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If richer exporting industries are richer than hundreds of millions farmers, doesn't it mean that they are more effective, and may be a large industrial farm wo

• LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  It does, and it would, but what are you going to do with those 100 million farmers? Their children are rushing to the cities faster than you can possibly imagine. But it takes at least a generation or two to change a country of poor farmers into an industrial, educated, urbanized society. And until then, you have this problem.
  • golergka 9y ago
    In a capitalist, free market economy, we don't have to do anything with people. They're doing anything they want instead. China might not be there yet, but thankfully, they're already got rid of the central planning.
    • wolfram74 9y ago
      They're doing anything they want and can afford, an important additional constraint. Remember the old cliche, "America: the land of the free, terms and conditions apply"
    • LeifCarrotson 9y ago
      That only works in a reasonably static society, where people can make informed decisions about what they want. If an elderly farmer had an opportunity to learn a trade or get an education, yes, he might be a welder, or a wine taster, or a writer - but it's a little late for that when he's 40 with a house and wife and kid, and everything he owns is in that farm, which was the best option he had as he steered himself down the path of his life. And now the market is saturated with cheap, industrially farmed food, making his output worthless. It's hugely oversupplied with obsolete farmers. Yes, the market will even things out eventually - but that can have a steep, painful human cost.