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Except it's not. China has reached the stage in economic development that people are moving to higher skilled and higher paying jobs. Infrastructure in Vietnam
by btian 13y ago
Except it's not. China has reached the stage in economic development that people are moving to higher skilled and higher paying jobs. Infrastructure in Vietnam has improved to the extent that is ready for large manufacturing plants.
While companies are saving by moving manufacturing plants, many people (millions) in Vietnam are going to experience higher standard of living. I say it's a win win.
- sixthloginorso 13y agoExcept for the people they'll lay off as the plants move? It didn't work out wonderfully for the autoplant workers at Flint and Detroit; for some reason, the people didn't get the upgrade you speak of after the plants closed. Weird, huh?
- gejjaxxita 13y agoIf we kept thinking like that all our clothes would be hand-woven.
- jellicle 13y ago> many people (millions) in Vietnam are going to experience higher standard of living. Aren't therefore many people (millions) in China going to experience lower standard of living?
- blueskin_ 13y agoNot really, because they are moving to higher paying jobs than assembly-line work.
- edwinnathaniel 13y agoNot all of them. Only the luckiest ones. 1-10% probably. The rest got laid off.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoYou suggest there are massive lay offs in China now because factories are moving to Vietnam? What are you talking about?
- davidw 13y agoThe economy is not a zero-sum game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
- sixthloginorso 13y agoThe economy isn't magical either; jobs lost in one region because the factories closed and moved to another aren't necessarily going to be recouped by new job creation in a short span of time.
- davidw 13y agoThen we should probably do what we can to help the worst off in the economy, whether they've lost their jobs due to new technology, moving factories, or whatever, rather than trying to nail the factories down to one particular place.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- JonnieCache 13y ago>help the worst off in the economy The problem with this is, the "factory owners" of the world run a political machine which they use to prevent that from happening, claiming it prevents them from building more factories. They use the same political machine to establish the moral goodness of continued factory building as axiomatic. This makes everything rather complicated.
- Artistry121 13y agoYes, government intervention does make things rather complicated.
- JonnieCache 13y agoAh, the old "when I no longer have to suffer the indignity of taxation I will donate half my money to the poor" argument. I wonder why I find it so hard to believe that the bottomless greed of capital will suddenly evaporate when we give them the entirely greed-based anarcho-capitalist society they want? But I agree with you that "factory owners" and "government" are basically the same people. That's what I was referring to by the political machine I mentioned above, although it extends far beyond government.
- llamataboot 13y agoAh yes, the wonderful world of libertarian thought. Where sweatshops to make cheap shit for rich countries is a win-win.
- Mikeb85 13y agoLook at how far China has progressed. It has nothing to do with Libertarianism, and everything to do with Economics...
- ForHackernews 13y agoSurely it must be possible to have economic development in poor countries without sweatshop-level exploitation.
- bd_at_rivenhill 13y agoProbably not, all of the developed countries went through a sweatshop phase at some point in their past.
- ForHackernews 13y agoThat's true, but just because something happened a certain way in the past, doesn't mean it's absolutely necessary it proceed that way in the future. As an industry, the technology sector prides itself on innovative thinking and using new approaches to solve old problems in a better way. It doesn't seem like economic development should be a path-dependent process. It saddens me to see people shrugging off human misery as though it's required by some ironclad law of economics. Instead, we should devote serious effort to figuring out how to get from "poor, subsistence farming" to "developed economy" without the "child labor and sweatshops" step. Rawanda is already trying to make that leap: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/04/paul-kagame-exclusive-interview http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/04/paul-kagame-e...
- corin_ 13y agoThe fact that something happened due to economics doesn't mean there aren't other ways it could happen.
- jebblue 13y agoThe Philippines would also be a great place for manufacturers to look at.
- BrandonMarc 13y agoThe Philippines is already a place the Chinese Navy is looking at ...
- caoilte 13y ago> China has reached the stage in economic development that people are moving to higher skilled and higher paying jobs. Yeah... 'caus that worked for Mexico... can China look forward to a descent into drug traficking fueled civil war now?
- Symmetry 13y agoIt's actually working pretty well for most Mexicans, just not the minority who live near the US border.
- pizza234 13y agoWith "working well", you mean, dozens how thousands of violent kills over the last years in the entire country, routine murdering of journalists and policemen, and essentially total corruption of the institutions? I wouldn't define that exactly working well.