Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Is America Stealing TSMC?" video.

  1. Ayup, fully agreed. Also, almost no one understands the level of global codependency we have nowadays... I also don't, but I think I approach the truth better than a whole ton of people who are constantly arguing about just cutting China exports away or some other ridiculous proposition. Sadly, the world needed a horrible wake up call - the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I don't mean to play down these countries importance on the global trade network, but you just gotta think a bit about it. Most of the exports majorly affected by this war, coming from Ukraine or Russia, are primary commodities. Fertilizers, wheat, gas... I think those are the most talked about. Those are essential globally, but also, not exactly impossible to replace, and it's not exclusive to those countries. I'm not saying it's easy, because you'd have to ramp up production after investing a whole ton of money in other source nations, if they are even able to come close to the production of Ukraine and Russia, build up infrastructure wherever they are available or can grow, do a ton of work to reach current production, or replace consumption with something else in the case of gas, but it's still kinda doable in perhaps a decade. I mean, if for some reason Ukraine and Russia stopped exporting those entirely, which is not the case even today in the middle of war. Taiwan with all steps of chip making, and then China with almost a 5th of the global population and exports of so many things that at least today, they are leaders, if not have almost exclusive production of... there are so so soooooo many insurmountable obstacles to go over to assume China production that it's just outright impossible. It goes from raw materials that China exports almost exclusively, to compensating for logistics and infrastructure that the rest of the world simply does not have, to the problem with finding the amount of workers requires for all of this, plus industrial and manufacturing tech that the west just does not have. People think you just have to re-activate some industry or production that the US had in the past and offshored to China and other Asian nations, but this was several decades ago... it unrealistic enough to reactivate industries of the 80s or something, but you also have a ton of stuff that western nations simply never had. There is this very negative misconception, particularly amongst citizens of developed western nations, that sees China as a whole as low skilled factory labor country and nothing else. Yadda yadda they copy everything yadda yadda. These people don't even realize that a whole ton of the most advanced tech in several parts of industry, product development and several other areas were created in technological hubs located in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and whatnot. This just isn't how most tech stuff is developed anymore. You are looking at a final product, that might have some design cues given by big tech in US and other western nations, but the thing you are looking at is composed of tens to hundreds of component parts that were mostly developed close to where they are being mass produced. The western parent companies might even have patents and rights to those things, but they have absolutely no idea how to actually make them, where to start from, what mass production processes are involved. It's an ownership on paper alone, it doesn't mean they know or have the capability to churn thousands of units a minute of that thing. A total cut in trade, in commercial relations, between say the US and China, would throw most of the world back over 100 years of development, if not more. Shortages of everything, most of the biggest companies seeing the floor disappear under them, the population of most countries having a portion go starving because they can't have access to lots of things... it's hard to even imagine how truly catastrophic it'd be. I mean, in the long run, after stocks go dry and all. There'd be a period - years or potentially decades - of extreme suffering throughout the planet. Anyways, I'm rambling a bit now, but yeah... I'm also always a bit baffled by how ignorant the vast majority of people are on topics like these, including sometimes politicians in high positions of power. Man, it's super scary how much representatives don't understand stuff like this.
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