There's more plants than herbivores, more herbivores than carnivores etc. The lower trophic levels weigh more. And "more" means few orders of magnitude more
Perhaps, we need to introduce an idea of a technology chain pyramid 🧵
Consumer goods would constitute the lowest trophic level. Which means, the largest level by far. There's just way more of them compared all the upper levels combined
This is also the only level of the technology chain visible to the general audience
"Everything produced in China" means "everything I buy is produced in China". And everything I buy means consumer goods
1. We see only the lowest trophic level of the technology chain 2. We notice it is dominated by the Chinese production 3. Voila, China produces everything
Data seems to support this idea. Indeed, Chinese manufacturing output may exceed the output of Europe + next few major industrial powers combined
That is because the upper trophic levels are just as invisible to the statistics as they are to the human eye
They are just small
Metalworking tools constitute principal industrial equipment for any manufacturing industry. Japan is the world's second largest exporter, almost on pair with Germany. And yet, machine tool industry makes for less than 2% of its manufacturing output
The upper levels are small
That makes the upper levels of the production chain completely invisible in the aggregate data. They're just very much smaller than the lower levels they feed off
Market of spoons > market of spoon producing machines
for the same reason there's more phyto- than zooplankton
Aggregation makes the upper levels of economy invisible for the same reason it makes invisible the upper levels of the trophic pyramid. There is way more grass than rabbits, there's way more frying pans than turning machines
Aggregation -> The structure lost
Now the thing with the upper levels is that they tend to be not only quantitatively smaller than the lower levels (-> hence invisibility), but also qualitatively different
More knowledge intensive
More tacit knowledge (craftsmanship) intensive
Harder to pick up
The bottleneck
Let's zoom in to something bottleneckish. The pressing die production could be a good example
Here is an Audi. What is interesting about the Audi is that it may have been one of the top metalworkers on the world
How do you make its car body elements? Most probably, you will:
1. Take a sheet of metal and feed it into a pressing machine 2. Machine it with a mill etc. to give it precise form and dimensions 3. Assemble it all
1, 2 and even 3 may be automatable
Pressing is automatable. You feed a sheet of metal into a CNC press and, kaboom, it is formed into the shape
Machining is automatable. Your CNC machine tool cuts off the excess metal from a workpiece giving it precise form and dimensions
Now what is un-automatable? Production of a pressing die
This is a bottleneck of a bottleneck. Each pressing die gives its impression to thousands of doors, etc. Every die error will be scaled up thousandfold
Dies are fixed manually, with fingers. That is semi-artisanal labor
Craftsman expertise like this cannot be bought. You can only grow it, in the process of one on one mentorship, taking years
Can you do without it? You can. You will probably end up with the lower quality dies -> lower quality product
Lots of defects, same on every car
So what did we learn? We dived in into the production of some of the most sophisticated consumer goods there are. We observed a bottleneck in this process (pressing die)
And in this bottleneck we found the manual, craftsman labor based on a semi-artisanal expertise
Now you may ask:
But is it really necessary to have all this artisanal expertise to produce a car? 🤔
Of course, not. The skills you may observe here are vastly excessive compared with the bare minimum necessary to produce a car that drives (and that you can sell at a profit)
And that is exactly the thing with Western Europe
It is excessive
It is excessive architecturally. You may notice it when visiting old European towns. There's just lots of stuff out there that has magically survived through all the political turmoils
Very un-optimized
It is excessive intellectually, excessive in terms of skills and craftsmanship. Carrying the uninterrupted tradition since the earliest days of Industrial Revolution, it is the largest reservoir of niche and unobvious manufacturing competences by far
Again, very un-optimized
I have been long puzzled by how widespread is contempt to Europe in the United States. I used to find this attitude exaggerated and almost performative
Now I tend to explain it with the un-optimized character of the European industry and economy in general
Excessive rather than optimised, driven by the craftsman more than entrepreneurial spirit, accumulating a great deal of obscure, niche knowledge, European industry may not be very efficient in terms of money making
You won't sell that much, if you insist on producing on your own terms
But
If a foreign martial state aims to produce something niche and unobvious
(like and intercontinental ballistic missile)
then it will have little choice but to outsource much of the production chain
What I am saying is that "capitalist reforms" are a buzzword devoid of any actual meaning, and a buzzword that obfuscated rather than explains. Specifically, it is fusing radically different policies taken under the radically different circumstances (and timing!) into one - purely for ideological purposes
It can be argued, for example, that starting from the 1980s, China has undertaken massive socialist reforms, specifically in infrastructure, and in basic (mother) industries, such as steel, petrochemical and chemical and, of course, power
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:
“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry
(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)
Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.