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Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

spiegel.de

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Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#31

Post by InclinedPlane »

w00pla wrote: post #26
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.

> 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.

South Korea and Taiwan are today 1st world nations whereas even a generation ago they were not. They didn't get there by wallowing in their perfect virginal misery, untouched by foreign trade. Quite the opposite, they got there by providing goods and services to the rest of the world, bootstraping their economy and their industrial base in the process.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#32

Post by radu_floricica »

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

God, I hate this kind of marketing. Until I read this link if anyone had asked me I'd say very convinced that I'm in favor of fair trade. I guess these days you have to be more careful what you support.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#33

Post by alxp »

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.

Americans aren't as ignorant as you think, everyone has now seen images of sweat shops and knows if you ask them that manufacturing conditions for the things they buy at Wal Mart are awful. However, they continue to buy them, just like an alcoholic continues to drink even though he knows that it's killing him. That's textbook addiction right there.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#34

Post by spazmaster »

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."…

I just bought some cool propaganda merchandise from teh official North Korean website :)

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#35

Post by snan »

w00pla wrote: post #29
lsb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t be so quick in lumping these two (fair trade labeling vs agricultural subsidization) together. I agree that fairtrade has problems. However, I see merit to the idea to inform consumers about the background of certain products (information is vital to market economy, right?). Fairtrade certification doesn’t just mean “fair” prices but also some restrictions on slave labor, the right to unionize, and conservation of the environment and some other network externalities. Product labeling is a classic direct action tactic and I think it’s a great way to concisely provide information that would otherwise be obscure.

This is not a subsidy and it’s not a tariff. It’s (an attempt at) providing information.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#37

Post by notauser »

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.

There's a limited supply of people in the world - about 6bn at the moment.

Roughly 1bn currently live in western-style economies at the moment. Once China and India are finished industrializing (in 30 years or so?) that'll be 3bn people in advanced economies.

Increasing the living standards of the remaining 3bn wouldn't impose as much of a dislocation as the current China/India affair, because it'll represent only a 100% increase in the labor pool not a 200% increase.

There'll be issues about scarce resources, and some currently abundant resources will become scarce, but the cost of unskilled and semi-skilled labor won't ever be this low again.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#38

Post by hugh_ »

alxp wrote: post #33
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.

Americans aren't as ignorant as you think, everyone has now seen images of sweat shops and knows if you ask them that manufacturing conditions for the things they buy at Wal Mart are awful. However, they continue to buy them, just like an alcoholic continues to drink even though he knows that it's killing him. That's textbook addiction right there.

Not really, it's just damn near impossible to buy anything that isn't made in China or some other crappy dictatorship.

Re: Swedish startup selling North Korean jeans

#40

Post by m_eiman »

mtts wrote: post #24
ilkhd2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to mention that little thing called "war".
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