Let me guess: Written on a machine with most parts "Made in China"?

No shit. Talking about everyday consumer goods, that we could do without, and that would not even be available, we're it not for Sam and his inbred family....clothes lines, mouse traps, pantyhose, razors, pet foods, timepieces, toys, shoes, etc.

I think its illogical to blame China.

The American economy depends on consumer spending, which doesn't want to pay the high price that goes with manufacturing high end products and paying the high wages that entail them. It's American Capitalism baby.

Love it or leave it.

"If anyone here is in marketing and advertising, kill yourself. I'm just trying to plant seeds."
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bill-Hicks-on-Marketing-and-Advertising

Passing through the sweatshop stage has been important to the development of a number of countries in east Asia. It's only a minute sliver of the global trade in labor, so I'm not sure why people single it out. If your country is losing jobs in manual labor, that's generally a good sign.
http://www.videosift.com/video/China-Blue-PBS-doc-on-life-in-Chinas-clothing-factories
http://www.videosift.com/video/Slave-Labour-from-the-East-for-the-West
China may seem decades behind in human rights now, but it's a near guarantee that they will catch up as their economy grows.

Maybe you should take another look at Century of the Self and see if you can't pinpoint where things went wrong.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Century-of-The-Self-Part-1-of-4

It's of course not China's fault-they are merely a billion plus new players in the game, growing stronger everyday as fodder. If anyone is to blame, it's the wide-asleep masses who have all the power and give it away, having been groomed to do so. I frikkin' love China, fer crissakes, that wall, as much blood sweat and slavery that went into her construction, is tits. Their time-honored medicinal and healing arts and their understanding of the subtle systems that constitute a human's waterbag, no match exists, save that of Tibet's. Even here-tell they got em some bitchin' pyramids, that make Khufu's look like outhouses....best we all bone-up on mandarin/cantonese

No way dude, ....we have enough Manuel labor in the US to have a glorious rebirth in manufacturing....why not adopt the Swiss model of quality, and the German model of anal-perfection???

cheap goods are the illusion of class-equality; now even dirt poor people can fill their abode with the minutae of the elite. Tchotchkes prove you are just as good as the bourgeouise.

Of course I'm one to talk: I loves me some Target and I ain't givin it up. Except the baby toys.... going to start buying wooden and Made In America baby toys soon.

>> ^choggie:
If anyone is to blame, it's the wide-asleep masses who have all the power and give it away, having been groomed to do so.

Blame for what? Also, calling global economic development 'giving up power' is a tad bit xenophobic, don't you think?

Xenophobic?? Big word used subjectively by someone who thinks they know when to apply it's meaning, and implying incorrectly here, that I don't love Chinese folks.....No fissionchip, that word you toss about smugly in an attempt to conveniently label, does not apply here.

I hate seeing "MADE IN CHINA" on anyting....the stuff of any value made by Chinese, has no such stamp or injection-molded raised letters.....
The power to exercise one's freedom of choice with regards to where they place their investments, be they small or large, is a manipulated confabulation. The availability of goods and services to Americans, the result of feeding the corporate beast is the reason why availability of quality merchandise and service is the exception, rather than the rule.

Your phrase, "Global economic development" with regards to what I am talking about, borders on oxi-moronic. Development for whom, and to what end??

We have the power, as the people who slave for shit-tickets, to demand more from ourselves, and our herders. They suck, and we don't. Always remember that, the measure of a man is not how much monopoly money is represented in a ledger.....money has NO value. Especially if the Fed printed it......

If I had my way, we'd start reshaping government, by actively disrupting the economy.

I have xenophobia when it comes to aliens from other planets.....all they want to do is invade us or kill us, mine our organs and planet, or inhabit our bodies.....

Thanks for the reply choggie. I know that my last comment was curt and provocative, but I can elaborate on what I was getting at.

I re-read your post, and I can't eek out anything besides a rehashing of tired arguments against globalization. Yes, I'm projecting a little bit, but you've alluded to an increasingly common reactionary position. If you can be more specific about who your post is aimed at I can make a more constructive comment.

When I write "global economic development", I mean development for anyone and everyone in the world. Granting greater access to worldwide markets is one way to achieve this, but it's a nuanced process which I can't go into further without writing an essay (I'd be glad to offer links though).

You wrote that you hate seeing "MADE IN CHINA", and that "We can no longer abide, your manufacture and distribution of useless plastic crap". Those parts in particular are why your claim that China is outside the blast radius of your rant is a stretch. It was in poor taste for me to use the x-word, but I honestly don't know of a word that means "undirected fear of other countries' economic growth".

Lamenting that people buy large volumes of low quality goods is a fine thing to rant about, so why not stop there?

>> ^choggie:
If I had my way, we'd start reshaping government, by actively disrupting the economy.

Is your main argument against neo-liberal economics then? It's really hard to tell. We all have beefs about the system to be sure, but it's the best progress engine we've come up with yet. If you think that the developed world has stopped progressing and that we're just building idles to the almighty dollar now, that's another fine rant, but there are 5.5 billion or so who haven't come close to hitting that sweet spot yet. I don't think you'll be able to enlist them in taking down the machinery that holds the greatest promise of helping them.

your's right FC, and I often muse idyllically about some other paradigm, like it would be better than the one we have, good with the bad, etc. We make great strides wit respect to science with the current one-My biggest beef is being accustomed to a higher standard of quality, and it becomes increasingly less available to me as the world's economy is faster becoming standardized. China has no history of quality with regards to manufacturing-America has pimped hers to the point of absurdity-Now when you want to use your coin to buy quality, you must return to the artisans and specialists in a trade or discipline.....used to be it was everyone holding themselves to a higher standard. Gone are the days.......

With regards to the Chinese economy stealing American manual labor jobs it's totally a fallacious lie. The Chinese didn't just invade and steal manufacturing plants, but rather American businesses seeking to lower their costs and increase their profits moved their operations to where there is hardly minimum wage, no health insurance, no unionization and hundreds of thousands willing to work 14 to 16 hours per day.

The businesses gained, the goods stayed expensive, with all the sweatshop labour the cost reductions are not passed on to the consumer, rather there is a larger profit margin to be made. For exmaple a t-shirt made in Bangladesh would cost 20 cents, but it is infalted to 10 to 15 US Dollars in the North American market.

Notice how all criticism towards losing manufacturing jobs always runs from illegal aliens to blaming China in general, but never falls on the businesses themselves.

China did a wonderful job of moving from a state centralized economy, to creating free commericial zones that allowed it to experiment with capitalism. Their entire motto of development has been import the first product, manufacture the second in China, export the third to the rest of the world. But even now its learning that mass production needs to be high quality and inspected thoroughly, given the Toy recall fiascos.

But one must realize that it is really a global economy now, the Chinese development is still reliant on a multitude of trade partners to make products develop, one part from Japan, another from Singapore and so on. The interconnection of global trade only benefits us all because having a war is dangerous as all economies become dependent on one another.

With regards to America. The country has been too obsessed with profit, as was the government in its legislation, it hasn't tried to create new jobs so much so as increase the profits of companies themselves, thinking that it would trickle down in employment. The US needs to overcome its recession, end the war and fix its debt before implementing FDR stlye reforms to create jobs for the people again.

choggie, I'd argue that you can get the same level of quality still in any product or service, and with very little effort.

The example I give is this video:
http://www.videosift.com/video/TED-What-does-technology-want
At 12:00, Kevin Kelly points out that technologies virtually never go away. He did a little experiment, leafing through a century-old catalog, and found that every product was still available.

Quality, is a subjective exercise with regard to what I am talking about-I detest cheap, plastic, crap. and farhad, why should we laud the recent up-and- commence of a country who, after wiping the sleep out of the collective eyes after their civil war, Dung and Mao, and being thrust out of poverty to bloom into the manufacturing shit hole of today.....huge amounts of natural resources are imported to keep their infrastructure going, and the net is an export explosion of low-end, disposable goods. Oh well......this is all as it should be, there is no going back-If the "global economy now" as a vision of the future.....the place WILL look like some 21century William Gibson scenario..

My hope for a future, would be cessation of the global economic gristmill, about 2/3rds of the earth's population disappearing in a matter of a few years (preferably some natural catastrophic scenario, and a collective upward thrust of mankind's remnants, finally getting their heads out of their ass, and working together for some worthwhile global scenario......until then, I'm all for getting rid of currency altogether.....

Your view of the world, indifference in the face of collapse, is the philosophy of a lemming. Dystopias are an artistic response to the short-sightedness of utopias, not a picture of reality.

Systems are not as stuck as you think they are, there is much room for improvement without throwing out the bathwater.

study history's democracies....can't see the hope in the rant, eh??? as always, these are the best of times, we work wt what we have,dystopiawhatever......

choggie, I don't see hope in any of your rants.

These are the best of times because we're on a gas guzzling induced high. The one-two punch of peak oil and climate change are about to knock our socks off, but I'm not one of those Luddite-anarchists who thinks we should give up the ghost and go back to horse-and-buggy times.

We may not be able to curtail such a backward slide, we've gone from indoor plumbing to shitting out doors before....My hope resides in the dynamic nature of this existence, good and bad-I don't have to like what I see, nor accept glazed Newspeak as an explanation-oil consumption is to climate change as solar cycles are to the nature of one man's power and control over another-ALL aspects of what we are experiencing are racing exponentially, to a culmination with no defined reference point-meaning,...
The explanations of the process and results are shady- most are ill-equipped to describe it using familiar models.

I agree, unfamiliar models are exactly what we should be looking for.

Can you do me a favour though, and stop posting about solar cycles? It's old hat. From the link: The sun-climate effect is “about 10 to 15% the magnitude of the greenhouse gas forcing over the 20th Century.

Fuck your pretentious request my friend, global warming is a crock of horseshit, for the singular reason that the data available to you is not able to be validated by the same apparatus-all of you people with an opinion that in this current paradigm, that we have an major effect not already dwarfed by our planet's own output, are batshit insane-and the fact that you chose the passive-aggressive stance by posting that non-sequituriffic comment on this thread, makes you all the more culpable in your own particular set of delusional process. -.....oooops, guess i just let out some more greenhouse gas