China's war on the US and the implications for capitalism

Is China already at war with the US?

The above video mentions five ways in which China is already warring with the US:

1. cyber warfare: hacking
2. economic warfare: undermining markets, taking over manufacturing, etc.
3. legal warfare: making laws that somehow apply outside of China, etc.
4. opinion warfare: making the world love China, saying "Wuhan virus" is racist, etc.
5. biological warfare: this should be obvious, but it's been happening since before COVID

The video's point is that China has been engaging in this sort of warfare for years, but America, hypnotized by the market opportunities it finds in China, hasn't woken up to the fact that we are in a state of war. This leads me to a discussion that's going to be uncomfortable for my fellow pro-capitalists: the flaws inherent in capitalism. There are several, and the above video indirectly highlights some of them. I'll concentrate on two.

1. Capitalism's logical conclusion

A free-market economy relies on competition for its robustness. If McDonald's totally dominated the market, what a sad world it would be, right? We need our Five Guys, Burger King, In-N-Out, Hardee's, etc. Competition. Freedom, a capitalistic value, entails having choices, and choices drive the market. But what's the ultimate purpose of every competitor that enters the market? To dominate it! This is only natural, after all; when we compete, we compete to win. And this, in fact, happens: some entities do, in fact, dominate the market, creating effective monopolies or almost-monopolies. While there are alternative search engines like Bing and Brave (a search engine and browser) out there, most people automatically think of Google first because Google, frankly, crushes the market. This isn't healthy, but while unhealthy, it's a logical side effect of capitalism: monopolies are the logical conclusion of true competition. Another example is Microsoft, which produces most or all of the software you use. The software is often crap (and mediocritization is a side effect of monopolies; I rant about how much MS Word sucks all the time in my office), but when the shitburger is the only choice on the menu, you either buy the shitburger or leave the store to make your own, tastier burger. If you know how.

2. Capitalism: toxic when focused on money

Much of what you saw in the above China Uncensored video comes down to capitalism not wanting to wake up to certain realities because, well, money. This is perhaps capitalism's biggest trap: it's easy to lose sight of the fact that capitalism, as a system, is composed of living, breathing, feeling people—that it's not merely a method to acquire more cash. When we stop thinking of cash as a way to enhance our freedom by providing us with more choices, and we start thinking of cash as an end in itself, that's when things turn ugly. Elon Musk has a Tesla plant in Shanghai and a Tesla showroom in Xinjiang. While he's held up as an icon of patriotic American values by addled conservatives who fail to note he has three nationalities and doesn't mind doing business in oppressive countries like China, Musk is, first and foremost, a businessman who, while he does do good things for the world (SpaceX and Starlink), ultimately cares more about money than he does about human suffering. Scale that thinking down to a more local level, and you can see that capitalism's overconcern for money ruins more lives than just in Xinjiang (reminder: I'm not really that sympathetic to the enslaved Uyghurs). Apple relies on Chinese slave labor to make its products, and many, many other businesses will outsource manufacturing to foreign countries precisely because the labor is so much cheaper. Donald Trump, who is essentially a 90s Democrat, comes along and, by making America his first priority (as opposed to the globalist idea of prioritizing international trade), reintroduces the notion of using American labor to produce high-quality products and services. Sure, these things will cost more, but it's more complex than that: by keeping jobs in America, you give more Americans the opportunity to earn money, and that, in turn, leads to more buying power, which in turn drives the engine of the economy.

A benevolent capitalism—which I believe in—will understand that money is crucially important to the smooth running of society. Money is a brute reality, and it's an everyday priority. (I can't imagine trying to get around Seoul with absolutely no money.*) At the same time, such a capitalism will not fetishize money to the point where cash becomes an end in itself, resulting in the dehumanization of the people who make up the system. Benevolent capitalism will also recognize the need for competition, but as Theodore Roosevelt intuited, there will come times when huge monopolies need to be broken up by a large, regulatory force. While some people will reflexively cry out against government involvement in any way, shape, or form when it comes to the market, that's a simplistic view. The fact is that monopolies do need to be broken apart (and it's past time to shatter the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) for the health of the nation. Competition is more important than competition's logical conclusion. That's a bit of a paradox (remember: we compete to win), but if we allow competition to proceed in an unbridled manner, we end up with the situation we see today: a cowed populace dominated by colossal monopolies.

This blog has plenty of posts about the virtues of capitalism, but that China Uncensored video prompted me to point out some of capitalism's flaws because, well, those flaws can end up killing us when our own businesspeople are too dumb to understand that they need to pull out of China (as they're "bravely" doing to Russia right now) and pivot to places like India and America-friendly parts of Eastern Europe. Time to get our heads out of our asses, no matter how big and tempting the Chinese market is. Dealing with China is like making a deal with the Devil: it's something to be avoided.

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*And I've been poor enough where that was almost a reality: I've had moments where I had to choose between getting a meager meal and using my money to take transportation home. I never want to be in that state again.