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Fragile, yes, but also beautiful. The Chinese "single product city" is something of a free-market wonder. I visited Dehua (a ceramics city) and spent the time f
by Cerium 6y ago
Fragile, yes, but also beautiful. The Chinese "single product city" is something of a free-market wonder. I visited Dehua (a ceramics city) and spent the time fascinated at how anything related to ceramics production is cheap in that city. It is no one individual factory that achieves economy of scale, but rather the full city, and everyone in it benefits. Small producers can achieve globally competitive pricing on their goods without having to take delivery of truckloads of input materials.
- bobthepanda 6y agoThis works really really well until it really really doesn't. There's a reason why these towns don't exist in the West anymore, Detroit being the biggest example (though they got out of their predicament by trying to diversify).
- maxerickson 6y agoThere's still a pretty huge concentration of automakers and suppliers in the greater Detroit area.
- bobthepanda 6y agoHence the keyword "trying".
- maxerickson 6y agoWhen I started composing my reply, your comment read "This works really really well until it really really doesn't. There's a reason why these towns don't exist in the West anymore, Detroit being the biggest example." Perhaps our edits overlapped.
- fermienrico 6y agoThere is nothing beautiful about this I see.
- afandian 6y agoReminds me of Tula, the Russian city where a huge number of accordions were made. I'm not sure if it was dictated by the Soviet government or whether it happened organically, but I'm not sure it was due to a free market.
- mynegation 6y agoIf anything, Tula is famous for metalworking, weapons, and gingerbread before anything else.
- retSava 6y agoweapons and gingerbread, now there's a combination that tickles the mind :)
- afandian 6y agoI'll take the accordions thanks.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoBeautiful samovars.