China

[topgearwascool]

What they do in China is up to China.

I personally don't feel like they've played 'fair' to get to where they've gotten to today.
By UK standards, China are lacking; Human Rights, Animal Rights, Democracy, Child Labour Laws and Freedom.
In the UK (where I'm from/posting this post from); You can't really work unless you're 16yrs old, and even then there are rules like how long you can work for and food you're entitled to as well as a minimum wage/rate of pay...
China, have the audacity to flaunt their 10% GDP, have no respect for copyright infringement, has no human rights or concept of ownership, and it actually matters WHERE in China you're born; Where you were born in China could be the difference between receiving health care and education and having nothing and being branded a lifelong peasant.
They've been on the brink of famine, so they consider dogs and insects a form of protein (which is all well and good for China considering their population figures and history)...
But it's not fair.
Beijing is probably the most polluted place on the planet and I swear China wouldn't be so prosperous if they had human rights and freedom like the UK, yet the UK has to sit down and listen why China inflate their own currency, and don't do anything to help with carbon emissions.
I'd say, if there wasn't a billion people in China, we could trade embargo them.
China doesn't need to be so prosperous.
Why can't countries with human rights just pull out of places like China?
We don't have slave labour in the UK, but we buy from Chinese slave labour.
An 8yr old in England has to go to school, so why is okay for a Chinese 8yr old to make my iPhones?

I personally want to cut China out of my supply chain.
But I am one person.
As long as we continue to feed 'Made in China', then China, with their smoggy Beijing, over inflated currency and slave labour, will continue to think it's so smart... When really, we haven't got the heart to watch a billion people starve.

 

[LeVeL]

TL;DR version - communism sucks.

 

[topgearwascool]

TL;DR version - communism sucks.

Well, we can't tell China what to do; China can't tell anyone else what to do...

I can say
"Free the Fulan Gong!"
"Stop harvesting their organs!"
all day long... But what they do in China, is up to China.
So what we do is up to us, and, well, we still trade with China.

 

[MWF]

And jumping on a soap box on an Internet forum isn't going to alter the status quo in any way. Nor to be frank is starting a petition on change.org beseeching people to stop buying products made in China because of human rights and labour law abuses but if you want to hang with like minded sheeple then you are probably better off starting there.

 

[Interrobang]

[...]
As long as we continue to feed 'Made in China', then China, with their smoggy Beijing, over inflated currency and slave labour, will continue to think it's so smart... When really, we haven't got the heart to watch a billion people starve.

And some people say that there are no great writers anymore ...

 

[marcos_eirik]

China, China, China etc...

 

[captain_70s]

TL;DR version - Industrial revolution sucks.

Fixed that for you.

The UK, USA and mainland Europe were lucky enough to violently explode from farming communities to industrial power houses while the concept of allowing your own people to starve, getting 8 year olds to operate heavy machinery and certain people simply being worth less than others was socially acceptable and had been the norm for the last few thousand years.
I'm sure the Western world could pressure China into getting their act together and being nicer to their populace/the environment/etc but being nice doesn't earn money and I don't see the Western world being too keen on financially supporting 1.3 billion extra people. There would be only losers in that scenario.

 

[LeVeL]

Fixed that for you.

The UK, USA and mainland Europe were lucky enough to violently explode from farming communities to industrial power houses while the concept of allowing your own people to starve, getting 8 year olds to operate heavy machinery and certain people simply being worth less than others was socially acceptable and had been the norm for the last few thousand years.
I'm sure the Western world could pressure China into getting their act together and being nicer to their populace/the environment/etc but being nice doesn't earn money and I don't see the Western world being too keen on financially supporting 1.3 billion extra people. There would be only losers in that scenario.

What?? The industrial revolution allowed us to feed and clothe more people than ever before.

 

[Labcoatguy]

What?? The industrial revolution allowed us to feed and clothe more people than ever before.

...which is a completely incomplete point; how well they were fed and clothed is a different matter. The industrial working classes weren't exactly comfortable, nor were the peasants still working in the fields that fed the big cities.
As for the whole difference in living standards, can the world's economy survive without a combination economic powerhouse/environmental shithole somewhere? Globalization hasn't ended industrial poverty, it's just exported it.

 

[LeVeL]

...which is a completely incomplete point; how well they were fed and clothed is a different matter. The industrial working classes weren't exactly comfortable, nor were the peasants still working in the fields that fed the big cities.

Irregardlessly of the completeness of my incomplete point, recall that prior to the industrial revolution workers were serfs working for a master and had zero autonomy. Factories arguably kept them in servitude but still awarded them far greater flexibility and freedom, as well as cheaper food and a great variety of goods.

That said, it would be quite an interesting discussion to consider the general merits and shortcomings of the industrial revolution and even agriculture on the world as a whole. It can be argues that agriculture is one of history's greatest ills.

As for the whole difference in living standards, can the world's economy survive without a combination economic powerhouse/environmental shithole somewhere? Globalization hasn't ended industrial poverty, it's just exported it.

Sadly, very true. Globalization brings material wealth through improved infrastructure but it's debatable whether the people are actually better off - depends on how you measure it.

 

[Labcoatguy]

Irregardlessly of the completeness of my incomplete point, recall that prior to the industrial revolution workers were serfs working for a master and had zero autonomy. Factories arguably kept them in servitude but still awarded them far greater flexibility and freedom, as well as cheaper food and a great variety of goods.

I wonder how much of this perspective is due to historians looking at industrialization with a rose-tinted POV; the industrial worker's freedom from agricultural serfdom also came with, if not de jure industrial enslavement, the alternative of clock-punching and having to stick to more formalized working hours (vs. rising with the sun). Consider also that many industrial towns had large populations of unemployed beggars who were pretty much interchangeable with factory workers, so freedom was in reality pretty thin.

tl;dr: Sure, there was more "freedom" in theory, but a lot of relative security was given up for it. Granted, for most of these people it was a choice between agricultural mud and industrial soot; I'm not prepared to argue for one vs. the other.

 

[calvinhobbes]

I wonder how much of this perspective is due to historians looking at industrialization with a rose-tinted POV

95 percent? It's no secret that industralisation produced a lot of extremely nasty side effects. Some historians seem all too willing to ignore that.

relevant:

Some (well, two) of the student jobs I had in my late teens and early twenties were a lot like that.

 

[GRtak]

...which is a completely incomplete point; how well they were fed and clothed is a different matter. The industrial working classes weren't exactly comfortable, nor were the peasants still working in the fields that fed the big cities.
As for the whole difference in living standards, can the world's economy survive without a combination economic powerhouse/environmental shithole somewhere? Globalization hasn't ended industrial poverty, it's just exported it.

We need to learn how to do it without the shit hole part. It wasn't that long ago in this country where we had rivers burning and are still in need of cleaning up several toxic sites. It is not cool to piss in the pool you will eventually need to drink from.

 

[topgearwascool]

Fixed that for you.

The UK, USA and mainland Europe were lucky enough to violently explode from farming communities to industrial power houses while the concept of allowing your own people to starve, getting 8 year olds to operate heavy machinery and certain people simply being worth less than others was socially acceptable and had been the norm for the last few thousand years.
I'm sure the Western world could pressure China into getting their act together and being nicer to their populace/the environment/etc but being nice doesn't earn money and I don't see the Western world being too keen on financially supporting 1.3 billion extra people. There would be only losers in that scenario.

That's true...
Just look at the British Empire of old.
...
Here's what they don't teach -
Narrated by none other than Robert Beltran (of all people)..

Warning! interesting watch but a long video!

THIS HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH CHINA, BUT... worth a watch.

 

[SirEdward]

Really?

A fully OT one-hour and forty minutes delirium about... what? If they were "the true enemy", it would have suffice to let britain starve out through german u-boots and bombers.

Lyndon LaRouche is quite a nut.

From his wikipedia alone, you can discover he believes in:

1)9/11 conspiracy theories (inside job with an iranian flavour),
2)AIDS conspiracy theories (man-made disease spread by the anglo-zionist (whatever that nonsense mean) and which is cnstantly lied upon),
3)the inexistence of the green-house effect,
4)the safety of DDT,
5)global warming as an economical control mean,
6)Hitler to have been put into power by the british (no, really...)

Do I really have to go on?

This thread is already bordering dullness as it is, pushing it wildly off-topic is not the right way to go.

Plus, you expressed yourself as a proud british nationalist, now are you allying with US nutcases who just happen to support your skewed view of things? This LaRouche guy says british government has pretty much created all of last centuries' problems to f**k up the US, and never managed to; he's a US ultra-nationalist, not a british one. What the heck are you thinking by supporting those idiocies?

Also, is it possible to have something from you which is constructive and not destructive? You are bordering trollness, or have already entered it.

Please, read some -real- history, keep in topic and try to listen to something other than the voice of your own belly button.

 

[topgearwascool]

Well, captain 70s had a valid point;
I guess China are doing what 'others have done in the past', and maybe it's needed to achieve what's gotten today?