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Comment by alephnan | Hacker News Reader

Would the west be as rich and Democratic without?

I think we’d be way better off if our manufacturing jobs had stayed on our turf. Yes, things might be more expensive, but we’d also have many more people being paid good wages, we would have reduced GINI inequality issues, we would have better supply-line security, we well might have more workers unions, and we would be more incentivized to reduce our pollution.

We would, on average, be richer and more democratic if we had retained our wealth-generating jobs. Instead, we gave the wealth-generating part of our corporations to Chinese labourers.

As a result, China now has a rapidly-expanding middle-class and America has a rapidly-diminishing middle class.

The only Americans who truly benefited from this move are the billionaires whose corporations profited by exploiting third world slave labour.

The billionaires of America/EU sold its soul to dictatorships.

The rust belt is struggling and the rise of Trump was direct consequence of that.

You need to re-read the stats on Trump voters. They are not all unemployed, uneducated, steel-mill hicks. Not by a looong shot. Your use of stereotypes is a poor strategy.

Holy batman strawman. Elections are hinged by a tiny % of swing voters. These were the 80k or so voters in Swing states. I never said anything about the rest of the voter base.

Respectfully, I suggest before telling others to re-read, some basic understanding of civics, electoral college, constituency and how elections are held would be helpful for yourself.

Growth would have been slower sure, but we were doing fine before and we'd have done fine without them, but they would still have rotted and by now may well have been forced to reform through economic failure.

> Growth would have been slower sure, but we were doing fine before and we'd have done fine without them, but they would still have rotted and by now may well have been forced to reform through economic failure.

May I introduce you to... colonialism? See also: how the battle of Plassey and subsequently income from India helped fund the industrial revolution. I can't speak much about Chinese colonial history (I expect it to be roughly about as brutal and violent as Indian colonial history) but boy does your comment ignore several centuries of history.

> we'd have done fine without them

There should not be ongoing supply chain issues then.

> they would still have rotted

This sounds sinophobic. Your profile mentions you’re from London. Yes, China was doing fine for a millennia, too, then the British colonizers brought opium and drugged their people.

> have been forced to reform through economic failure.

Yes, they did that. It’s cause embracing capitalism and free trade.

Far richer, but with less plastic junk that has to be thrown away in a few months.

Lots of plastic junk comes out of China, but the good stuff does too. I checked where a newly arrived superconducting magnet was made when purchased from a German vendor - China.

Anker products as well.

> far richer

In so far that there would not be supply chain issues causing massive inflation?

How would Amazon, Apple, the world’s richest companies be so without China?

They could all be running operations in Mexico. That could have become the North American SZ.

Everyone always goes straight to outsourced manual labor as a solution. It's a bad solution. If we weren't a nation run by corrupt middle managers trying to inflate their own salaries and sense of purpose we'd have stuck with the tried and true method of innovating on the manufacturing process itself making it more automated and less dependent on human labor. Human labor is always slow, prone to mistakes, and expensive. It's the favorite tool of the incompetent. If you think that's wrong then ask yourself which is better, harvesting a field with 100 workers with hand tools or with 1 farmer and a tractor?

China also doesn't share our value of craftsmanship. By letting them own a portion of our supply chain, they own a lot more than just the manual labor. They put us in situations where measuring temperature means buying an antique mercury thermometer, buying a $400 nist certified alcohol one, or getting Chinese made garbage that is not accurate within 2°.

> China also doesn't share our value of craftsmanship

Obviously we share theirs since we’ve shown were interested in cutting costs at the expense of quality.

They could make quality long last products. But in general both as individuals and as society in general from companies to government value cost cutting and short term profit most. So ofc what gets made and sold is the cheapest possible product that is still passable at time of sale.

> They

This embeds a colonialist / Western bias presuming that Americans companies are leading the charge and orchestrating everything, and the natives are incapable of self organizing. This is opposed to American companies being customers, and Chinese companies offering them a cheap all inclusive solution with implementation details ( factories / labor ) already sorted out. Since you pointed out Shen Zhen specifically.

Mexico would ultimately benefit from more investment. Throw in the trillions the US has wasted on nation building elsewhere and the Americas could have been built into having much stronger public institutions. It's not like Western Europe doesn't leverage its eastern neighbors and North Africa for cheaper labor.

Capital owners would be less rich, laborers would probably be more rich.

What’s the closest country currently in this regard?

I am afraid the debt is now come due for payment.

Exactly. My point here is that a lot of the Anti-China posters want to disregard and shed American’s responsibility. It’s just China that’s evil. Suddenly now that they’re rich and is/was on trajectory to surpass the United States. Where was the unified stance against China for the half century prior? The West and its consumers used China, but are now mad that the regime has always had its own agenda.

It’s really simple. There’s been decades of opportunity to hold Nike accountable, but people continued to support sweatshop labor. Sweatshop labor is not directly related here, but it supports a system that does not value human lives.

Offshoring labor, out of sight out of mind, to countries like China is a negative externality. Suddenly now China is the only one to blame when the externality is no longer external ( microplastics ).

It would not be hypocritical if countries “internalized their negative externalities”, or maybe just not create negative externalities or internalities in the first place. e.g. demote consumption, but that would not be very American. Just look at the public / self storage industry. Americans have two door garages and that’s still not enough. That part is really not China’s fault, even though they are the enabler.

We still have the same business incentives. Why wouldn't any CEO of a publicly traded company reduce resource costs as much as possible? If he would not do that, the boards would install someone who does. As an employee for a restricted time, it is optimizing your numbers and economic success until your successor takes over.

Without the exploitation of cheap labor and China work practices, your iPhone would cost 10,000 dollars.

Apple would be more like a Cartier or Tiffany...A few small exclusive shops around Monaco and the Cote de Azur.

Without the exploitation of cheap labor and China work practices, we would have been motivated to automate the manufacturing process and your iPhone would cost 100 dollars.

It’s paradoxical how companies aren’t self motivated. Look at fossil fuel car companies.

But yeah, Apple would have automated things. Except the part where they pass the savings on to end customers.

Furthermore in Apple’s case, they want China to be rich, too, because that’s a big market.

I’d prefer that.

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