No one ever understands when I try telling them about China (in the US). China has an actual free market. You must see it to grasp how not-free America's market it. People there... Get this, this wild, man... People there **_start businesses._** In fact, everyone I knew there had a business, even if they had employment somewhere else. Everyone, not one exception. You can walk into actual businesses, little shops that have nothing to do with franchises or government. Shop after shop after shop... And a couple streets over, its factory after factory after factory. They're not uptight about you just walking into a factory and looking, either. Would that fly in the US? I doubt it, if you could even find one. If you're in the US, look around and see how many businesses or friends are employed by the government, or who's employment would disappear if the government stopped paying somewhere in the chain. Even dog sitters would lose their income if the government stopped paying the business the dog owner is employed at. Small businesses are forced to franchise - that's basically a business on top of a business that only exists to manage the layers of compliance and regulatory burden. Franchises don't exist in free markets. Got some economic reason to disagree? GFY, I know my econ. The whole facade of "free market" in the US is more entry barrier than market. The town I'm in is "growing" - there's "progress" here, as the boomers call it. That's only for one reason - there's a university with several tens of thousands of kids there basically being employed by government policy to sit there and grow their debt. That's their job. Every year there's over ten thousand 18 year olds showing up who signed a thing that exchanges their productive potential for a giant pile of debt. That debt is the only reason there's roads being built here, after several layers of corruption where bureaucrats or companies that are paid by government take a cut. And after the road is built, all the businesses that appear are franchises. You know who they pay rent to? The university. The town is owned by the university, literally. And it takes one or two **_years_** to build anything here. Nothing takes that long in China. Nothing. Free markets are wild! Oh but China's BAD!!! Orange man : "CHIIIINA!!" There is one reason for all this anti-china rhetoric and protectionism, and its not geopolitics or containment. Its debt. Not that China owns our debt - that's the usual thought stopper when I talk to "conservatives." Without inflation, our debt can't be serviced. The payments on American debt **_at all levels_** require inflation, or the payments stop. Even your mortgage and those kids' student debt. But especially the $37 trillion of federal debt. Inflation makes payments manageable because if everything costs more after the debt is taken, including wages, then its like you borrowed less. This is why it's smart to use debt - take as much as you can, cuz you're fucking the lender. That's the game. But that also means that anything that's deflationary is the enemy of America. China's gazillion factories are deflationary : that makes China the enemy. You buy cheap shit from China : debt doesn't get devalued as fast as the corrupt class would like. Even American factories are America's enemy. Anything, anywhere, that allows supply to meet demand and prices to not rise, is deflationary, and thus America's enemy. That's it. That's the whole story, from why you can't afford groceries up to why a carrier fleet parks in some other country's waters. The beast is driven by hunger ; the hunger of the beast is debt. I **_wish_** I knew one person in real life who could understand this. Its not even particularly complicated... But people are too busy with their side gigs to think about stuff. I **_almost_** had a conversation about it with a biologist over Thanksgiving. Almost!!! But they thought I was too radical, like maybe I'm a Commy or something, **_because I wanted the government to do less._** lol. We're so fucked.