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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1799 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Here is one for you - Chinese failures. We write a lot about china successes in the culture war topic and it is not undeserved. But what about the other areas - that are structural, important, the government is keen on them succeeding, but they fail. So far the only thing that comes to my mind is civilian aerospace. They are way behind, rely on western parts, doesn't seem to be able to be waned off them and everything is way behind schedule. And that in a moment in which the lead times for delivery of aircraft approach 10 years. The market is hungry, China wants to provide, but they can't.

Chinese failures would take the form of the classic seen vs. unseen economic costs that no one seems interested in taking seriously anymore. Trump's US is unabashed in taking pages out of the Chinese playbook, at risk of our ruin.

US government has been doing it for the most of 20th century (I am not even talking about FDR who pretty much run the economy on manual, but it persistent well after) but Trump has this miraculous quality of making people noticing what is happening when he's doing it. Maybe we can have an actual discussion about whether the government intervention into the economy is really as good as it has been told, now that Trump had done it?

The difference between the 20th century and now is that we know better.

Who's "we"? Nobody in the current US federal government or US Congress ever gave any indication they know better. And it's not like we're talking about 20th century BC - it's literally the same people now, just way older (and a bunch of new ones, many of whom are so far left FDR looks like Mises from where they are standing). I know of no major political party in the US that makes "knowing better" any part of its program (no, LP does not count as "major political party" and if their past performance is any indication of future results, never will).

What you say is more about wrong policies (which is interesting in itself). Their real estate policy was a mistake, as is belt and road probably, but no one doubts that chinese can pour immense amounts of concrete in various shapes and lay tracks with the best of them. I am more interested in the moonshots that failed than the roads they did not take.

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