“Buyers’ strike,” boycott, or simply unorganized collapse of demand?

Lenin wrote a book about this.

Yeah, if it’s all being done in-house by state industry then all else being equal it will be cheaper than a private alternative. But “bringing down costs” and technological innovation are known effects of competition between firms and is a reason why China uses markets and also a reason why Chinese aerospace is in a better long term position than the US’s. For most of NASA’s history, the way it funded the development of launch vehicles was not conducive to bringing down costs whatsoever. The current paradigm is better, although like you suggest it is not the only alternative.

True. Then afterwards some bright activists from both sides can work towards a sort of union of sisterly republics to smooth things over.

omg it’s xingtian

Of course resources are a limitation. But instead of investigating a supposed limitation and seeing what can be overcome and what is truly fundamental, you have people either giving up and calling the issue intractable or not putting in the work while expecting it to be resolved. Example: liquid fuels. Inside of America there are two wolves—one correctly notes the high carbon cost of liquid hydrocarbons and the high money cost of synthesizing them and concludes there is no future for liquid fuels, while the other hears “synthetic fuels” and assumes the problem is already solved and so electrification need not be hurried. In reality, the high money cost can be overcome with sufficient buildup of renewables, as is beginning to be seen in China and will become obvious in the 2030s.

You are the one treating spaceflight like a video game here. FTL, stagnancy, and unrealistically efficient rockets are mainstays in that genre. Dialectical materialist analysis of the development of human civilization is not.

You’re speaking without any investigation in the matter. In the 21st century, advanced spaceplanes, electromagnetic rail assisted launches (there was even a post about this here, and it concerned China so everyone was a big fan), and sustainable & advanced energy infrastructure that can synthesize fuels is the future of the launch industry. Eventually, costly and complex infrastructure projects such as skyhooks and launch loops can be employed. The task of humanity is to develop the productive forces that enable such projects, not throw our hands up in the air and pretend we will be stuck with the Saturn V and fossil fuels for all eternity.

Yeah you’re doing the spaceflight equivalent of the great horse manure crisis. Earth-to-space technology begins with rockets.

thick atmosphere makes spaceplanes easy

China is not going to be increasing the tariffs. They already said that at their current level, further increases have no actual effects, and that they would only act if the US tries to harm their economy with non-tariff measures.

Yeah the ethanol bit is funny to me because I was under the impression that 1) it’s only profitable in the US because of government subsidies and 2) Brazilian ethanol is, again, more profitable (because it’s from sugar cane)

Pettis is a disciple of Gordon Chang basically

by continuing to call themselves the largest economy in the world in their news articles

He’s totally going to mandate incandescent light bulbs in federal property

It’s really not palatable to the mainstream lol

2035, Huawei goes viral on English-language WeChat for “One for every headmate” smartphone ad in New York subway car.

Stock market always goes up unless capitalism is ending. Just don’t die

And while many Chinese engineers may not graduate with M.I.T.-level skills, the best are world class, and there are a lot of them. There are 1.4 billion people there. That means that in China, when you are a one-in-a-million talent, there are 1,400 other people just like you.

Total oversimplification. Yes, population is an important variable but so is education and employment. It does not matter if you have 1400 potential geniuses most of then are not being educated. It does not matter if you have 1400 potential geniuses if there are only a dozen positions in the economy relevant to their work. And more importantly, it really doesn’t matter if you have geniuses at all, because genius intellect is not how things get done.

In liberalspeak: you have to utilize your human capital to its full extent!

Middle class is just defined through income. Well-off wage laborers. China has one!