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Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

I thought this article was very good - not perfect, but a fairly reasonable high level description of what possibly is, or may come to be an extremely large problem for western nations.

The interesting thing to me is, whenever an article of any kind on this topic comes up (on HN and elsewhere), those who disagree seem to disagree entirely, as if the entire premise is completely wrong, and there is literally no negative effects of globalization.

To me, simple thought experiments show several areas of risk both short and long term, and if you look at actual on the ground reality, there sure seems to be a lot of visible damage as well as a large increase in risk and "precariousness" where there used to be security. I don't by any means believe that globalization is a complete disaster or the end of the world, indeed it has been beneficial in many ways to both sides. But this seemingly very popular opinion that there is literally nothing at all to worry about, that when China with a combination of technical sophistication, developed local economy, and sheer population reaches parity and then surpasses the US as the new leader of the world, that all will be well. I think there are many good reasons to believe that China might be a better steward of the world, but there are also many reasons to think otherwise.

As it is now, "the west" enjoys world leadership, a high standard of living, and control their own destiny. I would rather pay a little more for manufactured goods and retain at least that last item.

I probably didn't communicate this very well, but this accelerating new world order seems at least worthy of public discussion, rather than being dismissed as racist conspiracy theory. If more people could at least even consider some of the mentioned risks as plausible it would make me feel better, but even that seems unlikely.

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> I would rather pay a little more for manufactured goods and retain at least that last item.

If you're in the bottom third, living paycheck to paycheck, and forced below the poverty line by ACA premiums you don't have much of a choice but to fuel the race to the bottom by spending on the cheapest goods and services available which will invariably stem from globalized production.

The assumption in the premise, though, is that these people would get better jobs than they have now, and therefore offset some increases in costs.

Through my work as a lawyer I have dealt with manufacturing of consumer electronics quite a few times, usually when things go wrong.

Most European companies have their products manufactured (assembled) in China. In a small gadget, there are easily 200 little parts that are produced by dozens of different Chinese companies. As always in business, there are regularly problems with quality or delays or price hikes, and then the client considers moving production back home to Europe. But such considerations always strand on a number of troubling reasons, and it's not that the gadget would be more expensive in Europe. Actually, the price increase nowadays would be less than one might think (for example from 10 euros to 15 euros on products that sell to stores for 50-100 euros and part of that extra cost would be recouped in not having to ship the products so far).

The real reasons are that there are almost no manufacturers in Europe who have the required knowledge, that European manufacturers cannot deliver as fast (they are smaller and have much less manpower) and that European manufacturers are not able to source the components in Europe anyways. Maybe we could get part of the components in Europe, but surely not all 200. In China, they are produced locally and can be delivered in hours or days. In Europe, we would have to have them shipped from China.

I don't believe production of the current consumer electronics will be moved back to the Western World. Phones, pads, monitors, flat screen tvs, laptops etc. will continue to be produced in Asia. After all, that's where the manufacturing infrastructure and knowhow is. What we can hope for is that the next generation of products will be mass produced here; robots, electric vehicles, drones etc. But I doubt it. Salaries in China have been at the level of the cheapest countries in Europe for a while but manufacturing has not returned in scale. Your next 3D gadget is likely going to be produced in Shenzhen or Malaysia, not in Romania, Portugal or Michigan.

> when China with a combination of technical sophistication, developed local economy, and sheer population reaches parity and then surpasses the US as the new leader of the world

I don't think that this is a foregone conclusion. In the 80's, Japan was going to take over the world too. While the situations aren't entirely equal, China has followed quite a bit of the Japanese playbook.

I sincerely hope China doesn't follow Japan's trajectory. It has a large military and strong authoritarian, nationalist tendencies. Japan's conservatives certainly would have liked to "war" their way out of stagnantion (Abe Shinzo is still trying to do this), but their right to a military was largely dissolved as a client state of the US post-WWII.

No such checks exist on China.

Japan's conservatives certainly would have liked to "war" their way out of stagnantion (Abe Shinzo is still trying to do this)

What war is Abe Shinzo trying to start? Is there some planned amphibious invasion of the Kurils I'm unaware of?

Abe Shinzo has been explicitly trying to rehabilitate Japan's imperial legacy the entire time he has been in power. He's tied to Nippon Kaigi, a group who believe,

“Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 ‘Nanjing massacre’ were exaggerated or fabricated.”

I think you can predict someone with that view of history's ambitions pretty clearly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/opinion/tea-party-politic...

Considering the history of Japan, China, and the rest of East Asia, along with the apparent weariness of the US defense guarantee, nobody can blame Japan for wanting to begin strengthening itself militarily. They'd be stupid not to.

While Japan does not have nuclear weapons at the moment (allegedly), it's assumed that they have the capabilities in place to weaponize themselves very quickly (months?) should the need arise.

Stupid is what the conservatives have been doing for decades, namely leaning on their relationship with the US as an excuse to take a grotesque stance towards their own history. Japan, had it followed a similar course as Germany, could have reconciled themselves with the countries they tried to conquer and built a true economic union with Taiwan, Korea, and others in the region, which would have acted as a true check on a rising China.

Instead, and admittedly with the encouragement of the US, they took a "temporarily embarrassed imperial" stance, cultivated an irrational and racist belief in their own inherent economic superiority, alienated their neighbors, and gave China an international relations scapegoat for anytime it was useful. The idea that they're some victim of Chinese circumstances with rising militarism as their only option ignores the decades of short-sighted conservative policy that put them in such a vulnerable position.

Considering the majority of China's technical capability was gifted to them from western corporations, I don't think Japan's belief in their economic superiority was irrational, it was simply an observation of reality.

Afaik they do consider themselves racially superior though.

> Considering the history of Japan, China, and the rest of East Asia, along with the apparent weariness of the US defense guarantee, nobody can blame Japan for wanting to begin strengthening itself militarily. They'd be stupid not to.

Why? I'm not particular familar with the regions history, but from the last ~150 years or so China and Korea should be scared of Japan, not the other way around.

You specifically claimed Abe Shinzo is trying to war his way out of stagnation.

Who is he trying to start a war with?

You'll need proof about Japanese militarism. Many in Japan disagree with the country's rearmament [1]. Even Chinese people find Japanese people less nationalistic than they are in recent days [2]. Though for some reason they still think Japan is a warlike/violent country.

[1] http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/10/31/japanese-back-global-eng... [2] http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/09/13/hostile-neighbors-china-...

Yes, I should have made more clear that I meant the Japanese government, not its people. But since Japan has not been a functional democracy since at least the 70s, the point still stands. In the post-war period, the US government has been actively subverting the Japanese left by providing political intel and financing to Japanese conservatives, who are the successors to imperial-era fascist regime. Abe's grandfather was even a war criminal administrator of the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2006/07/20/national/u-s-adm...

> I sincerely hope China doesn't follow Japan's trajectory. It has a large military and strong authoritarian, nationalist tendencies

You know that describes the US too?

A lot of people are only capable for extrapolating current trends indefinitely into the future. China has been growing, why won't it continue to grow forever?

I also think media is desperate for their to be another super power, or some kind of cold war, so they project this onto the best candidate.

This sounds a lot like the misunderstood "correlation != causation" meme that people are so fond of.

If China ever becomes as rich as Japan, i.e. GDP per capita becomes equal to what Japan has now, then China's GDP will be 52.6 trillion USD. The US has 18.6.

China following Japan's example would make the US be to China what Belgium is currently to Russia (at least in terms of total economic strength).

And this is today's lame duck Japan, not the powerhouse it was. Most people don't truly appreciate the scope of China's size. They may know the number, but they don't intuitively understand it when thinking.

I'm apparently old enough (just 44) to remember this exact same narrative spoken about Japan, and then Korea. I just don't buy that $NEW_DEVELOPING_COUNTRY is going to eat the world, for all the reasons that it didn't happen before - as countries develop, it gets a lot harder to grow, and cheap labor stops being cheap.

China has a massive population climbing out of poverty in a single generation. For every steel worker who loses his job in the US, there are thousands of human beings going from subsistence life to one that you and I might merely consider unexciting. I think this is pretty healthy and I wouldn't call it a "negative effect of globalization" - sure, it's not a pareto improvement but it's clearly positive overall.

I'm your age and to draw comparisons between the fear of Japan and the real threat of globalization is laughable.

Agreed. Japan is the size of California, demographically dying, and can't even feed itself as it's a net importer of food / energy. It's also basically a protectorate of the US.

Globalization, the rise of China, and the dismantling of the West's manufacturing (and now intellectual) supremacy in exchange for quarterly profits is a real problem.

Agreed. I remember seeing on the new Americans smashing up Japanese VCRs on the Whitehouse lawn. Japan is going to take all of our jobs! In 20 years they'll be 4x the US economy.

Turned out different huh?

> I just don't buy that $NEW_DEVELOPING_COUNTRY is going to eat the world, for all the reasons that it didn't happen before

Other than Japan, when did it happen before? This isn't exactly a common historical occurrence.

Since when has the aggregate human being in one country, been happy with a reduction in income, for the upliftment of millions in another?

The only reason this has happened, is because they got back some of those pennies in terms of cheaper goods.

The issue today, is that the average person is losing their purchasing and earning capacity in the western world.

The only people benefiting are people capable of straddling the complex legal and financial networks that span multiple countries and regulatory systems.

This provides them with a significant arbitrage opportunity, which they are abusing.

You could say that this whole conversation is about how political entities - countries themselves (!) - are now trade barriers.

If we let ourselves imagine - tomorrow every country in the world has some geo adjusted minimum wage, and all countries can compete in any geographic position while creating a single globally valid corporation.

Then, all the infrastructure which the 1% enjoy - lawyers, financiers, legalesse authors - it disappears. Their ability to extract rents from the system drops as their advantage vanishes.

Of course, mercantilism is also bad, but at least rent extraction and arbitrage disappear.

Thanks, your comment helped me spark off an idea that I didn't know had been nagging me.

I can now give a better example of why brexit is bad for the UK. The biggest loss is to new firms. A firm in the EU can start up and is valid across the entire region. They don't have to make new entities, or spend on lawyers, tax consultants to tap the full range of their market.

A UK firm, has only their own market to target.

When I argue this topic out, most of the focus is on big established firms.

> This provides them with a significant arbitrage opportunity, which they are abusing.

The proceeds of which flow into some offshore tax haven so they don't have to share via taxes with anyone in the environment overall society have built.

The idea that one could "pay a little more for manufactured goods" to retain "world leadership, a high standard of living, and control [of] their own destiny" is not necessarily true. It assumes that other nations cannot progress without our economic input.

Now, I'm not saying that the opposite is true, either. It's enough of a nuanced issue that I can't give a good or complete explanation. But "protectionism ==> prosperity" is a hotly debated issue and not necessarily true (or false).

Completely agree, but I was only saying you could retain the 3rd item, control of your own destiny.

Unless they stumble, China will undoubtedly be the world leader before too long (<20 years is my guess), yet other nations would still control how things operate in their own countries, until China decided they wanted control of that as well and decided to forcibly take it. If it was me, I would precede that with some healthy immigration to strategic locations first in order to facilitate a smooth transition, perhaps without having to even fire a single shot.

> pay a little more for manufactured goods

That's only part of the equation. The real issue is that the US elites are going to have to trade some of their profit margins - based on global expansion, market access, lack of tariffs, US military protection of trade routes, etc. - for gains going back to the rest of us.

The charts are clear. US capital owners have done quite well. The rest have not. Either something gives or the guillotines become fashionable again.

Strange that this was down voted. Do people honestly not think armed insurrection is not a possibility in the US? It won't be grand, but it could certainly happen in pockets of desperation.

the article raises a couple interesting points, but it utterly lacks a coherent argument (and basic editing). it starts with a tantalizing quote: "It enriches industrializing poor countries, impoverishes the semi-affluent majority in rich countries, and greatly adds to the incomes of the top 1 percent on both sides who are managing the arbitrage." and then goes on to blame globalization, as if it caused the greed that led us to the situation we're in. no, globalization was merely one of many convenient mechanisms to exploit. globalization is simply beside the point.

so why does it point the finger at globalization? just like immigration, attacking people in far-flung countries spares us a painful inward reckoning. our own greed let us overlook the looting of the middle class, in the secret hopes that we could each become part of the looting class. we let capital get a decisive leg up on labor, and its greed decimated our overall prosperity.

the genius of capitalism is that it channels greed for the greater good, but we forgot that it needs to be actively channeled and molded. let's institute laws that level the playing field and guard against economic looting so that we have a functioning middle class again.

And just like that the parents point was proven.

95% of the jobs created since 2009 are temp jobs, the actual way the us defines a job was changed under Bush and kept under Obama.

The number of new jobs created have gone down decade after decade since ww2.

The middle class cant come back because their jobs are those most affected by technology and globalization (service industry for instance) the only reason why there is a large group of people working with transportation is because we dont yet have automated cars. Once those get introduced the biggest industry in the US will implode.

This has nothing to do with capitalism or globalization in a vacum, this is a discussion about technologys effect on globalization and capitalism and thus the job market.

95% of the jobs created since 2009 are temp jobs, the actual way the us defines a job was changed under Bush and kept under Obama

Do you have a source for this? 95% is hard to believe...

First hit on Google[1] shows one study about it being 94% of jobs created from 2005 to 2015. So doesn't seem like a stretch so long as you agree with the "the actual way the us defines a job was changed under Bush and kept under Obama" part of the premise.

Edit: More reading of other articles suggests that this is true for the 2009 to present timespan. Quote[2]:

> The bottom line is: Almost all of the job gains under President Obama have been in so-called service jobs, such as those in Silicon Valley and consulting. Others are the low-end jobs, toiling in stores and restaurants.

Every job described in that sentence sounds like a temp job.

[1] https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created...

[2] http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/news/economy/jobs-under-obam...

Service jobs include nursing, software engineering, recruitment, and accenture style consulting. None of those are temp jobs.

Yes many of them are. People on part time contracts so companies don't have to pay healthcare. It's really quite grim.

> so why does it point the finger at globalization? just like immigration, attacking people in far-flung countries spares us a painful inward reckoning.

The finger is pointed because there is a solution that worked for a long time, trade tariffs. There is no solution to human greed and in certain circumstances it's actually a good thing.

Trade deficits as well used to be avoided because the difference was settled in gold. Gosh, I wonder why that was changed and who it benefits.

Yes, it sucks that parts of the manufacturing economy are shrinking, but we're between a rock and a hard place. Our only hope is to create new jobs, which actually seems to be working pretty well. I would also support efforts to get creative to make up the inequality gap, such as universal healthcare, potentially a wealth tax or basic income.

I don't think many people are actually saying "there are literally no negative effects" of globalization, just that the alternative is clearly worse. It also doesn't help that the anti-globalization rhetoric (like every modern republican platform) is now often mixed in with a lot of anti-intellectualism and xenophobia, and that makes it hard to pick out any good points there might be in the argument.

To talk about `positive` or `negative`, we first need to establish the fact that these things mean the same to all of us. That we have the same shared interests, overall.

Personally, I just don't believe that to be true. I do benifit from globalization, and my interests directly collide with first-world factory workers, for example. It's a normal and common situation - we have a lot of institutions that are working on balancing this conflicts in peaceful and productive way, from capitalism to democracy.

But to pretend that we all really want the same thing and the problem is just in intellectual disagreement over what is the best path of action is just silly.

> as if the entire premise is completely wrong, and there is literally no negative effects of globalization.

Well, sure. If you're a skilled professional in a coastal metropolis globalization is great. Your company is making record profits and you can buy all the cheap gadgets you want. And then Trump gets elected and you can't even fathom how or why.

I can understand how one can believe that it will all work out fine, after all one can easily form mental experiments (and find supporting evidence) supporting either outcome. But this absolutely steadfast refusal to even consider the possibility that once it is China who holds all the cards and it is them who are making the big decisions for the world that perhaps, just perhaps, life may not work out quite as nicely as before.

Perhaps I'm a bit jaded from my experience living in Vancouver, but historically Canadians had the option to move here and accept a somewhat lower standard of living in exchange for the nicer climate we enjoy. That option is now largely gone, and I expect it to be completely gone within 10 years, and after that it will be the other most desirable locations in the rest of Canada. It is simple economics. Aussies and New Zealanders among others are experiencing the same thing.

Of course, detractors can easily point to government "statistics" (that completely ignore blind corporations, proxy purchases, etc) showing foreign activity in real estate to be <5%, but I suspect the main reason most everyone (or at least voters) chooses to "believe" this obviously fake data is because a lot of people are making a loooooot of money from this shift in world order. For now. Let's see how happy are when it is their (and their children's) turn to pay the piper. You made a couple million bucks on your house? Great! Better hope you have only one child, because you cannot buy a home in Vancouver with earned income any longer. Oh sure, you can get a condo, for now, but soon even that option will be beyond reach. Luckily for Canadians we have a near infinite amount of beautiful land (weather, not so much), so there will always be somewhere for us to go, other countries I'm not so sure are similarly blessed. But either way, I'd have rather we retained our sovereignty.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

So float the housing market. People are willing to place huge bets on the local polities never, ever allowing housing prices to fall. If there were some risk the housing supply could ever increase enough to meet demand this behavior would instantly disappear. Market distortions attract speculators.

I can understand that people like to blame their problems on others. If housing prices go up, it's China fault. If Americans lose jobs, Mexicans' fault. Anyway, it is much easier to direct anger towards others than to find out the real reasons.

Is that honestly what you took away from this? Really? This deliberate nonsense is what's wrong with the world.

We had been telling you to get training, re-education and other qualifications so that you can change jobs and move up the value chain for more than 30 years. These low-paying jobs will be gone eventually, to other developing countries or to AI and automation. While there are workers who cannot find jobs, there is a severe shortage of computer engineers in the tech industry. These tech companies cannot hire enough engineers. They had to bring H1B workers from India, for example. It is just the way human society develop. 150 years ago, you could make a good living by driving horse carriages. Then cars and trains came along and they stole your jobs. 50 years ago, you could support your family by loading punch cards. Then, magnetic disks and SSD came along and took your jobs. According to research, AI will take away 30% of the jobs in 10 years. The thing is you need to constantly learn and change. For engineers, we need to upgrade our skills all the time. Otherwise you will fall behind and lose your jobs.

What do you say to a doctor + lawyer couple who can't afford a home? Move further up the value chain?

Get your phone out and call your representatives in the congress right now and tell them to change the NIMBY law that restricts constructions. Build more buildings if people like them. Don't restrict them.

A multi-year process with absolutely no guarantee of success. Or, you can control demand through regulations, as many countries already do.

It took multiple years for housing prices to go up. It did not happen overnight. If you don't try, there is no chance.

Or, you could control demand and be done with it in very short order. I'm not saying you can't build your way out of it, but waiting a decade for supply/demand to come back into some reasonable balance (maybe!!) isn't exactly "no big deal" to families just trying to get by.

Why can't you suppress your own craving for houses? Why do you want to regulate other people so that you can buy low-priced houses? The market is sending a clear message by increasing prices that we should build more houses. Why do you want to suppress that with regulations? It is economics 101 and how capitalism works.

You're asking why someone wants to own a house? Where to start with that. And it's s far from Econ 101.

You have not answered my questions. Why control other people's demand while you don't control your own?

> While there are workers who cannot find jobs, there is a severe shortage of computer engineers in the tech industry.

And obviously, everyone could become a computer engineer with enough training? No, not really. And that goes for every job. The idea that if some job is no longer valued by the market we can just retrain people to <job of the week> is so wrong it isn't funny anymore. People have different talents. Not everyone can be everything.

> These tech companies cannot hire enough engineers. They had to bring H1B workers from India, for example.

This has been refuted at least half a dozen times on HN already. They brought those people in as cheap labor forces, not because of some shortage.

It would probably be in my self-interest to agree with you but I am in favor of globalization and freedom of movement on moral/ethical grounds. I realize I am in a very small minority but I just don't believe in nationalism. I don't value Canadians over Chinese people and vice versa. I'm not writing this to win you over but just to bring a different perspective.

You do value some citizenships more than others though, right? Or would you trade yours for any other? If not, I don't think it makes you a "nationalist", but neither would opposition to free movement from places you don't want to live at into where you do.

It does not follow from not valuing some people more than others that free movement would benefit any of these people; IMO part of a "moral" position involves trying to guess the likely consequences of things in the real world. An argument that people from different cultures don't get along very well, particularly when there's a large and sudden change in the numbers of one of the groups, is not antithetical to your position of valuing people equally; the only point of disagreement is wrt likely outcomes.

I don't agree with you, but I can appreciate that belief. I'm curious if the feeling is mutual, because the way some people talk, having borders is craaaazy talk.

To me, it is quite analogous to one's home - while some people might be personally ok with strangers letting themselves in and sleeping on the couch, I am personally not ok with it. Perhaps you've spent considerable time and money putting things into a state that you find pleasant, I'd rather keep it more or less in that state, otherwise maybe I'd have just sat around and relaxed rather than expending all the effort and money.

I'm fine with others personally disagreeing with this philosophy, but I'm not ok with the fairly common claim that "it doesn't make any difference", or having to pay for the consequences of alternative philosophies. But then to be fair, the west has saddled many parts of the rest of the world with "extreme inconvenience" to put it mildly, so you could certainly argue that this is our just desserts.

I totally understand where you are coming from. I was actually raised by a family who were deeply nationalist and voted twice to separate from Canada. They wanted borders around Quebec and laws to protect the language and culture.

To answer both you and the other commenter, I'm a consequentialist. That is, I genuinely believe the world would be a better place without modern day nationalism. There would be less wars and more cooperation. Cultures would win by merit. Nationalism is not far removed from racism (which I assume you do not support) when you think deeply and honestly about it. Your nationality is for the most part an accident of birth, doesn't define you and is very difficult to change.

I could keep going without changing your mind. Nationalism is such a deeply emotional, entrenched notion that is taught from childhood, from Hollywood movies to popular songs, and almost never challenged (you may have thought about the subject more deeply, but you'd be in a minority). Plus, even if you agreed with me on a philosophical level, being Canadian and all, it'd probably still be in your best self interest not to join the anti-nationalist ranks :) In the spirit of full disclosure, I traveled a lot and lived in a few countries (including China), so I can't pretend to be completely unbiased.

> That is, I genuinely believe the world would be a better place without modern day nationalism.

Agreed, but until we have a massive enlightenment in overall society as well as removing those from power who play on people's fear and emotions, we'll have to make do with what we have. Until then, nationalism matters.

> Nationalism is not far removed from racism (which I assume you do not support) when you think deeply and honestly about it.

Yes and no. Racism, taken literally, is idiotic. Racism as a description for culturalism, does in fact define you, or the aggregate behavior of a group is what "culture" is. People are largely (but not entirely) a product of their environment, that is a fact. So the notion of "supporting it" or not makes no sense, it is simply a description of objective reality, a classification. Now, turning your brain off and making decisions solely based on what culture someone appears to belong to of course is prone to error so should be used with caution, but the progressive liberal fear mongering that dishonestly interprets this as bordering on genocide is a big part of the problem why we can never seem to make any progress imho. And again, this matural human behavior (classification based on objective reality) is abused by those in power for their personal gain.

> If you're a skilled professional in a coastal metropolis globalization is great...

Might want to modify that to a 'skilled professional under 35'. The H1B, offshoring, and the race to the bottom with younger and foreign workers is something that you'll think you won't have to worry about for a while.

And then you get older. With a family, kids, mortgage - a life full of things that leave little room for the next JS package manager or version of Angular.

I am older, have family and mortgage, time and financial pressures. But I still get excited about new developments in my trade as a primarily front-end dev, including package managers and frameworks. And the experience, capabilities and track record of success that I bring to the table act as a differentiator between me and my younger colleagues.

Not to discount your point, just to say there's more than one way to look at it. For some, they reach a point in their lives / careers where constant change is wearisome. Others continue to adapt and thrive. I have no idea what underlying factors would cause this.

Go ahead and take all these low paying, blue collar, manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. China does not want them. You can assemble your own iPhones. These Chinese workers work hard from dawn to dark, in a sweat shop, with no health care, no retirement benefits, for peanuts. Americans can assemble and consume your own iPhones.

Should the workers themselves have a say in deciding whether they will or will not assemble iPhones?

Absolutely. Same with consumers. They should be able to decide what to buy depending on the price, manufacturing location etc.

That's a fair argument, but you could also argue that:

a) they aren't making an informed (of the long term consequences) decision (and that they aren't informed isn't accidental)

b) considering the cost advantages of offshore manufacturing and economic hardship due to job losses, there really isn't much choice remaining

I don't fault Chinese citizens or even Chinese leadership in any way, they are simply acting in their best interests. It is western political and corporate leadership that I think are acting incredibly negligently/selfishly.

You think China, an authoritarian government run by a dictator and billionaire party members, that farm its own people out for cheap wages and horrendous pollution, and suppresses free speech, silences reporters and jails people without trials, is A BETTER STEWARD OF THE WORLD???!!

My god, what has this world become

> that farm its own people out for cheap wages and horrendous pollution

I feel it bears reminding that this is all done so that the west can have lots of cheap stuff. You should blame China for being the factory of the world no more than you should blame western companies (big and small) for outsourcing manufacturing to China.

As for the other things, the West does more-less the same, just with slightly different methods.

He said that it might be. No need to get worked up mate.

Actually yes, I think they very well might be a better steward of the world. I don't think it would be terribly difficult to put their historical behavior on the world stage up against that of others and conclude that they are a more ~moral culture.

Indeed, they are in many ways sacrificing (working to death and discarding) a couple generations of people in exchange for world dominance, but they are doing an incredible job of it in my opinion.

During the last election in /r/the_donald there was this recurring them of Donald playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers. Whether or not that was true (he did win the election), I feel the very same thing is playing out on the world stage. But really, it isn't that complicated when everything in the west is run by corporations that have no concern for anything but themselves, and a typical time horizon of a few quarters. Western society seems to me to have the tendency to completely ignore long term ramifications in exchange for short term benefits (see: the environment). Meanwhile, "racial guilt" from past transgressions is such that it's near impossible to even have a conversation about some of these issues.

Despite what the majority of the west believes, the people running China are fucking smart, but you don't even need that when you're taking candy from a baby.

yeah people running China are so smart. SO SMART that they

- have destroyed their water/air/land for money that was printed out of thin air by other countries, and those money are now fleeing China to US, Canada, Australia, etc.

- have leveraged their debt level to 300+%. not including shadow lending

- have built rails to nowhere or barely used, built cities that are not lived, or barely lived, and have to maintain them all

- have managed to piss off most of their neighbors (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, etc)

- have a crashing economy that needs capital outflow restrictions just to barely survive

- have not managed to create any global brands

- have managed to not create any innovations

- encourage its members to flee to US, Canada, Australia

> have managed to piss off most of their neighbors (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, etc)

Just like how the US is not pissing off its neighbours right now with treats to dissolve NAFTA? Or how the US wants to build a border wall and make their neighbour pay for it, even though they end up with no say in things like who will build it or how much it will cost?

Yes. The US is doing a stellar job of things. Not a single bad thing to speak of...

Despite popular opinion, the US hasn't just recently started behaving badly.

Who Owns the World? (Noam Chomsky) https://chomsky.info/20121026/

I'm not claiming that it's recent behaviour, but if I start dredging up old things, then people can claim "oh, well that was in that past, not now."

- have destroyed their water/air/land for money that was printed out of thin air by other countries, and those money are now fleeing China to US, Canada, Australia, etc.

Everyone "destroys" their environment while they develop. The earth is incredibly resilient.

- have leveraged their debt level to 300+%. not including shadow lending

Yawn.

- have built rails to nowhere or barely used, built cities that are not lived, or barely lived, and have to maintain them all

Let's see how it turns out, I suspect they know what they're doing.

- have managed to piss off most of their neighbors (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, etc)

Because they don't have to care what they think, they only have to manage opinions of Americans. Managing others would be polite but inefficient.

- have a crashing economy that needs capital outflow restrictions just to barely survive

Where have I heard this before?

- have not managed to create any global brands

Let's revisit this in 10 years.

- have managed to not create any innovations

True, but why innovate when 90% of the innovators deliver their technology directly to you?

- encourage its members to flee to US, Canada, Australia

Wouldn't you? Even if I move to China, I am going to retain a very strong allegiance to Canada. Despite what the PC crowd tells you, this is natural and normal. China's leadership acts quickly, but also thinks very long term.

One of us will be proven right in the end, your extreme confidence to me suggests you perhaps don't have a terribly open mind on the topic, which tends not to be beneficial when predicting how the future unfolds.

And besides having no morals, you seem to think that China, an overindebted nation with massive pollution, no military prowess, no innovations, crashing economy, hostile neighbors, declining standing with Americans (remember that Trump was elected on China stealing jobs and destroying manufacturing), and its riches fleeing the country, will somehow waive all that problem away.

You're delusional

I'm not taking sides here, but when people respond with stuff like this

> Yawn.

It makes you look bad, not the person you're debating, because while you might be bored of hearing what they have to say, to observers it just looks like you have no argument.

Those ghost cities filled up (http://www.vagabondjourney.com/5-chinese-ghost-cities-came-a...)

> have not managed to create any global brands

Why bother? They can build everything and outsource the pretty artwork to the west.

It's Apple, not Foxconn, that's the biggest company in the world.

The pretty artwork is where all the value is; manufacturing is a commodity solved problem in comparison.

Most profitable, not biggest.

If one of them were to disappear tomorrow which one do you think would have the biggest effect? Losing apple would be an inconvenience, losing Foxconn would be a major disruption to global supply chains.

Your definition of value is very different than mine.

> - have not managed to create any global brands

Xiaomi is the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and it is quite popular in Europe.

Given where China was in the 1970s they've progressed rapidly. The situation there is much better on average than it was when Mao was in power. Both in terms of economic freedom and political freedom.

Currently they are making major investments into cleaning up the environment. They've tried to limit population growth. They've invested tremendously in public transportation. None of these things the U.S. is doing right now.

Currently the U.S. government argues that is can kill American citizens without trial (as long as they are overseas), imprisons people without trial, silences reporters, imprisons a higher percentage of it population than China, wages war in multiple countries, and massively pollutes and consumes more than its fair share of resources.

This is the YouTube channel of a South African vlogger who has been living in China for quite some time, I think most westerners have a pretty antiquated view of what life is really like in China.

https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza

I can't say whether China will be a better steward, but I want to point out that the United States was very much like this 100 to 150 years ago, when it was rapidly industrializing. Its free speech and judicial record was generally better, but in World War I, people were jailed without trial simply for speaking out against the war.

I suspect that 100 years from now, things will be different for China. Cheap wages will have gone away, manufacturing will be outsourced to places like the Phillipines or Africa, people will be wealthy enough to care about things besides money, particularly the environment. The authoritarian government and the class of ultra-wealthy may or may not still be there, but what China is going through looks a lot like what the US and european countries were experiencing during their industrialization phases.

One interesting difference is that China so far hasn't shown much interest in politically and militarily dominating other parts of the world. So far, it seems to be interested in dominating the east Asia region. I wonder if that will remain so, or if China will eventually be interested in getting involved in other parts of the world in non-economic ways. China is very involved in the African economy, so that could very well progress to Chinese puppet states in Africa if their economic interest is great enough.

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