That's rich coming from the economic union that spends 40% of its budget on agricultural subsidies, which they then use to flood global south countries that sign FTAs with the EU with cheap food, ruining the livelihood of peasants and smallholder farmers.
When we do it, it’s simply western ingenuity and entrepreneurship. When they do it, it’s sinister.
That's not why they do it the livelihoods of peasants in the global south are collateral damage. The intent is cheap food in Europe.
Do they have export tariffs on food then? I'm genuinely asking, I can only find agriculture related import tariffs after a few minutes of searching. The EU's only got 1/5 the export of agricultural products of the US by dollar amount, but that's still a shitload with the comparative population density
by no means are they in any way concerned about ruining the livelihood of global south peasants. They subsidise agriculture for the reason of cheap food and supporting the rural European economy and then to deal with surplus dump unsold food on the market. Like I said they know what they are doing to the global south's agricultural economy but it isn't the object of the exercise
it's also not a practice unique to the EU China does the same thing with steel. A country that wished to protect itself from this would more reasonably put import tariffs on EU food and use this money to subsidise it's own agriculture than expect the EU to stop a successful program to spread money to rural areas and provide cheap food
China also has high speed rail, bus, and cycling infrastructure along with cheap EVs, so their EVs may actually do some positive change. Domestic EVs in china also outsell Teslas because it’s cheaper. The US government has its climate change eggs in the Mungus basket and they can’t even compel him to be safer, produce more cars, or make it sensible and affordable to switch over.
Weird, I thought subsidised industry couldn't compete with the efficiency and innovation of the free market.
If they think the price of electric cars is being kept artifically low, have i got some news for them about all their fruit
never mind the U.S. agricultural subsidies. all for free trade until some mild inconvenience happens.
So China is offering cheaper EVs - which aren’t even going to help climate change on its own, but touted by liberals as the #1 solution - and they’re not even accusing them of being low quality due to its price, but simply taking up more market share and devaluing overpriced western shit?
You might’ve recognized me in the extremely viral and financially successful feature film, Lars and the Real Girl
Gosling, I should have known that you would have been a silly, silly Hexbear.
Just for that comment, I will make you do 2 more dance numbers in the inevitable sequel.
The world isn't yours anymore, NATO. Fuck off, seethe and cope.
We're moving forward.
Communism will win and the world's people will be liberated from enslavement by neocolonial capital. Capitulate or fucking rot.
There's some older work, specifically Maguire, T., Molina, A., et al (2004) building off of Lee, S. and Ditko, S. (1963) that looks at the disastrous societal consequences the unintended side effects that these 'green energy drives' can produce.
The solution to cars isn't greener cars. It's replacing cars with something else completely, like human powered vehicles or multi-passenger transport. /c/fuck_cars has the right idea
human powered vehicles
This phrasing made by brain fly over bikes and land on Flintstones cars.
human powered vehicles
I am pessimistically imagining Musk and Bezos carried in giant glitzy palanquins
No no no, you gotta be optimistic about imagining Musk and Bezos being publically [redacted] by their palanquin bearers
The solution is to not leave fusion investment in the tentacles of power-crazed cyborgs.
actually there are massive government research facilities into fusion power and France and the UK work with China on that one. It just hasn't panned out yet
I actually worked on the US' omnishambolic ICF project. Even they joke about it always being 20 years away.
The impression I got is that there is interest and funding it's just very difficult
Well yes, the current issue is that the systems were designed way ahead of the computational power to assess how the plasma would behave in such conditions so dealing with fluid instabilities that arises from the most microscopic of target asymmetriea occupies the bulk of their time.
If they had another 4 billion dollars to build the system entirely from scratch I actually think they could get fusion based on what they know now. But they don't and it works for weapons complex integration with is in the end what the DOE cares about so yeah
Power-crazed cyborgs would never invest in that, it's all government funded. Our benevolent technocratic overlords are like the pharma companies, they'll just leap on it like rabid pitbulls after it's developed to make as much money as possible
I agree, but we can’t replace cars entirely anyway, which is why prioritizing public transportation while also improving personal vehicles is what China does. It’s just that they’re making their cars affordable as well as their trains and buses, while Europeans get angry that their shit is so expensive
Alfred Molina is real, he also went by Dr. Octopus after successfully defending his thesis on electronic mind-altering evil robot tentacle arms.
His work in that field set back public acceptance of electronic mind-altering evil robot tentacle arm decades.
she's not a nazi under her leadership the german army started having to train using brooms instead of guns and shout bang bang. Nazis are not known for not prioritising militarisation
their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies
we are launching an anti-subsidy investigation
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT THE ANSWER IS THERE JUST DO STATE SUBSIDIES DO WHAT BISMACK DID IN THE 20TH CENTURY INSTEAD OF DOING WHAT THAT ENGLISH LIBERAL AGENT OF A MONARCH WANTED
Bismarck's a communist, doncha know. He knew Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels through his niece.
I saw that the cheapest Chinese electric car is $5000. I feel like the Chinese approach of hanging the capitalists with the rope they sell them is working. How can western companies compete with any of this, aside from hobbling themselves with economic nationalism? Barring nuclear war or catastrophic climate collapse, China and the global south will keep developing while the west falls further behind.
They do massive subsidies, Tesla only ever made any money because of carbon credits! They're just trying to squeeze cash out of the consumers too. And it fucking works without an outside competitor
They do them but only in ways as allowed by the byzantine logic of EU bureacracy
Ok that's true I lost the thread of conversation. Hasn't Germany had some pretty lavish EV subsidies that they're only now phasing out?
Easy, they do tariffs and protectionism. This is how most of the emerging economy in the world during cold war managed to become successful regardless of their ideology (i.e Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, etc.)
If the west is really a free market, most non Chinese companies would be wiped out
China is doing predatory pricing on one of the most expensive purchases that people will do in their lifetime? Neat.