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Comment by schalab | Hacker News Reader

Why dont western companies band together and threaten a boycott until some kind of IP laws are enforced?

They just keep getting picked off one by one.

Because coordination problems are really hard and that’s what governments and the WTO are for. Also, I’d be very surprised if that kind of coordination didn’t bring national competition authorities down like a hammer on all participants.

> Why dont western companies band together and threaten a boycott

Isn't companies banding together and agreeing to restrict business in a market a combination in restraint of trade, which is explicitly illegal?

Have you used the internet in China? There is no meaningful presence of foreign companies. They’re already kicked out.

Not disagreeing with you, but with a lot of our manufacturing happening in China there is definitely a different kind of presence.

But still, not sure if they would give up the low cost of manufacturing for this. Frankly, the regime makes that possible.

Are there? You can’t open a business in China without it being majority Chinese owned. There are plenty of companies doing their manufacturing in China, but every example I know of the wforeigb company contracts the Chinese company to do the manufacturing. Often they’re even further removed, such as Apple who works with a Taiwanese company who just happens to have their manufacturing in China.

Prisoner's dilemma. If one of those companies jumps ship, it will make more money than the others.

Of all of the good and bad things that China is doing, underminding IP laws is probably the most beneficial to society.

The best way for the world to improve is for all scientific and technology advancements to be freely available.

The way they undermine them also spreads authoritarianism, which is a side effect you may or may not be okay with.

You can literally make this argument anywhere.

Any good China does for its people or for other nations? That will just serve to legitimize their totalitarian government and encourage imitations abroad. Ergo it's bad.

In general it's better to state your fundamental premises at the beginning of the argument rather than reveal them midway through

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