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America has the same business culture; what's saving (most of) us is our better-functioning regulatory culture.
by firethief 7y ago
America has the same business culture; what's saving (most of) us is our better-functioning regulatory culture.
- internet_user 7y agoand legal system too.
- _bxg1 7y agoFor now at least.
- killjoywashere 7y agoThis is actually something Hank Paulson comments on in his book "Dealing with China": the Chinese have a huge government, but they actually have something like a half to a third as many government workers per capita. And their comms infrastructure, despite the Huewai bruhaha, is severely lacking in comparison, so those additional people don't stretch as far.
- jbay808 7y agoWhat about their comms infrastructure is lacking? I got full high-speed cellular internet reception even in the deep countryside when I visited there last year.
- killjoywashere 7y agoDon't recall, feel free to read the book.
- jlawson 7y agoReally not. Spend some time in China. It won't take long (hours to days) before you notice the utter callousness with which people habitually treat strangers and the environment around them. It can't be believed until it's experienced.
- daodedickinson 7y agoIs there any place with comparable population density with a substantially better social environment? If so, have you any theories that could explain the difference?
- frequentnapper 7y agoJapan
- anoncake 7y agoAny city?
- BurningFrog 7y agoSome say the genocides of Communism and the Cultural Revolution wiped out a lot of the old civilized ways and made the survivors callous.
- roboys 7y agoWe shouldn't forget the almost 100 years of Europeans pumping opium into their country.
- MagnumOpus 7y agoThis hypothesis is falsified by the fact that the Chinese who live in Taiwan and Hong Kong are by and large perfectly civilised people, rather unlike mainland China.
- pas 7y agoWere they the main opium consumers?
- chewz 7y agoBritish not European. Europe is a large place on a map.
- rum3 7y agoUsually if something is made in America it is a product of very high quality (except for food). This must be a deeper cultural thing and not just regulatory culture.
- sanxiyn 7y agoNope. It's just regulation.
- natch 7y agoNope. Definitely not just regulation. China has regulation in spades but the culture breaks it. Culture plays a huge role. Source: first hand experience living in China (highly broken culture), Taiwan (pretty mature and functional culture, but with some problems like “the boss knows best even if he doesn’t”), India (seriously broken with the caste system but also a strong sense of propriety) and the US (mixed bag, comparable to Taiwan in a lot of ways).
- ars 7y ago> America has the same business culture; what's saving (most of) us is our better-functioning regulatory culture. The difference in America is it's not good business practice to hurt your own customers. i.e. reputation matters. You mess up just once, and it takes years for your brand to recover (this includes non-brand brands, like store brands or generics). In China it seems like there's a never ending supply of new names constantly.
- ppseafield 7y agoSometimes the backlash can be catastrophic in China though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
- sanxiyn 7y agoReputation is just as important in China.