The West

I'm hearing a lot of talk about the West recently. As in, "The West was victorious over Communism," or, "The power of the West has declined with the ascendancy of China." That kind of west. Not the Wild West, nor Adam West. The West, meaning the US and possibly portions of Europe that we like.

It seems we lost the war. It seems we're doomed to become second-class citizens. It seems we're failing. It seems a lot of things.

Guess what? These things are being sold to you by the same people who want you to believe that companies are only still alive if they're growing. And I've talked about growth-vs-death previously. So according to these people, since the West isn't growing as fast as the East (or whoever it is with whom we're supposed to be locked in competition, with apologies to those readers who might come from those places or be those people), we're doomed to fail, crash, burn, and die.

China has the fastest-growing economy in the world. Has for some time now. We should all be shivering in our boots because China is growing faster than we are. The problem with that point of view is that China started with essentially nothing, and for a long time wasn't growing at all, or was shrinking, so it would take a pretty hefty trick to pull off China not growing by leaps and bounds now that it has decided to embrace growth.

To put it another way, imagine for a moment that China's economic profit is 1 dollar. Work with me here, China's been selling international lemonade or something. Whereas the West has a combined economic profit of 1,000 dollars (we sell Ultra-Lemonade 2000 or something).

Now China makes some improvements, puts up bigger lemonade signs, uses cut-rate lemons, high-fructose corn syrup instead of real sugar, and makes 3 dollars the next month. That's a 300% change in profits. Meanwhile, good old reliable West, we keep chugging right along, and our profit for the next month is a cool 1,100 dollars. That's a change of 10% in our profits. So China's economy is growing 290% faster than ours. That's worrisome.

But wait. We made a butt-load more money than China. If China even made the difference in our two profits, the change would be in the order of 10,000%. And they still would only be making 100 dollars a month.

This is an overly simplistic example to illustrate one point: from a small number, a small increase results in a larger percentage growth than from a large number. So China, starting from almost nothing, may be growing quite quickly, but that shouldn't surprise anyone, really.

I'm not saying that China will never catch "the West." I'm not saying that we should sit back, rest on our laurels, and wait for that moment to come. For all I know, it may have already come. China may be making more money than the West right now, and that should motivate us to do our best to make money too.

But more than all that, my point is that just because China is doing well doesn't mean that we "lose." We only "lose" if we stop profiting altogether. And there are many ways to define "profit." I think it's fairly impressive, for instance, that during the Soviet era, the United States and the Soviet Union were both economic powerhouses, but the US did it without the various instances of ugliness that occurred on the dismal side of the Iron Curtain. I'm not saying it was perfect, but if we can maintain a thriving economy while not compromising safety or happiness, that seems like we're "winning" to me, even if we happen not to be making quite as much as the other guy.

Basically, my central thesis boils down to a question: since when does everything have to be a competition? Why can't we be happy that we're doing well, rather than obsessing over the fact that we may not be doing as well as the other guy? Why does "the West" have to "win?" Why should we lament the things that commentators seem bound and determined to have us lament? Aren't there enough other lamentable things in the world without worrying about "winning" some competition between East and West?

Plus, the whole conception of East and West seems pretty racist and paternalistic to me. But that's really beside the point.