Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans | Hacker News Reader

Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

spiegel.de

65 pointsmaxklein64 comments

Anything made in North Korea, as long as it is not overly expensive, would be worth buying just for the sake of owning something made in North Korea. (At least in my humble opinion.)

If North Korea wanted to they could probably make a whole lot of money, and improve the living standards of their citizens, by hiring a few good foriegn designers and created a whole line of specialty products "100% made in North Korea." Just imagine the premium they could charge!

The only difficulty that I can think of is how they would rehabilitate their image.

i don't understand. why would people want to own an artifact of human misery?

Weren't some rich Russians willing to pay for the privilege of a pirate-hunting vacation off the coast of Somalia? You're assuming everyone has a conscience, which is an unrealistic assumption.

sometimes I forget I live in a chimpanzee insane asylum.

> Weren't some rich Russians willing to pay for the privilege of a pirate-hunting vacation off the coast of Somalia?

No, that was a hoax:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/piratecruise.asp

Please note that I stated that some people were willing to pay for the privilege of blowing up Somali pirates with heavy weapons. You found evidence that the Russian company selling pirate-hunting vacations was a hoax. I am talking about demand for a gory form of entertainment, you're talking about supply. Hence, you have not defeated my argument.

I personally know people who would pay to shoot pirates with 50-cal machine guns. You'd be amazed at how bored executives at big companies can get...

1) People in USA/Canada/Other western world are _addicted_ to products made in misery (in China, for example). Less miserable of course, but still far from good conditions. 2) If there are reasons to think that it can improve their condition, than it os a good idea.

Very good point. China is only the tip of the iceberg. For example, about 10 years ago, there was a scandal that Nike used slave child labor in Pakistan to manufacture soccer balls.

http://www1.american.edu/TED/nike.htm

The problem, that USA is _not_ much better in the ways how blue collar workers are treated there. There is a good book "the great squeeze", which talks about misery workers go through working on American industrial facilities. Google Books should have it.

Ridiculous. They are addicted to inexpensive products, nothing else. Few people ever check a label to see where clothes are made.

Inexpensive (or more correctly - cheap) are almost always made in misery. So by simple logic, people who prefer cheap products prefer products made in misery.

Does not compute.

High-level languages are almost always slower. So by simple logic, people who prefer high-level languages prefer slow languages.

However, people wouldn't want anything to do with a slow language that's low-level. And in the same way for a shirt made in a poor country that's not cheap.

I am not talking about their intentions - that is not a domain of "simple logic" anyway. What I am saying is factual statement: the set [made cheaply] is a subset of [made in misery]. So you cannot escape purchasing stuff [made in misery] if you buy suff [made cheaply].

That's some seriously bad logic. The fact that cheap implies misery does not mean that misery implies cheap. People aren't buying the product for the misery, they're buying it for the price. Adding misery without affecting the price will not make people any more likely to buy your product.

Yes, you sound like Nazi's on Nuremberg process - "we just executed orders". And that is true: the did not care about people whom the tortured. In fact the would in other circumstances be friendly and polite to them. Yet they really-really needed their salaries or premiums or move up on their military ladder or other stuff.

So if people didn't buy stuff from these miserable countries the people there would be better off? Absolutely wrong. Typically their other choices are subsistence farming, prostitution, or selling children into same.

Also, I'm amazed that you tried to equate economic decisions to the acts of torture and mass murder committed by the Nazis. There ought to be a law about that sort of thing. ;-)

What utter drivel. I made no comment on the rights or wrongs of the situation: I simply pointed out that your logic was horribly flawed. Which it remains, and no attempts to compare me to a nazi are going to change that.

Americans aren't as ignorant as you think, everyone has now seen images of sweat shops and knows if you ask them that manufacturing conditions for the things they buy at Wal Mart are awful. However, they continue to buy them, just like an alcoholic continues to drink even though he knows that it's killing him. That's textbook addiction right there.

Not really, it's just damn near impossible to buy anything that isn't made in China or some other crappy dictatorship.

Difficult but not impossible. Amazingly enough, not everything affordable made in misery. LEGO kits for example are mostly made in Europe. Every once in a while you can see inexpensive toys made in Sweden, shirts made in Egypt, platic containers made in Germany, furniture made in Canada, hammers made in Russia, just look at the stickers.

The problem is in my view is not that countries are dictatorships, the problems are: 1. Outsourcing everything to one country creates unhealthy dependence of recipient economy on manufacturer. Well you may say - China depends on USA as much as USA on China - and that will be false - you forgot about a big economy - European Union/Canada. Asymmetry is obvious. 2. Nothing bad in outsourcing some amount of production to poor countries - good way to help them in fact. But if you overstretch then will destroy wellbeing of the citizens of your country, forcing them out of job, and, because poor countries has poor environmental regulations, poison environment of the producer.

The problem is... say you don't want to buy something made in China. The alternative is to do without, as everything is made in China.

(I would love to buy a laptop that's not made in China. Link me to one.)

> 1) People in USA/Canada/Other western world are _addicted_ to products made in misery (in China, for example)

The act of buying something made in a third world country greatly reduces the misery (by providing a job and an income to a person).

Btw, people in China have a pretty good lifestyle when compared to other people in third world countries - all thanks to Americans buying their stuff.

South Korea and Taiwan are today 1st world nations whereas even a generation ago they were not. They didn't get there by wallowing in their perfect virginal misery, untouched by foreign trade. Quite the opposite, they got there by providing goods and services to the rest of the world, bootstraping their economy and their industrial base in the process.

Oh yeah? tell it to ones who immigrate from China to Kazakhstan for example: Kazakhstan has very limited trade with USA, but quality of live is much, much higher than Chinese.

Of course. Kazakhstan is not a third-world country. It's a former Soviet republic, an oiled country, and basically a Russian satellite.

you might want to read this: http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=292...

How could you possibly imagine that the North Korean regime would undertake any activity to "improve the living standards of their citizens"? The appalling levels of human misery achieved in North Korea are the product of the regime. It takes only the slightest mote of thought to imagine that without the regime the North Korean people would enjoy wealth and comfort of the level of South Korea.

I just bought some cool propaganda merchandise from teh official North Korean website :)

Actually, I wonder if more entrepreneurs like those Swedish geeks started to invest in North Korea would initiate a "Chinafication" process of the country.

"Entrepreneurs" are doing brisk business with North Korea, to the tune of billions every year, doing arms deals, chemicals, construction, money laundering, commodities, and what have you. Second to the Chinese, Singapore government officials are deeply tied to the NK regime, for example.

Naturally I was implying some sort of legit investment, such as goods that can be mass produced and sold to the world. It may sound cynical, but a fascination indeed exists with products coming from troubled places. Furthermore, there is a whole commercial philosophy behind supporting developing countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade

If you like products, coming from troubled places I'd recommend to look at American products. USA is a very troubled country. Great inequality, corruption, pollution, crime, wars. Lack of labor law. Infrastructure is falling apart. There is chance the products are by slaves somewher in midwestern states.

Sounds like you have never laid a foot on a troubled place.

Sounds like somebody have never been outside downtown San Francisco/Seattle/or whatever and saw real life in USA. I lived in Florida for couple of years, and I never saw (anywhere I had a chance to live) such grotesque contrast between poverty in the inside cities and absurd richness on the oceanfront.

If you think that is in any way comparable to a country like North Korea (essentially one huge prison camp) or countries in Africa such as Guinee or Congo where maybe a hundred or so people are fabulously wealthy and the rest of the population doesn't have nearly enough to eat, your sense of perspective is, I would say, seriously out of whack.

Not to mention that little thing called "war".

... with Middle East, that already cost 3*10^12 $??

And the US is still doing fine. They can waste a lot more resources before it's going to be as bad as in some other places.

I'd say that that war is a lot worse in Middle East than it is in the US. Not speaking from personal experience, but having a $5000 dollar bomb dropped on you and/or your relatives seems like it'd be worse than paying for it.

You know what, as I mentioned in other posts - inequality in USA is already as bad as in Africa and is rapidly approaching South American's numbers. Of course bottom line is not as bad as in Africa, but quality of life for poors is already totaly incomparable with Europe. So from the point of view of Africans or Brazilians - yes USA is not that bad. From Canadian/European point view - USA is rather troubled place.

Thanks for giving a bit more background and some nuances. If you were fleshing this out a some more (and give more sources), this could get interesting.

By the way, how do you account for the number of people willing to emigrate to the US, if it's such a bad place?

What kind of numbers you want? GINI (inequality index)?: ok http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-us-becoming-third-w... That the poors are doing here worse than anywhere else in developed world: obvious from the GINI.

How do I account number of people willing to immigrate: 1. It is way,way easier to move to USA, than anywhere else in developed world. 2. Proximity of Latin American/Carribean countries, which are verrry bad. And you do not need an expensive ticket from Haiti for example. Just find whatever floating and have a free ride.

Now how you account for that: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/the-real-high-tech-... ?

Florida? Are you serious?

yes, why? Have ever been to west palm beach, and then palm beach itself? Difference is obvious. I am not even talking about Miami beach and Miami.

Fair Trade keeps the Triangle Trade alive and well.

If you want to change things and help developing nations, make sure those developing nations have added most of the value.

For example, you can buy fair trade chocolate bars, with beans bought from Ecuador at a "fair" price, whatever that means. But then the bars are made in Switzerland, or France, and the European country adds much of the value, and keeps much of the profit.

Kallari Rainforest Chocolate, for example, is a cooperative making chocolate, and they pick the beans in the lowlands and drive up to the mountains and turn them into bars, and then airmail it out.

If you want to make a difference, figure out where your money actually goes.

Fair trade is a first World scam. What fair trade does is mandate the price of certain commodities.

This in effect negates the biggest advantage of developing countries (cheap labour) and allows the products to be manufactured in developed countries at a "fair" price.

Fair trade, along with agricultural subsidization is some of the most evil things that developed countries do.

I wouldn’t be so quick in lumping these two (fair trade labeling vs agricultural subsidization) together. I agree that fairtrade has problems. However, I see merit to the idea to inform consumers about the background of certain products (information is vital to market economy, right?). Fairtrade certification doesn’t just mean “fair” prices but also some restrictions on slave labor, the right to unionize, and conservation of the environment and some other network externalities. Product labeling is a classic direct action tactic and I think it’s a great way to concisely provide information that would otherwise be obscure.

This is not a subsidy and it’s not a tariff. It’s (an attempt at) providing information.

Do not like it - do not buy, goddamnit. If you think that people who buy Fair Trade are stupid - no we are not, and we are doing for a reason - we do not feel good when consume something made by slaves. You can still shop for "free trade" stuff, nobody prevents you from doing that.

He didn't say you were just stupid, or that you were wasting your money. He said fair trade was evil. That means it's not so easy as saying "if you don't like it, don't buy it." Ignoring evil is not good, even if other people are doing the evil. "If you don't like murder, don't murder people" won't stop other people from committing murders. You're free to have your own opinion on whether fair trade actually is evil, but please address his point rather than ignoring it.

With a bit of goodwill, you can read the ilkhd's comment as: If all participants are in there voluntarily, it can't be evil; and you are free to ignore it.

I do not like the `fairtrade' stuff for the same reasons as w00pla, but since nobody's forced to participate (as opposed to agricultural subsidies and tariffs), I do not mind other people engaging in this.

Fair trade is free trade where people in the developed world choose to pay the produces to pay them for certain strange things. E.g. as a fairtrade producer you can not employ day labourers. (At least that's what I heard. But I do not remember the source.) And genetically modified plants are banned, too. (http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2008/...)

I can image myself paying more for stuff that gets produced in nice working conditions and does not damage the environment. But I'd actually prefer to see more GM and I do not mind day labourers. Perhaps one could create an alternative to `fairtrade' where you can combine your own building blocks of stuff you want to pay extra for?

Right, even hough that’s a bit of a simplification.

It’s not necessarily “paying more”, looking at the clarified conditions as services (even though of course there’s overhead, and possibility of corruption, in the labeling and certification process).

Imaging some item, let’s say jeans. You can get just jeans from company A, with an unknown profit margin or middlemen, or you can get jeans from company B together with information and conditions on production.

If these conditions were a service you were charged explicitly for, of course the company B jeans would be more expensive than the ones from company A. That’s not necessarily the case, however, since there might be unknown expenses for the consumer involved with company A (like, say, higher profit margins).

Or, for that matter, the jeans from company A could be every bit as “fairly” produced, just you don’t know about it. Nothing says that the labeled (“B” in the example) ones would be more expensive, disregarding the labelling/certification overhead.

Ok, so a coop or factory in a "3rd world" country needs to pay around $5k to a European organization to get this certification for this Fairtrade thing. It seems to me this just continues the racist attitude North America and Europe have toward certain countries. I'm sure not every factory or coop in the "3rd world" takes advantage of its workers. Maybe the "3rd world" should come up with some type of similar program for U.S. farmers to prove they didn't exploit migrant farm workers. I won't even go into all the stupid problems that occur when you create an artificial floor price for a product.

God, I hate this kind of marketing. Until I read this link if anyone had asked me I'd say very convinced that I'm in favor of fair trade. I guess these days you have to be more careful what you support.

I wondered the same. North Korea is a potential gold mine. Sooner or later, the regime will collapse or open up to capitalism, and when that happens the influx of foreign capital will be enormous. When the labor costs in China become "too high", and when Vietnam is no longer "that cheap", going to NK will be the natural option. Location-wise, NK is right next to Japan, so it's less of a logistic nightmare than, say, Cambodia or Laos.

In fact, I remember reading an article in the mid-1990s about an investment fund that only invested in extremely risky places, like war-torn countries in Africa, or hermit states like Belarus or NK. The idea is that when things have hit the bottom, the only possibility is for things to get better, and though the risk is very high, if 1 out of 20 countries they invested in turns out to become a stable, investor-friendly state, then the foreign investors will flock there, prices will rise, and the fund's initial investments will yield astronomical returns.

No, North Korea will not be a gold mine in this case, it would be yet another nail into the coffin of the western world (USA especially) , insanely, hysterically excited about it's own deindustrialization.

When I mentioned that NK could be a gold mine, what I had in mind was investments like real estate, utilities, land, agricultural commodities. My point would be clear if I had not suggested moving factories there to take advantage of cheap labor. My mistake.

> insanely, hysterically excited about it's own deindustrialization.

Yeah, I tried to get a bunch of 16 year old Americans to make a bunch of shoes. Apparently they were not interested :(

American deindustrialisation is not only caused by cheap labour in other countries, it is caused by the educational choices of Americans. Engineering isn't exactly the most popular thing in American universities. There is still plenty of room for hi-tech industries in first world countries (semiconductor manufacturing, specialised steel, electronic design, mechanical design, high-end software development, etc…) while still not begrudging third world countries’ jobs (textiles, assembly jobs, etc…).

> Yeah, I tried to get a bunch of 16 year old Americans to make a bunch of shoes. Apparently they were not interested :(

Probably you tried to pay 7.25$, per hour did not you? If you'll pay me 25 dollars per hour for making shoes - you can hire me. American deindustrialization caused by MOVING INDUSTRIES OUT OF USA, (Even food industry partially moved to China - apple juice consumed in USA for example 75% made in China). Enginnering has _nothing_ to do about deindustrilization, in fact you do not need more than couple of engineers to run a rather big plastics factory, Drop of demand (but there is still a lot of it) for engineering position in universities is just a reflection of current state of industry in USA. Combination of very bad labor protection in USA (no health protection, third world minimal salary, [do not tell me 7.25/h is a good compensation]) and "free trade" policies supported by government results in deindustrialization. Lack of good jobs causes enormous inequality in USA, as bad as in African countries. USA Gini (inequality index) = 46, higher than Nigeria = 43 and eqaul to Rwanda's. Canadian for comparison GINI = 32.

Guys, whoever give negative score - I do not care to be honest - I know I step on ambitions/complexes that USA is the best country in the world (whuch is not true) - it is you country, and you are going to live there. If you dislike grim reality, or lack education/life experience to understand the direction the country is going to - well that is your choice, which will pay back, and you will not like it.

There's a limited supply of people in the world - about 6bn at the moment.

Roughly 1bn currently live in western-style economies at the moment. Once China and India are finished industrializing (in 30 years or so?) that'll be 3bn people in advanced economies.

Increasing the living standards of the remaining 3bn wouldn't impose as much of a dislocation as the current China/India affair, because it'll represent only a 100% increase in the labor pool not a 200% increase.

There'll be issues about scarce resources, and some currently abundant resources will become scarce, but the cost of unskilled and semi-skilled labor won't ever be this low again.

Maybe the "Chinafication" of NK started in 2009: last year the country had its first pizzeria opened, and there was a beer ad on TV! :-)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/16/north-korea-pizz...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8132199.stm

Barring a major change in government, likely not. China allows citizens to build up wealth, while North Korea tries to prevent it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/03/north-korea-won-...

On one hand if you deal with a corrupt government, you legitimize them. On the other hand, if you don't legitimize them, they can blame their ineffectivenesses on forced isolation.

By the way, this is the page they are talking about: http://www.korea-dpr.com/exports.htm

I remember looking at this and laughing a few years ago. Ah, if only!

http://nokojeans.com/

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