I've been thinking about this comment. I've got some pretty severe Pareto pareidolia lately for whatever reason, but I guess the whole point of the Pareto Principle is it's more common than we think, right?

Let's call that last 20% expertise and that first 80% competence. I've long argued that most anyone can pick up the competence to do 80% of any job. Dealing with the last 20% that really makes up the job? that takes expertise.

The Chinese are competent manufacturers. They are competent researchers. They have successfully leveraged a command economy to produce astounding quantities of "good enough" consumer goods, machine tools, electronics, follow-on patents and other markers of empire. But they're devoid of luxury goods. They are bereft of original ideas. Their entire techological culture is imitative - Alibaba is a cutthroat eBay. TikTok is a cutthroat Vine. Huawei is a cutthroat Samsung.

But through the wonders of globalization, they can sell "good enough" for 30 cents on the dollar what indigenous "good enough" costs and if you're just reading Amazon reviews (the majority of which are written by Chinese bots) there's no reason to spend the 2.6x in order to buy "great."

I've got a "good enough" water welder. I spent half its price on the "great" Italian handpiece, though. I had a "good enough" melting furnace. It broke after three uses and I bought the "great" one. I have to hunt for these things because with what I'm pursuing, "good enough" isn't good enough.

The spindle for my mill will cost me between $4k and $18k if I need to rebuild it. It's Swiss and 30 years old. I could buy a Chinese one that theoretically specs out the same for $1600... but my experience has been that the Chinese just straight up lie about their specs. If you grew up with Chinese shit, pretty much everything you've ever seen is a solid b minus from a quality standpoint. So it gets to the point where nearly no one can afford to sell even the 90% stuff.

We're all watching TV shows with the subtitles on because that last 20% was my job, man. I'm an expert in a competent economy.