Once again ordinary people in the West are saved from affordable, low-pollution living, and Western companies are saved from having to compete.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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That's catchy, but not entirely true.
China heavily subsidizes EV manufacturers (and production in general), plus they have cheaper environmental and labour standards... it's not like there's a fair market EU companies can compete in without some sort of handicap.
PS: Yes, "western" countries have been playing along with China's deliberate long term strategy with full awareness of where it would lead, but that's another story that is both much older and has a much broader scope than the EV industry.
This is the market place, brah. If the US or EU want to keep up, they can subsidize EV manufacturing to the same degree. We are just too stuck on subsidizing O&G to realize that harvesting value from a dying industry is going to leave us out in the cold as the new technology matures.
Free market capitalism and what we operate under haven’t been the same thing for as long as I’ve been alive. What some may call “Communist China” is beating us at the game. Get on the bus or get run the fuck over.
This is the market place, brah.
...
Free market capitalism
then talk about subsidies or non capitalist country controlling the currency, markets, VCs, etc.
What does that even mean?
I did… that was the part about extracting value from a dying industry.
If the US or EU want to keep up, they can sunbsidize EV manufacturing to the same degree
You can't allow dumping-inducing subsidies without also allowing defensive tariffs, otherwise the richer and more authoritarian countries, which have greater capacity for subsidies and greater ability to concentrate them in specific sectors, will easily kill foreign competition and establish monopolies.
The marketplace brah is a place where, without regulations that maintain a degree of fairness, the rich kills the poor, competition dies off, and consumers are drained to their last cent.
Just think of it: competition is when different actors fight it off and it ends the moment one of the contenders wins.
If you want the fight to go on forever, you don't want an unregulated market.
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China heavily subsidizes EV manufacturers (and production in general), plus they have cheaper environmental and labour standards… it’s not like there’s a fair market EU companies can compete in without some sort of handicap.
Hah. Volkswagen is in trouble right now because they fucked up the transition to electric cars completly. What do you think will happen now? That's right, we the (German) people will have to save them now, with our money. Basically the same shit as a subsidy, just later in the process. Kinda like what the Chinese do, just the really stupid way.
Oh, and of course, it will be everybody's fault but their own.
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China heavily subsidizes EV manufacturers (and production in general)
And that's a bad thing? Any sensible government is going to subsidise renewable energy and electric vehicles. It makes both economic and environmental sense. Anyone not doing this is an idiot and a climate terrorist.
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Can you explain to us what the problem with China subsidizing EV manufacturers is exactly? That's how China chooses to run their economy, and it's entirely their business. The whole argument for capitalist markets is that they're supposed to be more competitive last I checked. If that's not the case then maybe the west should reexamine its assumptions about how an economy should be run.
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It is massively clownish though because as the barrier to entry goes up higher everyone will just switch to micromobility which is built mostly by the Chinese
is this the famous "invisible hand of the market"?
Is your argument pro market regulation or against market regulation or just there to stir up shit?
The EU is a heavily regulated market economy. Broadly that creates better outcomes and higher levels of happiness for its citizens.
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I'm so confused here. I was under the impression that the entire argument for capitalist markets was that they produce cheaper and better goods than is possible to do with central state planning. Yet, here we have the capitalist west complaining that Chinese state driven model if producing goods that western companies are simply not able to compete with. Somebody help me understand.
Capitalists hate capitalism. Competition is so irritating, because someone might undercut you. (And other people would cheat to win, just like you would, so you can't ever relax.)
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Politicians be like
Yay, no punishment for the european brands. What they were doing, slept?
Germany is upset about this because they sell cars to China. This will probable create Chinese counter tariffs on European cars.
because they sell cars to China
For how much longer? Can German cars even still compete with the Chinese, or has that ship sailed already? Come, buy the best engineering of yesteryear! Yay!
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Awww what's da madder widdle capitalist can't compete with a state run economy??
I assume this doesn't apply to Chinese parts used to manufacturer electric cars in the EU
@geneva_convenience It's exactly the same that also happened several years ago between the US and the EU concerning civil planes. Here Boeing and Airbus compete against each other - and the US had the assumption, that the EU subsidized Airbus so that Boeing couldn't compete. Because of that the US thought about tariffs that would have countered this.
Great news for EU auto workers!
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