[batista]

Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check.

Russia is only about 100-110 million people. One third of the US. So the "large unified market" is much smaller, as is the "human capital" pool, by which I don't mean people, but scientists, inventors, etc. And the military might that Russia has and uses to gain cheap access to resources is so smaller compared to the US it's not even funny. Plus, Russia is recovering from both the USSR state bureaucrat dictatorship AND the US/IMF BS doctrines imposed on the during the Yeltsin era.

Oh wait, I can do the same thing for China, too.

Well, unlike Russia, China DOES have all that. And China is doing rather well. It's on the up and up, and already poised to a larger economy that the US. So, if anything, this supports my argument.

[ekianjo]

Oh yeah, China is doing rather well NOW. How about China, like 20 or even 30 years ago ? It was a poor country, underdeveloped. And you know what changed ? Their economic system. Just that. It was so sudden in China you can easily trace the roots of their economic boom. It supports my argument, rather than yours.

[pyre]

  > And you know what changed ? Their economic system.

So the thing that we should all aspire to as a species is the venerable Chinese sweatshop? The 'perfect storm' of capitalism, anti-unionism, and corporatism?

[ekianjo]

You should go in China for once, and talk to Chinese people to better understand their situation. They were miserable in the countryside, and the "sweatshops" you mention are already providing them with a better life than what they had. That's why you will keep seeing those kind of news: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/fox...

By the way, that's where America was like 100 years ago. People need to work hard to get to high standards of living, in case you did not notice.

[cornell532]

Brilliant response.

Economic ignorance encountered here can be stupefying.

[ekianjo]

Yes, especially in a community of actual or wannabe entrepreneurs. I would expect people reading HN to be crystal clear about what creates economic value in society in the first place.

[pyre]

The cultural values in China are also different than in the West. Chinese culture (from my experience) tends to be less about the individual, and more about the group. This makes it easier for people to swallow 'hellish' conditions because they are sending money back home to their family, and therefore their family as a whole is 'better.'

Also, I wouldn't say that things like:

* Forcing foreign businesses to partner with a Chinese company if they want to do business in China.

or

* Kicking people out of their homes (with no compensation) to make way for construction/development (e.g. Chinese Olympic Stadium).

Necessarily jive with a capitalist society.

[batista]

You should go in China for once, and talk to Chinese people to better understand their situation. They were miserable in the countryside, and the "sweatshops" you mention are already providing them with a better life than what they had.

LOL. They were "miserable in the countryside" because their old way of living and farming was not a priority anymore for the central government, that needed city workers to build the country's industry. So, in essence they gave them incentives to come to the city, and they also made it so they the old village system wouldn't work, stopped subsiding, redirected resources, etc. It's a centrally planned economy, it's not a "coincidence".

The sweatshops

--and no quotes needed, those are real sweatshops, and 99% of the HN readership wouldn't stand an hour there (we're people that are even annoyed by browser popup windows and such first world problems), and yet some consider them as fit for the Chinese people--,

don't provide them "a better life than what they had", they just make it so that they are kept alive, by eating, and sending some money to their families back home. The "better life" they are "provided" is working 14-hours at best in hellish conditions, then sleeping till the next day, and drinking themselves to oblivion on weekends. Yeah, slightly better than dying of starvation, if those are your only two options.

Incidentally, that was the way the old English industrial revolution thing started. They forced farmers to work in the factories, in similar hellish conditions.

"While the average life expectancy all around Europe increased, that of the average factory worker decreased. There were "almost no safety devices on machines, accidents were common.' (Wallbank, 490) Edwin Chadwick's 'Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain' penned in 1842 provides a terrifying look inside the workplaces of the period. 'That the annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation are greater than the loss from death or wounds in any wars in which the country has been engaged in modern times. That of the 43,000 cases of widowhood, and 112,000 cases of destitute orphanage relieved from the poor's rates in England and Wales alone, it appears that the greatest proportion of deaths of the heads of families occurred from the above specified and other removable causes; that their ages were under 45 years; that is to say, 13 years below the natural probabilities of life as shown by the experience of the whole population of Sweden.' (Chadwick, available online at: http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/history/chadwick2.html)

[ekianjo]

LOL you too. Obviously you are ideology driven and refuse to see the facts that Chinese people make the deliberate choice, nowadays, to go in the cities and work in those "sweatshops" instead of staying in the countryside. Nobody is forcing them to do so. Nobody is forcing them to stay in the "sweatshops" with a gun on their head. It is a pragmatic choice.

And Yes, Living is better than dying of starvation. I don't know how one can even argue with that. If you live you can get married, have a family and children, and expand your overall satisfaction that you achieved something in the end.

I have been in China and I have seen and talked with the people who choose to lead that life, and for me this is very clear that they are better off. Feel free to believe whatever the evenings news tell you about the horrible conditions at Foxconn and other companies alike, they will still keep queuing for a job there, no matter what you think of them.

[cornell532]

This is an idiotic argument that ignores/sidesteps the main point of the parent.

No matter what you think of China's economy, it is leaps and bounds better than what it was 20 years ago and provides a dramatically superior quality of life for its citizens.

[chii]

People voted with their wallets. The verdict is very clear - most people prefer cheap goods to humanitarianism and proper treatment of workers.

[pyre]

So long as it's significantly abstracted away from them. If they were US workers, or people they might meet on the street, it would be a different issue. There is a disconnect.