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China and "our standard of living"

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Re: China and "our standard of living"

#61

Post by c0nsilience »

bbot wrote: post #36
c0nsilience wrote: post #33

While the story had some decent points to it, the ending was a really horrible cop out and cowardly way to accuse the young man of stealing an iPhone. Even if it is true.

Hey, let's do impressions. I'm c0nsilience. I fail to understand obvious satire, and am frequently confused by very simple things in every day life. If only some incredibly handsome man could leave a very sarcastic comment explaining how I failed to Get It, that would surely solve everything.

I understand satire, you moron. But I also understand when someone is trying to veil an accusation with satire and 'fiction.' The irony, you dolt, is that you failed grasp that idea.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#62

Post by whughes »

zimbabwe wrote: post #19
whughes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you couldn't. You spend $10y on a computer or a cellphone made in Germany, it'll still be completely useless within a decade or two. Tech is different .

Tech is only different if you play by the game wherein anything that doesn't abuse a computer's stats is not worth toying with. I'm guilty of playing this game along with everybody else, but at some point we'll realize that we don't need all of what we've got, and we'll start being satisfied with it. Hell, I can see myself sticking with the laptop I've got right now for a decade.

If you want to separate yourself from the world, then you could still use typewriters. Typewriters can't receive e-mail. Similarly, a Pentium can't run modern Web applications at a reasonable speed. A ten-year-old cellphone won't have a camera and all the associated applications of that. You can stay with old hardware -- but at the cost of eventually giving up access to contemporary applications.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#63

Post by mrshoe »

omouse wrote: post #59
mrshoe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's zero sum at any given moment, but you are correct that the sum constantly increases. It's similar to the stock market in that way.

Look up the definition of Zero-Sum: In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.

Just look at the stock market as an example. Many people speak of the stock market in terms of a zero-sum game, because on any given transaction if one person makes money the other loses money. However, every day more and more money gets pumped into the stock market, so that, on aggregate, everyone makes positive interest.

The same is true of our standard of living. The standard of living index, so to speak, has been increasing for a long time (forever, maybe?), and it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Everyone's standard of living will increase, in aggregate.

However, if people in poorer parts of the world start commanding higher salaries, people in more affluent areas won't be able to buy things as inexpensively as they do now. That's exactly what FSJ is pointing out here. I don't understand why I'm being down-modded for echoing it.

There was a time when Kings built huge castles and palaces. Those times are behind us now, because the standard of living is more evenly distributed. It's only going to continue to become more so.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#64

Post by potatolicious »

neilk wrote: post #51
biohacker42 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not quite spot on. It did mention that these people were willing to do what ever to get away from the hellish alternative they were born into. But if you blinked you missed it, you missed the most important point: People are doing this voluntarily. Rumors of forced labor are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps somewhere in Burma but in China and India and other places, people do this hard work because the alternative i…

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it. Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't sen…

Modern, first-world standards cannot be applied to the third world - I am a prime example of this. I owe my life to child labor and sweatshop labor, allow me to explain.

My family is originally from Taiwan, and both of my folks grew up when Taiwan was still an inconsequential tropical island consisted mostly of fishing villages and a hodgepodge government-in-exile. Both of them are beneficiaries of the "abusive" practices of foreign businesses. My father worked in a plastics plant, and once had to outrace a cloud of deadly chlorine gas, and survived by the grace of a low wall surrounding the factory (chlorine crawls along the ground). Safety practices were almost non-existent - my mother is still missing a small chunk of her right index finger (and she was lucky). My mother's family was desperately poor - my grandfather eventually succumbed to years of breathing in coal dust with no protective equipment, and all of his children worked from as young as 10 years-old to put themselves through school.

But here's the thing: people in that country could not afford to educate themselves, and if it were not for the willingness of employers to hire child labor and form sweatshops, they would never have had the opportunity to climb out of that hole.

If you had insisted on no child labor, minimum pay standards, and rigorous safety adherence, there would have been no reason to set up shop in a backwater island like Taiwan, and then where would we be? My family would likely still be living in the jungles up on some mountain somewhere, starving.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#65

Post by ido »

timr wrote: post #43
silentbicycle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It's easy to think that things were manufactured better in the good old days (whenever that was) when anything that didn't survive is out of sight and therefore out of mind. While it's quite possible that several specific things were manufactured objectively better at some point in the past, basing judgments about the past solely on nostalgia and the few pieces that are still holding up well is not the founda…

Small problem with this logic: twenty-two years ago was 1987. It's not as if we weren't importing cheap crap from China by the truckload in the 1980s. If you want to make a valid comparison, the "good old days", for the purposes of this question, are probably before the 1960s. I'm not saying that there isn't some confirmation bias going on in the OP, but it's wrong to say that products were bad in 1987, and that ther…

> It's not as if we weren't importing cheap crap from China by the truckload in the 1980s.

It was a lot less so than it is today.

My parents had a textile factory till the mid 90's - and that was still a relatively thriving industry at the 80's - as were a lot of other types of manufacturing.

For example, a lot of computers were made in western countries where as today there is probably not much in your computer that wasn't made in south east Asia, and I can say that without knowing which computer brand you are using.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#66

Post by philwelch »

neilk wrote: post #51
biohacker42 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not quite spot on. It did mention that these people were willing to do what ever to get away from the hellish alternative they were born into. But if you blinked you missed it, you missed the most important point: People are doing this voluntarily. Rumors of forced labor are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps somewhere in Burma but in China and India and other places, people do this hard work because the alternative i…

If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it. Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't sen…

I can afford to throw a life preserver with no real cost. When there are entire countries or continents of starving people to be saved though, it's not economically sustainable to just give them a first world standard of living from scratch. It has to be built up over time by progressively improving the standard of living.

Indentured servitude is prominent in American history too--it's how many of our ancestors got passage to the New World. And now here we are with air-conditioned offices, OSHA regulations, and paid leave.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#67

Post by mrshoe »

zimbabwe wrote: post #23
mrshoe wrote: post #12

This exposes the truism that there is always a standard of living continuum in society. In a different era there were Kings and Lords and Peasants. Now we have Europeans and Americans and Chinese and Indians. If globalization can succeed at improving the standard of living for those at the bottom of the continuum, it will have to be at the expense of those at the top. It's a zero sum game.

How is it zero sum? I'd make you a bet that right now, more people are living happily than ever did in the past. The bar constantly rises.

Let me expand upon my one line explanation. I apologize for being terse last time.

Let's say the stock market increases at 10% per year. This growth is driven by more capital being invested in the market each year. That means everyone in the market earns 10% interest every year, right? Well, in reality, that's not the case. Some people earn 30% and some people lose 20%. In fact, if anyone earns over 10%, that means that someone else must be earning less than 10%. So, maybe it's a 10-sum game, but most people still use the term "zero-sum game" to describe the situation.

Distribution of wealth and standard of living work the same way. Everyone's standard of living is increasing at 10 moon units per year. This growth is primarily driven by technology. However, if people in emerging markets are to have their standard of living increase at 15 moon units per year (which it is, and that's great), then someone else will have their standard of living increase at less than 10 moon units per year. That doesn't mean that our standard of living will decrease (although I wouldn't rule that out); it just won't increase as rapidly.

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#68

Post by [deleted] »

zimbabwe wrote: post #42
jfoutz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entertainment competition goes up. More tv, more books, more movies, more games, more music. I don't think i can objectively quantify fun had in a game 10 years ago or a game now. However, I think we can agree that how people spend their leisure time is a pretty good indicator of how much fun activity X is. In the early 80's movies were more fun than video games for just about everybody. Now, you see moms playing gam…

That's because video game consoles are more popular, and they've become more accepted by the media. 30 years ago, my father and his brothers played Atari. I grew up with parents that both understood video games, at least somewhat. There's nothing objective about the way we view video games, or any other form of media. For instance: I primarily look for media with some sort of emotional power, which is all-but-impossi…

[deleted]

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#69

Post by sengan »

Periodic wrote: post #46
sengan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Atari ST still works. Never needed a repair. Its Syquest harddrive still works. The WD harddrive I bought last year crashed... My 3 year old mac needed a repair. Yes, things run hotter, and faster, and are smaller, and whatever. But they are less reliable.

How many other things did you have that broke? Oh, you probably don't remember them because they weren't around very long and don't evoke strong happy memories. You can't rebut an argument about lack of data and selective memory with anecdotes.

Nope. I have kept every computer I've owned ever since the ZX81. And none of them has broken. Perhaps I'm lucky... But chips used to be rated to last 25 years, and by the time I left the semiconductor industry it was down to 5. Why? Yield. But I'm sure you've worked on chip design and have more experience on this topic than I do...

Re: China and "our standard of living"

#70

Post by KC8ZKF »

zimbabwe wrote: post #14
xenophanes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean spot on? It's not a serious post. It presents no evidence. He's joking around as usual. edit: i'm seriously being downmodded for saying a post accusing apple execs of conspiracy to commit murder was a joke? and the prevailing view here is we should take that post as an accurate (radical lefty) political statement? and praise it even though it gave no political arguments capable of convincing someone…

FSJ at his best is satirical, not joking. He's funny but he makes good points anyway. His little rant paragraphs 2-4 is spot-on.

HHOS, as we used to say. http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html
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