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Comment by jghn | Hacker News Reader

This. The amount of things I buy off Amazon has dropped quite a lot over the last 15-20 years. It used to be just about everything. Now it's an about once a month at most, and some of that are gifts for other people. I'm more willing to shop local now, and for everything else if I don't care a lot about when I get it I'll order it direct from a more appropriate vendor. And if I *really* don't care when I get it nor that it's fake, I'll use AliExpress. The only value Amazon has for me now is if I need an item on a predictable schedule and either I can't get it locally or its not worth my time to do so.

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I'm the same way. I've also been very impressed with Chinese made goods too. Especially in the music world, M-Vave recently released a very capable synth for $50 (FM-1) that is having a massive resurgence of tinking in the community (people are sly enough to use LLMs to vibe code different firmwares that turn the device into something else entirely, like a groovebox or drum machine for example).

It's a shame neoliberals hallowed out US manufacturing but at least consumers around the world are benefitting.

> It's a shame neoliberals hallowed out US manufacturing but at least consumers around the world are benefitting.

Unfortunately, the counterpoint is... China has us all by the balls. Do something China doesn't like, such as, say... support Taiwan? Whoops, where are you going to get stuff such as medication now?

I'm not really worried about China, the US has been a massive force of evil and imperialism across the world my entire life. When was the last time China invaded a sovereign country? The US did it twice in the span of a few months this year, and likely to do it again.

No one benefits from US foreign policy outside of elites or capitalists, everyone else suffers under imperialism.

The US may behave irrationally from time to time. Bush, Trump, the list goes on.

The problem with China is, they play the loooooooooooong game, and their game is explicitly to destroy our industries. As a German, this has me worried, because we have seen it with solar panels (we used to be the world leader), with medicine (similarly, a lot of compounds came from Germany) and now we're seeing it with cars.

This claim feels like a novel, nation-state-level variation on the "fundamental attribution error".

This feels weird to read, the US has played a direct role in your degradation of life in Germany (starting the Iraq invasion that spiraled into a massive immigration crisis that your country hasn't recovered from, inability to defend yourselves without NATO which means you have to please US benefactors to get protection that is constantly being threatened, and has caused a massive spike in your energy prices due to the Iran War) but you're scared of China because maybe they might do something in the future?

I'm sorry but this is quite sad. You're willing to blame a foreign country that is providing high quality goods that make your life better instead of your own political leaders or supposed allies that have no issues with selling your country down the drain?

I can see why people are voting for AfD.

> starting the Iraq invasion that spiraled into a massive immigration crisis that your country hasn't recovered from

Not really. The connection from Iraq to the Arab Spring is thin at best. If anything, what caused Arab Spring is the widespread availability of Twitter plus a lot of existing pressure in the MENA dictatorships and kleptocracies.

> inability to defend yourselves without NATO which means you have to please US benefactors to get protection that is constantly being threatened

Half-agree. Up until the 90s Europe was more than able to defend itself against Russia on its own - Germany had thousands of tanks, the French and Brits had thousands of tanks plus a sizable navy plus nukes.

After the German reunification, the collapse of the USSR and most of the former Soviet countries eventually joining the EU and NATO, the widespread assumption was that Russia would not be a threat for a land war again, and that there was no one else who could threaten Europe with a land war, so it was assumed that we could drastically reduce our land-war assets like tanks and artillery, instead focusing our military on countering jihadist threats. Additionally, the assumption was that the US would stay the same reliable ally it has been for well over half of a century.

Both of these assumptions have turned out to be wrong in the end unfortunately. I personally believe, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble, had we all (US+EU) enforced a no-fly zone over Syria to show Russia we actually mean business, and reacted much, much more strongly after the Little Green Men appeared in Ukraine or after MH17 was shot down.

> and has caused a massive spike in your energy prices due to the Iran War

While undoubtedly the US is to blame for that particular shitshow escalating the way it did... it's not like we didn't get enough warnings that it is a dumbass idea to continue relying on fossil fuels.

> but you're scared of China because maybe they might do something in the future?

They already did lol. Look at how many jobs they managed to lure from Europe by exploitatively cheap wages and employment conditions more resembling slavery ("996"). Yes, the US is, especially at the moment, as unreliable as it gets, but that does not mean China is the answer.

> I can see why people are voting for AfD.

A lot of the regions where people are voting for the AfD are the ones seriously affected by jobs moving off to Eastern Europe and China.

Most of our medication comes from India, actually.

And China isn't able to cut off your medication because you support Taiwan: it would have to be a country-sized ban, which for the US would immediately spark WW3. China isn't stupid, they have a sense of self-preservation. Why start a fight with the US when you can slowly milk it dry?

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