Thread by @soychicka

This thread goes places.

From pastries 1m long to semiconductors with traces only several atoms wide, Veldhoven, NL home to the world's largest, most insanely delicious appelflappen, and part of the reason for layoffs and skyrocketing car prices.

wired.com/story/asml-ext…

This story caught my eye...
wired.com/story/asml-ext…

And made me wonder - wasn't there something about a new semiconductor manufacturing process that the US was preventing the Dutch from shipping to China?

nytimes.com/2021/07/04/tec…

wsj.com/articles/china…

koersvanoers.nl/koersdigitaal/…

How odd that something brought this to my attention the other day, too.

https://twitter.com/soychicka/status/1431339590154084357?s=20

But here's the weird thing, somewhere around the beginning of August, 2000, I was on my way back from doing biodiversity research in Kyrgyzstan (where both Russian and Chinese military forces wielded their weapons against our joint KG-RU-US expedition, coincidently)

I spent a few weeks in the NL visiting a friend near Veldhoven, enjoying the appelflappen, returned briefly for UN FCCC COP6 briefly on Thanksgiving.

That year I caming to a realization that I shared on Christmas Day to my family, to many guffaws and jeers from the Uncles:

The eventual fallout of the incessant offshoring of US jobs to China would mean the next world war wasn't going to be fought with traditional weapons of war.... those were no longer required.

By destroying our manufacturing capacity ourselves, we had, in effect, pre-surrendered.

Granted, back then I was unaware of the degree of idiocy that resulted in offshoring IP for advanced electronic components; my prediction: blocking the flow of a commodity like, say, oil filters, a hostile "trading partner" could completely obliterate domestic logistics.

By feigning a single failure, explained away by 'manufacturing issues' that didn't actually seem to, in fact, exist, a single link in a chain could be exploited by those who sought to gain more than just economic status...

They could literally leave us to starve ourselves from inside.

Right now, we're allowing China to play Wal-Mart to our domestic economy - letting them move in and undercut the local businesses,

while we perceive we're prospering... but eventually, Wal-Mart destroyed those local businesses - and after gaining unified control over the local economy, could set whatever prices they wanted.

It's the same story I've known all my life, in various forms:
In unregulated capitalism, short-term vision rewards instant gratification, while those who try to ensure we act responsibly in order to preserve our future interests are penalized...

- those of us who prove risk-averse when it comes to causing harm to others often don't enjoy advancement in most workplaces, if we're retained at all - our very employment poses a risk to our employer's unfettered pursuit of profit.

Yet predators succeed and advance and profit.

It's a self-reinforcing system, a positive feedback loop, a virtual guarantee that the societal fitness of those who play Hawk, diminishing that of those who play Dove.

Think of it this way: it's a long-term strategy that can only work in a society that does not permit unfettered capitalism vs one that does...

And while it allows the Hawks amongst the unfettered capitalists to thrive, for a time...

the ultimate endgame is that those who permit those who seek instant gratification will always be pwned by those who can play the long game.

And Russia and China both play the long game.

China's flouting all environmental & human rights standards allowed them to charge next to nothing for manufacturing, so they drive out their competitors who DO have to adhere to those standards

Having a bunch of people you don't consider to be really 'human' living in your country helps, because you can simply force women and children to work 16 hour days for pennies (if they're paid at all)...

And so willful blindness of atrocities against humanity will always be a society's most fatal flaw - not morally, but literally.

By suborning slavery, with each step you take in those Kate Spade shoes along the ever-narrowing catwalk, you don't just risk tripping and falling into the fields of laborers who made those shoes - you risk taking generations of your descendants along with you.

Is it worth it?

And how do we address this?

The right claims that our standards for workplace safety and environmental protection are creeping socialism...

But rejecting those standards is not a realistic solution: it eventually drives us into the same position as a real communists invasion.

There's only one real solution to can ensure long-term protection for US interests:

Normalize working conditions and environmental regulations with minimum global standards for all entities allowed to engage in trade with the United States...

IOW, ensure everyone who receives American dollars helps their employees live better lives, in accordance with the same standards WE want to live in... or risk losing those standards ourselves as we're undercut by those who violate human rights for profit.

It's time the US prohibits transactions between US entities and foreign entities that are not in compliance with US labor and environmental protection standards,

that any entities outsourcing labor are responsible for ensuring 100% compliance,

and that, in the event of failure to comply, all individuals responsible for overseeing said contracts - and all their supervisors, up to CEO and board members - will be held criminally liable for any violations of US law committed on their behalf and under their supervision.

Not only would this result in preventing American companies from being undercut by those engaged in force labor, human rights abuses, and unfettered environmental degradation...

while it wouldn't directly force cessation of trade with other nations...

It would certainly normalize the cost of labour in other nations, as rampant profiteering is replaced with responsibility... with the net effect of increasing the probability new industry will start up at home first.

Reducing the risk of IP theft, harm to global commons, and most importantly, human rights abuses done in the interest of selling lots of cheap, plentiful crap...

You know, the crap that gets use for a while, but when it inevitably breaks (probably within a few weeks), gets replace with more cheap crap

because it's cheaper than repairing it (and building more jobs at home).

Really, the only downside is that those who profit MOST from enabling the global accountability chasm and putting our national security at risk for profit will stand to lose the drastic growth in returns they've accumulated over the past 30 years or so.

So, beyond that, I don't have any suggestions for how to achieve this objective, other than getting public sentiment behind it.

Events to unfold shortly should help foster that sentiment a bit, but regardless, there are some things that all REAL American patriots support:

creating jobs, growing our economy, and maintaining the sovereignty of our borders from invading foreign interests who seek to do us harm.

How far those definitions diverge may vary, but if we focus on the CORE of those values without giving in to whataboutism...

by agreeing on the WHAT and WHO we can agree upon as hostile entities, we can act to protect ourselves against THOSE entities....

and once that's sorted, it'll be surprising how many of the other issues might automatically work themselves out.

We've tried the "1. deregulate everything 2. ??? 3. Profit" model for the past 30 years...

and at least two generations who are clearly worse off than their parents and grandparents were at the same age will tell you that experiment has unequivocally failed.

So we have to find those in power who can recognize and agree to address how decades of permissivity towards malfeasance and abuses, funded for by American dollars, has put us where I thought we would be 20 years ago (same issue, just a different part of the tech stack, & bonus

insurrection and pandemic and foreign manipulation of housing markets, and 4+ years of an administration beholden to hostile foreign entities)....

and get rid of those who can't see the forest for their 401ks.