Chinese Innumeracy

 I noticed some Chinese commentators weren't good with math, and now we find the Chinese government isn't good with math. Lol@stereotypes. 

 https://www.straitstimes.com/business/china-wants-everyone-to-trade-in-their-old-cars-fridges-to-help-save-its-economy

 Hey morons, the reason they weren't already upgrading is because it costs more than you gain. 

 Hey imbeciles, you can't legislate wisdom. Perhaps certain members of the peasantry don't realize they can upgrade their windows for net savings within the 2-year rule of thumb, and not doing so is plain retarded...but idiocy is an iceberg. Even if you shave it all the way down to the water line, you've barely done anything at all. The less-obvious ice bobs up and they look almost as stupid as they did before.  

 

 The Chinese aren't as good with math as you've been told, but it's true their v-IQ is even lower. Verbal principles such as 'you can't legislate wisdom' are beyond their ken.

 They can't learn systematically. They can only learn each situation individually, in isolation. They know about point deer make horse, but they don't know about point cost make benefit. Maybe through painful experience they might learn that too, but there's two issues. 1) There's a limit to what individuals and cultures can learn by rote. Once they've learned point loss make profit, they forget about point deer make horse. Accumulation is impossible. 2) Novel situations are a law of nature. If China can only learn through "traditional" methods, China will always be fucked by novel situations. Whoops. 

 Systematic learning is largely about compression. Since you can't reasonably do anything to increase the wisdom cap, each particular bit of wisdom has to become more valuable. Apply to more situations while taking up less space.

 Secondarily, China has clearly drunk deeply of economic laudanum. They believe ""economists"" and, cue Moldbug, it has escaped their attention that when you stop shooting heroin, you feel awful. Government "stimulus" is crack. You need more and more crack to get the same high, and a recession is when tolerance has become so strong that no amount of "stimulus" can keep the crack addict awake.
 Broken window fallacy. In this case, buying new fridges will briefly prop up Haier &c, at the cost of being able to buy anything, including fridges, later. Recession = recession++, nice work FDR 2.0.

 Long term, short term.

 Of course, no black government can employ competent economists. They would tell you to fire the government, as it's easily the largest drain on the economy. Consequently black governments are always taking the advice of morons and madmen - making the government an even bigger drain on the economy. 

 If you don't think in the long term, you can't cooperate. Alchemically, black government are defectors and exist in dissonance with the long term. As you may know, the long-term Laffer maximum tax rate is 0. Anything higher than that causes taxable transactions to decline to zero, the only question is how long you expect it to take. Crime always destroys the source of its revenues, which is why it's important that taxation is inherently criminal.  

 The point of a black government is to be self-hating, after all, resulting in self-destruction and the suicide of the host society.