Quote:
Originally Posted by Riddil
It's a defeatist attitude to say, "I guess the rest of the world is getting better. We're just going to lose sometimes. Ah well."
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First I'd like to say that the mad face for the tipping comment was a joke. I thought it was very funny and laughed for some time after making the post.
What I was trying to do was a part of what the "problem" is here in the US, not taking on the real problems and instead looking at the totally insignificant as a distraction. Even to the point of getting passionate about those insignifcant things.
As for not being able to do anything about China catching up, there isn't much that can be done about the
other guy's drive to win the game. If the numbers were even close I'd say....maybe we can beat em'. That's not what I'm thinking now though.
What we need, IMO, is not to beat them at this game but to invent a better game and them beat them at that. The Chinese are surely hungry now and probably will be for many years to come. That's a great thing for them collectively because they have worked for many years to make the gains made in the past 15 years or so. Now they have so much momentum that only they can stop themselves by crashing the machine from within.
What does that mean?
It's not my training or study of societies but I'm guessing that they will fall through the same evolution that the west has. They work, they build, they have more than they need, they get complacent, they decline.
You can tell me how much better life is in the US than in China, I don't know. I'm not talking about the slivers of very rich but for the masses. What percentage of the people are flat broke? How many millions of people would do anything to get ahead? To have a life that is just a fraction of what the middle has here now?
It's my opinion that we arent going to affect that tide of people power in the least. How many Chinese are there? How many Americans ( and I'll say westerners )? The numbers are too great. We need to innovate to the new situation. To create better business arrangements. To scrap or seriously alter those ways that things are done here in the US right now. To re-think learning and working and all productive pursuits.
Not easy, no. We're the God damned United States of effing America for God's sake, we are the innovators! When these times hit the US we come up with better solutions ( for those that accept the new ways ).
I do believe that we'll do well as things get more competetive but not using the "America is the only country in the world" template. Our ways are inefficient and illogical and yet the machine of change here is too slow to compensate for the times.
We need to find different ways to have advantage. Ways that may not even be in the US but may work at making money for Americans.
What are the rules? What are "they" doing? What obstacles do we have? What are the laws, the regs, the methods? How can we outgrow them? How can we invent a better game that we can win at?
It's not a great explaination but that's what I'm looking at. Don't try to beat them, try to come up with a way to work with them that we win ( and they win too ). That's probably not going to happen with a "cookie cutter" old style US company.