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Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

spiegel.de

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Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#21

Post by ilkhd2 »

houseabsolute wrote: post #20
ilkhd2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) People in USA/Canada/Other western world are _addicted_ to products made in misery (in China, for example). Less miserable of course, but still far from good conditions. 2) If there are reasons to think that it can improve their condition, than it os a good idea.

Ridiculous. They are addicted to inexpensive products, nothing else. Few people ever check a label to see where clothes are made.

Inexpensive (or more correctly - cheap) are almost always made in misery. So by simple logic, people who prefer cheap products prefer products made in misery.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#22

Post by ramchip »

ilkhd2 wrote: post #21
houseabsolute wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous. They are addicted to inexpensive products, nothing else. Few people ever check a label to see where clothes are made.

Inexpensive (or more correctly - cheap) are almost always made in misery. So by simple logic, people who prefer cheap products prefer products made in misery.

Does not compute.

High-level languages are almost always slower. So by simple logic, people who prefer high-level languages prefer slow languages.

However, people wouldn't want anything to do with a slow language that's low-level. And in the same way for a shirt made in a poor country that's not cheap.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#23

Post by AlisdairO »

ilkhd2 wrote: post #21
houseabsolute wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous. They are addicted to inexpensive products, nothing else. Few people ever check a label to see where clothes are made.

Inexpensive (or more correctly - cheap) are almost always made in misery. So by simple logic, people who prefer cheap products prefer products made in misery.

That's some seriously bad logic. The fact that cheap implies misery does not mean that misery implies cheap. People aren't buying the product for the misery, they're buying it for the price. Adding misery without affecting the price will not make people any more likely to buy your product.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#24

Post by mtts »

ilkhd2 wrote: post #19
koevet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have never laid a foot on a troubled place.

Sounds like somebody have never been outside downtown San Francisco/Seattle/or whatever and saw real life in USA. I lived in Florida for couple of years, and I never saw (anywhere I had a chance to live) such grotesque contrast between poverty in the inside cities and absurd richness on the oceanfront.

If you think that is in any way comparable to a country like North Korea (essentially one huge prison camp) or countries in Africa such as Guinee or Congo where maybe a hundred or so people are fabulously wealthy and the rest of the population doesn't have nearly enough to eat, your sense of perspective is, I would say, seriously out of whack.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#25

Post by lsb »

koevet wrote: post #11
mahmud wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Entrepreneurs" are doing brisk business with North Korea, to the tune of billions every year, doing arms deals, chemicals, construction, money laundering, commodities, and what have you. Second to the Chinese, Singapore government officials are deeply tied to the NK regime, for example.

Naturally I was implying some sort of legit investment, such as goods that can be mass produced and sold to the world. It may sound cynical, but a fascination indeed exists with products coming from troubled places. Furthermore, there is a whole commercial philosophy behind supporting developing countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade

Fair Trade keeps the Triangle Trade alive and well.

If you want to change things and help developing nations, make sure those developing nations have added most of the value.

For example, you can buy fair trade chocolate bars, with beans bought from Ecuador at a "fair" price, whatever that means. But then the bars are made in Switzerland, or France, and the European country adds much of the value, and keeps much of the profit.

Kallari Rainforest Chocolate, for example, is a cooperative making chocolate, and they pick the beans in the lowlands and drive up to the mountains and turn them into bars, and then airmail it out.

If you want to make a difference, figure out where your money actually goes.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#26

Post by w00pla »

ilkhd2 wrote: post #10
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't understand. why would people want to own an artifact of human misery?

1) People in USA/Canada/Other western world are _addicted_ to products made in misery (in China, for example). Less miserable of course, but still far from good conditions. 2) If there are reasons to think that it can improve their condition, than it os a good idea.

> 1) People in USA/Canada/Other western world are _addicted_ to products made in misery (in China, for example)

The act of buying something made in a third world country greatly reduces the misery (by providing a job and an income to a person).

Btw, people in China have a pretty good lifestyle when compared to other people in third world countries - all thanks to Americans buying their stuff.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#27

Post by rivo »

arch_hunter wrote: post #2

Anything made in North Korea, as long as it is not overly expensive, would be worth buying just for the sake of owning something made in North Korea. (At least in my humble opinion.) If North Korea wanted to they could probably make a whole lot of money, and improve the living standards of their citizens, by hiring a few good foriegn designers and created a whole line of specialty products "100% made in North Korea."…

you might want to read this: http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=292&#3...

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#28

Post by w00pla »

ilkhd2 wrote: post #12
AlphaMonkey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered the same. North Korea is a potential gold mine. Sooner or later, the regime will collapse or open up to capitalism, and when that happens the influx of foreign capital will be enormous. When the labor costs in China become "too high", and when Vietnam is no longer "that cheap", going to NK will be the natural option. Location-wise, NK is right next to Japan, so it's less of a logistic nightmare than, say,…

No, North Korea will not be a gold mine in this case, it would be yet another nail into the coffin of the western world (USA especially) , insanely, hysterically excited about it's own deindustrialization.

> insanely, hysterically excited about it's own deindustrialization.

Yeah, I tried to get a bunch of 16 year old Americans to make a bunch of shoes. Apparently they were not interested :(

American deindustrialisation is not only caused by cheap labour in other countries, it is caused by the educational choices of Americans. Engineering isn't exactly the most popular thing in American universities. There is still plenty of room for hi-tech industries in first world countries (semiconductor manufacturing, specialised steel, electronic design, mechanical design, high-end software development, etc…) while still not begrudging third world countries’ jobs (textiles, assembly jobs, etc…).

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#29

Post by w00pla »

lsb wrote: post #25
koevet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naturally I was implying some sort of legit investment, such as goods that can be mass produced and sold to the world. It may sound cynical, but a fascination indeed exists with products coming from troubled places. Furthermore, there is a whole commercial philosophy behind supporting developing countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade

Fair Trade keeps the Triangle Trade alive and well. If you want to change things and help developing nations, make sure those developing nations have added most of the value. For example, you can buy fair trade chocolate bars, with beans bought from Ecuador at a "fair" price, whatever that means. But then the bars are made in Switzerland, or France, and the European country adds much of the value, and keeps much of t…

Fair trade is a first World scam. What fair trade does is mandate the price of certain commodities.

This in effect negates the biggest advantage of developing countries (cheap labour) and allows the products to be manufactured in developed countries at a "fair" price.

Fair trade, along with agricultural subsidization is some of the most evil things that developed countries do.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#30

Post by InclinedPlane »

arch_hunter wrote: post #2

Anything made in North Korea, as long as it is not overly expensive, would be worth buying just for the sake of owning something made in North Korea. (At least in my humble opinion.) If North Korea wanted to they could probably make a whole lot of money, and improve the living standards of their citizens, by hiring a few good foriegn designers and created a whole line of specialty products "100% made in North Korea."…

How could you possibly imagine that the North Korean regime would undertake any activity to "improve the living standards of their citizens"? The appalling levels of human misery achieved in North Korea are the product of the regime. It takes only the slightest mote of thought to imagine that without the regime the North Korean people would enjoy wealth and comfort of the level of South Korea.
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