Framing it that way hides all the levers used to tilt the playing field for US companies, no?

The government that removed restrictions on how private companies can access capital after a certain scale (the JOBS Act), that removed the need for private companies to report as if they were a public company after a shareholder threshold was crossed, superpowering the access of wealthy private investors to get in earlier in a growing company while at the same blocking the public from participating in funding growing enterprises at an earlier stage (since it required companies to IPO much earlier to access capital) which allowed retail investors to also reap the rewards on funding them early when they grew to become behemoths (like Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Google, etc.).

It's not fair in either place, the USA has its own model of unfairness, China has a completely different one. The difference is that in the USA the government allows private investors to become more powerful than the State (outside of the monopoly of violence) while plunging the rest of society into increasingly more precarious lives while in China the State is the power and its legitimacy only exists while the population feel they have a better life.

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atwrk a day ago | parent | next [-]

IMO the selective enforcement of regulatory requirements should be added to the list. Observing from the outside, I have a hard time believing that e.g. musks gas powered data centers really follow all the environmental laws, for example, or that the authorities really see no grounds for indictment if Altmans company hacks hundreds of third parties, or that there's really no one at the SEC having a problem with Anthropics fear mongering prior to the IPO.

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shwaj a day ago | parent [-]

In a list describing how the USA system works, sure: selective enforcement is there.

As a differentiator from the Chinese system, not so much. For two otherwise equal companies, the one that says things against the party line will experience selective enforcement too.

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gpt5 a day ago | parent [-]

Except that in China, the people who do that will disappear.

The propaganda of trying to make US and China government appear the same is making people dumber. and is one of the most heavily used tools in China’s online propaganda arsenal.

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K0balt 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the USA, they don’t disappear, they commit suicide in their car typically. In Russia, they fall out of windows and off of balconies. I don’t think it’s accurate to call the circumstances equivalent, or the regimes equivalent. But there are some remarkable similarities, and their goals are similarly structured - to keep those in power powerful and to enrich the wealthy.

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p_j_w a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>The propaganda of trying to make US and China government appear the same [...] is one of the most heavily used tools in China’s online propaganda arsenal.

The government could do some very easy things to remove this tool from China's toolbelt. Like you know, prosecuting rich people when they've earned it.

	▲	gpt5 a day ago \| parent [-]
		No. They would need to kidnap rich and poor people and their families regardless of "earning" it. Then they. will start to get closer.

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shwaj 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who was trying to make the US and China appear the same? I think you have reading comprehension problems, buddy.

If you look at the comment I responded to, they were remarking on selective enforcement in the USA. I merely observed that this isn’t a unique feature of the US system, it happens in China too. I said nothing about the severity of the consequences.

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010ED67913 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

he's not really "framing" it that way. that's just simply exactly what it is.

	▲	piva00 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's a framing though, by mentioning only Chinese tactics as nefarious/malicious it leaves the USA as the morally superior model (and for many it will be assumed as the "fair" option), which it definitely isn't.