There might be no industrial long term planning, but I think it’s because the US operates in a different mode — financial (late) Capitalism.

But gas pumps / electric charging stations are also private.

On a semi related note, military leaders in the US have been warning about the dangers of the American deficit and have a long history of trying to cut waste by getting rid of weapons programs and military bases they don’t need but are constantly blocked by the civilian leadership in Congress because of the job loss.

> citizens that accept surveilence and lack of privacy

It's certainly not to China's extent, but is America really that opposed to surveillance and lack of privacy?

Yes, we tend to raise a huge stink when evidence of such comes to the surface.

But actions speak louder than words, and through our actions we already largely accept surveillance and a lack of privacy.

Everyday consumer apps are some of the worst offenders. Our social media apps listen to us, Amazon Ring doorbells are allegedly accessed by ICE (though Amazon denies it), Flock cameras abound (not to mention the fact they're poorly secured so who knows who else is watching other than the municipalities Flock contracts with), companies own much of our data and sell them to myriad unknown sources on a whim. There are too many examples to list.

No, it's not as severe as China. But we're certainly not trending in the right direction.

> citizens that accept surveilence and lack of privacy

citizens had no choice.

China still has capital controls, so the RMB cannot be a world currency when you can't freely move it in and out of China.

How much more surveillance and lack of privacy is there than the US? The US also has

- surveilled cities and less dense places through doorbell cams - surveilled digital communications - social credit scores (try getting a bank account if you've opted out of things like lexisnexis etc)

China's low level of corruption wins again

The Chinese are selling their EVs all over the world.

There are credible American auto enthusiasts that have got these cars and have been using them in the. US.

The superiority of Chinese EVs isn’t propaganda.

The gas pumps maybe are just a ruse but we know they are operating in China since unlike the US auto industry the Chinese one is incredibly competitive so if BYD was lying about their gas pumps the nearly 100 other competitors would have called them out

Put political freedom aside. Does China not have massive high speed train networks, the best EVs on the planet, the most renewable energy growth on the planet and a competitive domestic AI industry, and hugely more engineering graduates per year than the US?

Their trajectory is incredible, and I don't see what burying ones head in the sand does to help the US or Europe or the democratic societies of the world get/stay ahead.

Europe is third since the 2000s. The pushed the Euro to try to limit it (and from the mouth of someone who was present when they pushed, it was also caused by the black Wednesday of 92, the attacks on currencies increased, and the cost to rebuff them too).

And yes, basically, no one should include europe in the comparison until US oil fields are depleted, and even then at best it would be a race for the second place. You can't compete without gas and oil or a huge manufacturing lead, and europe don't have any, and only have specific subset of manufacturing (basically sensors, electronics, avionics, optics, and handmade clothing) that isn't workforce-intensive, nor resource-intensive.

Maybe, but BMW are at least trying. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/electric-3-...

At least the Chinese tech will be available to European consumers, nothing says insecure like pretending a competitor doesn't exist.

I think this is probably because Europe is considered part of "the West".

you can buy Chinese phones/cars in EU, so we don't fall behind

though in 3.5 months they are gonna ban EU consumers from buying cheap things directly from AliExpress and groom July 1st you will have to pay 3EUR for each ordered item, including that 1EUR screen protector, because it's much better when you can feed some useless middleman than saving money, thanks EU!

That’s a rather tall argument given that the US is currently experiencing historic income inequality [1].

[1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/exploding-wealth-inequality-u...

America is also, fundamentally, a divided country where people disagree over basic things (such as the distribution of rice) and there is a massive industry dedicated to amplifying that division.

On almost every topic, the discussion will turn to what that other evil part of society is doing to disrupt the good guys. If people are arguing about how to house people or stop crime (both basic issues), you will never move from these topics.

Most visible example is public infrastructure, middle-income countries in SE Asia have better infrastructure than the US (and most of Europe)...this makes no sense within the prevailing political/economic/social context in the West, it should just be totally impossible.

Maybe. Agree that zero-sum thinking sucks. You gotta grow the pie. But. You also have to share the big pie.

In your example, the current crisis can be represented as:

A field exists and produces 1 unit.

A financial entity buys the field and applies unsustainable methods to increase production 100 units, keep 99.5 of them, distributes 0.5/n. People are pissed that they’re getting half of what they used to despite incredible productivity. The people elect a leader to fix the situation. The leader confronts the financial entity, and returns to the people with 4 units in their pocket and excuses.

America has a genuinely crazy side.

No other country in the world has anything like the Republicans in the US, who are the only major political party in the world to oppose the existence of man made climate change.

There may be political parties in the rest of the world that say that the cost of tackling climate change is too high, but they don’t dispute the factual reality of it.

The Republicans were in this position between about 2008 and 2014 when their leaders were McCain and Romney, but Romney’s lack of insanity inspired a massive backlash within the crazy part of American society that then made Donald Trump their primary winner in 2016 as a repudiation to the not completely insane Republican leadership.

I know HN loves to pretend that the Republicans and the Democrats are just two sides of the same coin, but this can be shown to be objectively false by comparing to political parties abroad. Democrats are a normal European center left to center right party with all the flaws that brings with them.

The Republicans are now a party of insanity.