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Also, maybe b/c of a market of consumers who don't know what they're buying. I bet tech-savvy Chinese know where to buy safely. But maybe there are a lot of C
by chernevik 16y ago
Also, maybe b/c of a market of consumers who don't know what they're buying. I bet tech-savvy Chinese know where to buy safely. But maybe there are a lot of Chinese with poorly educations or orientation to tech, maybe just arrived in a city, or travelling there to shop. And they get stuck by this stuff, and maybe don't even realize it b/c they don't understand the gear, or because so much of it is banged up. (Maybe the camera is also faked.)
It wouldn't surprise me that if a shopowner _was_ eventually caught at this, they'd simply close up and just move somewhere else.
As a free market type, I have to admit that in those circumstances, I don't find this surprising. The "market response" here is for consumers to become more savvy and cautious, but the population posited here wouldn't have resources for that response. And they're forced to choose between wariness, and participation in this new economy with all this neat stuff. And that participation might be the only path out of poverty and ignorance.
It's a crummy choice, and one that is likely to lead to all sorts of bitterness and suspicion of the merchant classes. It founds a similar ethic in the buyers, once they figure out enough to become sellers.
The likeliest defense I can imagine for my free markets is, China isn't really a free market. Its development is artificially stimulated and guided by government policies, which are pushing investments at levels that aren't sustainable, and into projects that probably won't return. A less hyper development might give consumers more opportunity to get up the learning curve, and lower (and probably more realistic) expectations of what they can afford.
Wow, tldr: Govt. accelerated hyper-growth pushes innovation faster than the least informed consumers can manage.
- bluedanieru 16y agoSo, to sum up, poor quality control in the absence of government regulation is the result of too much government regulation. There are folks who want to solve every problem with government-led solutions. They are often wrong. Then there are people whose response to everything is cutting taxes and privatizing institutions. They are often wrong. What you have in common (and lately I am beginning to think these two groups have a lot in common) is whenever anyone can name an example of your ideology breaking down in some way as it has here, your immediately come out with a No-True-Scotsman style of rebuke. Why is it so unacceptable that a pure free market might not work perfectly? And, the typical consumer anywhere would fall for this. This isn't an example of ignorant Chinese being duped by unscrupulous merchants. If ignorance alone is the culprit then this should be happening everywhere. Want to take a guess why it isn't?
- chernevik 16y agoYes. How many software bugs are traceable to lousy global design? No one here would be surprised that a system built on lousy principles exhibits many particular problems. Why is it surprising that an economy built on bad principles has all sorts of particular problems? And if anyone here suggested that the best response to a badly designed system was some additional "bug catching" layer, or just tweaking all the details, well, it wouldn't go over well. Patches might do just to keep things running, but none would suggest that's the right way to build the thing in the first place. And the patching approach would be doubly suspicious if the same crummy programmers that had the bad design where then tasked with patching up the bugs. And no, this won't happen here in the US. If you think the average US consumer is as ignorant as the average Chinese, you aren't thinking it through. Go look at what passes for a college degree in China, the government has massively expanded the "colleges" past all capacity to actually teach that many people. And the average US consumer has far better access to enough expertise to diagnose the problem. And US retailers make major investments in brand reputation, which they will not simply abandon. US consumers have far better resources for understanding fraud, and far better recourse against it. Now, my "ideology" is founded in a lot of solid theory and hard evidence. It is a world view that explains a _lot_, and often in advance of events. If you think I'm walking from all that b/c of one unfortunate example, if you think I'm not going to look for some explanation that is consistent with what I already know, I don't know what to say. Here I admit that this cheating is what I expect in these circumstances -- not really a free market advertisement -- and admit that I'm looking for some consistent explanation. And you have a problem with that? My biases are right here on my sleeve, where I can keep an eye on 'em. Where are yours?
- colanderman 16y agoWouldn't a valid free-market response be a private militia which is paid by its customers to shut down via threat of force stores which misrepresent their goods?
- solid 16y agoI think the valid free-market response is ultimately "caveat emptor". Your proposed solution violates the NAP, which most libertarians hold as axiomatic.
- isleyaardvark 16y agoI don't know of any libertarians that think fraud should be legal. The doctrine of "caveat emptor" also makes an exemption for fraud.