From a Leninist bureaucratic perspective, a paper trail is exactly what someone wants as a mid-level official: if something goes wrong a paper trail transfers responsibility to her higher-ups, reducing the chance this person becoming a scapegoat. Especially useful if someone's caught in a intra-party power struggle, in an area dealing with foreign entities where waters are muddier. Trust is very rare in the Leninist party. Not sure if the same logic works in other governments though.
I think here ambition needs to be distinguished from hard-work. For example many Chinese are hardworking but not ambitious, they work very hard for many years to become a civil servant. On the other hand, many in the US believe they can achieve anything. Plus it could be those exceptionally ambitious achieve exceptionally great results, much like the top few companies pull the entire S&P 500 upwards.
The business that Amazon, Facebook, Google have in China is tiny relative to their size. Amazon has a few machine-translated pages that relay their US, UK, DE, JP sites' goods to China. Kindle's shut down. FB & Google sell some ads to local exporters.
Hasn't China been preemptively retaliating since 2000? Among FAANG only Apple still works. And FANG is actually the surname of the father of the Great Firewall. (Fang Binxing)
Chinese IT was a wild west at its very inception. Companies with connections with the police framed competitors as early as the 90s IIRC. Android (de-Googled by law) is fraught with malware-ish apps. Luckily we still have Apple but I'm a bit terrified of the prospect that Apple may one day be forced to leave China leaving me only domestic Android.
I went from Apple Watch/Fitbit to Casios and mechanical watches, too. I remember when Microsoft Band first came out their commercial was showing people checking notifications in many scenarios, including with friends and family. I was like, yuck, I absolutely don't want to be distracted in these situations. A truly smart watch should actually do the opposite: block notifications when it can tell you're with family.
While I agree a business should have something higher and valuable, business is usually so competitive that mere breathing is hard enough. Most die before even mastering that.
I have never driven a Mazda but I watch a lot of car reviews. It seems to me they're the only car manufacturer that gets car interactions right. They actually have a philosophy how human-cars should interact and design everything based on it. Hence everything comes natural and consistent and logical.
I can totally imagine underdeveloped countries where you’ll find a lot of:
- Used Chinese EVs which costed around 10-15k USD new.
- Used and older upmarket EVs.
- Low speed and low range EVs that cost around 1-2k USD new.
There are many factors. Where I live, for example. Most apps are developed for mobile only. When you don’t have a desktop version of many essential applications, it justifies a more expensive phone. When I divide the price by the amount of time I spend on the device, it seems the results are somewhat equal between the laptop and the iPhone.
This brings up scaling up good governance and city planning (essentially politics) VS scaling up an industrial product. Democratic governments are generally much responsive to needs of minorities and disadvantaged people, yet it’s not doing particularly well in changing how cities are built. Non-democracies aren’t gonna do any better if not worse. Wouldn’t it be much easier to improve mobility by autonomous driving and improved car design?
This only works if you live somewhere with a mild climate. Most places of the world it seems won't fall into this category. Summer and winter are hard. With cars where you get to set a temperature before going out, it's not just convenient, it can well be vital for seniors. Not to mention when there's rain, snow or wind. I'm all for cars. They just need to be more efficient. And it's achievable.