And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
“We took zero action to compete and relied on protectionism and other forms of corruption to stay in business knowing that China was pulling ahead, we refused to plan for the future and harvested all the money for our owners instead and now we’re fucked unless you bail us out! Not the owners, of course, who could afford to bail us out, they will continue siphoning money even though they’re clearly incompetent, we need your taxes” … How about no?
Capitalists sound strange when they are faced with actual competition. That’s… kinda the whole point guys.
Yes, but there also is a legitimate issue related to staffing.
Everyone should be in unions, but unions ARE going to fight this level of automation to the bitter, as it will result in job cuts. In this particular instance, I think if you cut the CRO compensation to 0 they’d still be in trouble against some of these factories that automate almost the entire process.
This is the kind of “machines coming for your jobs” that’s realistic. AI may be a bunch of vaporware, but this stuff is different.
Maybe you should have kept up and innovated instead of just trying to stifle your competition and enshittify your products idiots.
But think of the short-term shareholder value! Have you no decency?
I do not.
well, username checks out
Compete or die
almost as if competition is what capitalism was always supposed to be about
No, thats what markets are about. Capitalism is about making money by stealing other people’s surplus labor value.
No, that’s what capitalism becomes when unregulated. Just as communism does the same when unregulated. The fact the US is on the literal same trajectory as Russia post USSR collapse is proof.
Open any Economics text book that defines what capitalism is, and by it’s literal definition, OP is correct. Capitalism, at its core, is about using capital + labor to make better products with better materials to compete in a market of others doing the same where consumers ultimately choose which company they buy from; in turn controlling which company thrives or dies. Competition is literally a key component of capitalism. It’s what most regulatory bodies were designed to protect (before they were captured). So without competition, we have something else that just looks like capitalism, but functions exactly like fascism.
I’m not defending capitalism by the way. I’m just pointing out what it is actually defined as versus what it has now become. I wouldn’t say Russia is Communist anymore by any means, so calling what the US and others practice now “Capitalism” is likewise mistaking what their system was in place of what it has become.
Wikipedia disagrees with you. Markets are just one component of capitalism.
The very first line is exactly my definition:
“Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and its use for the purpose of obtaining profit.“
Wikipedia fully agrees with me if you read the very next paragraph from your link you didn’t quote, emphasis mine:
This socioeconomic system has developed historically in several stages, and is defined by a number of constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth.
Yes I understand markets are one component of capitalism, I also understand that without them we don’t have capitalism as like you’ve said that’s a constituent component necessary for it to be defined as capitalism.
What market is there for Facebook? Google? X? Your ISP? Your government? Is it like 2 companies you have a choice between at most? Between Verizon or Quest? Between Facebook or MySpace? Between Democrat or Republican?
If there’s extremely limited choices in your markets, you don’t have markets. So you don’t have capitalism.
If you don’t have markets where things can compete for money based on their innovation, you get enshittification from the few companies who control everything. Which is very obviously where we are now.
In short, the enshittification of all things is because we no longer have competitive markets for consumers to use their money to buy what’s best. In its place, instead we have a CRAPitalist system that clearly doesn’t fit the definition of capitalism.
Which is my point. Which is why you cherry picked your answer from Wikipedia rather than reading more than the first paragraph.
So competitive markets are one part of a capitalist system, like I said… and capitalism is defined by using these markets to extract surplus labor value, like I said…
You’re missing the point completely my dude. There are no competative markets anymore. So there is no capitalism anymore. Do you understand?
Without a competative market, the system that’s extracting surplus value is NOT CAPITALISM.
Do you understand what the word “constituent” means?
It means, “a component that is part of a whole (noun) or something that’s necessary to form a part of a larger structure (adjective).”
Competative markets are constituent components to Capitalism. Thats what the wipedia page you linked says right after you stopped quoting it. So without competative markets there is no “whole” there is no capitalism.
If you sit down in a theater to watch a movie, and the projector doesn’t work, do you think you watched that movie? You bought a ticket for it. You sat down. But the constituent component of a projector broke, so all you saw was a black screen.
That is not a movie. Let alone watching one. But you would argue it is because you bought the ticket and sat down in the theater.
Capitalism’s competative markets are likewise broken, so what people are now experiencing is NOT capitalism.
This is not a hard concept to understand.
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the shareholders‽
yes I do think of the shareholders… in a dream… also involving woodchippers and guillotines
Indeed, those are short term folks who basically destroy companies.
“We insisted on fossil fuels and now Chinese electric car companies are eating our lunch, boo hoo”
Cry more fat capitalists
“Beautiful, clean coal!”
That’s capitalism.
¯\(ツ)/¯
Time for bailouts and layoffs!
That’s US capitalism.
Maybe even another war!! We could just try to take those factories. We deserve them, as a treat.
Back in the 80s, American cars got really, really crappy, and that’s when Honda, and Toyota, and later Hyundai, Daiwoo, and Kia were able to get market share. American car companies got their shit together, and started making cars that could compete again. So here we are a few decades later, in the same spot.
These scummy Capitalists get a taste of luxury, and they start getting lazy, while the Asians continue to crank away like they’re in last place. In the past, the Capitalists finally wised up, and got back into the game, but the current crop are so breath-takingly ignorant, that I doubt they could even recognize that they’re in trouble. If someone were to try to explain it to them, they’d probably just attack back.
The Japanese and Koreans will get their shit together. America won’t.
“we’ve built a model based on charging an assload of money for features that barely work and China is making cheap cars that do the job better. Because, you know, the cheap bullshit we’ve been building. If you force us to compete again we’ll lose!”
Okay, but have you considered that the Chinese Communist Party is ontologically evil? And therefore any amount of business (direct retail sale to consumers that sidesteps US rent-seekers) is in support of a genocidal regime of highly corrupt madmen who want to destroy liberty and justice across the entire planet?
We need to STOP CHINA NOW before they take over the damned world and ruin everything sweet and honest and pure that our glorious nation has created.
You got me in the first half. Ngl.
Weren’t some auto companies bailed out before? Why wouldn’t they expect the same thing again? Just get bailed out by the government again if things get bad enough.
They know they are in trouble but they think it’s because labor is lazy and needs more exploiting.
Part of getting Americas shit together is closing off immigration. The people doing this to us are mostly not American. It’s rich immigrants from various countries exploiting regular Americans. Thiel isn’t ours. Musk isn’t ours. Fucking murdoch… Why the fuck do they all move here? At some point it feels like an attack from other nations. From our own Allies. Who fucking needs enemies?
Immigration is the one of the primary economic engines in America, and it is a STUPID self-inflicted injury to close it off.
Those “immigrants” you mentioned aren’t a problem because they’re immigrants. They’re a problem because A)They are Sociopathic Oligarchs, and B) Our elected officials have allowed them to exploit our labor and resources for their own benefit, at the expense of our own citizens.
We shouldn’t cut off immigrants, who are coming here to contribute to America, we need to cut off Sociopathic Oligarchs who come here to abuse America. We need to make our government, and the wealthy, understand that we don’t exist to serve them, they exist to serve the Citizens, and this nation. They are allowed to keep their profits, after paying for the privilege through significant taxes, through the pleasure of the Citizens.
They can buy whatever they need out of their own pockets. We shouldn’t be giving their corporations tax breaks and loopholes, we shouldn’t be buying them stadiums, giving them enormous government grants, etc.They can afford to pay their own way. Not one [now illegal] penny should be spent on Sociopathic Oligarch toys.
Our tax money is for our citizens, and if Oligarchs can’t understand that, then they don’t understand their responsibilities to the country that has made them wealthy, and their fortunes will be confiscated, their corporations nationalized and operated for the enrichment of the American people, and they will be imprisoned. Their families will be left destitute, to start over.
That’s how you stop Sociopathic Oligarchs - by going after THEM, not some poor immigrant family that just wants to pick enough berries to buy food for the day.
Then stop being greedy fuckers
China will soon, or prolly has already, be the number 1 country. US oligarchs are just focussed on getting richer instead of trying to advance humanity technologically.
A nation can enrich it’s elites in the short term at the expense of its people, or it can invest in its people (education, commons, etc) at the expense of its elites.
The west, and especially my cesspool the US has made its choice.
China has been heavily building up its commons and infrastructure in the same 40 year span the US has let its commons and education fall into utter ruin in order to sell economically segregated education and gated communities for private profit.
The US is culturally indoctrinated to be hostile towards the very concept of society. Imagine resenting paying into universal healthcare because you don’t want to accidentally pay for your countrymen’s “bad decisions” like… Eating food.
I go on Rednote quite a bit. The US attitude towards China, just like non pure crony capitalism is “they are evil and from hell” for being a society. Their people, not their politicians, their people, are sweet, intelligent, and mostly treat Americans with an “are you guys OK? We’ve heard (true) horror stories.”
Thats humanity. Why would I want my schaudenfreude and greed ruled cesspool to “win?” It’s not about winning, it’s about the wellbeing of ALL your people. If the US dominates the world culturally, all that would mean is that humanity stands for “fuck you I got mine” at which point I have no comradery with my species whatsoever.
Actual human worth/value is measured in empathy for one another, which makes the US destitude in what matters.
Actual human worth/value is measured in empathy for one another, which makes the US destitude in what matters.
well said. i had the exact same thought yesterday.
China’s “investment in its people” comes with authoritarian control, surveillance, suppressed wages, restricted speech, and limited political rights. Framing it as simply generous is incomplete.
Maybe the workers at Toyota, Ford and Honda should take control of these plants. They would run it better without the capitalist leeches squeezing out every ounce of profits into their own pockets.
I cannot wait to see legacy auto disappear. It’s about time they failed. It’s fucking absurd that the most expensive piece of tech I own has a 15fps display with touch response rate measured in seconds, rather than milliseconds. They did this to themselves.
Legacy auto did nothing to compete with Tesla software, and they came out over a decade ago.
Oh, and they took the ‘10 bailouts and did fuckall with them. They didn’t take the bailouts and make a suddenly better product.
that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
I know that workers cost money to have but eveytime I read something like this I wonder if the corporations take into consideration the decrease in the number of people who may be able to purchase the product in the first place.
When you have an economy that isn’t capitalist, you can plan it…and extracting surplus value from workers isn’t necessary. You can automate your industries without destroying the quality of life of the people….in fact, you improve it because people can work less.
It really is that capitalism has exhausted its usefulness and ability to advance society. It is now socialism or barbarism.
I have had this same thought and I feel like I’ve come to a realization. If companies can cater to the desires of the top 10% or so, they can make more money. Why sell 200 $5 objects when I can cater to the affluent and sell 6 $250 objects.
I see this constantly with Automobiles and construction. Auto manufacturers do not make the cheap baseline cars for the most part Because they’ve realized they can make more money manufacturing the fancier vehicles /trim levels with higher margins.
Same thing with new buildings; affordable housing is not what is being built. You only see fancier, expensive construction, with higher margins, being constructed.
I dunno how the Japanese and Koreans will do, but I 100% guarantee that the American companies will do absolutely nothing, whine about it to their child rapist in chief and then get a massive government bailout paid for by ordinary Americans.
I dunno how the Japanese and Koreans will do
They’re equally freaked out, as they’ve been lashed to the same Wall Street piloted sinking ship as the rest of the US periphery. If you check out the politics in Japan and Korea over the last fifteen years, its been on a reactionary bent of increasing domestic militarization amid a continuous “Why aren’t our naturally superior native peoples making more babies?!” eugenics freak-out.
You can throw in The Philippines, Taiwan, India, and Australia while you’re at it. None of these countries seem to have a serious long term plan for their economic futures. Everything revolves around “containment” of the Chinese super-economy, even as individual plutocrats demand carve outs for their own supply lines and revenue streams.
In the US they’ll just keep banning Chinese cars, not sure how that’ll pan out elsewhere though since other countries have started or had existing import agreements.
Aw, Capitalism not working out for you car manufacturers? Awww, that’s too bad.
OH NO! THE FREE MARKET IS WORKING BUT NOT IN OUR FAVOR!!!
Genuine question is this the free market?
Is the CCP subsidizing these super cheap cars?
Which isn’t to say the US isn’t doing the same. 2008 should’ve meant the death of much of the American auto industry
The CCP didn’t just subsidize cheap cars. They built out the manufacturing capacity to produce them at scale.
As China’s demographics shifted and long-term labor supply came into question, they leaned heavily into automation and industrial efficiency.
That’s the real reason these cars are so inexpensive. It’s not just lower prices, it’s a fundamentally different cost structure driven by scale, integration, and advanced manufacturing.
What’s unsettling competitors isn’t cheap cars themselves.
It’s the ability to consistently produce cars more cheaply than anyone else.
Oh they likely are, just like the us does for their own auto industry. The free market part is simply a cheaper car that appeals to more people, it coming from China is the only thing really holding it back. Well and maybe the spying, but I don’t know how bad these are on that front.
Well and maybe the spying
Don’t forget the headline that came out the other day about how new US cars post-2027 model year are required to have federal surveillance installed.
We’re already being spied on, and I’d much rather China be doing it than fucking Palantir.
We are not being spyed on as long as we are not american or don’t buy new cars.
Every state does internal espionage on its citizens, and external espionage on other states.
Just because you don’t live in USA or China doesn’t excuse this.
Yes, but that is no reason to invite more of it. And this is not even government spying (they get the data I am sure) but corpo. A bad thing happening does not make it OK or normal.
invite more of it
You’re not inviting more of it. You’re trading spying done by one nation/corp with spying done by another.
Unless you think European espionage is somehow better than Chinese espionage.
