[yoster]

I don't care what country owns the brand as long as it is dependable and well made. Chinese products have a big stigma of being cheaply made. There are also a lot of reports of products from China containing unhealthy levels of lead. It would be great if most of the products being sold are made in your home country, but until prices are matched, it would be a while until that happens.

[icebraining]

It would be great if most of the products being sold are made in your home country

Why?

[kitcar]

There is a nice psychological feeling that some people feel when they are connected in some way to the manufacturer of goods which they consume.

Personally, I enjoy the experience of purchasing bread from my local independent baker, as compared to purchasing a factory-made loaf at the grocery store.

This doesn't necessarily mean the good has to be made in the person's home country; I think a similar feeling is derived after traveling to a brewery in another country, for example, and then drinking that same brew when you get back home. (In which case, problems like this might even been partly attributed to a lack of tourism to the exporting country!)

[rayiner]

Because I'd rather support the economy of Wisconsin than the economy of Chengdu. I like people in Wisconsin, can't really relate to people in Chengdu, and then there is the whole militarily adverse repressive communist regime thing.

Beyond that, I have no desire to contribute to the externalization of pollution, health and safety risks, etc, that come from exporting production overseas.

I think globalization is utterly ridiculous when countries are allowed to engage in a "race to the bottom" as China has by destroying its environment and poisoning its people to be more competitive against Western nations that aren't willing to do those things.

I'm happy to pay a little more: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/business/29shoe.html?ei=50....

[JumpCrisscross]

"I like people in Wisconsin, can't really relate to people in Chengdu"

I was raised multiculturally and have grown more cosmopolitan since leaving home, so I understand my reaction is a marginal one, but this emotion scared me. I am familiar with your comments on HN and so know you are an incredibly intelligent human being. Why, still, do you exclusively penalise the other party for unfamiliarity, which is a bilateral function? Why are intranational and international wealth inequality seen as diametrically opposed subjects?

[obviouslygreen]

Even as a monoculturally raised Midwesterner (US), I share this feeling (certainly not specific to or directed at the GP, but in general).

Why one person deserves to work more than another, or one company deserves your business more than another, solely based on where they are on the globe, is beyond me.

Personally, I think it's one of the last vestiges of patriotism/nationalism that otherwise rational, worldly people for some reason still hold on to. Hopefully we can get past it.

[rayiner]

> Why, still, do you exclusively penalise the other party for unfamiliarity, which is a bilateral function?

Because social relations aren't symmetric. Successful societies are built on: families, local communities, and national unity (in that order). This is nearly universal. Certainly, someone in Chengdu cares far more about his neighbors than he cares about me!

> Why are intranational and international wealth inequality seen as diametrically opposed subjects?

I view things that way because poor people in America are part of the same body politic as myself, while poor people in China are not. The well-being of people on the south side of Chicago or in the Bronx affects me directly. The well-being of people in China does not.

The ironic thing is that the Chinese wouldn't find my viewpoint curious. Of course your own community is more important than other peoples' communities, and your nation more important than other peoples' nations. It's a self-evident truth in Asian culture.

[derefr]

> poor people in America are part of the same body politic as myself, while poor people in China are not.

...and you don't see that as the problem worth fixing?

I live in Canada, where we get copies of all the social-policy laws from the US forced upon us as treaties [to ensure Americans don't just drive up here for their marijuanas or what-have-you] with no ability to actually vote in the US elections that control these laws. This is just a mild case of a power imbalance that's much more pronounced in countries that rely on the US for much of their GDP (usually based entirely around exports.)

There's only one world economy, and it affects all of us, but only some of us are living in countries that get to affect it with each swing of local political sentiment. It would probably be beneficial to all of us--even you all in the US--for that to change.

[tptacek]

Treaties aren't forced on Canada; they're bought from Canada, and Canada sells them. Complain to your own government.

I like how quickly the framing of discussions jumps around in political arguments on HN; we start by talking about a government so authoritarian that individual police officers can arrest, try, and sentence you for up to a year in a labor camp on the spot, and we end up talking about how repressive the US is because we still criminalize marijuana.

China, by the way, publicly executes drug prisoners.

[rayiner]

I'm not sure how you can look around the world and decide that what would make people in the U.S. better off is to make our body politic even more heterogenous and schizophrenic. We have enough trouble with Texas and California in the same union.

I look around the world and what I see is that the countries people generally admire from the point of view of quality of life: the Scandinavian countries, Japan, etc, have a high degree of cultural and political homogeneity and unity. Meanwhile, I see a European Union in meltdown because of the difficulty of forming a political union between people in countries with very different economies and cultures.

I also see international organizations like the United Nations that are deeply dysfunctional, and fundamentally compromised by the influence of a number of Asian, Middle Eastern, and African countries who bring to it their basically corrupt political systems. Don't get me wrong, I think the U.N. is great for things like coordinating disaster relief and whatnot, but I can't imagine a world where something like the U.N. exercising political influence in the U.S. would in any way be good for Americans.

[pasbesoin]

Brief aside: With labor/populations relatively fixed in place (legally as well as financially), there is no "one world economy".

Delve into the myriad policies controlling trade, and you further discover this.

I find myself frequently annoyed by the free market... "mythers", I guess would be the word.

[sliverstorm]

Not showing favoritism isn't the same as penalizing.

[cerales]

> I like people in Wisconsin, can't really relate to people in Chengdu,

?? They're just people.

[rayiner]

Sure, but let's make no mistake: the people in Chengdu don't buy into this silly idea that they should care as much about the people in Wisconsin as they do about their neighbors just because "everyone is just people."

[cerales]

And yet I've met people from Xinjiang and Sichuan who share my feelings about other people and view things through the lens of international solidarity on a personal, human level. What's your point? That the risk of 'white guilt' is a reason not to discard indefensible perspectives like xenophobia and othering?

[CamperBob2]

I have no control over what people in Chengdu think about me. I can only control what I think. I think I'm stronger as a result of free trade, and I even think that's true for my family, community, state, and nation.

[monkeyspaw]

Sure, but they probably feel more a connection to people locally. This is reflected by the psychological concept of propinquity. It's a powerful influence in our world.

[consz]

People in Wisconsin are people I might meet. People in Chengdu are people I will never meet.

[CamperBob2]

I'm happy to pay a little more...

Not likely. Everybody talks a good game, but very few actually follow through when it's time to open the old wallet.

[seanmcdirmid]

> I like people in Wisconsin, can't really relate to people in Chengdu, and then there is the whole militarily adverse repressive communist regime thing.

Think about the cute pandas.

> I'm happy to pay a little more

The problem is that its not just a "little more." I remember the 80s before China became a manufacturing powerhouse, and many things just got so much cheaper in the 90s.

[pfedor]

I like people in Wisconsin, can't really relate to people in Chengdu

The people in Wisconsin will be better off if they produce something at which their comparative advantage is the highest. You'd harm them, as well yourself and the Chinese people, by shifting the allocation of resources slightly away from optimal for all these parties.

[rayiner]

I would like to believe that, but I really don't. I'm not convinced that people in Wisconsin are better off in the long run if we trade with China rather than bomb it (to set up two extremes). That is to say, I'm not convinced free trade is Pareto efficient.

[pfedor]

Would you mind if I ask you to elaborate? I can think of two ways to read this

1. If the USA bombs China, and China fights back, that means a global war and global wars accelerate the progress of science and technology, therefore in the long run people in Wisconsin will be better off just like quite possibly they are better off now than they'd be in the alternative universe where World War II never happened (where they might not have satellite TV, GPS navigation, nuclear energy, computers etc.)

2. If the USA continues to trade with China, in a number of years China may become equally as powerful as USA or more and then China may choose to go to war with America and win.

Did you mean any of the two? I'm assuming the long run part is critical since in the short term it's fairly obvious that people in Wisconsin and everywhere would be worse off if the US bombed China.

[rayiner]

So a common reason given for U.S. prosperity in the 1950's and 1960's was that the industrial base of the rest of the world was decimated which made the U.S. the unmatched economy in the world. I'm not saying whether it's true or not, I'm just saying that it's something people say. To the extent that's true, doesn't that mean it would be better to bomb countries like China and India to keep them from competing with us? I'm not saying we should, but isn't that the implication?

My point is that while I think globalized free trade probably maximizes world GDP (to the extent you can deal with externalities like pollution in the developing world), I don't think it's necessarily the course of action that maximizes prosperity for Americans. I wouldn't say that it definitely doesn't--I'm just not convinced.

[rdl]

Whereas I actually identify more strongly with a hacker in Chengdu than with an old age pensioner, former government worker, in the Bronx. Or a banker.

[Systemic33]

China is far more capitalist than US! There's not a hint of communism left in modern china, it's just a different kind of democracy than US.

[rayiner]

China is a debunking of the idea that you need either free markets or political freedom to have an effective economy. It's still a tightly planned economy where the state either has a heavy involvement with or outright owns key industries. And politically, it's not a "democracy" in any sense of the word.

[weisser]

Presumably because they would like to support people closer to home. International commerce is very important for exchange of ideas and cultures and is enriching for all involved so long as the makers of the goods aren't being exploited as is sometimes the case.

[icebraining]

Presumably because they would like to support people closer to home

But does making most of the stuff locally really do that? By making e.g. cellphones here, you need to either pay Americans the same as Chinese workers make, or make Americans pay much higher prices for their cellphones. How does that help people closer to home? Seems like an handicap to me.

[angersock]

If nothing else, shortened supply chains mean more responsive product development, and in general help promote the general notion of localized/efficient goods production and distribution.

[bradddd]

To some extent yes, but advances have got to the point that spatial separation isn't nearly the handicap it used to be. Take Apple manufacturing for instance. They hardly ever carry an excess inventory.

[sliverstorm]

I take it as sort of an extension of "looking out for number one". Your local community is the closest extension of that, and buying local keeps the money local.

[micmcg]

People pay lip service to wanting to buy locally made, but they don't vote with the only thing that matters, the willingness to pay more. As long as consumers demand the absolute lowest price, regardless of the exploitation required to achieve it, things will be made in poorer countries with an impoverished workforce.

[icebraining]

In a marxist perspective, workers in the developed countries are being exploited too. In a free market perspective, Chinese workers are choosing to leave their farms and go to factories because it's a much better alternative for them, which has raised their wages and standards of living as a whole.

What exploitation are you referring to?

[micmcg]

Prices are never going to be matched, and why should they? Things made in China are cheap simply because they have a huge population of people desperate to work, so they can exploit this and pay them a fraction of an American salary and have them work under much worse conditions. Until you are prepared to work for the same money in the same conditions, don't expect the cost of something made domestically to ever be the same as if it were made in China.