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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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I get this perspective, but I think it really down plays the lack of control we have over foreign products.
Like, if a US company put a bunch of employees in place and then had them simultaneously break into people's houses, the US could arrest those who orchestrated the problem.
If a Chinese company did the same thing, sure we can arrest the individuals (if they're still in the county), but we're completely powerless as a nation to do anything to those that started the problem or those that escaped the country before we found out what they did.
Like the normal concepts of what's legal are just out the window, everything is legal when you're talking about nations vs other nations.
Thing is, neither the US nor Chinese company doing a home break-in is a realistic concern.
Realistic concerns are more along the lines of them sharing data that could rightly or wrongly get you on the radar of US law enforcement, or get you discriminated against in some way.
In terms of realistic concerns, your data being in US rather than foreign hands seems like significantly more of a problem.
Data is one of those things that you don't know how it's going to be used against you until it is. If somebody is going to have that data, I'd rather my own government have that data vs a foreign government... Harming one's own citizens isn't a great strategy to get your way, but harming another's citizens is quite effective.
The other thing I'll note is this isn't just about what they collect, it's about what they put out/promote; i.e. their ability to shape (or distort) their image. I think lots more people would be concerned if they saw the Chinese govt creating rally halls around the country with high turnout, even if "they're just putting on plays" in those places.
I don't know what government actions you've been watching, if all of modern history is a guide, it's a lot easier to make a profit by harming your own citizens rather than harming another country's citizens.
From where I've been sitting, the normal pattern is a country's rich and powerful exploit the commoners of their own country for profit and power. It's much harder to gain from exploiting another country's citizens, i.e. you can't directly tax them, you can't take away their things, you can't sell their rights to your powerful friends, etc.
So borderline free Chinese labor hasn't enriched US corporations? The waters for cheap oil and sugar -- those ended really well for the country on the receiving end right? What about the British spice trade and India?
Sure you can collect power within a nation and become a sort of "god within" that nation, but that's nothing compared to nation vs nation conflict. Some of these people don't even have clean running water.
You can't do the latter without doing the former. If you're not manufacturing consent, squashing decenters, and keeping the population depressed enough at home, your going to have a lot of free thinkers with free time on their hands, and that's not good for the power holders.
Respectfully, no. You act like Americans buying stuff on the cheap only benefited the businesses doing it. There were plenty of businesses around and plenty of people that had money to buy from them, that weren't doing things on the cheap, and people didn't. "Why pay for my silverware to be made here when I can pay a company that's oursourced half?"
This isn't about power, it's about human greed at all levels of the system. Our government (i.e. the power structure) is what actually was responsible for pushing things back the other way by introducing incentives (i.e. subsidizing doing the right thing) and introducing protected "Made in the USA" labeling. We're still nowhere near where we were.
Sure you can make the argument that people only buy cheap because they're not paid well. Again though, that's not how it was, and even now plenty of people that are paid well, pay for the cheap thing.
And again, some of these people don't even have running water. Whatever "bad deal" you think Americans have been delt in many cases the countries we outsource to have been cut far far worse deals and have no power structure to fix it.
(To be clear, I love my country, but we've got skeletons and I think it's important to talk about them and try to address them and how we got here. I don't blame "people in power", it's too easy and it's only part of the problem. We've got the wrong mindset as a society, "big, fast, cheap, and more of it")