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Comment by JonSkeptic | Hacker News Reader

I've seen sci-fi depictions of over-industrialized mega-city scapes, but I never thought I'd actually get to see a picture of one. To call that surreal is an understatement.

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sci-fi? It's more like reminder from the history. Rapid industrialization and increase in living standards seems to follow familiar pattern.

Great Smog of London documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkx-2mT1-q4

I guess we didn't have to wait until November 2019.

But at least we have "cheap" consumer goods!

And Chinese workers have stuff like food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#Poverty_reduct...

We could just give people food without having to make stuff for us in return. The world does not have a food shortage.

Meanwhile, in the political system we live in, most Americans think that a balanced budget should be achieved by cutting foreign aid.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/americans-want-to-b...

"Market exchange is a pathetically inadequate substitute for love, but it scales better."

That fosters dependence issues.

What does that even mean? Who is dependent on what in that scenario?

The people receiving food stop working to secure food on their own. They grow entitled, and expect food aid.

It's an observed phenomenon in Africa.

Wasn't that the whole idea - for them to stop producing and polluting the planet? That giving them food would be cheaper. Of course it would threaten our dependence on cheap clothes and expensive gadgets.

It's not a socially stable option. Not because we want cheap gadgets, but because of the social imbalance.

Also from an ethical point of view, it's not very fair to deny them the chance to become a developed nation.

People don't sit around on their bums for too long - it's just not in our nature. If they weren't slaving away in factories they might end up as a society that primarily produces cultural capital (huge social stability there) or they might develop a service-based economy. In the wider scheme, Chinese manufacturing is probably more important to the west than China.

How important Chinese manufacturing is to China has little to do with the ramifications of perennially feeding a country for nothing.

> It's an observed phenomenon in Africa.

Here I was expecting.. "in the western world" ;D

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