LOL, capitalism my ass.
They can push laws rapidly when they want to (i.e., being paid by lobbyists), but when it comes to picking up rubbish, making the water drinkable, or holding pedo billionaires accountable, suddenly the gears of government are slow and need thorough “debate”.
The free market is when you jam your invisible hand on the lobbying scale, right?
Free markets hurt capitalists.
They only want free markets when it benefits them.
Sort of like socialism
“Them” is different in the two cases. In this case it’s to benefit a few oligarchs. In the case of socialism it’s to benefit the general public.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be until the wealthy cunts need something, it’s their profits, and our losses wgen we have to bail them out, c’mon man get it together, that’s what I was implying at least
In a socialist system the “wealthy cunts” are not in charge. If they are then the label “socialist” isn’t really correct any more.
Though in some circles the label “socialist” actually corresponds to “a political structure or philosophy that changes based on context but always means whatever I don’t like”, in which case I guess go ahead and use it. I find this definition to be somewhat less useful, however.
Do you know how many times they say we need your money so together we can beat socialism. I know wtf it means numb nuts, sorry reading too much doom scrolling and my patience is wearing thin, very thin. So don’t reply numb nuts I’ve said for years prior to this hell on earth (I’m atheist fyi) that I make Democrats look like Republicans, I’m for helping people not hurting, and everyone one with over 500mil should be [redacted] and that ia a good start.
There’s that nebulous “they” again. And now childish ad hominems too, and a demand that I “don’t reply.” I get the impression that continuing to discuss would be pretty pointless, yeah.
So are you defending the wealthy? cause if so you’d be correct, this no longer needs to be a conversion to have. I’m probably older than you, I’m not like a majority of my peers, but if I’m older then yeah I got an education before they started to dumb it down. Smartest guy no, but not an average nor below average intelligence. There’s the old saying you might be better educated than me aka college but you’re not smarter than me. So again eat the wealthy, fuck gop and a majority of the democrats
I read that comment completely differently. The “socialism” in “Sorta like socialism” is supposed to replace “free markets” in the previous comment.
“They” only want “socialism” when it’s corporate bailouts. Privatized profits, socialized losses.
YEAH CAPITALISM - no competition allowed. Protect us from those damn commies …… and their free market competition
Fucking communists and their free markets and open competition! None of that for us, please.
(Poe’s law: This is meant to be taken as absurdist humor.)
Land of the thief, home of the slave.
Grand imperial guard, where the dollar is sacred
And power is god.
Banger fucking song
But enough about China.
If they paid us fairly, then we could afford to buy their expensive cars. Then, the competition from cheap Chinese cars wouldn’t be nearly so big a problem for them.
Their greed keeps coming back to bite them in the ass, but they’ll do anything at all to avoid sharing the wealth.
And if we had universal healthcare it would actually be cheaper to produce those cars. Canada is proof of this.
The CEO of Ford drives a Xaomi. He could have any car he wanted, and he chooses a Chinese car. It’s ostensibly for market research but he’s said he really doesn’t want to give it up. So yeah they’re cheap, and also I think China might just genuinely make better cars at this point. While China has been investing into manufacturing and consumer tech the big three have been dragging their heels and kicking and screaming because they see engineers as cost centers and that is biting them in the ass as well.
he wouldnt drive his own companies car, which are likely hazardous on the road.
What happened to the free market?
It’s free in the sense that the wealthiest businessmen are free to decide how the rest of the country shound live.
Maximum freedom for the maximally wealthy.
And getting the big money out of politics is communism, according to these fascists.
It literally is communism, in the sense that capitalist states are always controlled by big money, and the only way to prevent that is to do a communist revolution.
Capitalism needs protection because the socialists are better at capitalism than the capitalists are. After all, capitalism only works long term with a strong state to ensure market competition. Who better than a bunch of literal communists to see this and actually try and create a long term functional market economy?
China is straight up capitalist. They produced more billionaires than the US for the third straight year. The people do not own the means of production. The government shares more in common with fascism than it does socialism.
It makes sense. The investment in and development of EVs and EV manufacturing has been fully kneecapped by the American auto and oil industries.
If China came in, the American auto industry would be destroyed overnight due to the lack of competitive vehicles.
The propaganda of “Chinese vehicles are cheap and dangerous” only works when people don’t have the product in front of them.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-ceo-jim-farley-xiaomi-tesla-chinese-ev-2026-4?op=1
I live in a country with Chinese vehicles, and I would say that they were, initially, a bit crappy, a little less technically safe but cheaper.
Now though they’re pretty much even, especially BYD.
This is the confident opinion of one who has never owned a Chinese vehicle!
The propaganda of “Chinese vehicles are cheap and dangerous” only works when people don’t have the product in front of them.
Plus they’d have to pass whatever requirements in the US to be sold, the same ones that the ‘domestic’ manufacturers do.
Is this even a concern anymore? Haven’t we pretty much gutted any requirements that would actually matter / wouldn’t already exist in Chinese cars?
There are some American safety requirements that are based on protecting the safety of the driver at the expense of everything else that cheaper vehicles might not meet.
Could you give us some examples?
One example is a strong A-Pillar on a car–the metal post to the left and right of the windshield. Most manufacturers meet the standard by making it really beefy and wide. It protects the driver from collision but makes collision more likely by obstructing the driver’s vision.
Car safety standards in the US are actively hostile to anyone outside a car.
As they sell them in Europe we can be sure that that meet the more stringent European standards too. The idea that Chinese vehicles are all crap has passed its use by date.
Yeah from a performance and safety standpoint I don’t think there’s much difference. There is some argument that repair parts availability might be worse with Chinese vehicles, but the usual domestic manufacturers are also actively hostile to repairs now anyway so I don’t know how different that will really be.
i have a BYD at home in Australia, i charge it 90% of the time off the solar panels on my roof. I travel SE Asia a fair bit (and work remotely) I am astounded by the number of Chinese EVs in Phnom Penh (I’m currently in Cambodia) as well as quite a few Mazda EVs (sedan and SUV) which i think are made in China anyway. So many brands, actually competitive :) I have seen one Toyota EV and lots and lots of used Prius.
Another thing is so many Bentley’s and Lamborghinis.
[China’s auto industry has] grown from holding 16 percent of global market share to 25 percent—with automotive analysts predicting that this value could reach one-third by 2030.
I would imagine that global market share would explode if they were allowed access to the American market. Especially with oil prices being what they are.
But this is supposed to be fixed by the free market, anything else is communism.
You know, all the reasons I didn’t want a Chinese car are now also present in American cars…
We need to start raiding junkyards for old cars, and working on making electric conversions without corporate cloud connections and integrated spyware more accessible.
Or, and hear me out on this, push our useless elected officials to fucking do something for the people instead of the highest bidder.
Hahaha, good one! Guards! Seize this impudent peasant and whip him to the bone!
They’re all bought, pushing them only gets pointless promises during campaigns that will be ignored as soon as they get your vote.
Whether it’s a pedophile MAGAt, or that piece of shit Jeffries, they’re all a joke…
And it’s not funny.
Thats because people only vote for one of two parties therefore neither party needs to do anything to secure their votes. All they have to do is convince you that the other party is/would be worse rather than actually doing things that benefit people or have a real impact.
We need universal ranked choice voting.
Or at least people showing up to the PRIMARIES and kicking these pieces of shit out before they become the DNC annointed one.
The USA is Capitalistic Communism. Drug Companies do research with taxpayer money then reap profits.
Bailouts and market manipulation like not allowing Chinese cars.
AI is gonna crash hard and the companies already have their hands out.
Only the profits are private.
I want a Chinese car
Sorry capitalism can’t do that. Only the glorious PRC can have electric Chinese cars.
Plenty of capitalist countries can have electric cars, including but not limited to Chinese cars. The problem isn’t capitalism here, it is the US.
There are several different problems here and banning Chinese cars is possibly the worst solution. And with Trump and magats in charge, a better solution is off the table anyway.
Problem 1: American automakers don’t make anything good and it’s all expensive.
Problem 2: Americans need jobs, everyone buying their (second) most expensive belonging from abroad transfers manufacturing jobs abroad.
Problem 3: EV transition in the US isn’t going as strong as it should be.
Problem 4: China has EV subsidies for cars sold to other countries. This allows for dumping stock at below cost prices, after already having super low production costs (among other things China is the world’s battery manufacturer, Chinese EVs get batteries for much cheaper; also Chinese labor costs are at most a quarter of union labor in the US). Usually EV subsidies, if they exist, are on purchasing, not production.
The solution, to me, isn’t banning Chinese EVs. It’s a further increase of tariffs on cars made in China and then that tariff money should be used to fund an EV purchase subsidy so that all EVs get cheaper for the end user to buy (yes, said subsidies would also apply to Chinese EVs). Now if BYD or whoever wants to sell a ton of cars in the US, they have to manufacture in the US, which means they have similar costs to other manufacturers (minus the batteries of course, nothing to do about that without causing a ton of issues. You can’t just increase tariffs on Chinese batteries because non-Chinese manufacturers need them too).
My proposed solution would directly affect #2 and #4 in a positive manner, be better for #3 than outright banning Chinese EVs, but not as good as simply allowing them to dump nearly-free cars on Americans (which would of course increase in price once the competition is dead) and forces the American automakers themselves to sort out #1 because right now much of their competition is the German big 3 and Toyota, all of which are expensive too (shit, I consider Toyota more expensive than the Germans because I look at used cars, I love depreciation)
But what do I know, I’m not American and don’t know shit about economics and trade wars and don’t even own an EV.
I want tiny Japanese trucks, byd cars, and every car in the world to be available for purchase in “the land of the free”
chicken tax 2.0
you will buy your 90% markup unrepairable slop cars and learn to like it
Are the Chinese EVs repairable though? And what I’ve seen of them is a bunch of gimmicky features that I don’t want.
Try repairing any modern car. Try repairing a six year old car. Without the proprietary software to interface with the car computers, there aren’t a lot.of repairs you can do on your own.
I have a 19 Volvo and a 13 Volvo. You can’t do much of anything to either without the software and a cryptographic PIN that locks the central electronics module. The only way you can access the cem is buy “renting” Volvo software. Even then, they charge for individual transactions. Want to make a key for your car? Pay for the software then pay another $250 for access to the key making module. BTW, that only permits you to make ONE key.
You’ve been locked out of your own cars for a long time now. More and more goes behind the dealer paywall over time.
Exactly.
Do the Chinese make a car that’s not like that?
lmao
