I often hear, “You should never cheap out on a good office chair, shoes, underpants, backpack etc…” but what are some items that you would feel OK to cheap out on?
This can by anything from items such as: expensive clothing brands to general groceries.
Well, China is evidently not focused on money grubbing and wallet lynching, the way Western capitalist economies are, so…
Yeah, but Chinese private companies are still that, private companies that are profit driven. There’s exciting and even cheap to buy stuff coming out of China, like IEMs for example, but it’s still a good ideia to keep expectations in check for the motivation of these companies.
Being profit driven is a meaningless term. Apple and Hifiman are by no means equally profit driven. If that seems like an odd comparison, Apple and Huawei make equally well polished smartphones, watches and products, yet Huawei is about 20x smaller in net worth.
China is responsible for allowing most of the world to be able to buy and own good quality products without the 10-20x markups that American companies tend to have. They have captured over half the world’s EV market and are scaling up with EV cars they are making, with very affordable and safe ones being made. They are making everything, not just IEMs. They make kilobuck top end headphones that rival Grados.
I agree with you, I was just giving a simple example of more simple product, I didn’t mean to imply that the relations are exactly the same to the ones in a capitalist country, neither that China isn’t responsible for basically all the production in the world and affordable access to said production.
Still, while most private companies can’t just do whatever they want like in the rest of the world, the fact of the matter is that profit is still the primary concern for a lot of consumer products made in China, and it’s something worth to keep in mind. The existence of gacha games like Genshin are a perfect example of this.
No other country has kneecapped its own industries, especially video gaming industry. There are others like real estate, private tuition and other sectors which Chinese government clamped down on, and is well known to hang corrupt millionaires and billionaires. Meanwhile, such people in West hang (used to) around on Epstein’s private island and do such stuff and are worshipped.
Genshin, despite being a gacha, is nowhere as greedy as something like Dokkan. Dokkan makes 16% revenue of Dragonball franchise IP total revenue. I am a F2P Dokkan player for almost 7 years now, not spent a dime, but if you chose to buy ingame currency for summoning units, one multisummon costs $40. And the banner rates are 0.5-1% per new unit. That is not apologia for Genshin though, as I never played Genshin or Honkai, and gacha lootbox/DLC/IAP gaming industry is nasty, no matter where it is. It is not sensible to blame China for gacha, when Japan created gacha, and Western gaming companies are infamous for IAP and DLC tactics for quarter profitmaxxing.
Again, I agree and I’m aware of the stuff you talk in the first paragraph. I’m from Lemmygrad, I defend China as an AES country.
Now for the second paragraph, I’m not trying to blame China for gacha, I’m just pointing it out as an issue that also exists there. That comes with their acceptance of capital, and is something they can be criticized for. My criticism is not to belittle them, but because I believe they can do better.
There was recent news of China clamping down on lootboxes and predatory monetization in gaming, which would be great and would set a precedent for the rest of the world, but last I saw they walked back on it.
I don’t play Genshin, I only used it as an example, but I play League Of Legends, which is owned by Riot Games that is owned by Tencent and recently there has been the inclusion of gacha mechanics for skins that heavily relies on fomo for people to spend money on, and it’s really expensive. Meanwhile Riot also just fired 530 people worldwide and killed multiple projects and iniciatives inside the company, while starving other projects too. This is a billion dollar worth company owned by Tencent, and it all deserves criticism like any other games and companies.
Gachas and lootboxes are addictive and money grubbing. You cannot do much about them. Casinos, gambling and lootboxes have existed for thousands of years, with not just capital but objects, kingdoms and even people used as bets. Now in modern world its just some currency bills as bets.
I have a principle set in stone as a belief and basis for all things in life and beyond, Pareto’s principle. I think morality, communism/altruism and all these things are also not 100% applicable, but only 80% (or 85, 90% whatever). So we will always be stuck with that 10-20% of capitalism, for example. And beyond that is diminishing returns. It is better to accept that, and work towards efficiency and optimal results.
I get what you’re saying, but there’s a difference between me gambling 50 currency with my friends on who is gonna win X match and a full blown casino or videogame that uses every psychological tactic possible to manipulate me into spending more and more money at every turn. One is a social interaction between people, the other is an exploitative tactic to make you spend. You can a 100% allow one and ban the other.
I don’t want in any shape, way or form to disrespect what you believe and since you said it’s set on stone I have no intent on changing it whatsover, but I think a more materialist approach could help here.
The DPRK exists and it is full on socialist. Sure it isn’t communist yet, and won’t be until the rest of the world becomes socialist, but there’s nothing to suggest we can’t fully achieve it.
My idea is not to discourage perfection (100%), but that the law of diminishing returns applies everywhere. Even communism will be insanely effective at 90% or above application. States like USSR were not 100% communist, but probably 95%, this does not mean they were not communist states, the kind of lie lot of people love to parrot about AES and former communist states.
Think of it, China is a market socialist economy, and their manufacturing for the whole world increasing global PPP for everyone is a form of communism at an economic level. And China is not even communist yet, only AES.
I am not parroting the nonsense that full communism is impossible, or that if it is not possible, imply that we must not strive for it and remain stuck with the garbage capitalist pyramid system. But 100% might not even be needed before its effects are observable.