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Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

India reminds me a lot of what Taiwan used to be. About 10-15 years ago, they were a big joke when he came to cycle manufacturing. The quality of the bikes they produced and the factories there were horrible sweatshops.

Then, they started getting better. They updated their technology, they had better trained workers to run the new machines. Then bike manufacturers started to see what was going on, and started moving big chunks of their manufacturing over there. Last time I checked, companies like Giant, Trek, and Specialized all have some of their manufacturing over there now. Their factories are some of the most advanced manufacturing plants in the world.

I think India has the same potential, but its still about 3-5 years from realizing its own potential. It will be interesting to see if it can make the jump, or remain a great "what if. . " story line.

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Education, infrastructure, and even basic literacy are at least an order of magnitude worse in India than in Taiwan.

taiwan also didn't also have the problem of

1.) large population

2.) squatters rights

3.) apathetic/spineless voters

4.) human fecal matters on the streets

5.) water shortage

6.) religious ferver

7.) entranched corruption

8.)....many more

Taiwan and SK also had strong dictatorships until relatively recently; we aren't really talking about democracy until the 80s. Now, dictatorships are bad, but as long as the dictators are somewhat responsible, they do convey some amount of stability and economic development on the country that might not be possible (at that time) with a more chaotic democratic system. I'm not pro dictator, and I'm sure there was a more efficient path to prosperity that involved democracy, but this is just how it worked out.

Today see China, or Singapore if you think maybe the Lee family has a bit too much power than is justified in a real democracy.

Maybe it's not really dictatorship vs democracy.

India has an English democracy. Everything in India was originally designed to support a wealthy English middle-class (if it was important directly from the UK), or to extract wealth from poor Indians so it could be exported to the UK.

I'm saying, India's institutions are overbuilt. They were originally designed to work in a far richer, and far more orderly country. There are certainly some things which are "one size fits all", but for anything which is only appropriate with a large, law abiding middle class it fails horribly in India.

This is a good point. But I would wonder: what kind of democracy/government would be appropriate for a developing country? It should somehow promote stability and development, and perhaps not focus so much on liberty and freedom. This realization makes me a bit uncomfortable as an American living in China.

Taiwan didn't clean up its pollution until it became a democracy. (I lived there for extended periods both before and after that transition.) Generalizing a bit more, dictatorship was not strictly necessary for Taiwan's progress, as we know from two lines of evidence:

1) Some countries in other parts of the world developed AS democracies, even earlier than Taiwan.

2) Taiwan has continued to develop and improve most aspects of its living standards since it became a democracy.

Dictatorships miss out on the valuable reality-checks on public policy provided by free and fair election campaigns.

> 1) Some countries in other parts of the world developed AS democracies, even earlier than Taiwan.

I don't get this point. Sure some countries developed as democracies, but effectiveness is contextual.

> 2) Taiwan has continued to develop and improve most aspects of its living standards since it became a democracy.

No one is arguing here that democracy is not eventually the best form of government, only when democracy is appropriate. Once a country is solidly middle class, I think democracy is a solid win and the people will demand it anyways.

Your timeline of bicycle manufacturing in Taiwan is off by at least fifteen years. (In other words, it has already been a good thirty years that you have been able to count on good bicycle manufacturing there, after an era when one would think of Japan, but not Taiwan, when thinking about a place in Asia where good bicycles are made.)

What's the ownership and history of Giant, by the way?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Bicycles

Can you elaborate on the similarities? I don't understand how the two are comparable at all.

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