War is the great driver of technological leaps
Maybe for capitalist countries because an external threat is the only motive that will get the bourgeois to fund science instead of consolidating power, but the USSR and Chinas rise were during peaceful times.
I’m 100% confident that there is a 30% chance that it is correct.
70% chance the AI uses it to sound more confident, while being entirely incorrect.
Yeah those are all pretty valid. Going cashless requires a lot more from society than just giving everyone an app.
Or like the one bar I go to is still kinda lawless haha, a PBR is $2.
lmao you should see how cheap liquor is in asia.
Regarding 2 and 3, theres a qualitative difference between the chinese government mandating corporations respect privacy and not retain or use biometric data and the US doing so (with the EU somewhere in the middle, usually), and what they have historically used that data for.
Regarding 1, in the event of a total societal collapse where not even phone towers are running, I’m not sure how much utility money would have.
Wechat and Alipay do all that except the not keeping a record of transactions. There’s tons of food places where the entire payment system is just a printed QR code and they just tell you how much to pay so there’s nothing that can go down except the phone network and wifi.
You can also just give people money, which seems like it shouldn’t work with a credit card because it’s technically a cash advance. There’s been a dozen times where a store that requires everything go through an app so they can make you click through 3 menus advertising discounts if you buy more items wouldn’t work because I didn’t have a Chinese number or something, and the employee would put in the order, then I’d give their personal account the money.
Why would it be a failure? I loved never having to carry anything but a phone in China.
Technical development in non-capitalist societies is suppressed by war. Kalashnikov wanted to design farm equipment. Instead he designed weapons. Ask any scientist if they’re working so they can develop X before <insert adversary>, let alone as part of a war effort, 99% of them will say no. Ask the politicians why they are funding that research, and you will get a very different answer.