problem the US faces is racism towards the Chinese; the ill-earned sense of centrality and irreplaceability. I believe that Trump, Navarro and the rest of that gang are as misinformed as the average MAGA guy on Twitter, given how they speak and that amusing formula. Americans still think that their great consumption is the linchpin of Chinese economy, 10-30% of their GDP (it's more like 3%); that the Chinese produce apparel, “trinkets” and low-quality materials (they also produce things that Americans plausibly cannot start producing at the same quality in years); that American IP is vital for their industry (they're making their own software, OSes, CPUs…) and so on. The idea that American de-industrialization is a product of betrayal by Wall Street Elites who offshored jobs to China also feeds into the delusional notion of possible parity – but the truth is that there has never been a point in history where American industry had scale or diversity comparable to what's going on in China now. The issue with their bad financials is also overblown; as for losing markets, they have the capital at hand for consumption stimulus. This guy from Beijing writes:

China’s PPP GDP is only 25% larger than that of the US? Come on people… who are we kidding? Last year, China generated twice as much electricity as the US, produced 12.6 times as much steel and 22 times as much cement. China’s shipyards accounted for over 50% of the world’s output while US production was negligible. In 2023, China produced 30.2 million vehicles, almost three times more than the 10.6 million made in the US.

On the demand side, 26 million vehicles were sold in China last year, 68% more than the 15.5 million sold in the US. Chinese consumers bought 434 million smartphones, three times the 144 million sold in the US. As a country, China consumes twice as much meat and eight times as much seafood as the US. Chinese shoppers spent twice as much on luxury goods as American shoppers.

…It is prima facie ridiculous that China’s production and consumption, at multiples of US levels, can be realistically discounted for lower quality/features to arrive at a mere 125% of US PPP GDP. … Similarly, analysts who lament that China accounts for 30% of the world’s manufacturing output but only 13% of household consumption are far off the mark. China accounts for 20-40% of global demand for just about every consumer product but much of the services it consumes have been left out of national accounts.

Accordingly, with a higher real GDP, their effective debt to GDP ratio may be as low as 150%, not 200-300%. They have US assets to sell too.

So China can trivially absorb half of the overcapacity freed by reduced trade with the US, and might find buyers for the rest.

My thesis is that in picking this fight, Americans don't understand that they're actually not that big of a deal. Unfortunately, their delusions are globally shared and become reality in their own right. But perhaps not enough to offset the gross physical one.

The actual dangerous thing for China here is that Trump seems determined to immiserate the whole planet, completely irrespective of any geopolitical rivalry, because he's an illiterate anarcho-primitivist and thinks that all trade is theft unless it's barter, basically. America vs. The World, especially with a chain reaction of tariffs on Chinese (and likely also Vietnamese etc…) capacity spillover, results in massive reduction of productivity for everyone. For now, nations like Vietnam are unilaterally dropping tariffs on American crap, but that can't be a big effect because their tariffs were low to begin with, and Americans just don't and cannot produce enough at price points that people of those nations can afford. (We may see IMF loans for 3rd world countries importing overpriced American beef or Teslas or whatever to placate Don, but I doubt it'll be sustainable). I suppose in the long run the idea is that Optimus bots will be churning out products with superhuman efficiency, at least Lutnick argues as much. But that's still years away. Perhaps this extortion of zero balance trade (so in effect, the demand that trading partners buy non-competitive American products) is meant to finance the transition to posthuman automated economy. Bold strategy.

I am of course very amused and curious to see how it'll go. Will Fortress America intimidate the rest of us into submission, likely forever? Or will it be so stubborn, brutal and ham-fisted that humanity will finally rebel and ostracize the rogue state, letting it broil in its own supremacist fantasies? Can Bessent et al. turn 1D “trade le bad” checkers of the King of Understanding Things (懂王) into 4D chess? We shall see.

Broadly I have concluded that the main problem the US faces is racism towards the Chinese; the ill-earned sense of centrality and irreplaceability.

I can of course only speak for myself, and not the Trump administration, or even the "MAGA movement" as a whole.

IR policy wonks would say that this suggestion is nonsense; that any conflict between the US and China is just the rational, mechanistic outcome of two world powers who are both vying to secure their own interests. But for my part I will acknowledge that, yes, there is a racial element to the designation of China in particular as a geopolitical adversary, as opposed to some other nation. Ceteris paribus, I would prefer for world power to remain concentrated in the hands of European and European-derived peoples, as opposed to non-European peoples. (This is largely already a doomed project due to the ongoing mestizofiction of America, but, you know, you can't win 'em all...) And I particularly don't want power to rest with the Chinese, who have produced a civilization that (in its current phase of historical development at any rate) I view as uniquely soulless and utilitarian. (I do not view all non-Europeans, or even all East Asians, as exactly equivalent in this regard; if Japan were in China's position instead, I would be welcoming them as liberators!)

The Chinese, too, have a sense of centrality and irreplaceability. They too believe that they have a world historical mission to be the center of world civilization. Very well then, we shall see who prevails.

But all this only goes so far as influencing the fundamental choice to take up the conflict in the first place; it has no bearing on the strategic considerations for how the conflict should actually be navigated. China is obviously very powerful and capable, and it would be the height of foolishness to underestimate them as a nation of "trinket producers".

Americans don't understand that they're actually not that big of a deal.

A change in American economic policy sent global markets into a tailspin, so objectively speaking, America is in fact a big deal.

I can only say that engaging with the Chinese, and with people like you, has gradually convinced me that White People (Hajnali European stock specifically) are basically jumped-up serfs, the confused lower caste of prawns from District 9, with little more to offer to the world sans stale kanging and hollow, corporate-coded pretense of “soul” that, if it ever existed, resided in your currently extinct owners. You don't even notice my point about simple economics and logistics, so lost you are in your racial superiority masturbation. But of course those issues are related.

if Japan were in China's position instead

But it isn't, and you are largely responsible for that, because your previous generation had the exact same attitude towards the Japanese. Deaths from overwork, rigid hierarchy, soulless collectivist automatons cheating and copying to flood the markets and dispossess our Christian Germanic workers – this can't be allowed, can it? Oh, what a pity that now that we know them better, Japan is a geriatric country of no ambition, that mainly produces anime to give you some respite from the toxic antihuman sludge of your own media. (Presumably this is the fault of Joos. Somehow for all your natural nobility of spirit you are not capable of resisting a tiny tribe of natural wordcels. At least the Chinese managed to overthrow the Manchu).

Regrettably, China is 10 times larger and the same tricks won't work.

A change in American economic policy sent global markets into a tailspin, so objectively speaking, America is in fact a big deal.

Yes, you can do a great deal of damage to humanity. This is akin to the bafflingly swinish line of argument that “China needs us more than we need them, because they need to sell their valuable manufactured goods to someone; our consumption is more valuable than production”. We shall see how well this philosophy works.

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You don't even notice my point about simple economics and logistics

No, I did notice your point about economics and logistics. But your point wasn't relevant. The likelihood of winning a conflict has little relevance to whether that conflict should be waged in the first place.

Ironically, and contrary to your accusation, it is the serf who acts in accordance with prudence and rationality. The serf is a serf precisely because he correctly calculates that servitude is what gives him the best odds of continued survival. The nobleman, in contrast, acts in accordance with virtue, even when the outcome is certain destruction.

A Nietzsche quote for every situation:

Noble and common. - For common natures all noble, magnanimous feelings appear to be inexpedient and therefore initially incredible: they give a wink when they hear of such things and seem to want to say, 'Surely there must be some advantage involved; one cannot see through every wall' - they are suspicious of the noble person, as if he were furtively seeking his advantage. If they become all too clearly convinced of the absence of selfish intentions and gains, they view the noble person as a kind of fool: they despise him in his pleasure and laugh at the sparkle in his eye. 'How could one enjoy being at a disadvantage? How could one want with open eyes to be disadvantaged? Some disease of reason must be linked to the noble affection' - thus they think and look disparagingly, the way they disparage the pleasure that a madman derives from his fixed idea. What distinguishes the common nature is that it unflinchingly keeps sight of its advantage, and that this thought of purpose and advantage is even stronger than its strongest drives; not to allow these drives to lead it astray to perform inexpeditious acts - that is its wisdom and self-esteem. In comparison, the higher nature is more unreasonable - for the noble, magnanimous, and self-sacrificing person does in fact succumb to his drives; and in his best moments, his reason pauses. An animal that protects its young at the risk of its own life or during the mating period follows the female unto death does not think of danger and death; its reason likewise pauses because the pleasure in its brood or in the female and the fear of being deprived of this pleasure dominate it totally; the animal becomes stupider than it usually is - just like the person who is noble and magnanimous. [...]

The likelihood of winning a conflict has little relevance to whether that conflict should be waged in the first place.

It actually has a lot of relevance. The real reason you act like it doesn't is that you do not seriously engage with the possibility of losing, and losing badly (losing what? To what degree? How many cards do you have left at the point of losing, and what terms can be negotiated?). People make unreasonable maximalist demands when they are assured of their invulnerability. You treat a great power conflict like another Middle Eastern adventure, “oh we found WMDs in this shithole, our Democracy will perish if we do not conquer it hue hue!”. It's an instinct that's hard to overcome after a century of uninterrupted wins and cost-free losses. The same Main Character Syndrome, coupled with low human capital in Trump team, explains decidedly suboptimal and cost-insensitive means that were chosen for prosecuting the conflict. Americans think they can afford anything, because that's recorded in their institutional DNA. But they have never fought a superior power, due to it never having existed prior to this day. So they have developed an auxiliary belief that the very fact of them antagonizing any power confirms it is inferior. It's hard to feel pity for such a narcissistic people.

it is the serf who acts in accordance with prudence and rationality. The serf is a serf precisely because he correctly calculates that servitude is what gives him the best odds of continued survival. The nobleman, in contrast, acts in accordance with virtue, even when the outcome is certain destruction.

In Imperial Russia, there was a trend when mujiks, LARPing as nobles, initiated duels over petty spats, murdering each other with axes; eventually the state had to put its boot down. Due to extremely low literacy rates they couldn't have plausibly cited Nietzsche when doing so, but I believe that they'd have appreciated your quote.

Self-serving, petulant, handwavy, shallowly aesthetic notions of virtue are cheap and easy to brandish in defense of one's animalistic impulses; any kind of impulsive retardation can be dressed up as a calling of aristocratic, virile masculine nature, there's a whole genre of extremely popular Western music about it, authored by the impromptu warrior aristocracy of the streets. Your own elite has been wiped out to such a degree that this whole discourse is vacuous, we can't consult with a living bearer of a tradition, only speculate. It is plausible that I am wrong and there's just never been any substance to the whole fraud.

But they have never fought a superior power, due to it never having existed prior to this day.

America fought Britain twice and the Ottoman Empire once when they were far superior powers.

I know. This was a completely different America, it's like saying that Moscow was once conquered by Poles or something (Russians are very proud of that episode, thanks to propaganda in history lessons, but obviously there is no memory, institutional legacy or military tradition that survived) – a dim fact people learn in school. America that lives today was born in the Civil War and was fully formed in McKinley's era, probably. Since then, it was straight up dunking on weaker powers. With some tasteless underdog posturing from time to time, of course.

Russians are very proud of that episode

Really, very proud? Because, against all odds, it ended with Romanov dynasty rather than a Polish king, or did you mean to write 'Poles' there?

I always mean to write what I write.

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