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drewdevault.com

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Re: China

#331

Post by kick »

Aperocky wrote: post #311
kick wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the companies you listed are allowed to operate without partnering with a Chinese company. If you accept them as operating in China, then given 95% of consumer goods have "Made in China" stamped on them, China operates just as much in the US. The above poster's point is still wrong, but so are you.

Wrong, Microsoft/Apple/Starbucks did not partner with anyone. That requirement was specifically for auto/manufacture industry.

You are spreading misinformation. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351

Re: China

#332

Post by brobinson »

DataGata wrote: post #284
Aunche wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has always valued "principle" over actual results. In Iraq, Saddam was "evil", so he had to go, even though it would leave the entire country in the power vacuum and destroy the livelihoods of the average Iraqi. Ditto for Gaddafi in Libya. This post is much the same way. A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom. This happened in South…

South Korea achieved democracy when their GDP per capita was $4k. China's GDP per capita is approaching $9k. When will they be rich enough that they yearn for democracy?

The PRC will most likely not escape the Middle Income Trap before their population pyramid massively inverts. No other country has aged so quickly at such a large scale before. Their population and working age groups are at the largest they will ever be right now and will steadily decline starting in 5-10 years.

I think collapse of the current government is more likely than a peaceful ROC-esque (Taiwan) transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Re: China

#333

Post by [deleted] »

bachmeier wrote: post #179

> The financial incentives don’t help any Americans, and in fact, most of us are hurt by this relationship. What a weird statement. We buy Chinese goods because it makes us better off. "The US is full of idiots that engage in voluntary transactions that make them worse off" is a hard claim to accept. Obviously some people are worse off because of trade with China. And some are worse off because of technology. And a m…

[deleted]

Re: China

#334

Post by spacehunt »

brobinson wrote: post #326
baby wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of mainland people in the US who think the western medias are all biased and that they are helping HK to separate from China.

What I've heard from PRC nationals in the US is that the CIA is behind the "riots". I'm assuming this is the narrative being pushed by the state-run media in the PRC.

Definitely, pretty much from day one the PRC has been accusing the CIA and MI6 for inciting the "riots" designed to hurt the feelings of Chinese people.

Re: China

#335

Post by CharlesColeman »

koube wrote: post #249
CharlesColeman wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are winners and losers in every decision, and I've already acknowledged there are concentrated losses among certain populations. Decisions are political, and these decisions have been, more or less, presented to the losers as a fait accompli by the winners. It is good and right that such a decision be challenged, and that it potentially be moderated or rolled back entirely. These decisions also have had impor…

The scientific side of economics is the description of the properties and behavior of economics systems. The political side is what we should do with this information. I think I and the sources I've cited have kept largely to the former, and I'm the only one in the comment chain to at least throw up a graph. Call it what you want, but we should be able to make observations on systems. At the very least it's a step up…

> The scientific side of economics is the description of the properties and behavior of economics systems. The political side is what we should do with this information.

No, sorry. It's not that clean cut. Your links had economists stating things like "America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports." But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intensely political statement (even ignoring the fact that statement was made though an organization advocating for a particular political policy).

If economics was not political, economists would merely say things like "All else being equal, if our models are correct, increased tariffs will lead to increased domestic prices of international trade goods. However, all else is not equal, so we cannot comment if tariffs are good policy or not."

Re: China

#336

Post by marcosdumay »

typon wrote: post #119
gregwebs wrote: post #59

I don't necessarily disagree with the article, I just want to point out that outside of the US others will readily view this line of thought as hypocritical and self-serving. As a US citizen, I try to consider how the rest of the world may view our actions (glass houses and all). Following the logic here it would make sense for the rest of the world to cutoff trade with the United States due to the Iraq war, which ha…

The Iraq war is just one example out of the many atrocities that the US has committed around the world. (as we speak, the US is currently supporting coups in Latin America). So even though the US has absolutely no moral high ground - I still think that it is important for individual Americans to take a stand against atrocities around the world. I don't think we can discredit Drew's post based on the fact that the US…

> the US is currently supporting coups in Latin America

Should it support popular coups (that promise elections as soon as they take over) or dictatorships?

Re: China

#337

Post by leereeves »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #173
CharlesColeman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the economics issue though, readers should know he disagrees with economists, who nearly universally agree that trade with China benefits Americans as a whole, with the caveat that there are concentrated losses in certain populations. The thing is: economists are hardly unbiased and neutral. Their theories are far from scientific truth, and typically embed significant political content. For instance: "benefit" c…

If it wasn’t China, the US would be importing goods from elsewhere. It’s unlikely the response to not China will be America. There are reasons to believe the US should still do not China even if it means Bangladesh or Vietnam (in fact, this is exactly what the TPP was supposed to have achieved, and would have better protected worker rights as well as IP...but I guess that wasn’t blunt enough for America). The US is w…

> The US is wealthier than it has ever been thanks to trade abroad.

And more unequal than it has been since the Gilded Age, when the infamous robber-barons ruled the economy unrestrained.

As you said, the US hasn't "spread the benefits of trade internally", but that has a lot to do with globalization. Workers lost bargaining power and income as competition for their jobs increased due to globalization, and unions became weak when companies responded to strikes by moving operations overseas.

The benefits of globalization naturally flow to foreign workers and the few Americans in charge, while the cost of globalization falls on American workers.

Re: China

#338

Post by perennate »

Aperocky wrote: post #324
perennate wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US I can read any English source, both ones from China and ones from US/UK media. I read that the CCP imprisoned approximately one million Uighurs in concentration camps in Xinjiang, where they are being held indefinitely without due process, and there are reports of physical torture (waterboarding and tiger chair), rape, and occasional killings. I also read from CCP's point of view that this started because t…

You’re right and entirely sideway to my point, which is that narrative pushing are not just from one side alone.

Let's consider a hypothetical scenario similar to the one you put forward then. Suppose the US government conducts mass imprisonment of a certain population in concentration camps, like CCP is doing to Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Well, it's not hypothetical, we already did it during WWII to Americans of Japanese ethnicity. And newspapers across the US spoke up against this atrocity [1]. Contrast that with China where the newspapers are forced to push the government's narrative, and invariably focus on the terrorism in 2014 that sparked the CCP's disproportional response rather than the barbaric violence perpetrated by the CCP.

The US government has formally apologized for the atrocities in the concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were held, and paid reparations ($42K per camp survivor in current USD). We vowed never to do something so horrible again. But in 2019 China is still playing with mass forced incarceration, and they even have the gall to call it a model for combating violence that other countries should follow. The CCP has replaced the Japanese empire in abusing their own population (but I think some in China are racist and view Uighurs as not part of the Chinese people, just like how Nazi Germany viewed the Jewish people, and how some in US during WW2 viewed Japanese-Americans).

[1] https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/11/protests-against-in...

Re: China

#339

Post by zeveb »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #160
Barrin92 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you may be fine if you have a lot of disposable income, but many poor Americans will not. Which is of course the opposite story that the OP tried to tell. If you are a minimum wage US worker paying hundreds of dollars more for basic goods is a drastic cut into your quality of life. This mercantilism on display here will be extremely harmful to people in America who rely on low cost imported goods just for the sa…

> Well you may be fine if you have a lot of disposable income, but many poor Americans will not. Why are they poor? Hasn't globalization directly contributed to making the American working class poorer? For instance: Offshoring a factory obviously eliminates those workers' jobs. The owner of a American factory can also use the threat of offshoring to keep wages down. The owner is better off, but the workers clearly a…

> Hasn't globalization directly contributed to making the American working class poorer?

My understanding is that our standard of living has continued to increase throughout my lifetime, and thus that the American working class is on the whole richer than it was decades ago.

> The owner is better off, but the workers clearly aren't.

Aren't they? If they make $10/hour instead of $15/hour, but the goods they buy are 40% the cost that they would have been, their $10/hour is effectively $16/hour (I think I got the math right there).

Of course, maybe they are making $9/hour, or maybe they lost their jobs after all, or maybe the goods they buy are 95% the cost that they would have been … but the principle still holds that they can be doing less well than they would like but still better than they were.

Re: China

#340

Post by dang »

big_chungus wrote: post #285
kick wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham: I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of so…

Problem is, it doesn't just attach a "score" to a comment. The UI will gradually hide comments as they are voted farther down; I've seen many that are barely legible. Flagging also hides comments by default. I can't tell you how many reasonable, well-thought out points I've seen that I have to highlight with the mouse to actually read. I wouldn't even see many insightful comments had I not logged in and enabled "show…

If a comment is faded, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, where it should be in the regular readable black.
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