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> You present it as if the poor country that allows foreign companies to exploit its cheap labor is somehow the one taking advantage of the rich countries. Just

by ardy42 7y ago

> You present it as if the poor country that allows foreign companies to exploit its cheap labor is somehow the one taking advantage of the rich countries. Just ask yourself: is that a likely way for the world to work? Do you think the rich countries just let themselves get walked over in that way by much weaker, poorer countries? Your questions don't make a lot of sense, because the situation is much complicated than than a model with two monolithic actors ("poor country" and "rich country") can handle. For instance: "rich country" has powerful actors that work to benefit their own private interests against the national common good. At a national level, industrial capabilities are more valuable than currency and finished product, but for many private actors, the opposite is often true. National time horizons are longer (or should be longer, as in multiple lifetimes), but private time horizons are usually much shorter (fractions of a lifetime). > It's hard to square your view with the fact that American companies have made massive sums of money by exploiting cheap Chinese labor, or with the fact that when you walk around any Chinese city, you see American brands everywhere (Apple, Starbucks, KfC, GM, Tesla, all the fashion brands whose names I don't know). What the US has had with China is private interests trading industrial capabilities for short term increased profit. The US government hasn't kept those private interests in check (because they're powerful), and China has been happy to take advantage of the situation.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
You're talking about the United States vs. China, not China vs. individual American companies. Over the past several decades, China has undergone massive internal structural changes, many of them at the behest of the United States. China has made massive changes to its economic and legal systems in order to allow foreign companies wide-ranging access to Chinese markets. Those changes allowed unprecedented profits for American companies. But the way you're painting it, allowing American companies to exploit cheap Chinese labor, allowing them wide-ranging access to the Chinese market, where they sell enormous amounts of goods and dominate many market sectors, and constructing an IP enforcement system out of nothing constitute China taking advantage of American companies.
- ardy42 7y ago
  > You're talking about the United States vs. China, not China vs. individual American companies. Actually, I was talking about something more like individual American companies & China vs. the United States. > But the way you're painting it, allowing American companies to exploit cheap Chinese labor, allowing them wide-ranging access to the Chinese market, where they sell enormous amounts of goods and dominate many market sectors, and constructing an IP enforcement system out of nothing constitute China taking advantage of American companies. What's so hard to understand? The idea is that American companies making profit selling Chinese-made goods to Chinese and Americans may not actually a very good deal for the United States. It's like a son selling his family's farm for the price of 10 years of produce and the paper title "king of the village," so he could focus on improving his underwater basket-weaving skills. Maybe that was a good deal for the son, but that doesn't mean it was a good deal for the family. But the key point was to say the answer to this question, which you asked and seem to think is false, could conceivably be true: >>> Do you think the rich countries just let themselves get walked over in that way by much weaker, poorer countries? That question is a lot like this one: do you think king with a castle with impenetrable walls and overflowing storehouses will just let his enemy inside? The answer is no, if the king is the only agent in the castle. The answer is yes, if the guard manning the gate is an independent agent, and the enemy bribes him. The answer to the question is very different once the model is expanded to include more agents with different motivations. The two-agent model implicit in your question is too simple for this topic.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    > Actually, I was talking about something more like individual American companies & China vs. the United States. > [...] > The idea is that American companies making profit selling Chinese-made goods to Chinese and Americans may not actually a very good deal for the United States. What it sounds like you're upset about is actually the growth of international trade and deindustrialization in the US. You're putting it in crude and xenophobic terms: China taking advantage of the US. American workers who have lost their jobs or who saw their wages decrease certainly were taken advantage of. It wasn't by the Chinese, or the Japanese, who were the bogeyman in the 1980s. It was by an impersonal and ubiquitous economic system. It's much easier to direct your hatred towards a specific, tangible enemy, however, which is why the xenophobic answer is so popular. Just point the finger at the foreign workers earning their pennies an hour, rather than understanding the broader economic forces at work.

by ardy42 7y ago

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

You're talking about the United States vs. China, not China vs. individual American companies. Over the past several decades, China has undergone massive internal structural changes, many of them at the behest of the United States. China has made massive changes to its economic and legal systems in order to allow foreign companies wide-ranging access to Chinese markets. Those changes allowed unprecedented profits for American companies. But the way you're painting it, allowing American companies to exploit cheap Chinese labor, allowing them wide-ranging access to the Chinese market, where they sell enormous amounts of goods and dominate many market sectors, and constructing an IP enforcement system out of nothing constitute China taking advantage of American companies.

ardy42 7y ago
> You're talking about the United States vs. China, not China vs. individual American companies. Actually, I was talking about something more like individual American companies & China vs. the United States. > But the way you're painting it, allowing American companies to exploit cheap Chinese labor, allowing them wide-ranging access to the Chinese market, where they sell enormous amounts of goods and dominate many market sectors, and constructing an IP enforcement system out of nothing constitute China taking advantage of American companies. What's so hard to understand? The idea is that American companies making profit selling Chinese-made goods to Chinese and Americans may not actually a very good deal for the United States. It's like a son selling his family's farm for the price of 10 years of produce and the paper title "king of the village," so he could focus on improving his underwater basket-weaving skills. Maybe that was a good deal for the son, but that doesn't mean it was a good deal for the family. But the key point was to say the answer to this question, which you asked and seem to think is false, could conceivably be true: >>> Do you think the rich countries just let themselves get walked over in that way by much weaker, poorer countries? That question is a lot like this one: do you think king with a castle with impenetrable walls and overflowing storehouses will just let his enemy inside? The answer is no, if the king is the only agent in the castle. The answer is yes, if the guard manning the gate is an independent agent, and the enemy bribes him. The answer to the question is very different once the model is expanded to include more agents with different motivations. The two-agent model implicit in your question is too simple for this topic.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  > Actually, I was talking about something more like individual American companies & China vs. the United States. > [...] > The idea is that American companies making profit selling Chinese-made goods to Chinese and Americans may not actually a very good deal for the United States. What it sounds like you're upset about is actually the growth of international trade and deindustrialization in the US. You're putting it in crude and xenophobic terms: China taking advantage of the US. American workers who have lost their jobs or who saw their wages decrease certainly were taken advantage of. It wasn't by the Chinese, or the Japanese, who were the bogeyman in the 1980s. It was by an impersonal and ubiquitous economic system. It's much easier to direct your hatred towards a specific, tangible enemy, however, which is why the xenophobic answer is so popular. Just point the finger at the foreign workers earning their pennies an hour, rather than understanding the broader economic forces at work.