The evils of the past

[FZR1KG]

FZ, yes, eventually the sun is going to run out too I hear.

There are finite resources on our planet for sure, but I think it's a stretch to say we have reached a point to say they are definitely finite. Just look at the tar sands in Alberta- we knew they were there for decades, just had no good way to refine the oil. Look at Japan, which basically started an expansionist policy a century ago because of the lack of resources in their own country- not growing as much as in the early 90s (when I remember "teach your kids Japanese!" was the "teach your kids Chinese!" battle cry you hear today), but still plenty going on in the knowledge economy.

So we agree that resources are finite, now it's more a question of when they will run out not if they will.
Just to be different because it's me, I propose that the resources themselves are not the only issue.
There is only a finite amount of CO2 we can dump in the atmosphere before we change climate to our own detriment.
We can have as much oil reserves as we want but, once the point is reached where it would be devastating to the ecology of our little planet if we use it, we can either, no longer use it, destroy the climate by ignoring it, or we have to limit its use.
Suddenly those huge reserves don't seem to be that large anymore and we hit the wall of what it mean to have finite resources.

Speaking of Asia, it's a very neat place to visit lately that reminds me of visiting Hungary after communism ended- everywhere building, everywhere things are "new" and people excited to join the middle class. Just because a family in China can now afford a motor scooter doesn't mean there is a finite number of them in the world and you took that scooter away from another family, right? That would be a bizarre school of economics.

See above.
Like my little sarcasm about aliens, I actually want there to be fair access to the resources for everyone.
My issue is that it is not being done, but how it's being done.
Right now, money is treated like a weapon. It has been for a long time. It's a weapon of the rich and powerful and a form of control for others.
That's not to say I want it gone or have some crazy radical scheme that involves bartering.
It means there is always a shift of power that comes with the shift of money. Major power. The type of power that destroys countries or rebuilds them depending on who wields it.
If one looks at it from that pov, and IMHO large transfers of wealth and money should be treated that way, then shifting money and wealth is basically handing weapons to others.
There is no problem with that if one actually understands that's what they are doing and trust the people (read government) they are transferring to.

So there comes the irony in all this.
The USA for so long has been the "champion of democracy", they have indirectly fought wars with the USSR and China over that and even had (possibly still have) laws against selling things to them such as computers and high technology (night vision) etc. Selling a PC to them years ago was treason.

Yet, if we consider money as a weapon, what the USA and other countries have done is basically hand over their largest most deadly weapons to the same people they have been in an ideological war with.
The reason the USSR collapsed is the lack of funds it had. It could no longer sustain itself while controlling the people. That's what got rid of communism there.

China is still a communist country. One with human rights violations and many other issues relating to the people that represent it.
All it takes is one crazy getting in power there to change their view on the USA or Europe for example and, suddenly they not only have the man power, the technology, the resources but also the funding to do anything they want.
The balance of power is being handed to them, willingly, almost exclusively in the name of short term profits by large multinational companies.

Now if that's what the world actually want to do, that's fine, but most people are ignorant about it.
They won't think that way till it's too late and then they will wonder what went wrong.

What would have gone wrong is that the transfer of power came too fast to people who really didn't earn the trust to wield, nor the experience to manage it and, it would have come to fruition because the nature of capitalism not only allowed it but encouraged it, to it's own demise.

That's not to say the worst will happen. It may turn out to also be the breaking point for communism in China.
It may turn out that China knows how to handle the power better than the rest of the world.
My issue isn't with what could happen, it's with our governments and corporations leading the way while wearing blindfolds and hoping for the best.
That's no way to run a country or an economy.

[SciFiFisher]

Russia Communism vs China Communism.

The USSR never really seemed to want to embrace any form of free enterprise. They believed that any form of free enterprise would just allow man's natural greed to assert itself. Besides, the corrupt oligarchs had all the luxuries they wanted so why would they want people running amok and selling luxuries to the proletariat? So, the west decided to beat them into submission.

China represented a radical shift in the western way of waging war on communism. Instead of embargoing them to death the west decided to give them a taste of what free enterprise could do for their economy. instead of beating them into submission we would seduce them towards the ways of democracy and personal freedom. The thought process was also that it would be harder for world wars to break out if everyone's economies were all tied together.

Of course, Z does point out one of the problems with this. How do you go to war with someone when it means crippling your own economy? And what do you do when that party decides that this gives them enough leverage to do whatever they want? The people who thought this policy up IMO didn't consider what would happen if the other party decided to manipulate the game. Look at Russia today. Would they have been so willing to engage in the Ukraine adventure if they didn't have that nice huge natural gas contract with Europe?

Of course, we don't have world wars now anymore. So, the project was a success!

[FZR1KG]

China represented a radical shift in the western way of waging war on communism. Instead of embargoing them to death the west decided to give them a taste of what free enterprise could do for their economy. instead of beating them into submission we would seduce them towards the ways of democracy and personal freedom. The thought process was also that it would be harder for world wars to break out if everyone's economies were all tied together.

Sadly, we didn't decide anything. China decided that on their own to get it done using the close ties it naturally had with Hong Kong.
They used the skill set and contacts to full advantage and saturated the market.
This was in pretty good swing by the early 1980's.

Then countries like the USA, Japan, Germany, Australia etc started getting rid of their "old" stock.
China snapped it up.
They bought heavy industry machinery for less than the transport costs and shipped it back to China to kick start their own heavy machine industry at next to no cost.
They bought old silicon fabs that silicon valley figured was junk. Who wants to by SSI fab machines when the market is going LSI.
That gave them almost no lead time to kick starting their own silicon production plants and no R&D to be done to do it.
From there they learned to mass copy by slicing silicon and simply copying rather than developing.
The market was flooded with basically stolen IP/counterfeit products.
Since China does not recognise patents suing is impossible.
The rest of the world rather than stopping this practice instead embraced the cheap products.
They paid well for people who could teach in English. Living in China teaching engineering was an option I had and I could have made a small fortune doing it.

Now, as I said before, I don't mind sharing wealth, I'm all for it.
The problem is how it's done and if there is a level playing field.
Sadly, there is not. The standard practice in China is to dominate the market by producing cheaper products than the competition because they don't play on a level field.
Then the other manufacturers shut down their own skill sets and get stuff from China.
This results in a loss of expertise in the originating country.
That makes us ultimately dependent on someone else.
Thankfully communist dictatorships have a long history of doing the right thing and respecting human rights...

As an example of what happened in Australia, I was an electronics design engineer and if I wanted parts built I could get them done pretty cheaply but if I went to China there were a number off things that happened:
1) I was given the option of buying their version of my product for far cheaper.
2) I was given higher quotes than other countries because my parts were expensive. Read that as they had to buy them from the USA because they didn't manufacture the CPU I used in China. Cost about $4 but the price hike in the total board was far higher than that $4
3) (1) & (2) happened without my approval, in fact I said do not send my card to China. They took one of my cards anyway, sent it to China and made the offers to make them. I didn't approach them, they approached me and disregarded my request not to send the product there. But hey, it's a free market so they can buy product and send it there for analysis.
4) They then approached my buyer letting him know they can supply a different product far cheaper. They couldn't use my design because I used a special CPU that they don't produce.
5) They reverse engineered my product and others then offered some back at cheaper prices.
6) When their product failed to meet the Australian standards for RFI, they approached me and asked me to help them redesign it so it would pass...for next to nothing mind you. Think about that. They were offering me wages to fix their product so it would pass the standards and be able to compete with my products in a market that I already had and they wanted to break into.

The net result is that engineering skills are lost here, gained there. Our countries get dependent on another country that either stole the technology due to not recognizing the patent process or were give the technology by companies making a quick buck.

My issue is that the playing field is stacked against us. We follow the rules, they do not.
Sure they will eventually. They seem to get better everyday.
Ultimately however, it comes down to, do you trust a communist government with the control of mass wealth and power.
If you do, then no problem.

I'm betting a few Tibetan monks however won't agree with you.

Bottom line, China has done some fantastic stuff. I mean it's tactics are brilliant. They could not defeat the West by military, so they embraced the economy and capitalism instead.
If you want to know what near unrestrained capitalism looks like, look towards China. It's a great example of the fast strides that can be made. Now we wait for the repercussions.

[FZR1KG]

But, being new here, I will try to fit in, at least for a little bit. As such, I propose a new rallying cry for a commonly found ethic at this board. It is to be found in my signature.

I'm guessing your bite isn't as good as your bark?

[geonuc]

But, being new here, I will try to fit in, at least for a little bit.