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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025

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They’re massively tilting their economy and investment towards things like this to the detriment of their consumers and other sectors of the economy.

You say this like the US isn't massively tilting their economy in even worse and more unsustainable directions. The US has been privileging financial fraud, outsourcing, private equity vulture capitalism and a whole host of other social ills. The USA would unironically be better off if they directed all the investment currently being placed into gambling, sports betting and outsourcing into high tech manufacturing and research.

Come on this is farcical and focuses on an absolutely tiny part of the US economy. Sports betting is annoying and predatory but it was happening off shore until recently. There are always going to be money grubbing industries in good times. The pump and dump stuff in crypto is probably a more reasonable thing to think would have downstream effects.

The main thing is the US is a consumer and services dominated economy, which is what happens when an advanced economy is capable of circulating money back to households to sustain demand. China is depressing this part of their economy and has huge overcapacity as a result. More than that, they’re so focused on production that other countries are frustrated that they do not import goods and services. As people are saying in this thread, the US is the biggest consumer market in the world.

They have a ton of EV companies, of which like 5 will make it to 2030. This strategy of focused investment might look good for industry but it is not good for the ‘quality growth’ they apparently are after. I do not believe this is a sustainable strategy and does not position them well to rival the US.

Yeah. Atleast China curates things on plausible social utility